Sino-Mongolica Remota

The present collection of critical remarks on early Mongolian and Sino-Mongolian documents (inscriptions, manuscripts and printed texts) of the 13th and 14th centuries is the outcome of much reading and writing on the subject over many decades. They are addressed mainly to philologists and students of Preclassical Mongolian, but sinologues working on the language and literary culture of the Yuan period (including the reigns of the first four khans, 1206–1368) can also benefit. It is assumed that the reader, besides knowing Chinese and written Mongolian, is also acquainted with the documents in question and has access to photocopies of the original texts. In any event, I shall constantly provide references to the transcriptions/transliterations of these texts published by L. Ligeti, D. Tumurtogoo & G. Cecegdari, F.W. Cleaves, D. Cerensodnom & M. Taube, and others, and their translations when available. The texts are arranged in chronological order.

The ‘Stone of Chingis’

The so-called ‘Stone of Chingis’ is the inscribed stele celebrating the victory of Činggis Qan’s nephew Yisüngge (c. 1190–c. 1270) in an archery contest that Činggis held at a place near the Imil and (Black) Irtysh rivers in present-day northern Xinjiang on his return journey to Mongolia after the great campaign against Khwarezm (1218–24). It was in all probability the same area between the old territory of the Uighurs and the Naimans where he and his army had encamped en route to the West in the summer of 1119.[1] There he set up his ordo again in the summer of 1224, engaging in the usual activities of hunting, archery contests, etc., and holding a great feast. In the archery contest, Prince Yisüngge, the second son of Činggis’ younger brother (Ĵoči) Qasar (1164–c. 1213) — himself a great archer — shot an arrow to the distance of 335 aldas or fathoms equivalent to 536 metres. The text, roughly carved on the two-metre high granite stone now at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg reads:

When Činggis Qan, having subdued the Sartaγul (= Central Asian Muslim) people, set up camp, and the noblemen of the entire Mongol nation gathered at Buqa Sočiγai,[2] at the long-distance shooting Yisüngge shot an arrow to the distance of 335 fathoms.[3]

Most of the problems associated with the decipherment of the inscription derive from the fact the stone was not inscribed by a professional carver; the stone surface was not smoothed properly before the text was inscribed; and that the text was subsequently damaged by the breaking of the stone which occurred accidentally while the stele was being transported from the east Baikal region to St. Petersburg in 1829–32. Fortunately, only two letters of two separate words in the inscription were obliterated. More than a century and a half of assiduous work on the part of a dozen scholars from various nations has yielded a reconstruction of the full original text and an interpretation that is both thorough and reliable. The Mongolian text is no longer a problem.[4]

The main problem concerning this interesting monument, which (it should be mentioned) is unique of its kind in the history of Mongolian epigraphy, is the dating of its erection and inscription. The latter was, of course, made when the stele was erected, but was it erected in Central Asia at the time of the event it celebrates, that is, in the summer of 1224, thus making it the first monument in Uighur-Mongolian script and, indeed, the very first specimen of this script that has come down to us? As is known, according to the Chinese sources the then illiterate Mongols adopted the Uighur alphabet at the very beginning of the thirteenth century (1204), some twenty years before the archery contest, and adapted it, almost without a change, to their own language. In 1206, together with a major reform of the military system, Činggis created a rudimentary ‘tent administration’, with recording and bookkeeping duties, which clearly required the use of the new script. The officer in charge was the newly appointed adjudicator (ĵarγuči) Šigi Qutuqu, who, as a child, had been adopted by Činggis’ mother Hö’elün. All of Činggis Qan’s sons had received personal tuition in the Uighur-Mongolian script by the Uighur Tatar Tonga, a former seel-keeper and secretary of the khan of the Naiman tribe and the very man who reputedly introduced the Uighur script to the Mongols. The rudimentary administration run by Šigi Qutuqu was the precursor of the later court Secretariat which, in the latter part of Činggis’ life and during the reign of his successor Ögödei Qaγan (1229–41), was headed by the (? Uighur) official Čin(g)qai (c. 1169–1252) and the sinicised Khitan Yelü Chucai (1189–1243), the former being in charge of all matters entailing the use of the Uighur script, hence the adoption on the part of the Mongol court administration of Uighur chancellery practices and procedures in drafting documents, etc. Yelü Chuzai was in charge of all Chinese matters to be dealt with by the Secretariat, as well as acting also as court astrologer-astronomer using both Arabic-Persian and Chinese techniques. As the chief ‘Chinese’ scribe, he drafted official letters in that language and was probably the one who sanctioned the use of vernacular Chinese in the official correspondence and imperial edicts.[5]

Now, the ‘Stone of Chingis’ or, more correctly, the ‘Stele of Yisüngge’, was discovered some time before 1818 among the ruins of two medieval Mongolian settlements on the rivers Khirkhira and Kondui, both affluents of the Urulyungui, itself a left tributary of the Argun River. Some five kilometres upstream from the Khirkhira site a few ancient kurgans were found, that is, large burial mounds or tumuli, and it was near them, according to local informers, that stood the stele which by 1818 had already been removed and stored in the nearby village of Nerchinskiĭ Zavod.[6] Later investigations by Russian scholars confirmed that Yisüngge’s stele originally stood on a granite base in a ravine at the Khirkhira site and in the area of the kurgans linked to the medieval Mongolian settlement, which further excavations revealed to be a large township with its citadel, palatial buildings and workmen’s dwellings. Further research identified the whole area as the centre of the former domain or apanage of Ĵoči Qasar, of his sons and their descendants in south-eastern Transbaikalia, that is, in the region of the Argun and Hulun Lake (or Dalai Nōr), where the borders of Russia, China and Mongolia converge. Prince Yisüngge presumably returned there late in 1224 or early in 1225 after the great campaign in the West. When he died more than forty years later, he was buried (one assumes) with the inscribed granite stele erected near his tomb as a memorial to his skill as the best Mongol archer and his great feat in Central Asia in Činggis Qan’s time.[7]

The problem, then, in Pelliot’s words, is the following:

Whatever reading [of the place-name *Buqa-(s)učiqai – I.R.] we may adopt, it is difficult to account for the region where the ‘stone of Chingiz-khan’ was found, presumably in situ: the stone was discovered in the basin of the Argun, i.e., far to the east of the track which Chingiz followed on his way back from the Ili region to his ordo. I have no solution to proffer for this question, which former inquirers have ignored.[8]

The point raised by Pelliot is pertinent since it has a direct bearing on the dating of the inscription. Excluding the very remote possibility that the stone was cut and inscribed in Central Asia and carted all the way to Transbaikalia, there are only two likely scenarios. One, that the stone was cut and erected immediately after Yisüngge’s return to his family domain — an unusual practice for a Mongol at the time, but not impossible. If so, that would date it from 1224–25. The other, that the stone was erected after his death, that is, c. 1270, as a funerary monument, to honour and perpetuate his memory by recording the most outstanding achievement of his life.

While there is no certain way to find out which of the two alternatives is more likely to have occurred, Pelliot was of the opinion that the stele probably dated from 1225. He therefore was in favour of the first alternative but gave no reason for it.[9] For my part, I am entirely in agreement with Pelliot, my main reason being that the granite stele is, as an inscribed memorial stone, very ‘primitive’, completely lacking in polish and roughly incised. Had it been erected and inscribed in or about 1270, it would have undoubtedly been executed more professionally. Nevertheless, after Yisüngge’s death it would still make a fitting gravestone and epitaph for a personage whose major claim to fame was that extraordinary bow shot.

To this general consideration we must add certain orthographic features of the text, viz. the use of the Uighur letter z to render the Mongolian final s in the words Činggis and aldas in the first and fourth lines, whereas the final s of the word ulus in the second line is rendered with the Uighur letter s. The verb ontud- ‘to shoot an arrow at a long distance’ is spelt differently in the fourth and fifth lines (ontuDur-un and onDutulaγ-a, where D is the Uighur d and t the Uighur t, that is, the two letters are used interchangeably). The diacritic points added to the letters n and γ are used erratically, and q has two dots, as in Uighur, when it should have none in the Uighur-Mongolian script. There is, therefore, a definite Uighur influence on the orthography, which is a characteristic of Mongolian epigraphies and documents throughout the Mongol-Yuan period, except for the Uighur z used, inconsistently, also for the Mongolian final s. Thus all the formal (material) and textual features of the monument point to an earlier rather than later date.

In conclusion, I think we can safely say that in all likelihood the stele of Yisüngge was erected in Qasar’s family domain in 1224 or 1225 and that it remained in situ until the beginning of the 19th century, eventually finding its way, somewhat worse for wear, to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg where it can still be admired today. Consequently we may, indeed, continue to regard it as the first surviving example of an ancient Mongolian commemorative stele as well as the first specimen of Uighur-Mongolian script still extant.[10]

The Sino-Mongolian Inscription of 1240

The Mongolian text of the Empress Töregene’s edict of 1240 is only three lines long and comes immediately after the Chinese text of the edict (11 lines in vernacular officialese).[11] It is purely formulaic in contents, warning any transgressor and using a phraseology employed in numerous other documents of the early Mongol period.[12] Contrary to F.W. Cleaves’ opinion, I do not think that it is the end of a longer text in Mongolian and, moreover, incomplete.[13] The transcription of the Mongolian text is the following:

[1] Šne minu üge busi bolγaγ-san kümün
[2] yeke erke aldaγ-situ boltuγai Šne
[3] bičig qulaγana ĵil

Please note that 1) the text lacks any punctuation, 2) in the first line the separation of san from bolγaγ, and in the second line the separation of situ from aldaγ are simply orthographic peculiarities: the two words should be read bolγaγsan and aldaγsitu respectively, and 3) the same applies to the reading Šne (ane) = ene in the first and second lines.[14] If one ignores these orthographic features and punctuates the text, I would at present read the same text as follows:

[1] Ene minu üge. Busi bolγaγsan kümun
[2] yeke erke aldaγsitu boltuγai. Ene
[3] bičig qulaγana ĵil.

I would also offer a new literal interpretation of the text, as follows:

[1] This [is] my word (= order). [Any] person who has contravened [it]
[2] shall be guilty of great arrogance (= lese-majesty) [and will die]. This
[3] Writ [was issued by me in] the Year of the Rat (= 1240).

I take the first three words as a single proposition and not as the direct object of what follows as previously done by Cleaves and myself.[15]

The major bone of contention is the first two words of the second line, viz. yeke erke. Cleaves does not transcribe and translate the word erke; Ligeti transcribes it as ‘eregü [?]’ (‘punishment’); Dobu has ‘Šnke’ adding in a note ‘This word is unreadable’; Saitō transcribes it as ‘änkä’ adding in a footnote ‘änkä?’ (all these scholars read the preceding word yeke or yäkä ‘great’ or ‘greatly’); de Rachewiltz reads yeke erke and translates ‘[by] the supreme power’, explaining further ‘which I presume refers to Heaven rather than to the qaγan of the Mongol state’; Tumurtogoo transcribes the two words also as yeke erke.[16]

However, it has escaped all the above transcribers and translators that the term erke, the primary meaning of which is ‘power’, has in Preclassical Mongolian also the extended meaning of ‘arrogance’. In the Mongolian version of the Xiaojing 孝經 or Classic of Filial Piety, which I believe dates from the early Yuan period, that is from the second half of the thirteenth century, the word erkeben (= erke-ben) ‘his arrogance (or pride)’ occurs twice, erke rendering in both cases the term jiao 驕 ‘proud, arrogant’ of the Xiaojing.[17] In Classical and Literary Mongolian, as well as in the modern dialects erke also occurs with the meanings of ‘arbitrary, wilful, capricious; disobedience, insubordination, defiance’ and the like.[18]

As for aldaγsitu, I think that A. Mostaert (in Cleaves, ‘Sino-Mongolian Inscription of 1240’, p.70, n.5) is right in regarding it as an adjective in -tu of aldaγsi, but I do not share his opinion that the latter may be a deverbal noun in -si (see Poppe, Grammar, §181) of *aldaγ- = alda- ‘to lose, fail, err’ and, by extension, ‘to make a serious mistake, to commit a crime’, hence ‘an offence, a crime (< “a mistake liable to punishment”)’. In Mongolian there is no attested occurrence of a verb aldaγ-, however, except for this single instance. This, I believe is because aldaγ is not a Mongolian word but a Turkic deverbal noun formed on tu. alda- or alta- ‘to deceive, cheat, mislead’ (> mo. alda- ‘to fail, err, etc.’) and meaning ‘fraud, deceit’. See Wilhelm Radloff, Versuch eines Wörterbuches der Türk-Dialecte, I-IV (St. Petersburg: IAN, 1893–1911), Vol.1/1, p.414, and p.413, s.v. alday; V.M. Nadelyaev et al., Drevnetyurkskiĭ slovar’ (Leningrad: ‘Nauka’, 1969), p.34b; Clauson, Etymological Dictionary, p.133a; Doerfer, Elemente, no. 533. Aldaγ does correspond to mo. aldal ‘mistake, punishable crime’, as Mostaert, loc.cit., correctly says, but this is not relevant here insofar as aldal does not come into the picture. The word aldaγsitu is simply an aberrant form of mo. aldasitu (alda- + -si- + -tu) due to a Central Asian scribe-secretary (of Turkic language background?) with an imperfect knowledge of Mongolian who mistakenly coined this Turko-Mongolian hybrid term meaning ‘who has (committed) a crime (liable to punishment)’, viz. ‘guilty of a capital offence’. Aldasi ‘crime, criminal (= capital) offence’ is a technical term one frequently encounters in the historical and legal-administrative literature of the Mongol-Yuan period in Chinese. See Cleaves, op.cit., pp.70–71, where several citations clearly indicate that under the first Mongol rulers the aldasi-offence entailed capital punishment.[19] Therefore, the very concise, formulaic and somewhat ungrammatical Mongol validation and caveat at the end of the imperial edict of 1240 may be understood in plain English as follows:

This is my order. Anyone who contravenes it shall be guilty of lese-majesty and will die. This Writ was issued by me in the Year of the Rat (= 1240). Alternatively: ‘Anyone who contravenes this order of mine shall be guilty of lese-majesty, etc.

The above remarks are meant, in particular, to complement, supplement and revise what I have already written on the subject in de Rachewiltz, ‘Töregene’s Edict of 1240’, and in the Secret History, Vol.2, p.769, and Vol.3, pp.112–13.