Mongolia's Culture And Society

Sechin Jagchid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429727153
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book describes nomadic life and culture in Mongolia depicting the patterns of the Ch'ing period (1644-1912), in which all the Mongols lived under the administration and control of the Chinese empire. It explains the patterns of the subsequent revolutionary period which altered the life of them.

1
Land and People of the Mongolian Steppes

A line drawn through East Asia from the middle of Manchuria to the southwest, following the Great Wall toward Tibet and on to Arabia, naturally divides the Asian world into two parts: the arid world of the nomads to the north and the intensively farmed monsoon lands to the south. Within these two spheres there developed radically different societies and cultures. The historical succession of nomadic societies and cultures to the north was based on the domestication of animals and a migratory style of life; to the south, the economic base of society was primarily wet rice agriculture and a concentrated settlement pattern. The nomadic peoples and the sedentary Chinese struggled continually for power, for control over resources, trade routes, and strategic areas. Under strong dynasties, there were campaigns from China into the steppe, but the dominant trend was invasions of the nomadic peoples into North China. Major events or developments in the heartland of Inner Asia, either natural disasters or political changes, almost inevitably impinged on the fate of the surrounding territories governed by sedentary peoples in China, Russia, and West Asia.

In East Asia, the Chinese model of civilization dominated, and its institutions were naturally dispersed widely, northward into Korea and Japan and southward into Indochina. North of the wall, Chinese culture has had very little influence upon the society and cultural development of the nomadic peoples until recently. Conversely, while the nomadic peoples gained political dominance, they exerted very little cultural influence southward into China. While the geographical distance was short, the cultural distance between these two spheres remained very great. Just as Confucian patterns of society in China established a model or common denominator for other East Asian societies, various nomadic peoples out in the steppe to the north (Turkic, Mongolian, or other) perpetuated certain common aspects of their life-style for centuries.

The unstable relationship between the nomadic Altaic people and the sedentary Chinese, and the lack of an institutionalized and continuous trade or co-prosperity between them, was due to the economic dependence of the nomadic people of the steppe on the agricultural people south of the wall and, concurrently, the antipathy of the Chinese toward their northern nomadic, "barbarian" neighbors. The steppe inhabitants had abundant meat for food and wool and hides for clothing, but they lacked such necessities as grain, cloth, and agricultural products. When they could not obtain these items through trade, they resorted to invasion and conquest.¹

The scope of power and activity north of the wall was broad and expansive from the beginning of history until modern times. From the Mongolian plateau, as a heartland, dominion was thrust eastward into Manchuria and Korea or westward to control the trade routes, Central Asia and the lands of western Asia, the Near East, or even eastern Europe. From Manchuria to western Asia, there are virtually no major geographical barriers, so various nomadic rulers were able to control, for periods of time, the great Eurasian steppe area, far into southern Russia. From their excellent strategic position on the high steppe plateau of Mongolia, nomadic peoples looked down upon and constantly thrust themselves into the rich areas of China for exploitation and trade. Thus, through the centuries, the plateau served as a strategic military and geopolitical position. Because of an imbalance in supply and demand between these two spheres, the tension and conflict were never resolved.² Peace and trade between them did not exist for extended periods of time except during the Ch'ing, the last imperial period, which was actually one of Manchu rule rather than Chinese.

The nature of the relationship between the two spheres may be seen in the writings of Pan Ku (A.D. 32-92), second great historian of the Han dynasty.

As for customs, food, clothing, and language, the barbarians are entirely different from the Middle Kingdom. They live in the cold wilderness of the far north. They follow the grazing fields, herding their flocks and hunting game to maintain their lives. Mountains, valleys and the great desert separate them from us. This barrier which lies between the center and the alien outside was made by Heaven and Earth. Therefore, the sage rulers considered them beasts, neither establishing contacts nor subjugating them. If any agreements were established it would involve our troops in vain and cause the enemy to fight back if an invasion were carried out. Their land is impossible to cultivate and it is impossible to rule them as subjects. Therefore, they are always to be considered as outsiders and never as intimates. Our administration and teaching have never reached their people. Our imperial calendar has never been bestowed upon them.³ Punish them when they come and guard against them when they retreat. Receive them when they offer tribute as a sign of admiration for our righteousness. Restrain them continually and make it appear that all the blame is on their side. This is the proper policy of sage rulers towards the barbarians.⁴

In the late Han period, many similar sentiments were current, demonstrating a deep breach and incompatible differences in life-style between the steppe and China.

The date of the earliest inhabitation by man in the steppe areas is still a moot question. However, archaeologists have discovered paleolithic sites inhabited by man in northern Mongolia in the Selengge, Tula, and Orkhon river-valleys and in eastern Mongolia in the Khalkha River valley. Other paleolithic sites have been found in the northwest region of the Altai Mountains and around Khobdo. All of these sites are recent finds. Sites inhabited by man from the late paleolithic age into the neolithic age are found in the great loop of the Yellow River (the Ordos) in southwestern Mongolia and also at Jalainor in the Nonni River valley in eastern Mongolia. Bronze Age and Iron Age implements as well as neolithic artifacts are found continually in various parts of northern and southern Mongolia, which are habitable by man. Mongolia thus served both as a cradle for many nomadic peoples and as a base for their expansion and the establishment of their empires. The major groups of Altaic people who dominated the area were the Hsiung-nu, the Hsienpei, the Juan-juan, the T'u-chüeh, the Uighur, the Kitan, the Mongols, and the Manchu.

The geographical expanse of the Inner Asian steppe belt was well suited to the people who lived there since their activities continually required broad movements in search of water or pastures, or escape or refuge from natural disasters. Survival and security in the steppe, which offered so few of the necessities of life, depended upon the movement of families and clans or powerful khans over many clan federations. An increasing number of peoples, whose lives were based on a pastoral economy, settled in the area.

There were some common denominators among the people inhabiting these areas, but there were also important differences in lifestyle. The pastoral nomadic life was dominant, with important ancillary groups such as hunters; there were groups with a mixed hunting and pastoral economy and others with a mixed hunting and agricultural or a mixed agricultural and nomadic economy.

About one century B.C. in the classic history of the Shih chi, Ssu-ma Ch'ien wrote:

The Hsiung-nu live in the Northern Barbarian lands and wander, following their herds, moving from place to place . . . searching for water and pastures. They have no cities, no permanent dwellings and no cultivated fields.... Their children ride on the backs of sheep and shoot [arrows] at birds and rats. As they grow older, they shoot fox and rabbits for food. The men are able to pull heavy bows and they are all armored horsemen. According to their custom, during times of peace they follow their herds and hunt animals and birds to sustain life; in crisis everyone uses their unique tactics for an attack and invasion. Their long distance weapons are bows and arrows and their hand-to-hand weapons are swords and daggers. When it is profitable they advance; when it is unprofitable they withdraw, never being ashamed of retreat. . . . From their rulers down everyone eats meat, wears animal hides and puts on felt and furs.⁵

This brief description confirms that hunting and pastoral pursuits were the bases of the livelihood of the ancient inhabitants of the Mongol steppes.

It seems to be the consensus of most students of Inner Asia that rather than being an ancient, primitive form of society out of which men evolved an agricultural society, nomadism was a comparatively late development made possible only after men had mastered the domestication of animals and developed techniques for survival in the steppe. By watching natural phenomena, men may learn how to plant seeds and deal with the comparatively simple world of agriculture, but it is much more difficult to develop processes to domesticate and handle herds of wild animals. Pastoral life depends on a critical ecological balance. It is necessary to know the lowest consumptive limitations of man, comparative birthrates in developing herds, and methods of avoiding or compensating for natural disasters. It is impossible to live by heedlessly drawing from the herds. For example, when taking milk, one must leave enough for the young nursing animals, and when shearing wool, one must make allowances for the protection of the animal in cold weather. This form of livelihood is more complex than agricultural life.

Food, clothing, transportation, and all other factors in the lives of nomadic peoples are directly dependent upon their animals; therefore, man and animal are inseparable. The milk and meat of the sheep, cattle, horse, and even the camel are the food of the nomad; the wool and hide of the animals are used for clothing; and even dwellings are made from animal products. The horse, the most important means of communication and mobility was also crucial to warfare. Cattle and camels also provided means of transportation; in extreme desert areas, only camels can be depended on. Naturally, the wealth of a nomadic family or ruler is determined by the size of the herds. In order to maintain or increase this wealth, it is necessary to constantly seek better or larger grazing areas. Disease, catastrophes due to weather, or other types of disasters force the nomadic group to move to a new area. Migrations inevitably lead to conflicts over good pasture areas.

Sedentary agricultural people consider their main source of wealth to be the land on which they raise their crops, but for nomads, land is only indirectly a necessity for increasing or maintaining viability.⁶ The key element for nomadic people is the animal subsisting between man and the land. This is the basic difference between the two types of society. Federated clans of nomads gradually coalesced into an empire—a "state on horseback."⁷ Due to the precarious nature of the pastoral economic base, it was necessary to maintain a wide distribution of the herds. At the same time, it was necessary to maintain unity and coordination of the clan federation through a hierarchical structure of vassalage. It was not possible for the nomads to maintain large, tightly knit units like the Chinese family lineage (ta-chia-t'ing), nor was it possible in their geographical environment to integrate the nomadic population into a monolithic unity like the traditional Chinese state. Thus, inherent in the nomadic state (ulus) was a strong tendency to fragmentation and the dissipation of power.

The basic factors of nomadic life influenced unique developments in every phase of culture. Nomadic institutions or customs, then, are generally in marked contrast to those of sedentary agriculturists. Because of the great cultural distance between the thought and the customs of these two worlds, strong prejudices militated against any close relationship.

The term "Mongol," so awesome and famous in the Middle Ages, was earlier the name of an obscure and neglected group of people, a seemingly insignificant tribal people in the remote areas of northern Mongolia. The name soon became important as it was imposed upon smaller tribal neighbors and as these people became unified by the Mongols. As the empire expanded under the military and administrative genius of Chinggis Khan, the Mongol name was applied to the great empire that unified many ethnically related tribes. The name is still applied to the people and land of this same region. Mongolia remains today the homeland of its age-old inhabitants, still known to our contemporary world as the Mongols.

According to one theory, the term "Mongol" comes from the T'ang dynasty, when a nomadic group, known as the Meng-wu or Meng-wa, emerged. Some Chinese scholars confuse or mistakenly relate the word Mongol to the Mongolian word mönggü(n) ("silver") and explain that while the Jurchen people refer to themselves as the "golden" people, the Mongols called themselves the mönggü(n) or "silver" people.⁸ Another theory, subscribed to by some Mongolian scholars and intellectuals, is that the term Mongol historically involves a linguistic combination of two Mongol words, möngke andghol, which are interpreted to mean "the eternal center." This idea seems to come from Sagang Sechen, author of Erdeni-yin tobchi, who explained the origin of the word Mongghol as follows: "After Chinggis became the Great Khan he proclaimed: 'we suffered and struggled (mong) and have now become the center (ghol) of the universe,. . . therefore we should be called the Köke Mongghol [Blue Mongols]. One must remember that blue, the color of the heavens, symbolized everlasting power to the Mongols.'"⁹ This is a pleasing notion from the viewpoint of the Mongols, which, while it cannot be disproven, seems to be a rather romantic interpretation.

Mongols commonly identify themselves and others by various triballike names. One important group is the Buriyad Mongols, who live in the vicinity of Lake Baikal in Siberia. In eastern Mongolia, in the Nonni River valley, are the famous Dakhur Mongols who speak a dialect of mixed Mongolian and Tungusic-Manchu. The most prominent Mongol group in western Mongolia, centered during certain periods in the T'ienshan mountain region and in the lower Volga River valley, are the Oirad Mongols, known more popularly in the West as the Kalmuck. In the heartland of central Mongolia, to the north and south of the Gobi, are Mongols identified as the Khalkha-speaking group, but divided into various subdialects. It is this group that is frequently referred to in both Asian and Western texts as the Inner and Outer Mongols.

The terms "Inner" and "Outer" Mongolia, as the different spheres came to be known, are political terms not derived from the Mongols themselves, but rather from the Manchu rulers during their two and one-half century reign. These terms, which are distasteful to nationalistic Mongols, are useful in historical analysis. The Mongols do make a somewhat related distinction in that they refer to Mongols living north of the Gobi as the aru Mongols, literally the "back," and to people living south of the Gobi as the obör Mongols, literally the "bosom." Implicit in these terms is the idea that the back and the bosom are inseparable, that all Mongols are one.

Calculating the total population of Mongolia presents many knotty problems because of the widely dispersed population and the complex political situation, which places Mongolian peoples under various governments. Reliable estimates of the Mongolian population indicate, however, that it does not exceed a total of four million persons. The population of the Mongolian People's Republic approached one and one-half million in 1975. The population in southern Mongolia, in the Chinese sphere, is estimated at approximately two million persons, and the remaining numbers are scattered in various areas under Soviet and Chinese rule. Mongolians abroad—often elite leaders who have been forced to flee from Chinese or Russian rule for various reasons— number perhaps one thousand in the United States, four to five hundred in Europe, five to six hundred in Taiwan, and perhaps several hundred dispersed in India, Nepal, and Japan.

It is equally difficult to define Mongolia as a land because of the conflict between political boundaries and cultural institutions. However one may view it, cultural Mongolia today is far larger than the political boundaries represented by the Mongolian People's Republic. The common Mongolian view is that people who speak the Mongolian language are Mongols and that the land that they inhabit is Mongolia, irrespective of the present, temporary, political circumstances. Projecting this rather ideal scope of cultural Mongolia, it extends in the east from the Nonni River valley in Manchuria, latitude 125 degrees east, westward to the T'ienshan (Turk. Tenggeri Tagh) mountain range in eastern Turkistan (Sinkia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 LAND AND PEOPLE OF THE MONGOLIAN STEPPES
• 2 ELEMENTS OF NOMADIC CULTURE
• 3 LIFESTYLE OF THE NOMADS
• 4 RELIGION
• 5 LETTERS AND ARTS
• 6 THE SOCIO-POLITICAL STRUCTURE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
• 7 ECONOMY AND POLITY
• 8 POSTSCRIPT ON MODERN CULTURE
• Identification of Major References
• Key to Short Title References
• Notes
• Index