Sunday, January 30, 2011
Stanford festival explores Mongolia's music
By Andrew Gilbert
While growing up in Beijing, Jindong Cai remembers hearing exotic music from the distant northern provinces, haunting sounds that stayed in the back of his mind for decades.
Last summer, Cai, Stanford's Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies, finally traced the music back its source, taking a 10-day trip to Mongolia with his wife, journalist Sheila Melvin. They discovered a vast, sparsely populated nation in the midst of self-discovery, a serpentine process of building a modern identity out of the wreckage of Stalinist repression and a distant, epic history of world conquest.
"I've been thinking about going to Mongolia for a long time," says Cai by phone from his Stanford office. "I knew some of the music from growing up, and it's always stayed with me. The Mongols ruled most of the world for a period, including China for almost 100 years under Kublai Khan. It was a huge empire, unbelievably huge, all the way to Hungary and Poland."
The Seventh Annual Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival, which opens Friday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, encompasses the ancient and modern story of Mongolia with a series of concerts, pre-performance discussions, symposia and lectures. Friday's program, "Melodies From the Grasslands: Traditional Mongolian Music," features throat-singer Nanjid Sengedorj with horse-head fiddle virtuoso Urtaa Gantulga. It also includes Boerte, an accomplished seven-piece Mongolian band that plays a singular synthesis of jazz and folkloric Central Asian styles on traditional Mongolian instruments (including the horse-head fiddle, or morin khuur).
No instrument better captures Mongolia's ongoing struggle to reclaim its past than the horse-head fiddle. Over the centuries when the nomadic people ruled the steppe, no yurt was complete without the instrument hanging on a felt-covered wall. In the horse-centric culture, the morin khuur was often used to evoke galloping hooves. Writing in the New York Times from Mongolia's capital, Ulan Bator, Melvin detailed how in the years since the country's transition to democracy in 1990, the instrument has played a central role in Mongolia's cultural recovery from Russian domination.
"The horse-head fiddle is a soul instrument for Mongolia families," Cai says. "It has two strings, but made out of hundreds of horse hairs. It's a very fascinating instrument, but during the Soviet period they weren't allowed to continue developing it. Since 1990, it's been reborn."
The Soviets didn't merely repress Mongolia's distinctive traditions. They sought to spread European culture, and three generations of Mongolian musicians received classical conservatory educations, often in Russia. Saturday's program at Dinkelspiel, "From the Grasslands to the Steppes," explores that enduring influence. Conducted by Cai, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra will interpret Borodin's enduringly popular "On the Steppes of Central Asia" and guest composer Byambasuren Sharav's "Concerto for Morin Khuur and Orchestra," and Suite No. 2 from the ballet "Zuurdiin Oron," featuring pianist Juliann Ma, winner of the 2010 Stanford Concerto Competition, and soloist Gantulga.
"Western arts have deep roots in Mongolia as well," Cai says. "The Soviet Union controlled the country for 60 years. They built an opera house and a music school, a national ballet and music theater. In a holdover from the Soviet system they produced 14 ballets and operas every year.
"But the Mongolians suffered a lot during the Soviet period," Cai continues. "You don't see any of the original script; you see Russian Cyrillic. But it's not Russian; it's phonetic representation of Mongolian. A lot of young people don't read the old script. They can't read the old books. So there are a lot of discussions going on about how to reclaim that past, and we want to explore a very broad scope of Mongolian culture at the festival. We'll touch religion, poetry, fine arts."
The festival's second weekend takes a wider look at Central Asia. On Feb. 11, San Francisco's New Spectrum Ensemble and the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music's ensemble-in-residence, the New Pacific Trio, collaborate with Ko Ishikawa on Japanese bamboo mouth organ and horse-head fiddle player Urtnasan, exploring a program of new and recent works by Chen Yi, Keiko Fujiie, François Rose and Tajik composers Tolib Shakhidi and Farangis Nurulla-Khoja.
On Feb. 12, the festival truly lives up to its pan-Asian name, as the Bay Area's Ballet Afsaneh presents folkloric and classical dances of Central Asia, alongside performances by Mongolian, Tibetan and Japanese soloists, including Ishikawa, Sengedorj and traditional Mongolian dancer Darkhya.
The festival closes Feb. 13 with a performance by Iranian singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo, who is marking the release of his new CD, "Useless Kisses" (Payam Entertainment). Sponsored in part by the Pan-Asian Music Festival, the album is a collection of love songs written between 1995 and 2006.
Living in the Palo Alto area for the past year, Namjoo is a visiting artist at Stanford through the spring. Barred from recording in Iran (where he was sentenced in absentia to a five-year jail term in 2009 for his unconventional vocal rendering of a Koranic verse on a private recording), he's developed an avid following at home and in the Iranian diaspora, where the raw emotion in his music resonates with disillusioned young listeners.
"People say his music is controversial, but it comes from the heart," Cai says. "His music is so spread out on the Internet, but you can't publish it in Iran, and he's never officially recorded any of these songs."
Always looking for pan-Asian opportunities, the festival has invited a Tibetan singer to perform with Namjoo's band of fellow Bay Area Iranian musicians.
Seventh Annual Stanford
Pan-Asian Music Festival
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and Feb. 11-12, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 13
Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University
Tickets: $20; 650-725-2787, http://scbs.stanford.edu/festival
While growing up in Beijing, Jindong Cai remembers hearing exotic music from the distant northern provinces, haunting sounds that stayed in the back of his mind for decades.
Last summer, Cai, Stanford's Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies, finally traced the music back its source, taking a 10-day trip to Mongolia with his wife, journalist Sheila Melvin. They discovered a vast, sparsely populated nation in the midst of self-discovery, a serpentine process of building a modern identity out of the wreckage of Stalinist repression and a distant, epic history of world conquest.
"I've been thinking about going to Mongolia for a long time," says Cai by phone from his Stanford office. "I knew some of the music from growing up, and it's always stayed with me. The Mongols ruled most of the world for a period, including China for almost 100 years under Kublai Khan. It was a huge empire, unbelievably huge, all the way to Hungary and Poland."
The Seventh Annual Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival, which opens Friday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, encompasses the ancient and modern story of Mongolia with a series of concerts, pre-performance discussions, symposia and lectures. Friday's program, "Melodies From the Grasslands: Traditional Mongolian Music," features throat-singer Nanjid Sengedorj with horse-head fiddle virtuoso Urtaa Gantulga. It also includes Boerte, an accomplished seven-piece Mongolian band that plays a singular synthesis of jazz and folkloric Central Asian styles on traditional Mongolian instruments (including the horse-head fiddle, or morin khuur).
No instrument better captures Mongolia's ongoing struggle to reclaim its past than the horse-head fiddle. Over the centuries when the nomadic people ruled the steppe, no yurt was complete without the instrument hanging on a felt-covered wall. In the horse-centric culture, the morin khuur was often used to evoke galloping hooves. Writing in the New York Times from Mongolia's capital, Ulan Bator, Melvin detailed how in the years since the country's transition to democracy in 1990, the instrument has played a central role in Mongolia's cultural recovery from Russian domination.
"The horse-head fiddle is a soul instrument for Mongolia families," Cai says. "It has two strings, but made out of hundreds of horse hairs. It's a very fascinating instrument, but during the Soviet period they weren't allowed to continue developing it. Since 1990, it's been reborn."
The Soviets didn't merely repress Mongolia's distinctive traditions. They sought to spread European culture, and three generations of Mongolian musicians received classical conservatory educations, often in Russia. Saturday's program at Dinkelspiel, "From the Grasslands to the Steppes," explores that enduring influence. Conducted by Cai, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra will interpret Borodin's enduringly popular "On the Steppes of Central Asia" and guest composer Byambasuren Sharav's "Concerto for Morin Khuur and Orchestra," and Suite No. 2 from the ballet "Zuurdiin Oron," featuring pianist Juliann Ma, winner of the 2010 Stanford Concerto Competition, and soloist Gantulga.
"Western arts have deep roots in Mongolia as well," Cai says. "The Soviet Union controlled the country for 60 years. They built an opera house and a music school, a national ballet and music theater. In a holdover from the Soviet system they produced 14 ballets and operas every year.
"But the Mongolians suffered a lot during the Soviet period," Cai continues. "You don't see any of the original script; you see Russian Cyrillic. But it's not Russian; it's phonetic representation of Mongolian. A lot of young people don't read the old script. They can't read the old books. So there are a lot of discussions going on about how to reclaim that past, and we want to explore a very broad scope of Mongolian culture at the festival. We'll touch religion, poetry, fine arts."
The festival's second weekend takes a wider look at Central Asia. On Feb. 11, San Francisco's New Spectrum Ensemble and the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music's ensemble-in-residence, the New Pacific Trio, collaborate with Ko Ishikawa on Japanese bamboo mouth organ and horse-head fiddle player Urtnasan, exploring a program of new and recent works by Chen Yi, Keiko Fujiie, François Rose and Tajik composers Tolib Shakhidi and Farangis Nurulla-Khoja.
On Feb. 12, the festival truly lives up to its pan-Asian name, as the Bay Area's Ballet Afsaneh presents folkloric and classical dances of Central Asia, alongside performances by Mongolian, Tibetan and Japanese soloists, including Ishikawa, Sengedorj and traditional Mongolian dancer Darkhya.
The festival closes Feb. 13 with a performance by Iranian singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo, who is marking the release of his new CD, "Useless Kisses" (Payam Entertainment). Sponsored in part by the Pan-Asian Music Festival, the album is a collection of love songs written between 1995 and 2006.
Living in the Palo Alto area for the past year, Namjoo is a visiting artist at Stanford through the spring. Barred from recording in Iran (where he was sentenced in absentia to a five-year jail term in 2009 for his unconventional vocal rendering of a Koranic verse on a private recording), he's developed an avid following at home and in the Iranian diaspora, where the raw emotion in his music resonates with disillusioned young listeners.
"People say his music is controversial, but it comes from the heart," Cai says. "His music is so spread out on the Internet, but you can't publish it in Iran, and he's never officially recorded any of these songs."
Always looking for pan-Asian opportunities, the festival has invited a Tibetan singer to perform with Namjoo's band of fellow Bay Area Iranian musicians.
Seventh Annual Stanford
Pan-Asian Music Festival
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and Feb. 11-12, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 13
Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University
Tickets: $20; 650-725-2787, http://scbs.stanford.edu/festival
Elderly American woman fell in love with Mongolia after served 2 years as Peace Corps Volunteer
By Alan Burke
MARBLEHEAD — Her home is on one of the prettiest streets in the most picturesque towns in the world. Judy Gates loves Marblehead. But, she just spent 27 months in Mongolia, with no central heat, where wintry temperatures linger eight months of the year and the wind cutting across the grasslands can drive the thermometer to 50 below zero.
Yet, she said, "I felt more a part of the community there than I do here." Not that she's lost her affection for Marblehead. "I love seeing my friends again," Gates said. And as a former library trustee, she will give a talk titled "Take a Trip to Mongolia" at the Abbot Public Library on Sunday, Feb. 6, at 2 p.m. It's a topic likely to tell us a little bit about our lives and what's gotten lost in the rush toward progress. Gates, 67, a widow with two grown children and grandchildren, went to Mongolia as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2008.
"We all have to figure out what is meaningful in our lives," she said before departing. "One of the most important ways to find meaning is by trying to do things for others."
She went to a country quite literally on the other side of the world, tucked up between China and Russia, a land of grassy plains and people who briefly conquered much of the known world in the 13th century. Today, Mongolia is considered a developing country, formerly under Soviet control.
As a volunteer, Gates used her skills in marketing to help at the local chamber of commerce. Renting space in a wooden house, Gates enjoyed three rooms to herself but kept to one in order to stay warm. Her biggest challenge, however, wasn't weather. It was the language. It gets tougher to learn, she conceded, as you get older.
"But I was able to make myself understood," she said. "I managed fine. And I was able to make many friends."
It helped that the Mongolians are now taught English in schools and seem anxious to use it.
Further, Gates found them wonderfully hospitable, a trait seemingly belied by their photos — most Mongolians believe it inappropriate to smile for the camera.
She was also struck by their respect for elders.
"If I go along the street in Marblehead, would teenage boys speak to me?" she asked doubtfully. In Mongolia, Gates heard greetings all day from strangers and from a growing list of friends.
"I felt welcomed by little kids," she recalled.
Meanwhile, she helped set up a shop catering to tourists on their way to nearby Lake Khovsgol, known as the Dark Blue Pearl and one of the deepest in the world.
In addition, she said she started a project to remind these once-nomadic people that it makes no sense to litter when you stay in one place, establishing a system of trash barrels in her town.
She helped in little ways, too, tutoring people in English, filling out forms in English, and, in one dramatic case, surmounting red tape for a young father who'd lost his leg in a motorcycle accident and getting him a new one.
Although increasingly urbanized, Mongolians continue to work as herders, and horses are a vital part of their lives.
"Just about as soon as they can walk, they learn to ride," Gates said.
She rode, too, and she came home with a broken thumb after being thrown by a balky horse, but she laughs that off.
The Mongolians are a people who love their mothers, love their families and love their songs, Gates said. They sing all the time. And while she doesn't begrudge them the influx of cheap Chinese electronics, computers and cell phones — "Everyone has one" — she worries about the impact.
"When I was growing up, my family sang all the time," warned Gates, who was born in Cincinnati. Lots of families did. But over time, the machines began singing for us and the habit faded away.
Seeking a better life, some Mongolians asked Gates about going to America. Others went to earn money in South Korea.
"The standard of living is much lower than it is here," she said. "But there is a love of family and a love of country that tugs at them."
It tugs at Gates, too.
Having only returned in September, she said, "I miss Mongolia." In fact, she hopes to get the Peace Corps to send her back for another six months in the spring.
"It's an absolutely beautiful country filled with people I love dearly."
If you go
What: "Take a Trip to Mongolia" with Judy Gates, Peace Corps volunteer. The library will recognize the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps with a free talk by Gates, who will bring images from Mongolia and examples of handicrafts.
When: Sunday, Feb. 6, 2 p.m.
Where: Abbot Public Library, 235 Pleasant St., Marblehead
Source:www.salemnews.com (The Salem News newspaper)
 |
| Judy Gates of Marblehead, second from left, poses with a group of Mongolians at a Tsagaan Sar (Lunar New Year) celebration. |
Yet, she said, "I felt more a part of the community there than I do here." Not that she's lost her affection for Marblehead. "I love seeing my friends again," Gates said. And as a former library trustee, she will give a talk titled "Take a Trip to Mongolia" at the Abbot Public Library on Sunday, Feb. 6, at 2 p.m. It's a topic likely to tell us a little bit about our lives and what's gotten lost in the rush toward progress. Gates, 67, a widow with two grown children and grandchildren, went to Mongolia as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2008.
"We all have to figure out what is meaningful in our lives," she said before departing. "One of the most important ways to find meaning is by trying to do things for others."
She went to a country quite literally on the other side of the world, tucked up between China and Russia, a land of grassy plains and people who briefly conquered much of the known world in the 13th century. Today, Mongolia is considered a developing country, formerly under Soviet control.
As a volunteer, Gates used her skills in marketing to help at the local chamber of commerce. Renting space in a wooden house, Gates enjoyed three rooms to herself but kept to one in order to stay warm. Her biggest challenge, however, wasn't weather. It was the language. It gets tougher to learn, she conceded, as you get older.
"But I was able to make myself understood," she said. "I managed fine. And I was able to make many friends."
It helped that the Mongolians are now taught English in schools and seem anxious to use it.
Further, Gates found them wonderfully hospitable, a trait seemingly belied by their photos — most Mongolians believe it inappropriate to smile for the camera.
She was also struck by their respect for elders.
"If I go along the street in Marblehead, would teenage boys speak to me?" she asked doubtfully. In Mongolia, Gates heard greetings all day from strangers and from a growing list of friends.
"I felt welcomed by little kids," she recalled.
Meanwhile, she helped set up a shop catering to tourists on their way to nearby Lake Khovsgol, known as the Dark Blue Pearl and one of the deepest in the world.
In addition, she said she started a project to remind these once-nomadic people that it makes no sense to litter when you stay in one place, establishing a system of trash barrels in her town.
She helped in little ways, too, tutoring people in English, filling out forms in English, and, in one dramatic case, surmounting red tape for a young father who'd lost his leg in a motorcycle accident and getting him a new one.
Although increasingly urbanized, Mongolians continue to work as herders, and horses are a vital part of their lives.
"Just about as soon as they can walk, they learn to ride," Gates said.
She rode, too, and she came home with a broken thumb after being thrown by a balky horse, but she laughs that off.
The Mongolians are a people who love their mothers, love their families and love their songs, Gates said. They sing all the time. And while she doesn't begrudge them the influx of cheap Chinese electronics, computers and cell phones — "Everyone has one" — she worries about the impact.
"When I was growing up, my family sang all the time," warned Gates, who was born in Cincinnati. Lots of families did. But over time, the machines began singing for us and the habit faded away.
Seeking a better life, some Mongolians asked Gates about going to America. Others went to earn money in South Korea.
"The standard of living is much lower than it is here," she said. "But there is a love of family and a love of country that tugs at them."
It tugs at Gates, too.
Having only returned in September, she said, "I miss Mongolia." In fact, she hopes to get the Peace Corps to send her back for another six months in the spring.
"It's an absolutely beautiful country filled with people I love dearly."
If you go
What: "Take a Trip to Mongolia" with Judy Gates, Peace Corps volunteer. The library will recognize the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps with a free talk by Gates, who will bring images from Mongolia and examples of handicrafts.
When: Sunday, Feb. 6, 2 p.m.
Where: Abbot Public Library, 235 Pleasant St., Marblehead
Source:www.salemnews.com (The Salem News newspaper)
The indigenous on brink of extinction
By Azartush Najjarian
Multinational corporations are in a race to drain the natural resources in all areas of the world.
People are being treated as mere devices to exploit for profit. As the virtual world grows and the masses are herded into the cities, we see the indigenous peoples of the planet struggle to live in this ever changing matrix. We are witnessing the death of the indigenous populations. It is not my intention to cover the atrocities occurring to all indigenous peoples in this short piece; in addition, volumes of books should be written on this particular subject. Whether we talk about the Native Americans, the indigenous peoples of Brazil, the Aborigines in Australia or the nomadic Turks in Central Asia, we see the threat of extinction. Mongolia is a subject worth exploring. The consequences of corporate occupation are affecting the Mongolian nomads' lives.
The people on the steppe of Mongolia are nomadic herdsmen. This is their way of life and it's all that they know. The main animals they keep are cattle, sheep, goats and the beautiful and famous Mongolian horses. Other animals such as chickens and pigs are kept but not so with the traditional nomads, for chickens and pigs are not the type of animals which can be herded across the vast steppes. The nomads maintain sustenance from the animals producing milk, meat, different cheeses and creams. Life is harsh in Mongolia with temperatures hitting below 40 degrees zero, and the weather can change quickly. The freezing nights incinerate the living, leading to the death of entire herds of animals by morning.
Mongolia has been the target of multi-million dollar companies to sink their tentacles in, as the financial elite have decided to usurp the land of the Mongols for mining. It is a race nowadays to rape Mother Earth of all her innocence and beauty. The competition for the Mongolian mining industry is fierce. Thus, we see major superpowers coming to Mongolia such as Canada, Russia and China, to name a few. The Asian Federation has labeled the Mongolian nomads as terrorists because of their efforts to defend their land. What a convenient word this has become for the authoritarian establishments and governments. After 9/11, the so-called war on terrorism was always blamed on Muslims in particular. However, now that we explore the mendacious and mind-controlling propaganda pumped through the idiot box, it's apparent that a terrorist is often anyone who opposes the government and authoritarian institutions. This is particular in the West.
There is an interesting parable worth noting from WWII about the Nazis. When the Nazis came after the Jews, a certain man did not care because he was not Jewish. Then they came after the gypsies and he again did not care because he was not a gypsy. Thereafter, they came after the Protestants and again he did not worry because he was not a Protestant. Last they came for him and it was too late for anyone to speak out or condemn this tyrannical force because he was the only one left. The indigenous peoples have primordial connections with Mother Earth. Once they are killed off, the lower classes will be next in the food chain and then the middle classes and so on.
Corporate-capitalism is an ancient form of black magic, which operates in a clandestine fashion placing the elite in positions to behave as gods. It is the allegory of a machine without human compassion or reason. Mongolia is a rich, pristine land and has a plethora of precious minerals. It's obvious that these lands will be exploited just like the lands in Africa have been used for diamond and gold mining, precious minerals and the like.
The so-called civilized masses who are slaves to the banking cartels must unplug themselves to the debt machine and totalitarian order which is being created. They probably do not care much about such subjects as it's not directly affecting them at the moment. The elite will continue to behave in this most ominous manner. It is the similitude of when the white colonizers desecrated the holy burial sites of the Native Americans, killed off their buffalos and seized their lands for the same purposes; for exploiting the people of the earth. Military occupations and corporate occupations go hand in hand. There is no ability to fight this system save only with the masses. We have brave Presidents like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales coming forth to support the rights of the indigenous populations and others are speaking out. These people are always disparaged in the media and depicted as being insane and fanatical. The truth will appear as a lie and the lie will appear to be the truth.
Speaking and condemning the actions of others will not go so far. There must be a grass roots movement amongst the peoples of any land to oppose the corporate entities and their goals to exploit the natural resources of the people. We can see the indigenous losing their livelihoods and right to self determination just as the middle classes are losing employment, housing and the most basic necessities for survival. The majority, which is us, have to begin to see what the future is turning into. That is an authoritarian establishment, which could also be called a total institution. Protests in Europe have done nothing but gained some slight media attention. Westerners who have written to politicians have accomplished nothing. I have faith that an intellectual and spiritual revolution is possible without violence.
The peaceful alternative would be accomplished by boycotting the main corporations, the promotion of barter systems, gift economies, trading gold, silver and precious metals as our own informal currencies that Western capitalist governments cannot charge interest on, and all other forms of informal economic activities. We are approaching a time in history where the workers and the common people will no longer be able to rely on Western governments to provide sustenance for them such through misanthropic capitalist labor or even food and housing. Therefore, the conditions for surviving are through mutual cooperation built from the masses up. Once the masses can escape capitalism, the corporations, and illegal taxes, thereafter, a theoretical emancipation is possible without violence. The financial elite are behaving as gods because we have granted them this power and played as pawns on their chessboard. Violence is not the answer and revolution does not have to be violent. We are dealing with demonic forces that thrive on our participation to carry out well planned protocols. Once we withdraw from this agenda and provide sustenance and care for each other, the elite will die like in parasitic life form that has to find a host to exist.
The lessons to be learned from the corporate takeover of Mongolia are that these circumstances are not precarious events thousands of miles away. We can see how corporations are affecting our own lives in the cities and suburbs in the West and abroad. These are carefully planned out events and unless we rely on each other we will end up like the indigenous with no capability to take care of our families and loved ones. The choice is ours. We can die slowly through the actions the elite are propagating or we can withdraw from it by mutually cooperating, building federations and withdrawing ourselves from the capitalist and authoritarian forces which threaten our livelihoods on a day to day basis.
Once I heard a gentleman on an alternative radio program and he stated that he did not know how anyone could quite define consciousness. I gave it some thought and the most appropriate definition I could form is that “consciousness is the act of being aware that you are aware.”
We really have to ask ourselves in these ever changing times how many of us are really aware? We are living in an era where realities our given to us like DVDS and our ability to be aware is distorted with what the media, educational institutions, politicians and other authoritarian institutions are programming us with. The indigenous are aware and conscious with nature, love of family and are in peace. We live in the cities and consider their ways primitive and backwards. However, they live in harmony with nature spiritually, organically and physically. The new generations desecrate earth with toxins and synthetics until the land is uninhabitable and then they move to another location and repeat the same cycle. The indigenous populations on this planet are a part of the earth and are needed for the planet's therapeutic well being and health. There is so much we can learn from them if we simply open our minds.
NM/AKM
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Press TV.
Source:Iran Based Press TV
Multinational corporations are in a race to drain the natural resources in all areas of the world.
People are being treated as mere devices to exploit for profit. As the virtual world grows and the masses are herded into the cities, we see the indigenous peoples of the planet struggle to live in this ever changing matrix. We are witnessing the death of the indigenous populations. It is not my intention to cover the atrocities occurring to all indigenous peoples in this short piece; in addition, volumes of books should be written on this particular subject. Whether we talk about the Native Americans, the indigenous peoples of Brazil, the Aborigines in Australia or the nomadic Turks in Central Asia, we see the threat of extinction. Mongolia is a subject worth exploring. The consequences of corporate occupation are affecting the Mongolian nomads' lives.
The people on the steppe of Mongolia are nomadic herdsmen. This is their way of life and it's all that they know. The main animals they keep are cattle, sheep, goats and the beautiful and famous Mongolian horses. Other animals such as chickens and pigs are kept but not so with the traditional nomads, for chickens and pigs are not the type of animals which can be herded across the vast steppes. The nomads maintain sustenance from the animals producing milk, meat, different cheeses and creams. Life is harsh in Mongolia with temperatures hitting below 40 degrees zero, and the weather can change quickly. The freezing nights incinerate the living, leading to the death of entire herds of animals by morning.
Mongolia has been the target of multi-million dollar companies to sink their tentacles in, as the financial elite have decided to usurp the land of the Mongols for mining. It is a race nowadays to rape Mother Earth of all her innocence and beauty. The competition for the Mongolian mining industry is fierce. Thus, we see major superpowers coming to Mongolia such as Canada, Russia and China, to name a few. The Asian Federation has labeled the Mongolian nomads as terrorists because of their efforts to defend their land. What a convenient word this has become for the authoritarian establishments and governments. After 9/11, the so-called war on terrorism was always blamed on Muslims in particular. However, now that we explore the mendacious and mind-controlling propaganda pumped through the idiot box, it's apparent that a terrorist is often anyone who opposes the government and authoritarian institutions. This is particular in the West.
There is an interesting parable worth noting from WWII about the Nazis. When the Nazis came after the Jews, a certain man did not care because he was not Jewish. Then they came after the gypsies and he again did not care because he was not a gypsy. Thereafter, they came after the Protestants and again he did not worry because he was not a Protestant. Last they came for him and it was too late for anyone to speak out or condemn this tyrannical force because he was the only one left. The indigenous peoples have primordial connections with Mother Earth. Once they are killed off, the lower classes will be next in the food chain and then the middle classes and so on.
Corporate-capitalism is an ancient form of black magic, which operates in a clandestine fashion placing the elite in positions to behave as gods. It is the allegory of a machine without human compassion or reason. Mongolia is a rich, pristine land and has a plethora of precious minerals. It's obvious that these lands will be exploited just like the lands in Africa have been used for diamond and gold mining, precious minerals and the like.
The so-called civilized masses who are slaves to the banking cartels must unplug themselves to the debt machine and totalitarian order which is being created. They probably do not care much about such subjects as it's not directly affecting them at the moment. The elite will continue to behave in this most ominous manner. It is the similitude of when the white colonizers desecrated the holy burial sites of the Native Americans, killed off their buffalos and seized their lands for the same purposes; for exploiting the people of the earth. Military occupations and corporate occupations go hand in hand. There is no ability to fight this system save only with the masses. We have brave Presidents like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales coming forth to support the rights of the indigenous populations and others are speaking out. These people are always disparaged in the media and depicted as being insane and fanatical. The truth will appear as a lie and the lie will appear to be the truth.
Speaking and condemning the actions of others will not go so far. There must be a grass roots movement amongst the peoples of any land to oppose the corporate entities and their goals to exploit the natural resources of the people. We can see the indigenous losing their livelihoods and right to self determination just as the middle classes are losing employment, housing and the most basic necessities for survival. The majority, which is us, have to begin to see what the future is turning into. That is an authoritarian establishment, which could also be called a total institution. Protests in Europe have done nothing but gained some slight media attention. Westerners who have written to politicians have accomplished nothing. I have faith that an intellectual and spiritual revolution is possible without violence.
The peaceful alternative would be accomplished by boycotting the main corporations, the promotion of barter systems, gift economies, trading gold, silver and precious metals as our own informal currencies that Western capitalist governments cannot charge interest on, and all other forms of informal economic activities. We are approaching a time in history where the workers and the common people will no longer be able to rely on Western governments to provide sustenance for them such through misanthropic capitalist labor or even food and housing. Therefore, the conditions for surviving are through mutual cooperation built from the masses up. Once the masses can escape capitalism, the corporations, and illegal taxes, thereafter, a theoretical emancipation is possible without violence. The financial elite are behaving as gods because we have granted them this power and played as pawns on their chessboard. Violence is not the answer and revolution does not have to be violent. We are dealing with demonic forces that thrive on our participation to carry out well planned protocols. Once we withdraw from this agenda and provide sustenance and care for each other, the elite will die like in parasitic life form that has to find a host to exist.
The lessons to be learned from the corporate takeover of Mongolia are that these circumstances are not precarious events thousands of miles away. We can see how corporations are affecting our own lives in the cities and suburbs in the West and abroad. These are carefully planned out events and unless we rely on each other we will end up like the indigenous with no capability to take care of our families and loved ones. The choice is ours. We can die slowly through the actions the elite are propagating or we can withdraw from it by mutually cooperating, building federations and withdrawing ourselves from the capitalist and authoritarian forces which threaten our livelihoods on a day to day basis.
Once I heard a gentleman on an alternative radio program and he stated that he did not know how anyone could quite define consciousness. I gave it some thought and the most appropriate definition I could form is that “consciousness is the act of being aware that you are aware.”
We really have to ask ourselves in these ever changing times how many of us are really aware? We are living in an era where realities our given to us like DVDS and our ability to be aware is distorted with what the media, educational institutions, politicians and other authoritarian institutions are programming us with. The indigenous are aware and conscious with nature, love of family and are in peace. We live in the cities and consider their ways primitive and backwards. However, they live in harmony with nature spiritually, organically and physically. The new generations desecrate earth with toxins and synthetics until the land is uninhabitable and then they move to another location and repeat the same cycle. The indigenous populations on this planet are a part of the earth and are needed for the planet's therapeutic well being and health. There is so much we can learn from them if we simply open our minds.
NM/AKM
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Press TV.
Source:Iran Based Press TV
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Italian scientists claim to invent cold fusion
A team of Italian scientists claim to have found the holy grail of energy sources – Cold Fusion.
Cold Fusion is one of those things which exists quite happily as a mathematical formula but has failed to see the light of day.
The idea is that you can manage a near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy.
Every now and then someone hits the headlines saying that they have managed to do it, but everyone else seems to have difficulty reproducing their experiment.
Despite the intense skepticism from other boffins, a team of Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W.
They demonstrated a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor which they say will be .shipped as a commercial device within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.
Rossi and Focardi say that when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31.
On a large scale the boffins think that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.
On the plus side it does not produce any CO2 or radioactive waste and will be economical to build.
The boffins are manufacturing a 1MW plant made with 125 modules. Although the reactors can be self-sustaining so that the input can be turned off, the scientists say that the reactors work better with a constant input. The reactors need to be refueled every 6 months, which the scientists say is done by their dealers.
One reactor has been running continuously for two years, providing heat for a factory. They provide little detail about this case.
However, Rossi and Focardi's paper on the nuclear reactor has been rejected by peer-reviewed journals. They published their paper in the Journal of Nuclear Physics, an online journal founded and run by themselves.
They say their paper was rejected because they lack a theory for how the reaction works.
No word on how much their reactors will cost. They published a paper here but the site is overloaded. We just hope that does not happen with their reactors.
External links
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/
Cold fusion experimentally confirmed
Cold Fusion is one of those things which exists quite happily as a mathematical formula but has failed to see the light of day.
The idea is that you can manage a near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy.
Every now and then someone hits the headlines saying that they have managed to do it, but everyone else seems to have difficulty reproducing their experiment.
Despite the intense skepticism from other boffins, a team of Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W.
They demonstrated a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor which they say will be .shipped as a commercial device within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.
Rossi and Focardi say that when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31.
On a large scale the boffins think that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.
On the plus side it does not produce any CO2 or radioactive waste and will be economical to build.
The boffins are manufacturing a 1MW plant made with 125 modules. Although the reactors can be self-sustaining so that the input can be turned off, the scientists say that the reactors work better with a constant input. The reactors need to be refueled every 6 months, which the scientists say is done by their dealers.
One reactor has been running continuously for two years, providing heat for a factory. They provide little detail about this case.
However, Rossi and Focardi's paper on the nuclear reactor has been rejected by peer-reviewed journals. They published their paper in the Journal of Nuclear Physics, an online journal founded and run by themselves.
They say their paper was rejected because they lack a theory for how the reaction works.
No word on how much their reactors will cost. They published a paper here but the site is overloaded. We just hope that does not happen with their reactors.
External links
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/
Cold fusion experimentally confirmed
Friday, January 21, 2011
Rig Veda Riddles In Nomad Perspective
Dr. Bjorn Merker Ph.D.
If the mists of time have veiled the meaning of many a Rig Veda passage from the bearers of that ancient tradition, and if the creators of those hymns were migrants from the Eurasian steppe, is it conceivable that the living traditions of the peoples of the steppes and forests of Eurasia might provide clues to the hidden meaning of Rig Veda riddles?
A general similarity between Indo-European and Altaic religious beliefs has been noted (Eliade, 1964, p. 378). A comparison of Banzarov (1982) and O'Flaherty (1981) shows that with reference to the Rig Veda such similarity extends to the fundamental bipartition of the world into sky (or heaven) and earth, male and female respectively, their creation by separation from a primordial fused condition, the supremacy of Heaven or the sky god, as ruler or regulator of the world, all-seeing judge of men, and giver of life, and the veneration of fire. One may further note the propping up of the sky on a support (Harva, 1938, p. 38) a matter to which we shall return, the eagle as messenger of the sky god (Eliade, 1964, p. 128), and the horse sacrifice as points of coincidence between Vedic and Eurasian traditions.
In what follows, I propose to show by way of concrete examples that Altaic traditions are capable of throwing new light on enigmatic concepts and obscure allusions in the Rig Veda, and so help us solve some of its riddles. For an English rendering of the Vedic hymns I rely upon the easily accessible selection translated by O'Flaherty (1981).
I. Vena.
Rig Veda 10.123, vena or "longing" has been called a strange and mystical hymn by the translator. Three of its eight verses read as follows:
1. This Vena drives forth those who are pregnant with the dappled one. Enveloped in a membrane of light, he measures out the realm of space. In the union of the waters and the sun, the inspired priests lick him with prayers as if he were a calf.
2. Vena whips the wave high out of the ocean. Born of the clouds, the back of the loved one has appeared, shining on the crest at the highpoint of Order. The women cry out to the common womb.
7. Then the divine youth climbed straight back up into the dome of the sky bearing his many-colored weapons. Dressing himself in a perfumed robe, looking like sunlight, he gives birth to his new names.
I propose that the above imagery would be directly descriptive of the rainbow, were it not for the apparent incongruity of the italicized sentence in versa two. That, however, is the very clue that allows us to clinch the identification by noting the widespread belief among Altaic peoples that the rainbow sucks or drinks water from rivers and lakes (see Harva, 1938. p. 212). The subject of the hymn Vena is clearly the rainbow, insists the nomad riddler.
II. The riddle of The One.
Few Rig Veda conceptions are veiled in more hoary mystery than is The One. Having arisen through the power of heat (10.129.30), it props apart the six realms of space (1.164.6), and all creatures rest on it. (10.82-6). The hypostasis of The One as ultimate principle or ground of existence and philosophic Absolute in later Upanishadic and Vedanta monism should not deter attempts to find for it a less speculative referent within the world view of a preliterate people hailing from the steppe.
The Rig Veda contexts that feature The One are creation, cosmology, and the symbolism of the sacrifice. Pervading these contexts is the bipartite world scheme of sky and earth, already referred to as a point of coincidence between Vedic and steppe traditions. A basic and impressive fact of such a scheme of nature is the rotary motion of one of its halves relative to the other, observable in the rigid spherical motion of the starry night sky.
Celestial motion is the basic fact of nature behind the widespread Eurasian belief in a world pillar, the axis mundi which as support of the sky forms the centerpiece of the world scheme (Eliade, 1964, p. 261). In the Rig Veda it figures as the "axle pole of space" (1.164.19) and "pillar of the sky" (9.74.2), which props apart sky and earth (3.31.12). The point about which the starry heavens turn is marked by the Pole Star, uniquely at rest in the revolving expanse of stars, like the nave of a wheel. The Buriats picture the stars as a herd of horses tethered to the Pole Star, the "Golden Pillar" of the Mongols (see Eliade, 1964, p. 261). It, accordingly, is the point where the sky is suspended on the world pillar, the singular point of support of the world order without which its halves collapse back into their primordial condition. There, I propose, in the northern night sky, breathes the Vedic One, "there where, they say, the One dwells beyond the seven sages." (10.82.2)
Who or what are the seven sages? A Mongol riddle of nature reads:
Behind the Altai and Khangai Mountains
There are a hundred thousand horses, they say.
There is a group of seven loners, they say.
There is a group of six which flock together, they say.
There is a group of three which form a file, they say.
There are two which set black and white apart, they say.
There is one left behind, they say.
(Hangin, 1986, p. 63).
Stars and heavenly bodies are the topic here. The seven loners or seven Elders (Harva, 1938, p. 191), form the constellation Ursa Major, to which another Mongol riddle refers as "Those which go around are seven "(Hangin, 1986, p. 63). A Buriat story pictures the constellation as seven heroes with seven horses (Harva, 1938, p. 192). What they circumambulate is of course the Pole Star, which one finds in the night sky by extending one side of the Ursa Major trapezoid.
The seven sages of the Vedas, I propose, are Ursa Major, which may also figure as the seven-wheeled chariot with seven riders and horses of Rig Veda 1.164.3, and possibly even as the seven half-embryos of 1.164.36, which "themselves surrounded, surround it on all sides." As Ursa Major they would be surrounded by stars, and surround the pole star by going around it. "The One who dwells beyond the seven sages," then, would be the pole star, resting support of the revolving heavens, nave and navel of the cosmic order (l.164.6, 10, 13, 19, 33-34), found by sighting along two of the seven sages, though not the two we use today.
Because of the precession of the earth's axis, its north pole makes a 26,000 year circuit through the constellations. In 2,000 BC it pointed close to the star Thuban in the Dragon constellation. Thuban is the star indicated by one of the major corridors of the Cheops pyramid, built approximately 2,600 BC. Around Thuban Ursa Major made an even tighter circuit than around the Pole Star of today. One finds it by extending the opposite side of the Ursa Major trapezoid to about twice its length. Thuban was a good approximation of celestial north well beyond the middle of third millennium BC.
As pole, The One would be intrinsically linked to the act of creation that separated sky from earth, and to the axis mundi or world pillar that keeps them separated. Via these relations, much of the imagery of the hymn to the Unknown God ("Who") or Golden Embryo (10.121), such as holding earth and sky in place, propping up the dome of the sky, supporting the two opposed masses, and having the quarters of the sky as his two arms, becomes appropriately linked to The One. The answer to the hymn's recurrent question "Who is the god whom we should worship with the oblation?" -- a god said to be "the one king of the world that breathes and blinks," and "the one god among all the gods" -- would therefore be: The One, or Thuban, the late pole star. Its association with fire (10.121.7) and heat (10.129.3), as well as with Agni (1.164.46), elaborated, I suggest, in 10.5 matches the Mongol belief that fire was born in the separation of heaven and earth (Banzarov, 1982, p. 59). Faced with these clues and relations, the nomad riddler may indeed find in the pole star, mainstay of a familiar cosmology, the key to the Rig Vedic One.
III. The celestial riddle mill
The above two exercises direct attention to natural and particularly celestial phenomena as models and inspiration for the riddles of the Vedic poets. The revolving sky itself has not been exhausted in this regard by noting its anchoring at the pole star. When a heavenly body is spoken of as "clothing himself in those that move towards the same center but spread apart" (1.164.31) the stars of the night sky may be intended, rather than the rays of the sun, by analogy to the Buriat conception of tethered stars mentioned above. Also, a chariot-riding people would find in the wheel a natural metaphor for the revolving dome, as in the "ageless and unstoppable wheel with three naves," or the wheel whose axle, though heavy-laden, does not get hot nor bleak in its naves, both featured in the Riddle of the Sacrifice (1.164.2, 13).
From the revolving sky-dome, the metaphor of the wheel naturally extends to the sequence of the seasons, and the rolling wheel of the annual cycle, as in verses 11 and 48 of the same hymn, particularly as the seasonal cycle is accompanied by the wandering of the seven celestial bodies (five visible planets plus sun and moon) through the constellations of the fixed stars (see 10.85.13). But what wheel has three naves? Again the beliefs of steppe and forest people may render assistance.
Where the axis mundi suspends the sky at the pole star, there is said to be a hole, and where Heaven is multilayered, a common feature in Altaic beliefs, there is a further hole for each layer or realm of heaven, one above the other. These holes are the primary conduit of communication between the heavens and earth, and provide the passage via which the shaman visits the various heavens in the course of his trance journey (see Harva, 1938, p. 49-53). These holes arrayed along the world axle would indeed resemble naves. The three naves of the Rig Veda may be associated with sky, earth, and the intercalated "middle realm of space", or, perhaps more likely, with the "triple dome" of the tripartite heaven featured in Soma hymn 9.113. There is also a triple earth (7.104.11), providing a context for the three fathers and three mothers held up by The One without wearing him down in 1.164.10.
Besides these "global" celestial characteristics, there is wide scope for attempting to fit more specific phenomena, such as the patterns of the constellations and their associated myths, or the behavior and appearance of the seven wandering heavenly bodies, to the numerology and allusions of hymns like the Riddle of the Sacrifice. Such an exercise lies beyond the scope of the present communication, but a few observations may serve to indicate possible point of departure.
The Mongols know Venus, the evening and morning star, as a heavenly horseman with a helper, keeper of stellar herds, and benefactor of men. Oldenberg has suggested that the Vedic twin horsemen, the Asvins, relate to the same "star" (see Harva, 1938, p. 199). Here it may be noted that there are in fact two visible planets associated with dusk and dawn because of their central orbits around the sun, namely Mercury and Venus. They may have inspired both the Altaic and Vedic pair of horsemen. Venus alone, by far the brighter of the two, may in turn be the celestial identity of the Vedic Savitr on the basis of his contextual similarity to and linkage with the Asvins (2.38; 1.35; 1.164.26-27; 10.85.8-9). The Buriat association of Venus with bride abduction (Harva, 1938, p. 199) recalls the strong attraction to beauty attributed to the Asvins in 1.116.17, and their intrusion on the wedding of Surya, the sun, to claim her for themselves in 10.85.14.
If, as suggested above, those spreading around the same centre are stars rather than solar rays, day is changed to night, and the cowherd appearing in that context (1.164.31; 10.177.3) might then be Venus, as above, or another impressive night-time luminary such as the moon. With its phases of waning, disappearance, "rebirth", and full moon marking the monthly division of the year one would expect the moon to provide lavish grist for the poet's celestial riddle mill. The moon appears as groom of the sun in 10.85, through the imagery of filling up, shaping the seasons and the year, hiding, repeated births, leading the dawn, and stretcher of the life span provided in that hymn, the nomad riddler might attempt to trace, via overlapping or juxtaposed clues, the full-grown, white face (4.5) of the willful, self-ruled god who comes and goes, who strays from his field (when appearing in the daytime sky?), hides, is destroyed, yet is born again and again (mortal/immortal) (4.5; 1.164; 5.2-10.85; 6.9), and who sharpens his horns (points; of the sickle) to break out of captivity (the dark phase) (5.2; 10.8; 4.58)? The riddler might even wonder whether the bones of 1.164.4 refer to the new moon, cued by the strong association between bone and the color white in the lore of the steppe (Hamayon, 1972, p. 227).
Finally, our nomad riddler might wonder whether the Milky Way is hidden in one of the many "paths," such as 10.85.11, featured in the hymns. A number of Altaic peoples call this impressive celestial phenomenon the Way or Road of the Birds, in the belief that it guides their migratory flight (Harva, 1938, p. 200). There is a "path of the bird" in 10.5, and 1.163 features a racecourse of the sky reached by a team of horses in V-formation (Taurus, which touches the Milky Way?). But short of further clues, the matter must rest as a question.
Conclusion
The coincidences brought to light in the above do, of course, imply very little regarding their genesis. Neither independent origination within cultures sharing similar circumstances borrowing from a common source, Altaic borrowing from traditions collaterally related to the Vedic, nor relatedness by common descent are excluded by the fact of coincidence itself. Nor is it clear how much further into Vedic lore the present approach may take us. The above exercises are exploratory in nature. They have been conducted without a wide-ranging search of Altaic sources on the one hand, and without the benefit of Vedic expertise on the other. That nevertheless one tradition appears capable of illuminating the other may encourage further attempts along these lines.
References
Banzarov, Dorji. "The Black Faith, or Shamanism among the Mongols." Mongolian Studies 1981-2, 7: 53-91.
Gimbutas, Marija. "The Indo-Europeans: Archaeological Problems." American Anthropologist 1963, 65: 815-836.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism. Princeton University Press, 1964.
Hangin, John Gombojab. "Mongolian folklore: A representative collection from the oral literary tradition. Part One." Mongolian Studies 1985-86, 9:13-78.
Hamayon, Roberle. "Triades de l'univers." Etudes Mongoles 1972, 3: 225-238.
Harva, Uno. "Die religiosen Vorstellungen der altaischen Volker." Helsinki, 1938.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. "The Rig Veda." Penguin Books, 1981.
Dr. Bjorn Merker of Sweden took his Ph.D. in Brain Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and continued his advanced research at the University of California, Los Angeles. In his youth he travelled extensively in Asia and developed a keen interest in the Oriental Philosophies. During 1964-65 he spent 18 months in India and at that time stayed for 6 months at the Atheist Centre.In the second millennium BC a conquering Indo-European people penetrated from the Eurasiatic steppes into the Indus river basin, there to found a new civilization, the Old Indic (Gimbutas, 1963). Besides horses, cattle, and carts, the conquerors, who called themselves Aryans, brought with them from the steppe their tribal traditions and religious lore. In the new homeland, this cultural heritage gave rise to the Vedic religion. It has come down to us in the collections of hymns, incantations, and sacrificial formulas known as the four Vedas. Of these, the Rig Veda provides a unique window on the Old Indic culture in the rich and varied contents of its 1,028 hymns. Though some of these hymns yield to straightforward interpretation, others have been notoriously difficult of access, not only because of their archaic language, but because the key to the poetic imagery, sometimes explicitly cast in the form of the riddle, is missing.
This article was originally published in Mongolian Studies, Journal of the Mongolian Society, in its Volume XI, 1988.
If the mists of time have veiled the meaning of many a Rig Veda passage from the bearers of that ancient tradition, and if the creators of those hymns were migrants from the Eurasian steppe, is it conceivable that the living traditions of the peoples of the steppes and forests of Eurasia might provide clues to the hidden meaning of Rig Veda riddles?
A general similarity between Indo-European and Altaic religious beliefs has been noted (Eliade, 1964, p. 378). A comparison of Banzarov (1982) and O'Flaherty (1981) shows that with reference to the Rig Veda such similarity extends to the fundamental bipartition of the world into sky (or heaven) and earth, male and female respectively, their creation by separation from a primordial fused condition, the supremacy of Heaven or the sky god, as ruler or regulator of the world, all-seeing judge of men, and giver of life, and the veneration of fire. One may further note the propping up of the sky on a support (Harva, 1938, p. 38) a matter to which we shall return, the eagle as messenger of the sky god (Eliade, 1964, p. 128), and the horse sacrifice as points of coincidence between Vedic and Eurasian traditions.
In what follows, I propose to show by way of concrete examples that Altaic traditions are capable of throwing new light on enigmatic concepts and obscure allusions in the Rig Veda, and so help us solve some of its riddles. For an English rendering of the Vedic hymns I rely upon the easily accessible selection translated by O'Flaherty (1981).
I. Vena.
Rig Veda 10.123, vena or "longing" has been called a strange and mystical hymn by the translator. Three of its eight verses read as follows:
1. This Vena drives forth those who are pregnant with the dappled one. Enveloped in a membrane of light, he measures out the realm of space. In the union of the waters and the sun, the inspired priests lick him with prayers as if he were a calf.
2. Vena whips the wave high out of the ocean. Born of the clouds, the back of the loved one has appeared, shining on the crest at the highpoint of Order. The women cry out to the common womb.
7. Then the divine youth climbed straight back up into the dome of the sky bearing his many-colored weapons. Dressing himself in a perfumed robe, looking like sunlight, he gives birth to his new names.
I propose that the above imagery would be directly descriptive of the rainbow, were it not for the apparent incongruity of the italicized sentence in versa two. That, however, is the very clue that allows us to clinch the identification by noting the widespread belief among Altaic peoples that the rainbow sucks or drinks water from rivers and lakes (see Harva, 1938. p. 212). The subject of the hymn Vena is clearly the rainbow, insists the nomad riddler.
II. The riddle of The One.
Few Rig Veda conceptions are veiled in more hoary mystery than is The One. Having arisen through the power of heat (10.129.30), it props apart the six realms of space (1.164.6), and all creatures rest on it. (10.82-6). The hypostasis of The One as ultimate principle or ground of existence and philosophic Absolute in later Upanishadic and Vedanta monism should not deter attempts to find for it a less speculative referent within the world view of a preliterate people hailing from the steppe.
The Rig Veda contexts that feature The One are creation, cosmology, and the symbolism of the sacrifice. Pervading these contexts is the bipartite world scheme of sky and earth, already referred to as a point of coincidence between Vedic and steppe traditions. A basic and impressive fact of such a scheme of nature is the rotary motion of one of its halves relative to the other, observable in the rigid spherical motion of the starry night sky.
Celestial motion is the basic fact of nature behind the widespread Eurasian belief in a world pillar, the axis mundi which as support of the sky forms the centerpiece of the world scheme (Eliade, 1964, p. 261). In the Rig Veda it figures as the "axle pole of space" (1.164.19) and "pillar of the sky" (9.74.2), which props apart sky and earth (3.31.12). The point about which the starry heavens turn is marked by the Pole Star, uniquely at rest in the revolving expanse of stars, like the nave of a wheel. The Buriats picture the stars as a herd of horses tethered to the Pole Star, the "Golden Pillar" of the Mongols (see Eliade, 1964, p. 261). It, accordingly, is the point where the sky is suspended on the world pillar, the singular point of support of the world order without which its halves collapse back into their primordial condition. There, I propose, in the northern night sky, breathes the Vedic One, "there where, they say, the One dwells beyond the seven sages." (10.82.2)
Who or what are the seven sages? A Mongol riddle of nature reads:
Behind the Altai and Khangai Mountains
There are a hundred thousand horses, they say.
There is a group of seven loners, they say.
There is a group of six which flock together, they say.
There is a group of three which form a file, they say.
There are two which set black and white apart, they say.
There is one left behind, they say.
(Hangin, 1986, p. 63).
Stars and heavenly bodies are the topic here. The seven loners or seven Elders (Harva, 1938, p. 191), form the constellation Ursa Major, to which another Mongol riddle refers as "Those which go around are seven "(Hangin, 1986, p. 63). A Buriat story pictures the constellation as seven heroes with seven horses (Harva, 1938, p. 192). What they circumambulate is of course the Pole Star, which one finds in the night sky by extending one side of the Ursa Major trapezoid.
The seven sages of the Vedas, I propose, are Ursa Major, which may also figure as the seven-wheeled chariot with seven riders and horses of Rig Veda 1.164.3, and possibly even as the seven half-embryos of 1.164.36, which "themselves surrounded, surround it on all sides." As Ursa Major they would be surrounded by stars, and surround the pole star by going around it. "The One who dwells beyond the seven sages," then, would be the pole star, resting support of the revolving heavens, nave and navel of the cosmic order (l.164.6, 10, 13, 19, 33-34), found by sighting along two of the seven sages, though not the two we use today.
Because of the precession of the earth's axis, its north pole makes a 26,000 year circuit through the constellations. In 2,000 BC it pointed close to the star Thuban in the Dragon constellation. Thuban is the star indicated by one of the major corridors of the Cheops pyramid, built approximately 2,600 BC. Around Thuban Ursa Major made an even tighter circuit than around the Pole Star of today. One finds it by extending the opposite side of the Ursa Major trapezoid to about twice its length. Thuban was a good approximation of celestial north well beyond the middle of third millennium BC.
As pole, The One would be intrinsically linked to the act of creation that separated sky from earth, and to the axis mundi or world pillar that keeps them separated. Via these relations, much of the imagery of the hymn to the Unknown God ("Who") or Golden Embryo (10.121), such as holding earth and sky in place, propping up the dome of the sky, supporting the two opposed masses, and having the quarters of the sky as his two arms, becomes appropriately linked to The One. The answer to the hymn's recurrent question "Who is the god whom we should worship with the oblation?" -- a god said to be "the one king of the world that breathes and blinks," and "the one god among all the gods" -- would therefore be: The One, or Thuban, the late pole star. Its association with fire (10.121.7) and heat (10.129.3), as well as with Agni (1.164.46), elaborated, I suggest, in 10.5 matches the Mongol belief that fire was born in the separation of heaven and earth (Banzarov, 1982, p. 59). Faced with these clues and relations, the nomad riddler may indeed find in the pole star, mainstay of a familiar cosmology, the key to the Rig Vedic One.
III. The celestial riddle mill
The above two exercises direct attention to natural and particularly celestial phenomena as models and inspiration for the riddles of the Vedic poets. The revolving sky itself has not been exhausted in this regard by noting its anchoring at the pole star. When a heavenly body is spoken of as "clothing himself in those that move towards the same center but spread apart" (1.164.31) the stars of the night sky may be intended, rather than the rays of the sun, by analogy to the Buriat conception of tethered stars mentioned above. Also, a chariot-riding people would find in the wheel a natural metaphor for the revolving dome, as in the "ageless and unstoppable wheel with three naves," or the wheel whose axle, though heavy-laden, does not get hot nor bleak in its naves, both featured in the Riddle of the Sacrifice (1.164.2, 13).
From the revolving sky-dome, the metaphor of the wheel naturally extends to the sequence of the seasons, and the rolling wheel of the annual cycle, as in verses 11 and 48 of the same hymn, particularly as the seasonal cycle is accompanied by the wandering of the seven celestial bodies (five visible planets plus sun and moon) through the constellations of the fixed stars (see 10.85.13). But what wheel has three naves? Again the beliefs of steppe and forest people may render assistance.
Where the axis mundi suspends the sky at the pole star, there is said to be a hole, and where Heaven is multilayered, a common feature in Altaic beliefs, there is a further hole for each layer or realm of heaven, one above the other. These holes are the primary conduit of communication between the heavens and earth, and provide the passage via which the shaman visits the various heavens in the course of his trance journey (see Harva, 1938, p. 49-53). These holes arrayed along the world axle would indeed resemble naves. The three naves of the Rig Veda may be associated with sky, earth, and the intercalated "middle realm of space", or, perhaps more likely, with the "triple dome" of the tripartite heaven featured in Soma hymn 9.113. There is also a triple earth (7.104.11), providing a context for the three fathers and three mothers held up by The One without wearing him down in 1.164.10.
Besides these "global" celestial characteristics, there is wide scope for attempting to fit more specific phenomena, such as the patterns of the constellations and their associated myths, or the behavior and appearance of the seven wandering heavenly bodies, to the numerology and allusions of hymns like the Riddle of the Sacrifice. Such an exercise lies beyond the scope of the present communication, but a few observations may serve to indicate possible point of departure.
The Mongols know Venus, the evening and morning star, as a heavenly horseman with a helper, keeper of stellar herds, and benefactor of men. Oldenberg has suggested that the Vedic twin horsemen, the Asvins, relate to the same "star" (see Harva, 1938, p. 199). Here it may be noted that there are in fact two visible planets associated with dusk and dawn because of their central orbits around the sun, namely Mercury and Venus. They may have inspired both the Altaic and Vedic pair of horsemen. Venus alone, by far the brighter of the two, may in turn be the celestial identity of the Vedic Savitr on the basis of his contextual similarity to and linkage with the Asvins (2.38; 1.35; 1.164.26-27; 10.85.8-9). The Buriat association of Venus with bride abduction (Harva, 1938, p. 199) recalls the strong attraction to beauty attributed to the Asvins in 1.116.17, and their intrusion on the wedding of Surya, the sun, to claim her for themselves in 10.85.14.
If, as suggested above, those spreading around the same centre are stars rather than solar rays, day is changed to night, and the cowherd appearing in that context (1.164.31; 10.177.3) might then be Venus, as above, or another impressive night-time luminary such as the moon. With its phases of waning, disappearance, "rebirth", and full moon marking the monthly division of the year one would expect the moon to provide lavish grist for the poet's celestial riddle mill. The moon appears as groom of the sun in 10.85, through the imagery of filling up, shaping the seasons and the year, hiding, repeated births, leading the dawn, and stretcher of the life span provided in that hymn, the nomad riddler might attempt to trace, via overlapping or juxtaposed clues, the full-grown, white face (4.5) of the willful, self-ruled god who comes and goes, who strays from his field (when appearing in the daytime sky?), hides, is destroyed, yet is born again and again (mortal/immortal) (4.5; 1.164; 5.2-10.85; 6.9), and who sharpens his horns (points; of the sickle) to break out of captivity (the dark phase) (5.2; 10.8; 4.58)? The riddler might even wonder whether the bones of 1.164.4 refer to the new moon, cued by the strong association between bone and the color white in the lore of the steppe (Hamayon, 1972, p. 227).
Finally, our nomad riddler might wonder whether the Milky Way is hidden in one of the many "paths," such as 10.85.11, featured in the hymns. A number of Altaic peoples call this impressive celestial phenomenon the Way or Road of the Birds, in the belief that it guides their migratory flight (Harva, 1938, p. 200). There is a "path of the bird" in 10.5, and 1.163 features a racecourse of the sky reached by a team of horses in V-formation (Taurus, which touches the Milky Way?). But short of further clues, the matter must rest as a question.
Conclusion
The coincidences brought to light in the above do, of course, imply very little regarding their genesis. Neither independent origination within cultures sharing similar circumstances borrowing from a common source, Altaic borrowing from traditions collaterally related to the Vedic, nor relatedness by common descent are excluded by the fact of coincidence itself. Nor is it clear how much further into Vedic lore the present approach may take us. The above exercises are exploratory in nature. They have been conducted without a wide-ranging search of Altaic sources on the one hand, and without the benefit of Vedic expertise on the other. That nevertheless one tradition appears capable of illuminating the other may encourage further attempts along these lines.
References
Banzarov, Dorji. "The Black Faith, or Shamanism among the Mongols." Mongolian Studies 1981-2, 7: 53-91.
Gimbutas, Marija. "The Indo-Europeans: Archaeological Problems." American Anthropologist 1963, 65: 815-836.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism. Princeton University Press, 1964.
Hangin, John Gombojab. "Mongolian folklore: A representative collection from the oral literary tradition. Part One." Mongolian Studies 1985-86, 9:13-78.
Hamayon, Roberle. "Triades de l'univers." Etudes Mongoles 1972, 3: 225-238.
Harva, Uno. "Die religiosen Vorstellungen der altaischen Volker." Helsinki, 1938.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. "The Rig Veda." Penguin Books, 1981.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
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Mythical Elements in "The Secret History of the Mongols"
The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 10", December 1994
Once again Mr. Aaron Cohen deputized for our President, whose return was delayed while he recovered from a minor operation performed while he was in England. With his usual style, Mr. Cohen had found in one of his books a reference to the Mongols with which to introduce our speaker.
The "Secret History", said Dr. Finch, might be better called "The Life of Chinggis Khan". Dating from 1240, it begins by tracing his genealogy back to his mythical ancestors Borte Cino (Gray Wolf) and Qo'ai Maral (Fallow Doe; "q" is an alternative graphy for "kh"), who are said to have crossed the sea and settled by the Onan River, establishing the Borjigin clan, to which Chinggis Khan belonged. A later chronicle, the "Altan Tobci", dated between 1621 and 1628, takes the genealogy eight generations further back to an Indian prince who manifested signs of divine origin, having turquoise blue hair, flat palms and soles, and eyelids that closed from the bottom upward. As a boy he had been set adrift in a copper box, was then found and finally became the first king of Tibet, Kujugun Sandali-tu Qagan. Borte Cino was one of three sons of the seventh of these kings, and, as a result of quarrelling with his elder brothers, crossed a lake and came to the land of the Mongols and married a girl called Qoua Maral.
The "Altan Tobci" takes Gray Wolf and Fallow Doe to be human rather than animals. The "Secret History" does not make it clear which they are, but a comparison with the chronicles of other Altaic peoples and other peoples in the same area shows non-human beings playing a leading part. The Tibetans, for example, trace their descent from a monkey and an ogress, while the imperial line of the Mongols is likewise traced back to quasi-historical personages, and another source calls Borte Cino the "Son of Heaven". In Chinese accounts of the origin of the Turkut a wolf figures prominently. The whole tribe was massacred by a neighbouring tribe except for a ten-year-old boy who was left for dead, with his hands and feet cut off. He was nurtured by a wolf, and then the two of them were transported by a "good genius" to the present-day Qara-xojo near Turfan. There the she-wolf gave birth to ten male young, who captured wives and gave their names to their families, and the resulting people adopted a wolf's head as their insignia. On the basis of all this evidence, we may conclude that the very brief reference to Gray Wolf and Fallow Doe in the Secret History represents the same tradition of incorporating what may be termed the "animal ancestor" motif.
The "Secret History" then continues through nine generations, and comes to a brief account of Dobun Mergen (Dobun the Sharpshooter or Dobun the Wise) and his brother Duwa Soqor (Duwa the One-Eyed). These names seem to be made up of a personal name and an epithetical surname, without any reference to animals, so these brothers must be at least quasi-historical persons. Duwa the One-Eyed immediately suggests that he was a Polyphemus figure, perhaps partly mythical, and this second mythical reference may be termed the "giant motif".
Duwa's part in the story is mainly to find a wife, Alan Go'a, for his brother Dobun, and she bore two sons, Bugunutei and Belgunutei (who may have been twins). Dobun had once taken home with him as a slave a poor boy he had found when hunting, and after Dobun's death, this man continued to live with Alan Go'a, and might have been the father of three more sons to whom she gave birth, Bugu Qatagi, Bugutu Salji, and Bodoncar Mungqag (Bodoncar the Fool). Alan Go'a decided to allay all her sons' suspicions about this by telling them that every night a pale yellow man would enter the yurt by way of the smoke hole and stroke her belly, and his light would penetrate it; then he would leave in the form of a yellow dog. This mythical story seems merely to have been an invention of Alan Go'a or one of the sons, and the "pale yellow man" suggests that at least one of the three boys had a lighter complexion; another account suggests that the Borjigin clan (Chinggis Khan's) shared this characteristic, and, as it is descended from Bodoncar, it seems as if he was the one who differed physically from the others, as well as in some other way that earned him the epithet "the Fool". This story, which may be called the "miraculous birth" motif, was evidently put together from elements surviving from an earlier tradition, or taken from an outside source, and was included in the "Secret History" to support the claim of Chinggis Khan to rule by divine right.
Among the chronicles of other Altaic peoples, one of the most developed accounts containing the same mythical themes is the history of Dung Ming, the founder of the Korean race. According to Chinese sources, there was a kingdom in the north called Fu-yu, and further north, across the Sungari River (a tributary of the Amur), lay the kingdom of Korai. The first king of Korai had a harem, and one day a slave girl in the harem saw a cloud or ray of light enter her bosom, and under its influence she conceived. The king wanted to put her to death, but hearing her story he let her give birth to the child, Dung Ming.Fearing the miraculous child might one day usurp his throne, he cast it first into a pig sty and then into a stable, but each time the animals kept it alive. The child grew up and became an expert archer, which made the king even more afraid of him. Dung Ming was forced to flee south, but found his way barred by the Sungari River. He shot arrows into the river, so many that the fish crowded together to avoid them and formed a bridge over which he crossed; the fish then dispersed so that his pursuers could not follow him. He then became king of Fu-yu.
The most obvious parallel between the history of Dung Ming and the Mongolian chronicles is the "miraculous birth" motif. But other motifs common to myths from various parts of the world are the "exposure of the baby" and the "wild child" motifs. The former is not found in the "Secret History", but occurs in the story of Kujugun Sandali-tu Qagan in the later "Altan Tobci" and in that of the ancestor of the Turkut in the Chinese Annals. Both these boys may be recognized as future hero kings by being specially marked, the one by his turquoise hair and reversed eyelids, the other by his amputated hands and feet. Bodoncar too, as we have inferred, may have been marked by having a light complexion. A variant of the "exposure of the baby" motif may be the "exile" motif. The two are combined in the Dung Ming story, and in the "Altan Tobci" Borte Cino has to flee after quarrelling with his two brothers. Also in both stories the hero has to cross over a body of water and then becomes king of a new people. Bodoncar, too, had a quarrel with his elder brothers, who drove him away from home; he crossed the Onan River to an island, and became king of a new people.
In the same way, the "wild child" motif may be an extension of the "animal ancestor" motif. Thus in the story of the origin of the Turkut the orphan boy suckled by the she-wolf may later have mated with her and begotten a new tribe. In most of the myths the one motif excludes the other, and there are few examples of the "wild child" mating with his nurse. There are, however, two folk tales current among the Buryat Mongols in which the "animal ancestor" motif is linked with the "exposure of the baby" one. In both, the mother has given birth to a half-animal baby and then sealed it in a cradle and thrown it into a lake. The close resemblance to the story of the boy with the turquoise hair who was shut up in a copper box and cast into the river may justify us in putting the various mythical fragments together and arriving at a story in which it is Borte Cino who is set adrift in a cradle and found and suckled by a wolf (or, for instance, a shamaness with a wolf as "helper").
Shortage of time forced Dr. Finch to cut out illustrations of parallel themes in Greek and Roman mythology, such as the "miraculous births" fathered by Zeus, the "exposure of the baby" as in the Oedipus story, or the "wild child" motif found in the story of Romulus and Remus. But he turned his attention to another "Polyphemus" myth which parallels the reference to Duwa the One-Eyed in the "Secret History". This is found in a collection of tales of the Oguz Turks, in which the Polyphemus figure is Depegoz (Top-Eye), who is the result of a union between a shepherd and a fairy. He lives in the mountains and raids the countryside, feasting on people. Then a tribal warrior, who had been brought up as a wild boy, gets into the ogre's cave and puts out his one eye with a heated spit. Then, as in the story of Polyphemus, he tries to get out of the cave together with the ogre's sheep, which the ogre is feeling as they go out to the pasture; in this he is not successful, but he succeeds in getting the ogre's magic sword and cutting his head off with it.
At this point Dr. Finch had again to excise a considerable portion of his prepared text, in which he had traced parallels in Buddhist, Christian and Zoroastrian sources, and proceeded to his conclusion. The parallels with Greek and Roman mythology, he said, might be due not so much to Hellenistic influence as to contact with more immediately neighbouring Indo-Europeans who had preserved much of the same original mythology. Of all the Indo-European myths with a "miraculous birth" motif, the closest one to the story of Alan Go'a turns up in the westernmost part of the area, in Ireland. In it a girl shut up in a house made of wickerwork is visited by a denizen of the Land of Youth who comes down through the opening in the roof in the form of a great bird and is then transformed into a glorious young man. Later she gives birth to a baby. Another Irish myth has a Polyphemus element. A race of demons or titans who terrorized the local population had a king with one eye, who could slay anyone with a baleful glance. Being told in a prophecy that he would be killed by his grandson he shuts his daughter up in a tower, but one man enters and she subsequently gives birth to three sons. When the king hears of it he orders the babies to be thrown into a whirlpool. But one survives and is found by a druidess, who gives him to a smith to bring up, and he eventually grows up and kills the king in battle, putting out his eye.
This last myth has all the elements needed to incorporate the Polyphemus figure into a myth containing the "miraculous birth" (though, in Irish fashion, a god is turned into a human father), "exposure of the baby" and "wild boy" motifs. But how are we to connect Irish myths with Mongol ones, when the two areas are so far apart geographically? The missing link here may have been the Tocharians. These were a fair-haired people speaking an Indo-European language (recorded in the 7th and 8th centuries) who lived on the northeast rim of the Tarim Basin. Their language is closer to the Italic and Celtic languages than to those of the Indo-Iranian or Slavonic groups, suggesting that they migrated east, presumably bringing with them the myths common to the west European area. Unfortunately we have no record of their ancestral beliefs or myths, as they have only left behind Buddhist texts, but it is interesting to speculate on the extent to which their stories might have been incorporated into the literature of their neighbours.
Once again Mr. Aaron Cohen deputized for our President, whose return was delayed while he recovered from a minor operation performed while he was in England. With his usual style, Mr. Cohen had found in one of his books a reference to the Mongols with which to introduce our speaker.
The "Secret History", said Dr. Finch, might be better called "The Life of Chinggis Khan". Dating from 1240, it begins by tracing his genealogy back to his mythical ancestors Borte Cino (Gray Wolf) and Qo'ai Maral (Fallow Doe; "q" is an alternative graphy for "kh"), who are said to have crossed the sea and settled by the Onan River, establishing the Borjigin clan, to which Chinggis Khan belonged. A later chronicle, the "Altan Tobci", dated between 1621 and 1628, takes the genealogy eight generations further back to an Indian prince who manifested signs of divine origin, having turquoise blue hair, flat palms and soles, and eyelids that closed from the bottom upward. As a boy he had been set adrift in a copper box, was then found and finally became the first king of Tibet, Kujugun Sandali-tu Qagan. Borte Cino was one of three sons of the seventh of these kings, and, as a result of quarrelling with his elder brothers, crossed a lake and came to the land of the Mongols and married a girl called Qoua Maral.
The "Altan Tobci" takes Gray Wolf and Fallow Doe to be human rather than animals. The "Secret History" does not make it clear which they are, but a comparison with the chronicles of other Altaic peoples and other peoples in the same area shows non-human beings playing a leading part. The Tibetans, for example, trace their descent from a monkey and an ogress, while the imperial line of the Mongols is likewise traced back to quasi-historical personages, and another source calls Borte Cino the "Son of Heaven". In Chinese accounts of the origin of the Turkut a wolf figures prominently. The whole tribe was massacred by a neighbouring tribe except for a ten-year-old boy who was left for dead, with his hands and feet cut off. He was nurtured by a wolf, and then the two of them were transported by a "good genius" to the present-day Qara-xojo near Turfan. There the she-wolf gave birth to ten male young, who captured wives and gave their names to their families, and the resulting people adopted a wolf's head as their insignia. On the basis of all this evidence, we may conclude that the very brief reference to Gray Wolf and Fallow Doe in the Secret History represents the same tradition of incorporating what may be termed the "animal ancestor" motif.
The "Secret History" then continues through nine generations, and comes to a brief account of Dobun Mergen (Dobun the Sharpshooter or Dobun the Wise) and his brother Duwa Soqor (Duwa the One-Eyed). These names seem to be made up of a personal name and an epithetical surname, without any reference to animals, so these brothers must be at least quasi-historical persons. Duwa the One-Eyed immediately suggests that he was a Polyphemus figure, perhaps partly mythical, and this second mythical reference may be termed the "giant motif".
Duwa's part in the story is mainly to find a wife, Alan Go'a, for his brother Dobun, and she bore two sons, Bugunutei and Belgunutei (who may have been twins). Dobun had once taken home with him as a slave a poor boy he had found when hunting, and after Dobun's death, this man continued to live with Alan Go'a, and might have been the father of three more sons to whom she gave birth, Bugu Qatagi, Bugutu Salji, and Bodoncar Mungqag (Bodoncar the Fool). Alan Go'a decided to allay all her sons' suspicions about this by telling them that every night a pale yellow man would enter the yurt by way of the smoke hole and stroke her belly, and his light would penetrate it; then he would leave in the form of a yellow dog. This mythical story seems merely to have been an invention of Alan Go'a or one of the sons, and the "pale yellow man" suggests that at least one of the three boys had a lighter complexion; another account suggests that the Borjigin clan (Chinggis Khan's) shared this characteristic, and, as it is descended from Bodoncar, it seems as if he was the one who differed physically from the others, as well as in some other way that earned him the epithet "the Fool". This story, which may be called the "miraculous birth" motif, was evidently put together from elements surviving from an earlier tradition, or taken from an outside source, and was included in the "Secret History" to support the claim of Chinggis Khan to rule by divine right.
Among the chronicles of other Altaic peoples, one of the most developed accounts containing the same mythical themes is the history of Dung Ming, the founder of the Korean race. According to Chinese sources, there was a kingdom in the north called Fu-yu, and further north, across the Sungari River (a tributary of the Amur), lay the kingdom of Korai. The first king of Korai had a harem, and one day a slave girl in the harem saw a cloud or ray of light enter her bosom, and under its influence she conceived. The king wanted to put her to death, but hearing her story he let her give birth to the child, Dung Ming.Fearing the miraculous child might one day usurp his throne, he cast it first into a pig sty and then into a stable, but each time the animals kept it alive. The child grew up and became an expert archer, which made the king even more afraid of him. Dung Ming was forced to flee south, but found his way barred by the Sungari River. He shot arrows into the river, so many that the fish crowded together to avoid them and formed a bridge over which he crossed; the fish then dispersed so that his pursuers could not follow him. He then became king of Fu-yu.
The most obvious parallel between the history of Dung Ming and the Mongolian chronicles is the "miraculous birth" motif. But other motifs common to myths from various parts of the world are the "exposure of the baby" and the "wild child" motifs. The former is not found in the "Secret History", but occurs in the story of Kujugun Sandali-tu Qagan in the later "Altan Tobci" and in that of the ancestor of the Turkut in the Chinese Annals. Both these boys may be recognized as future hero kings by being specially marked, the one by his turquoise hair and reversed eyelids, the other by his amputated hands and feet. Bodoncar too, as we have inferred, may have been marked by having a light complexion. A variant of the "exposure of the baby" motif may be the "exile" motif. The two are combined in the Dung Ming story, and in the "Altan Tobci" Borte Cino has to flee after quarrelling with his two brothers. Also in both stories the hero has to cross over a body of water and then becomes king of a new people. Bodoncar, too, had a quarrel with his elder brothers, who drove him away from home; he crossed the Onan River to an island, and became king of a new people.
In the same way, the "wild child" motif may be an extension of the "animal ancestor" motif. Thus in the story of the origin of the Turkut the orphan boy suckled by the she-wolf may later have mated with her and begotten a new tribe. In most of the myths the one motif excludes the other, and there are few examples of the "wild child" mating with his nurse. There are, however, two folk tales current among the Buryat Mongols in which the "animal ancestor" motif is linked with the "exposure of the baby" one. In both, the mother has given birth to a half-animal baby and then sealed it in a cradle and thrown it into a lake. The close resemblance to the story of the boy with the turquoise hair who was shut up in a copper box and cast into the river may justify us in putting the various mythical fragments together and arriving at a story in which it is Borte Cino who is set adrift in a cradle and found and suckled by a wolf (or, for instance, a shamaness with a wolf as "helper").
Shortage of time forced Dr. Finch to cut out illustrations of parallel themes in Greek and Roman mythology, such as the "miraculous births" fathered by Zeus, the "exposure of the baby" as in the Oedipus story, or the "wild child" motif found in the story of Romulus and Remus. But he turned his attention to another "Polyphemus" myth which parallels the reference to Duwa the One-Eyed in the "Secret History". This is found in a collection of tales of the Oguz Turks, in which the Polyphemus figure is Depegoz (Top-Eye), who is the result of a union between a shepherd and a fairy. He lives in the mountains and raids the countryside, feasting on people. Then a tribal warrior, who had been brought up as a wild boy, gets into the ogre's cave and puts out his one eye with a heated spit. Then, as in the story of Polyphemus, he tries to get out of the cave together with the ogre's sheep, which the ogre is feeling as they go out to the pasture; in this he is not successful, but he succeeds in getting the ogre's magic sword and cutting his head off with it.
At this point Dr. Finch had again to excise a considerable portion of his prepared text, in which he had traced parallels in Buddhist, Christian and Zoroastrian sources, and proceeded to his conclusion. The parallels with Greek and Roman mythology, he said, might be due not so much to Hellenistic influence as to contact with more immediately neighbouring Indo-Europeans who had preserved much of the same original mythology. Of all the Indo-European myths with a "miraculous birth" motif, the closest one to the story of Alan Go'a turns up in the westernmost part of the area, in Ireland. In it a girl shut up in a house made of wickerwork is visited by a denizen of the Land of Youth who comes down through the opening in the roof in the form of a great bird and is then transformed into a glorious young man. Later she gives birth to a baby. Another Irish myth has a Polyphemus element. A race of demons or titans who terrorized the local population had a king with one eye, who could slay anyone with a baleful glance. Being told in a prophecy that he would be killed by his grandson he shuts his daughter up in a tower, but one man enters and she subsequently gives birth to three sons. When the king hears of it he orders the babies to be thrown into a whirlpool. But one survives and is found by a druidess, who gives him to a smith to bring up, and he eventually grows up and kills the king in battle, putting out his eye.
This last myth has all the elements needed to incorporate the Polyphemus figure into a myth containing the "miraculous birth" (though, in Irish fashion, a god is turned into a human father), "exposure of the baby" and "wild boy" motifs. But how are we to connect Irish myths with Mongol ones, when the two areas are so far apart geographically? The missing link here may have been the Tocharians. These were a fair-haired people speaking an Indo-European language (recorded in the 7th and 8th centuries) who lived on the northeast rim of the Tarim Basin. Their language is closer to the Italic and Celtic languages than to those of the Indo-Iranian or Slavonic groups, suggesting that they migrated east, presumably bringing with them the myths common to the west European area. Unfortunately we have no record of their ancestral beliefs or myths, as they have only left behind Buddhist texts, but it is interesting to speculate on the extent to which their stories might have been incorporated into the literature of their neighbours.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
7 Reasons to Join our Army of 10,000
PayBox is building an Army of 10,000 newly-trained Internet marketers. Why? In order to give us the boost we need to reach our growth goals and begin work to “Open the Box”, turning PayBox into a full-featured payment processor.
Joining our Army of 10,000 is optional. In fact, we only recommend joining for our EarlyBird users who have a good deal of ambition and determination to change their lives for the better. If that doesn’t describe you, please pass over this opportunity, but, be sure to cheer on our army, as they represent the future of PayBox.
We expect that less than 4% of our EarlyBird users will participate in our Army of 10,000. Why is that good news for the few who choose to participate? Read on to find out…
Just how vast is the potential here? There are nearly 2 Billion people now using the Internet, millions of products that you can profit from and thousands of companies willing to pay you. But, if you don’t know what to do, that money just will just sit there untapped—or worse—someone else will claim it.
What would you do with an extra $500 per week on top of what you make now? What about $1,000 or $3,000 per week more? This type of income is a very real possibility for anyone who takes the time to learn good strategies for affiliate marketing.
One of the great things about affiliate marketing is that you can begin practicing your new skills immediately. In fact, you could actually earn commissions within hours of beginning your lessons. There are literally millions of products you could begin promoting within minutes, once you know what to do.
The moment someone clicks one of your links, a website will load in their browser where they can learn about a product or service. If it’s something they want, they buy it and you get paid a commission.
It’s that simple.
So, your affiliate marketing training will focus on teaching you the best ways to get people to click on your affiliate links. That’s it. Just a click. A single click could earn you $20, $50, even $100 or more depending on the affiliate program you promote.
There are a lot of ways to be successful at this, but, without proper training on the best techniques, you will never earn big paychecks as an affiliate marketer.
Why?
It’s because they don’t know how to drive traffic to their affiliate links. Most of them are just regular people who signed up for an affiliate program in the hopes that they would magically make a lot of money.
Hoping, wishing and magical thinking won’t get you what you want. In order to succeed, you must get training and tools. You have to get up-to-speed on the latest Internet marketing techniques if you hope to earn enough money to make a difference in your life. The top affiliate marketers—those who know what they are doing—can earn upwards of $50,000 per month.
It’s not that affiliate marketing is difficult. It’s just that most people are too lazy and lack the ambition it takes to get proper training and tools.
This is good news for you! You wouldn’t even be reading this if you didn’t have ambition and a desire to create a better life for yourself. That puts you a good distance ahead of 99% of the “affiliate marketers” out there.
As a member of our Army of 10,000, you’ll have even more working in your favor…
It’s like our small army of Internet marketers just discovered the enemy’s vault filled to the brim with cash and treasure, but the door is wide-open and there are no guards to be seen. Get ready to take all you can!
Reason #6: You’ll Give Away a Valuable Service for FREE!
Note: This section refers to once you begin promoting the PayBox affiliate program (which is not yet live).
Not only is your task simple—you just send web traffic to your affiliate link—even better, the link you send people to will be giving away a valuable service for free.
When people follow your link, they will be prompted to create a free account with PayBox. When they do, you will earn a referral bonus in your PayBox account.
So, back to the people you refer to PayBox. They will sign on for a free service that offers instant value in the form of digital goods and eventually much more as we work to “Open the Box” and become a full-featured payment processor.
Once your referrals have joined PayBox, they will have the option to purchase several things from PayBox, if they do, you will earn a commission on every sale. Your affiliate link will appear within the PayBox “My Account” area of every person you refer. You could even earn long-term recurring income.
The commission you earn from these sales will be paid to you either by direct bank deposit or by paper check which you can deposit to your current bank account. In addition, we are building into our affiliate program a very special feature that could have hundreds or thousands of EarlyBird users promoting your affiliate link for you!
As a member of our Army of 10,000, your marketing efforts will help PayBox to reach our growth goals by growing our user base. Once we reach those goals, it will allow us to begin to “Open the Box” and pave the way to reach our goal of becoming a full-featured payment processor.
The building of our Army of 10,000 is critical to the success of PayBox. We welcome you to join our army and take the first steps to changing your life in ways you only dreamed possible.
In our upcoming blog posts, we will review and recommend the best of the best Internet marketing training courses and tools. Please carefully read through these blog posts, follow the links and see what each training course or tool has to offer.
There is a good matching training course for everyone who wants to participate. You’ll know which one is right for you. If you read about one that feels like a good fit for you, go for it! Don’t wait!
You really can’t go wrong with any of the training programs or tools we recommend. Again, each of these is time-tested and proven to be the best of the best. To join our army simply follow our upcoming blog posts and join the course that feels like the best fit for you. Get on board as soon as possible to start learning and applying the lessons and/or tools it provides.
The PayBox affiliate program will not launch until our Army of 10,000 is trained and ready. So, jump on board, begin practicing and get ready for the time our affiliate program launches!
Joining our Army of 10,000 is optional. In fact, we only recommend joining for our EarlyBird users who have a good deal of ambition and determination to change their lives for the better. If that doesn’t describe you, please pass over this opportunity, but, be sure to cheer on our army, as they represent the future of PayBox.
We expect that less than 4% of our EarlyBird users will participate in our Army of 10,000. Why is that good news for the few who choose to participate? Read on to find out…
7 Reasons to Join our Army of 10,000
Reason #1: You’re Ready to get More out of Life!
It’s time to begin your dream job…What this “job” doesn’t have:
- There’s no boss telling you what to do.
- You’re not on anyone else’s time clock.
- You won’t be told what days of the week you have to work.
- You won’t be told what holidays you can take off.
- You won’t be told what time of day to work.
- There’s no long commute, sitting for hours in traffic.
- You won’t waste your life away working for someone else.
- You won’t be told how many days you can take off for a vacation.
- You won’t need an alarm clock to start work “on time”.
- You won’t have to spend time away from your family.
What this “job” does have:
- You can choose to work from home or anywhere else you choose.
- Take all the free time you want.
- Spend more time with your family.
- Earn more money than you need.
- Travel whenever you want.
- Do something you enjoy.
- You could earn as much as a doctor.
- It’s easy to do.
- Work only a few hours a day.
- Make money even while you’re not working.
- Start making money as soon as today.
What do you need to get started?
- It requires no experience.
- You’ll need a computer with Internet connection.
- Must have ambition—no longer willing to settle for less.
- A determination to create a better life for yourself.
Reason #2: You’ll Learn a Valuable New Skill.
You’ll learn a skill that is highly valuable and which provides you with a way to always earn an income from the Internet, in any market, in any economy, and you can do it from nearly anywhere in the world.Just how vast is the potential here? There are nearly 2 Billion people now using the Internet, millions of products that you can profit from and thousands of companies willing to pay you. But, if you don’t know what to do, that money just will just sit there untapped—or worse—someone else will claim it.
Reason #3: Money—Earn More and Start Today!
It’s very likely that the income you earn from marketing your affiliate links on the Internet could easily exceed the money you would earn at a day job. In fact, many Internet marketers have shown that they can replace their full-time day job by doing affiliate marketing only 10-15 hours per week.What would you do with an extra $500 per week on top of what you make now? What about $1,000 or $3,000 per week more? This type of income is a very real possibility for anyone who takes the time to learn good strategies for affiliate marketing.
One of the great things about affiliate marketing is that you can begin practicing your new skills immediately. In fact, you could actually earn commissions within hours of beginning your lessons. There are literally millions of products you could begin promoting within minutes, once you know what to do.
Reason #4: It’s Incredibly Simple.
As an affiliate marketer you don’t have to “sell” a thing. All you do is direct people to your personal affiliate links—once people click your link, your “work” is done.The moment someone clicks one of your links, a website will load in their browser where they can learn about a product or service. If it’s something they want, they buy it and you get paid a commission.
It’s that simple.
So, your affiliate marketing training will focus on teaching you the best ways to get people to click on your affiliate links. That’s it. Just a click. A single click could earn you $20, $50, even $100 or more depending on the affiliate program you promote.
There are a lot of ways to be successful at this, but, without proper training on the best techniques, you will never earn big paychecks as an affiliate marketer.
Reason #5: You’ll have Very Little Competition.
Sure, a lot of people try to make money with affiliate programs, however, most of them earn less than $50 per month.Why?
It’s because they don’t know how to drive traffic to their affiliate links. Most of them are just regular people who signed up for an affiliate program in the hopes that they would magically make a lot of money.
Hoping, wishing and magical thinking won’t get you what you want. In order to succeed, you must get training and tools. You have to get up-to-speed on the latest Internet marketing techniques if you hope to earn enough money to make a difference in your life. The top affiliate marketers—those who know what they are doing—can earn upwards of $50,000 per month.
It’s not that affiliate marketing is difficult. It’s just that most people are too lazy and lack the ambition it takes to get proper training and tools.
This is good news for you! You wouldn’t even be reading this if you didn’t have ambition and a desire to create a better life for yourself. That puts you a good distance ahead of 99% of the “affiliate marketers” out there.
As a member of our Army of 10,000, you’ll have even more working in your favor…
- Our affiliate program will only be open to our EarlyBird users.
- In addition, we expect that less than 4% of our EarlyBird users will join our team of marketers.
It’s like our small army of Internet marketers just discovered the enemy’s vault filled to the brim with cash and treasure, but the door is wide-open and there are no guards to be seen. Get ready to take all you can!
Reason #6: You’ll Give Away a Valuable Service for FREE!
Note: This section refers to once you begin promoting the PayBox affiliate program (which is not yet live).
Not only is your task simple—you just send web traffic to your affiliate link—even better, the link you send people to will be giving away a valuable service for free.
When people follow your link, they will be prompted to create a free account with PayBox. When they do, you will earn a referral bonus in your PayBox account.
Another Note: Although your PayBox account balance may not seem very useful while PayBox is operating as a “closed box” system, it will become more and more valuable as we work to “Open the Box”. One way it will grow more valuable in the near future is through our Digital Delivery Project. This project will launch before our affiliate program. It will allow PayBox users to purchase digital goods from merchants who sign on to accept PayBox.
So, back to the people you refer to PayBox. They will sign on for a free service that offers instant value in the form of digital goods and eventually much more as we work to “Open the Box” and become a full-featured payment processor.
Once your referrals have joined PayBox, they will have the option to purchase several things from PayBox, if they do, you will earn a commission on every sale. Your affiliate link will appear within the PayBox “My Account” area of every person you refer. You could even earn long-term recurring income.
The commission you earn from these sales will be paid to you either by direct bank deposit or by paper check which you can deposit to your current bank account. In addition, we are building into our affiliate program a very special feature that could have hundreds or thousands of EarlyBird users promoting your affiliate link for you!
Reason #7: Help PayBox Reach the Next Level.
PayBox is still a closed box system for now. This means all transactions are currently limited to payments between user accounts. The Digital Delivery Project will begin to “Open the Box”, but for PayBox to expand beyond digital goods, we need to grow our user base. This growth will allow us to form essential working relationships with large merchants and payment networks.As a member of our Army of 10,000, your marketing efforts will help PayBox to reach our growth goals by growing our user base. Once we reach those goals, it will allow us to begin to “Open the Box” and pave the way to reach our goal of becoming a full-featured payment processor.
The building of our Army of 10,000 is critical to the success of PayBox. We welcome you to join our army and take the first steps to changing your life in ways you only dreamed possible.
In our upcoming blog posts, we will review and recommend the best of the best Internet marketing training courses and tools. Please carefully read through these blog posts, follow the links and see what each training course or tool has to offer.
There is a good matching training course for everyone who wants to participate. You’ll know which one is right for you. If you read about one that feels like a good fit for you, go for it! Don’t wait!
You really can’t go wrong with any of the training programs or tools we recommend. Again, each of these is time-tested and proven to be the best of the best. To join our army simply follow our upcoming blog posts and join the course that feels like the best fit for you. Get on board as soon as possible to start learning and applying the lessons and/or tools it provides.
The PayBox affiliate program will not launch until our Army of 10,000 is trained and ready. So, jump on board, begin practicing and get ready for the time our affiliate program launches!
The Philosophy of Gilgamesh
There is a mystic tale, written by the ancient Mesopotamians, that few people have heard about and even fewer have actually read. It is generally regarded as the oldest literary text in the history of humanity. It has influenced countless works such as the Odyssey, the Bible, and the Edda. Numerous scientists work eagerly to decode its complex structure and metaphoric content, still not even sure on where to begin. Simple and rational, yet full of magic and hidden philosophical statements that, like a flower, become more and more advanced in content and form the more one tries to analyze its basic components. I am talking about the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Its origins can be traced back to the ancient Mesopotamia, originally written on twelve clay tables in cunieform script. Although several passages are still lost, a majority of the work has been recovered through extensive archaeological findings around the world - and though literary scientists for a long time have known about this text, few people in today's society have had the chance to even acknowledge its very existence, even though its literary, cultural, and religious impact and influence on famous works, simply cannot be overestimated.
The tale is about the king in Uruk, Gilgamesh. 2/3 part god and 1/3 part human, Gilgamesh is a split character that feels unsure of where his limitations in life are, thus turning him into an arrogant and reckless king. The citizens eventually feel so threatened by their leader, that they call for the sky god Anu to free them from their wrathful lord. Anu orders the goddess Aruru to create the First Man, Enkidu, as a competitor to Gilgamesh, in an attempt to give him a friend, which will bring peace to his soul.
And so it is done; Enkidu, the First Man on Earth, is created and begins to live among the animals, until he one day discovers love to a human female, thus realizing he's actually a human being, supposed to live in the city with other people. Gilgamesh and Enkidu eventually become close friends, and one day the king decides that they should go out on an adventure, to escape the depressing city life and discover new challenges together.
At one point Enkidu is sentenced to death by the gods, which leaves Gilgamesh alone with his own destiny. This time he realizes that he has to explore his inner self and combat the eternal existential questions, in order to find new strength to understand life and thus be able to appreciate it for the beautiful journey it really is.
What makes this epic a complex work is that its actual content is buried beneath a metaphoric language, hidden within the language itself, as well as the form of the prose. The story is simple and straightforward, but as scientists now are beginning to understand, the actual messages are hidden within an advanced form of relating ideas to structure. Even the names of the characters hold linguistic secrets, making it very hard for modern science to fully understand all the cultural links within the work.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a highly refined nihilism, which describes the development of humankind, from animal to god. Gilgamesh is, as noted above, 2/3 part god and 1/3 human. The problem for him is not so much the composition of his being, but the failure to understand and take use of his possibilities as well as limitations. Gilgamesh wants to believe he is godlike, and thus do not have to face death, sadness or loneliness, as those are parts of the human fate. Therefore the gods decide to create Enkidu, as a mirror to reflect Gilgamesh and show him the true image of himself.
By closely following the development of Enkidu, we therefore also understand the development of Gilgamesh. Firstly Enkidu acts like an animal: he drinks from the river together with the herds and protects the animals from the hunters. When he has faced his true identity as a human being, he begins to understand the possibilities of being human; solving existential as well as practical problems, by finding an abstract idea and work to achieve it, by acting upon the ideal. Finally, after Enkidu dies, he realizes his actual limitation through mortality, and thus free his soul to live forever in the underworld, where he discovers the concept of eternity as a result of one's achievements during lifetime.
When examining these developments of Enkidu, we find that they correlate to the three stages of man: 1) hedonism, or the time when we're still so young that our focus and world view becomes centred around ourselves and our animalistic behaviour, 2) realism, or the time when we realize our small part as individuals in life as a whole, and that reality therefore isn't an equivalence to our ego, but that we must use our brain to create a change in the real world, 3) idealism, or the time when we accept our mortality as human beings and thus instead wish to live for the permanent things in life, which is the Ideal.
The life of Gilgamesh follows this pattern very closely: in the beginning of his time as a king, he believes he cannot die, and therefore have nothing to fear as an individual. As a result he becomes an immature and reckless leader, without being able to appreciate life for what it is, but life for what it could be. When Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh is forced to face his existential problems, he decides to travel with Urshanabi across the Ocean of Death, over to the Other Side where he will find the wisdom of life (Abzu, "The Depth"). His goal is to learn about himself and the world around him. This forms the connection between the material and ideal world, death and life.
One could see this as a process of nihilism, where all moral, ethical and utopian illusions are forced to pass through the filter of reality, until only ideas connected to truth are left. When Utnapishtim, lord of the Other Side, explains to Gilgamesh that he is not immortal - and all his attempts to take use of the secrets and possibilities open to immortality, fail - the once ruthless king now becomes a person in harmony with his inner soul. The mortal limitations, the 1/3 human part of his being, teaches Gilgamesh to not only live for the Ideal, but to accept and find meaning and beauty in reality, here and now, without sorting for the illusions that previously plagued his mind. He has become a nihilist and an idealist, loving and caring for his people and the village in which he lives.
By accepting his mortality, and thus his humanity, Gilgamesh paradoxically is able to live like a normal human being again - but at the same time fulfil his ideal as a god. For according to the ancient Sumerian texts, Gilgamesh actually becomes a god and continues to live for eternity. But an even more fascinating secret in this text is the fulfilment of the structural intent behind Gilgamesh's name. By splitting the name up into smaller words and translating them into separate concepts, then merging these together linguistically, 'Gilgamesh' translates into 'The Tree of Godlike Balance'. According to Sumerian mythology, the tree was seen as an organic connection between Earth and Sky, the life of the humans and life of the gods. The kings were often compared to a tree as in a spiritual hierarchy.
Understanding the three phases in the life of Gilgamesh, we also find a parallel to the linguistic meaning of his name: Gilgamesh is the king that rises from the earthly life and ends up becoming a god himself. He finds the connection between the material and the idealistic world; he achieves balance between ideal and reality, thus both becoming human but at the same time transcending all polarities and completing his 1/3 part to become 3/3 part god. Metaphorically we therefore see Gilgamesh as a tree, which forms a relationship between god and man, expressing idealism identical to the ancient Indo-European religion, where gods were a natural part of the reality of people.
This is a beautiful, transcendent work of prose, that much like the Edda or the Iliad, is an essential piece of read when one is up in the middle of life, looking for existential guidance, for truths and secrets, to open up a new gateway that will clear all illusions imposed on us by modern society, to free ourselves from the shackles of morality and guilt - and like Gilgamesh did - rediscover life to learn how to accept its limitations, possibilities, and inherent beauty; to learn how to live and love life as it really is.
source: http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/alexis/gilgamesh/
Its origins can be traced back to the ancient Mesopotamia, originally written on twelve clay tables in cunieform script. Although several passages are still lost, a majority of the work has been recovered through extensive archaeological findings around the world - and though literary scientists for a long time have known about this text, few people in today's society have had the chance to even acknowledge its very existence, even though its literary, cultural, and religious impact and influence on famous works, simply cannot be overestimated.
The tale is about the king in Uruk, Gilgamesh. 2/3 part god and 1/3 part human, Gilgamesh is a split character that feels unsure of where his limitations in life are, thus turning him into an arrogant and reckless king. The citizens eventually feel so threatened by their leader, that they call for the sky god Anu to free them from their wrathful lord. Anu orders the goddess Aruru to create the First Man, Enkidu, as a competitor to Gilgamesh, in an attempt to give him a friend, which will bring peace to his soul.
And so it is done; Enkidu, the First Man on Earth, is created and begins to live among the animals, until he one day discovers love to a human female, thus realizing he's actually a human being, supposed to live in the city with other people. Gilgamesh and Enkidu eventually become close friends, and one day the king decides that they should go out on an adventure, to escape the depressing city life and discover new challenges together.
At one point Enkidu is sentenced to death by the gods, which leaves Gilgamesh alone with his own destiny. This time he realizes that he has to explore his inner self and combat the eternal existential questions, in order to find new strength to understand life and thus be able to appreciate it for the beautiful journey it really is.
What makes this epic a complex work is that its actual content is buried beneath a metaphoric language, hidden within the language itself, as well as the form of the prose. The story is simple and straightforward, but as scientists now are beginning to understand, the actual messages are hidden within an advanced form of relating ideas to structure. Even the names of the characters hold linguistic secrets, making it very hard for modern science to fully understand all the cultural links within the work.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a highly refined nihilism, which describes the development of humankind, from animal to god. Gilgamesh is, as noted above, 2/3 part god and 1/3 human. The problem for him is not so much the composition of his being, but the failure to understand and take use of his possibilities as well as limitations. Gilgamesh wants to believe he is godlike, and thus do not have to face death, sadness or loneliness, as those are parts of the human fate. Therefore the gods decide to create Enkidu, as a mirror to reflect Gilgamesh and show him the true image of himself.
By closely following the development of Enkidu, we therefore also understand the development of Gilgamesh. Firstly Enkidu acts like an animal: he drinks from the river together with the herds and protects the animals from the hunters. When he has faced his true identity as a human being, he begins to understand the possibilities of being human; solving existential as well as practical problems, by finding an abstract idea and work to achieve it, by acting upon the ideal. Finally, after Enkidu dies, he realizes his actual limitation through mortality, and thus free his soul to live forever in the underworld, where he discovers the concept of eternity as a result of one's achievements during lifetime.
When examining these developments of Enkidu, we find that they correlate to the three stages of man: 1) hedonism, or the time when we're still so young that our focus and world view becomes centred around ourselves and our animalistic behaviour, 2) realism, or the time when we realize our small part as individuals in life as a whole, and that reality therefore isn't an equivalence to our ego, but that we must use our brain to create a change in the real world, 3) idealism, or the time when we accept our mortality as human beings and thus instead wish to live for the permanent things in life, which is the Ideal.
The life of Gilgamesh follows this pattern very closely: in the beginning of his time as a king, he believes he cannot die, and therefore have nothing to fear as an individual. As a result he becomes an immature and reckless leader, without being able to appreciate life for what it is, but life for what it could be. When Enkidu dies and Gilgamesh is forced to face his existential problems, he decides to travel with Urshanabi across the Ocean of Death, over to the Other Side where he will find the wisdom of life (Abzu, "The Depth"). His goal is to learn about himself and the world around him. This forms the connection between the material and ideal world, death and life.
One could see this as a process of nihilism, where all moral, ethical and utopian illusions are forced to pass through the filter of reality, until only ideas connected to truth are left. When Utnapishtim, lord of the Other Side, explains to Gilgamesh that he is not immortal - and all his attempts to take use of the secrets and possibilities open to immortality, fail - the once ruthless king now becomes a person in harmony with his inner soul. The mortal limitations, the 1/3 human part of his being, teaches Gilgamesh to not only live for the Ideal, but to accept and find meaning and beauty in reality, here and now, without sorting for the illusions that previously plagued his mind. He has become a nihilist and an idealist, loving and caring for his people and the village in which he lives.
By accepting his mortality, and thus his humanity, Gilgamesh paradoxically is able to live like a normal human being again - but at the same time fulfil his ideal as a god. For according to the ancient Sumerian texts, Gilgamesh actually becomes a god and continues to live for eternity. But an even more fascinating secret in this text is the fulfilment of the structural intent behind Gilgamesh's name. By splitting the name up into smaller words and translating them into separate concepts, then merging these together linguistically, 'Gilgamesh' translates into 'The Tree of Godlike Balance'. According to Sumerian mythology, the tree was seen as an organic connection between Earth and Sky, the life of the humans and life of the gods. The kings were often compared to a tree as in a spiritual hierarchy.
Understanding the three phases in the life of Gilgamesh, we also find a parallel to the linguistic meaning of his name: Gilgamesh is the king that rises from the earthly life and ends up becoming a god himself. He finds the connection between the material and the idealistic world; he achieves balance between ideal and reality, thus both becoming human but at the same time transcending all polarities and completing his 1/3 part to become 3/3 part god. Metaphorically we therefore see Gilgamesh as a tree, which forms a relationship between god and man, expressing idealism identical to the ancient Indo-European religion, where gods were a natural part of the reality of people.
This is a beautiful, transcendent work of prose, that much like the Edda or the Iliad, is an essential piece of read when one is up in the middle of life, looking for existential guidance, for truths and secrets, to open up a new gateway that will clear all illusions imposed on us by modern society, to free ourselves from the shackles of morality and guilt - and like Gilgamesh did - rediscover life to learn how to accept its limitations, possibilities, and inherent beauty; to learn how to live and love life as it really is.
source: http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/alexis/gilgamesh/
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The world conqueror and the mountain savage
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| Qiu Chuji; Changchun (1148 – 1227) |
During the wars in north China Genghis Khan had his attention drawn to a Taoist scholar, the monk Ch'ang-ch'un, who was highly regarded in the imperial courts of the Chin and the Sung. Taoism had developed in China from the old scholars of the magicians; although it was later developed into a lofty system of metaphysics, it had succeeded in liberating itself from its mysterious origins. Taoist alchemy sought for the elixir of life, which would confer immortality; it was an alchemy that exerted great fascination. Ch'ang-ch'un, however, was a philosopher and poet who had nothing of the vulgar magican about him; the intellectual asceticism of the Taoist won for him widespread and deep regard.
The illiterate Mongol world conqueror, who was interested in 'the philosopher's stone' with its secret of immortality, wished to employ the magic powers of the famous monk - in whom he presumably saw a worker of miracles - for his own purposes. He wanted to know if Ch'ang-ch'un really possesed the medicine of immortality, and if so he intended to compel the heavenly forces, who had the power of life and death, to do his bidding.
At the moment in 1219 when Genghis Khan was preparing his army on the Kara Irtish River for the assault on Khwarasm, he asked Ch'ang-ch'un, who was then living in the province of Shantung, to come and visit him. The 71-year-old Taoist, realizing that to refuse was not possible, resolved to go to the world conquerer. Genghis Khan had a special escort of 20 men send to accompany Ch'ang-ch'un from Shantung. Chinqai, one of the Mongol conqueror's advisers, was appointed to fetch the monk and to look atfer him during the journey. On the day of his departure the aged Taoist told his disciples that he would be away for three years.
During their campaign the Mongol army regularly chose concubines from the defeated nations for Genghis Khan and his generals. The learned ascetic was highly indegnant when he discovered that he would have to travel in the company of a number of 'harem girls'. His protests were successful and the concubines had to stay behind.
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| Wang Chongyang and the Seven Immortals |
In Peking the monk was told that Genghis Khan had in the meantime departed for Khwarazm. In March 1221 Ch'ang-ch'un began his difficult journey accross Asia to his new destination. One of his companions, Li Chih-ch'ang, kept a detailed diary, which became an important historical source. It did not, however, contain only historical facts. The information it gives about the geography, ethnography, climatology, and about the flora and fauna of Central Asia is of great value. Via Dolon Nor the company travelled to the camp of Genghis Khan's youngest brother, Temuge-otchigin, which lay on the River Kalka. On 30 April Ch'ang-ch'un was received by Temuge. They journeyed through the Kerulen Valley to the upper Orkhon, where, in spite of the summer season it was very cold. Even the strongest members of the party suffered acutely from the climate. The journey continued via the Altai mountains, north along the Tien Shan mountains, Sairam Nor and Almalig to Samarkand, where the travellers arrived on 3 December 1221.
Because of the wintry weather Ch'ang-ch'un remained for some months in Samarkand. In the middle of April 1222 he received a request from Genghis Khan to call upon him, and on 26 April the Taoist master set off with an escort from Samarkand. He went via Balkh to Genghis Khan's camp, which lay south of the Hindu Kush. The aged Chinese scholar arrived on 15 May. He was most warmly received by the world conqueror and thanked for the fact that, in order to make this visit, he had travelled a distance of 10,000 li (one li being 573 metres). Ch'ang-ch'un replied that Genghis Khan's command had been the will of heaven and that as a 'mountain savage' he had no choice but to obey. (As a token of his hermit's humility the monk had given himself the name mountain savage) Genghis Khan invited the Taoist to sit down, and came straight to the point by asking the old monk if he really possessed the medicine of immortality. Ch'ang-ch'un answered that there were many ways of prolonging life, but that no medicine of immortality existed. Genghis Khan was undoubtedly deeply disappointed; he had hoped to be able to conquer death itself. However, he gave no sign of his feelings, but congratulated the monk for his honest answer. The world conqueror ordered that two tents should be erected east of his own headquarters for the master and his companions.
It was the intention that Ch'ang-ch'un should also give an account of the Taoist philosophy, but enemy activity in Afganistan demanded all Genghis Khan's attention. At his own request Ch'ang-ch'un therefore returned to Samarkand, arriving there in mid-June 1222. When Genghis Khan invited the monk to call on him for the second time in September 1222, his camp had meanwhile moved to a place south-east of Balkh. Ch'ang-ch'un arrived there on 28 September, almost immediately moving north with the imperial household. It was not until October that Genghis Khan was able to hear the master give his exposition of Taoism. In an impressive pavilion specially erected for the purpose, Ch'an-ch'un was once again received by Genghis Khan with great courtesy. The conquerer listened with close attention to Ch'ang-ch'un's words, which were translated by an interpreter. The old monk returned after this to Samarkand, but subsequently accompanied Genghis Khan for a time on his moves. The Mongol conquerer wanted Ch'ang-ch'un to travel back with him on the return journey to Mongolia, but the master asked permission to leave earlier; he had promised his friends in China to be back after three years.
Before the journey to China began, the monk found an opportunity to warn Genghis Khan to look after himself more carefully. In March 1223, during a hunt Genghis Khan shot a boar, but at the same moment his horse stumbled and the world conquerer fell. The boar, which had been wounded, stood still and did not attack, so that the attendants were able to rescue their prostrate sovereign. The master took advantage of this incident to point out to Genghis Khan that life was precious and to suggest that in view of his age he should not hunt so much. Genghis Khan could not agree to abondon his Mongol way of life. He admitted that the monk was right, but added that the Mongol learned to ride and to use the bow and arrow as children - it was difficult to give up these habits. He promised Ch'ang-ch'un, however, that he would bear his advise in mind.
In April 1223 Ch'ang-ch'un at last obtained permission to leave. The return journey followed more or less the same route as the journey out. In January 1224 the company reached Peking. Five months later the master received a message from Genghis Khan saying that the sender had not forgotten his old friend; the world conquerer hoped that he would also be remembered by the monk. Ch'ang-ch'un died in 1227, the same year that Genghis Khan died.
source: http://books.google.com/books?id=a4p9C6J35XYC
The tragedy of four civilizations
Any civilization will be ruined if it does not think of its own immortality
We are used to treating myths and legends as things that do not actually exist. However, if we take a closer look at the cultural inheritance of a people, we notice remarkable things. For example, some cultures that live absolutely separately from each other have legends that describe one and the same thing or event. Such legends surely have certain differences, but they are basically the same. Scientist Vladimir Shemchuk has studied the curious peculiarities of folklore and compared them to certain facts from the history of our planet. Shemchuk got the following picture of life on planet Earth over thousands of years.
The Bible contains a legend that there used to be a Golden Age on the planet. Then, it was replaced by the Silver Age, then there was the Bronze Age, and it was all over with the Iron Age. The legends of American Indians and of the African and Australian tribes say that planet Earth was first inhabited by demigods: the Assures (Titans). Then, there were the Atlants. The Atlants were smaller than the Titans; they soon died, and they were replaced by the civilization of giants.
We are used to judging ancient civilizations as badly developed and primitive. Yet, some findings in mines prove that the people of ancient civilizations could mine coal. They even had electricity and manufactured plastic items. All ancient written sources of information mention giants. Most likely, those abundant written legends about giants give certain reasons to believe that giants actually lived on our planet thousands of years ago. This theory explains why ancient constructions and buildings were so huge. It was not simply because of the wish to show their power. They were needed for giant people.
Five stone figures are found in an Afghan village not far from Kabul. One of them is two meters high, another one is six, then there is a figure of 18 meters, the fourth one is 38 meters, and the last one is 54 meters high. Local people do not know the origins of those statues. Some of them think that they guard their village. However, Shemchuk believes that the height of each statue corresponds to the true height of ancient people.
The Assures could not live in the atmosphere that the planet had during those times. They were too big; they would kill themselves with their own weight. They were 50 meters high, they weighed 30 tons, their shoulders were 12 meters wide, and their bodies were five meters thick. A Russian legend about a man called Svyatogor says that he was basically lying all the time, because it was too hard for him to carry the weight of his own body.
Our ancestors were all long-lived, to say the least. Alapar, the second divine Babylonian ruler, reigned for 10,800 years. This means that the Assures’ average age reached 50 thousand years. Shemchuk calculated that having a height of 50 meters allowed one to live for tens of thousands of years. The civilization of Assures lasted for 100-200 generations.
In 1965, Italian scientist Kolossimo summarized the information of all archeological expeditions that people knew. He came to the conclusion that planet Earth used to be the arena of battles using nuclear weapons. Many ancient sources mention weapons that remind one of modern nukes. Melted stones were found in the Gobi desert, in the Middle East, in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and South America.
Shemchuk believes that the global catastrophe on the planet was a nuclear one. Ancient legends described mutations (Cyclop monsters with one eye only). Archeologists have found strange skeletons with several rows of teeth. Another radioactive mutation is the Mongolian race.
Numerous nuclear explosions resulted in hard rains, which, in their turn, led to the global flood. After the flood, there was a nuclear winter, which is scientifically known as global freezing. Fires made the atmosphere of the Earth less rarefied, which was not good for giant forms of life.
Practically all nations and tribes have a legend, a myth, or a tale about dragons. North American Indians have a legend about the invasion of monster dragons that killed our ancestors’ civilization. One could assume that our planet was seized by dragons.
A civilization will inevitably vanish if it does not think of its own immortality. Scientist Shemchuk urges everyone to pay attention to ecological issues and to the development of people’s psychophysical abilities. The work of scientists has only one goal: to make people understand that it is time to take serious measures. Otherwise, our civilization will be ruined.
source: http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/18-09-2002/14531-0/
We are used to treating myths and legends as things that do not actually exist. However, if we take a closer look at the cultural inheritance of a people, we notice remarkable things. For example, some cultures that live absolutely separately from each other have legends that describe one and the same thing or event. Such legends surely have certain differences, but they are basically the same. Scientist Vladimir Shemchuk has studied the curious peculiarities of folklore and compared them to certain facts from the history of our planet. Shemchuk got the following picture of life on planet Earth over thousands of years.
The Bible contains a legend that there used to be a Golden Age on the planet. Then, it was replaced by the Silver Age, then there was the Bronze Age, and it was all over with the Iron Age. The legends of American Indians and of the African and Australian tribes say that planet Earth was first inhabited by demigods: the Assures (Titans). Then, there were the Atlants. The Atlants were smaller than the Titans; they soon died, and they were replaced by the civilization of giants.
We are used to judging ancient civilizations as badly developed and primitive. Yet, some findings in mines prove that the people of ancient civilizations could mine coal. They even had electricity and manufactured plastic items. All ancient written sources of information mention giants. Most likely, those abundant written legends about giants give certain reasons to believe that giants actually lived on our planet thousands of years ago. This theory explains why ancient constructions and buildings were so huge. It was not simply because of the wish to show their power. They were needed for giant people.
Five stone figures are found in an Afghan village not far from Kabul. One of them is two meters high, another one is six, then there is a figure of 18 meters, the fourth one is 38 meters, and the last one is 54 meters high. Local people do not know the origins of those statues. Some of them think that they guard their village. However, Shemchuk believes that the height of each statue corresponds to the true height of ancient people.
The Assures could not live in the atmosphere that the planet had during those times. They were too big; they would kill themselves with their own weight. They were 50 meters high, they weighed 30 tons, their shoulders were 12 meters wide, and their bodies were five meters thick. A Russian legend about a man called Svyatogor says that he was basically lying all the time, because it was too hard for him to carry the weight of his own body.
Our ancestors were all long-lived, to say the least. Alapar, the second divine Babylonian ruler, reigned for 10,800 years. This means that the Assures’ average age reached 50 thousand years. Shemchuk calculated that having a height of 50 meters allowed one to live for tens of thousands of years. The civilization of Assures lasted for 100-200 generations.
In 1965, Italian scientist Kolossimo summarized the information of all archeological expeditions that people knew. He came to the conclusion that planet Earth used to be the arena of battles using nuclear weapons. Many ancient sources mention weapons that remind one of modern nukes. Melted stones were found in the Gobi desert, in the Middle East, in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and South America.
Shemchuk believes that the global catastrophe on the planet was a nuclear one. Ancient legends described mutations (Cyclop monsters with one eye only). Archeologists have found strange skeletons with several rows of teeth. Another radioactive mutation is the Mongolian race.
Numerous nuclear explosions resulted in hard rains, which, in their turn, led to the global flood. After the flood, there was a nuclear winter, which is scientifically known as global freezing. Fires made the atmosphere of the Earth less rarefied, which was not good for giant forms of life.
Practically all nations and tribes have a legend, a myth, or a tale about dragons. North American Indians have a legend about the invasion of monster dragons that killed our ancestors’ civilization. One could assume that our planet was seized by dragons.
A civilization will inevitably vanish if it does not think of its own immortality. Scientist Shemchuk urges everyone to pay attention to ecological issues and to the development of people’s psychophysical abilities. The work of scientists has only one goal: to make people understand that it is time to take serious measures. Otherwise, our civilization will be ruined.
source: http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/18-09-2002/14531-0/
Monday, January 17, 2011
Geser, Hero of the People
by Sarangerel Odigon
The Buryat heroic epic Geser is one of the landmarks of Buryat Mongolian folklore and mythology. While there is some tenuous relationship between it and the Tibetan legends of Gesar of Ling, the Buryat Geser is a shamanist epic while the Tibetan legends are Buddhist. In fact the more important name for Geser is his original name, Bukhe Beligte, which was his name when he was a sky spirit (tenger) of the 55 tenger of the western direction. This name is used much more frequently than Geser in the first section of the story. This may possibly be because the name "Geser" was added in later after contact with the Buddhist legend. Similarities between the Geser myth and heroic myths of the Native Americans in Alaska and Canada suggest that this story has its origins from myths thousands of years old.
Geser is a very long epic, it was traditionally performed over nine days by a bard playing the Mongolian horse head fiddle (moriin huur).
Geser is actually a key to understanding the intricate cosmology of Buryat shamanism. In the opening chapters of the epic are descriptions of the creation and earliest days of the world. Here is a short summary of the creation story (I will put the full text on this page once I have finished translating it).
In the very earliest days, there was nothing but heaven and the oceans below, no land, no sun, moon, or stars. Tenger was very lonely and bored, so he created a sun and moon to light the skies. He then created the goldeneye duck, and he sent it to the bottom of the sea to bring up some mud. The duck was gone for a very long time, but finally it came up with a little dirt in its bill. Tenger placed the mud on the back of a turtle, and its legs extended down to the bottom of the sea. The mud spread out and became dry land, and Tenger shaped the mountains, lakes, and river courses with his palm and fingers. He then created the birds, fish, and animals. However, since the sun and moon shone at the same time, it was too warm and the animals complained. Tenger then commanded the moon to shine only at night, and so it remains today.
The story then tells of how the various sky spirits came about, how they are related, what direction they inhabit, and what their qualities are. Over time, the eastern and western tenger feuded among each other, and as a result of this feud several monsters and diseases appeared on the earth. This was a danger to the early human inhabitants of the earth, so the tenger conferred among themselves and decided to send one of their own, Bukhe Beligte (Gilga mesh), to incarnate on earth in order to kill off the monsters and save mankind. This myth has many intriguing parallels to the Monster Slayer and Saya myths of the Dene tribes of North America.
Geser seems at the same time to be both a man and a god. He was born and grew up as a human being, but at the same time he had extraordinary powers. He was able to mount a magic horse and fly through the air, much as the Buryat shaman flies through the air on a spiritual horse during shamanic journeys. Yet at the same time he showed the vulnerability and weakness of humans and he won his battles not so much by personal might as by his intelligence. His real name, Bukhe Beligte (Bilga Mes, Temuu Chin), is associated in Mongolian-Buryat tradition with bilig (dream/effort/mind), the female force of cunning and wisdom associated with the moon. Thus his name means "all bilig" or strong/sharp bilig". His consort, Alma Mergen, is on the other hand a Valkyrie-like figure who would fly to the scene of battle or hunting, and is very much like Artemis of Greek myth. She was the daughter of Uha Loson, the chief of the nature spirits of the waters. She has the male epithet of "Mergen" which is usually applied to warriors or shamans. The bending of gender roles in this unusual couple and the shamanlike qualities of both make Bukhe Beligte and Alma Mergen very remarkable and memorable, and this also may be related to the mixing of gender roles that is customary among shamans of many Siberian tribes.
Furthermore, the life of Geser exemplifies the Mongolian/Siberian shamanist ideal of living, tegsh, which means living in balance and in consciousness of one's true nature and life purpose. This principle means there must be balance between good/bad, compassion/hardness, male/female, self-denial/excess. Geser in his life embodies these ideas in his life and as the culture hero of the Buryats preserved the central philosophy of his people through the oral tradition. These same principles are what allowed the native peoples of Siberia to live in such perfect balance with their ecology for thousands of years of history.
It is very likely that Chinggis Khan himself heard this legend as he was growing up and he may have been inspired by the heroic ideals and character of Bukhe Beligte. Like this hero, Chinggis Khan was successful many times not because of superior physical strength as much as by cunning and perserverance. He appears to have consciously evoked the imagery of Geser in the organization of his court and in the symbolism of the imperial cult. Even today Buryats see many strong parallels between the character of Bukhe Beligte/Geser and Chinggis Khan.
To this day Bukhe-Beligte/Geser is a hero and national symbol for the Buryats. Shrines to Bukhe Beligte Tenger have been erected in many places throughout Buryatia since the repression of shamanism ended in 1991. There are some 30 sacred sites in Buryatia and in Buryat territories adjacent to it (Ust Orda, Irkutsk, Chita, and Aga) that are related to Geser. The most important sites, however are the birthplace of Geser in the Sayan Mountains and the Geseriin Buuts (the place of Geser's descent) outside of Ulaan Ude, the capital of Buryatia. The Geseriin Buuts is to be the center of a center dedicated to Buryat culture in the future. The shrine in the Sayan Mountains has a most interesting story connected with it. When it was to be consecrated in 1994 a shaman warned that to dedicate the shrine would awaken Bukhe Beligte Tenger and bring about his return to his people. At the time when the dedication ritual was held, an earthquake shook the Sayan Mountains.
Bukhe Beligte has returned to his people. At this time of spiritual renewal of the human race, what will the return of Bukhe Beligte mean for the future of the Buryat Mongols and for mankind?
Here is a short version of the Geser story read by students in Buryatia.
The War Among the Tenger
This happened in the very earliest of times. At that time, the mountain Sumber stood at the center of the world and extended up to heaven, but Lake Baikal was nothing more than a small pond.
In the upper world, beyond the downy clouds, were the 55 tenger of the western direction and the 44 tenger of the eastern direction. The leader of the tenger of the west was Han Hormasta, the leader of the 44 eastern tenger was Atai Ulaan. Between them was the land of Sagaan Sebdeg (Blue Ice) Tenger. One time Han Hormasta and Atai Ulaan happened to meet at the border of the lands of Sagaan Sebdeg. Atai Ulaan asked, "What business do you have coming here?" and so they argued and argued and finally it turned into a fight. Han Hormasta won after smashing Atai Ulaan into pieces. He then tore off Atai Ulaan's head and tore his body into bits and scattered them in the air. When the pieces drifted down to earth they turned into evil spirits and all sorts of diseases.
The people living on earth were ruled by three brothers, Sargal Noyon, Sengelen Noyon, and Hara Zutan. Suddenly there appeared on the land all sorts of evil spirits in strange forms which wreaked havoc among mankind. First they polluted the waters. Then all the animals got sick with plague and anthrax and started to disappear. Animals were hungry and were dying off.
The shamaness which served the three brothers, Sharnaihan Shara, shamanized, calling to the tenger to help the suffering of the world, and when she reached ecstasy, she threw her drumstick to the sky, and it flew to the upper world and landed on the table of Manzan Gurme Toodei, mother of all the sky spirits. When the drumstick came flying up to her, Manzan Gurme Toodei was very astonished, and took out her shaman mirror and when she gazed into it she saw that the animals and humans on earth were in danger of disappearing. Knowing this, she called the tenger to meet and decide what to do to save mankind.
Han Hormasta had three sons, the middle son was Bukhe Beligte. The tenger decided to send him down to earth to become a human. After being born as a human he would kill off the monsters and save the people.
When the Hero was Born on Earth
The oldest of the three leaders of the people, Sargal Noyon, had a dream. He said,"On the north side of Sumber Mountain I saw a lark singing , it was a bird from the tenger. If it can come down to earth it would save us from our troubles!"
Hara Zutan, while hunting in the mountain forests, saw the lark come down. It turned into a remarkably beautiful maiden. It was Naran Goohon, the daughter of Naran Dulaan Tenger (tenger of the sun). Hara Zutan brought the maiden home with him and presented her to his brothers.
Sargal Noyon said, "We will marry her to Sengelen Noyon. But since she is now living as a human we have to change the face of this heavenly woman and make her ordinary. She will live with Sengelen Noyon in a tepee and they will eat out of carved wooden pots like poor people."
Hara Zutan said, "I will mutilate this woman!" He then slashed her hands and feet, and disfigured her face so that she was no longer beautiful.
After this was done, Sengelen Noyon and Naran Goohon were married. They were sent far away to live in a smoke-filled tepee and were completely helpless. They had no dog, not did they have a child to raise upon the knee. They had no livestock and practically no possessions. They survived by gathering wild onions and garlic, netting small fish and catching rabbits with snares.
One night while Naran Goohon was sleeping inside the tepee she awakened suddenly. Her bedcover suddenly raised up, and then she heard the steps of a man walking away, but she saw no one. She then realized that the slashes on her hands, feet, and face had disappeared. That night she became pregnant and she rejoiced that she would have a child.
Finally the day that the couple was waiting for arrived. When the little red infant was first born, he raised his right hand up as if to strike, bent his left leg, and looked at them with the right eye wide open and the left eye squinted. Then the newborn baby spoke these wise words, "I hold up my right hand to show I will strike my enemies. Bending the left leg shows I will kick my enemies. My wide open eye shows that I will always see the right path. My squinted eye shows that I will be able to see through deceit."
Thus the middle son of Han Hormasta, Bukhe Beligte, was born as a man on this earth.
He starts to defeat enemies while still in the cradle
While Bukhe Beligte was lying on his cradleboard, the enemies he was born to defeat learned about his arrival on earth. The evil spirits lived in a place that was dry, sunless, all plants were withered in this clearing in the forest. They met and decided that they would kill the newborn child. They sent a giant rat with a bronze muzzle to kill him. The little baby grabbed a whip with 18 tails, and struck the rat so that it shattered into ninety tiny mice.
The evil spirits then sent a raven with an iron beak and claws, black as night. The boy smashed the raven into bits, then with great strength threw the beak and claws so that they flew all the way back to the clearing in the forest where it had been sent from.
The hateful enemies of the child then sent a giant mosquito as large as a horse. The baby took a red whip and struck it with great force, saying "forever be hungry and fly among the grasses!" and the giant mosquito turned into a cloud of mosquitoes and gnats.
Seeing that the three monsters they had sent were destroyed, the boy's enemies were much dismayed. Nine hundred monsters and ninety evil spirits met together and said to their leader, "O great powerful one, a magical boy has been sent to earth by the will of Tenger! We need to kill this child, to smash him, to beat him into a pulp, to crush him!"
Therefore after some time the leader of the evil ones traveled to the boy's native land with the purpose of exterminating him. Upon reaching the border of Sengelen Noyon's lands he changed his appearance into that of a shaman. According to the custom of hospitality he walked into the dwelling of Sengelen Noyon's family, saying, "I am a shaman who has traveled from a long distance away. I have heard that you recently gave birth to a child. I have come to help and protect him."
The baby started crying loudly. The shaman said "Why is the boy crying, is it because of his illness?" and approached the cradle. As he neared the child the guest turned back into the monster he truly was. He shouted "I will take away your suld, cut off your life, and eat your ami!" and showed a mouth full of iron fangs.
The baby was ready for him. He grabbed the iron muzzle of the monster, and kicked his neck so that his head was torn off. He then threw the monster's head to the ground.
The hero's growth did not go from year to year like most children, nor from month to month, but rather day by day he grew larger and stronger. His parents said, "Before he turned even four years old he has defeated four enemies!" and rejoiced at having such a child. When he would sleep they would wrap him in a sheep's skin, but soon it was too small and they had to wrap him in a cowhide instead. While playing he would run, jump, and yell.
How the boy came to be called Nuhata Nurgai
Heroes usually are born into and spend their early years in poor households. When they are small they do not wear brocades and silk but rather wear poor and nasty clothing. For this reason they will never get cold.
The elder brother of the child's father, Sargal Noyon, came one day to visit his younger brother Sengelen Noyon. He regretted that he had married off Naran Goohon and sent her with his brother to live in exile as poor people. Therefore, when he saw that they had a child he was very happy. He wanted to adopt this child who showed the temperament of a warrior. He said, "Let me take this child with me, and he can grow up and play with my own two sons!"
The boy's parents agreed. Sargal Noyon then released his brother from his exile and Sengelen Noyon returned with his wife Naran Goohon to her own family in the upper world.
The child that was to become Geser in the future was quite a troublesome and confusing little boy for his parents. He would urinate in his swaddling great amounts of water like a river, and when he would defecate in his cradle the smell was powerful. He would run around barefoot with snot running out of his nose.
When Sargal Noyon came home he gave a feast to celebrate the arrival of the boy. He told his guests, "Up to this time this boy has no name. Find me a suitable name for him!" he told his people, "To the one who gives me a name I will give meat enough to cover his head like a hat and a lump of fat as big as his head!" From among the people an old man leaning on a white walking stick said, "He has snot running from his nose, he is sweaty and muddy. Why not call him Nuhata Nurgai (Slimy Face)?"
Everybody laughed, and, smiling, Sargal Noyon embraced the old man warmly. After that time Nuhata Nurgai watched Sargal Noyon's animals.
Sargal Noyon's own two sons were called Altan Shagai and Mungun Shagai. They constantly tested his strength, tested his quickness of mind with riddles, and sent him out on the hunt. He succeeded at any test that they put him to. Sargal Noyon then thought, "Any man who can endure such tests at this time was certainly born to defeat the monsters and evil things on the earth!"
At that time the leader of the people of the northwestern lands, Temeen Ulaan, has a very beautiful daughter named Tumen Jargalan. He announced that he would give his daughter in marriage to any man who was able to win three demonstrations of strength. Warriors came from many different households and gathered for the contest. Nuhata Nurgai also came, wearing old clothes and riding a mouse brown two year old colt. But once the contests began he won every single one. He picked up a huge liver colored rock and threw it so forcefully that it shattered into flints. He then uprooted a pine tree from the forest and threw it so that it shattered into splinters. He then pulled up an ephedra bush and threw it further than anyone else. No one was able to match this kind of ability. Among them was the boy's uncle Hara Zutan, and from that time onward poisonous hatred boiled in his heart toward his nephew. Having won all the contests, Nuhata Nurgai took Tumen Jargalan back to his own country as his wife.
After returning home, before long Nuhata Nurgai went out again on his travels. He still rode the little mousy colt, and was armed with a simple red willow bow and horn tipped willow shafted arrows. He went here and there about the world. He arrived at one country where its ruler, Shaazgai Bayan, was promising to give his daughter in marriage to any man who was able to defeat a giant warrior.
The giant had a powerful black body, a chest as wide as the sea, armor of forged iron, a broad strong bow, a quiver made of planks, rode a buckskin horse and had a powerful booming voice.
With the power of his body and the quickness of his mind Nuhata Nurgai was able to win the contest. He therefore was able to take Shaazgai Bayan's daughter, Urmai Goohon, back to his home as his second wife.
How the Hero was transformed into Geser
Tumen Jargalan, Urmai Goohon, and Nuhata Nurgai had a very dull life together. Their life became poorer and worse every day. The two wives were very astonished, for after he had brought them home he never slept with them. Instead, he would always go out at night and would not return until daybreak.
One night Nuhata Nurgai climbed to the summit of Mount Sumber and did a ritual to honor Etseg Malaan Tenger. There, at the summit of the mountain, his face changed into his true appearance as Bukhe Beligte. Instead of a boy's body he had the appearance of a warrior, a dark red brown face, broad white teeth, a powerful broad chest, powerful black fists, multicolored eyes, and black hair a fathom long!
Looking down from the upper world Bukhe Beligte Tenger's father, Han Hormasta saw his son upon the summit of the mountain. He took back the warrior's equipment that Bukhe Beligte had entrusted to Etseg Malaan Tenger before his birth. He then sent these things down on a warrior's horse, a bay that came down from heaven. It had hooves that would never slip, legs that would never get cold, and a mane that was three armfuls worth of hair. When it alighted upon the mountain its hooves struck sparks upon the rocks and lightning glittered in its eyes! The horse was named Beligen (gift).
The warrior who had now become Geser grabbed the red reins of the horse, put his feet into the silver stirrups and sat upon the silver saddle. He rode down toward the world, and saw the seven lands while riding his horse. His bay steed Beligen galloped between heaven and earth through the skies, the hero had become like the eagle.
On his way back to his home Geser met thirty three warriors, three thousand and ninety soldiers, and three hundred captains for his army. They followed him as he traveled toward his home. Thus Geser came to the world to kill the monsters, suppress the evil spirits, and bring life and happiness to all people and living things.
Sengelen Noyon and Naran Goohon rejoiced to know they had borne such a heroic son. When Tumen Jargalan and Urmai Goohon realized that they were married to such a handsome warrior they were content.
He was then asked, "Where shall the people's famous hero Geser make his home?" He answered, "By the great river, on the shores of the eternal lake, by the Hatan River, and on the shores of the black lake, in the land of the larks!" (the eternal, black lake is Lake Baikal) In this beautiful land Geser lived happily for three years and a day.
Geser's Third Wife Alma Mergen
One day Geser got up and told his family, "I am tires of eating beef, I miss eating game. I will go hunting in the Altai and Sayan mountains."
Thus Geser went hunting among the peaks of the Altai and Sayan Mountains. After three days of hunting he had not killed a single deer. On the fourth day he saw a spotted deer running in the forest and he followed it. Then suddenly a young man riding a chestnut horse appeared and shot the deer before Geser. While at a trot the boy reached down, grabbed the dead deer, swung it up on his horse, and galloped away.
Geser was angry and shouted after the boy. He then rode after him and continued to shout, but the boy ignored him and continued riding. Geser did not want to return home without the deer. In great anger he struck Beligen with his whip and pursued the boy. The boy and his horse were starting to get tired, and they were approaching the shores of Baikal. But the youth rode fearlessly into the waters of the lake and disappeared.
Geser tied his horse to a tree and entered the waters of the lake supporting himself with his spear. He then discovered that he had found the entrance to the country of Uha Loson, the head of the water spirits. The rider of the chestnut horse was none other than the daughter of Uha Loson. When she had met Geser she had taken on the appearance of a young man while hunting.
He came to the house of Uha Loson and announced who he was, and he was introduced to Alma Mergen. When he was young, Uha Loson had known Han Hormasta quite well. Furthermore, they had agreed that his daughter Alma Mergen and Han Hormasta's son Bukhe Beligte would be married. According to this custom, Alma Mergen became Geser's third wife.
After ten days of feasting Geser announced his intention to return to his homeland. He had still not slept with his new wife. Alma Mergen used her own guile to keep Geser from leaving and put a drug in his food that made him lose all his thoughts and worries about his former life. He did not know whose son he was, where he came from, where he was going, he was powerless to remember anything. At this time Alma Mergen became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.
Days and months went by, and became years. Geser had become stupid, and did not remember his home, his lands, or his livestock. Instead he watched the animals belonging to his father-in-law. On the shore of the lake his horse Beligen had turned into skin and bones and was barely able to stand. At that time the western tenger looked down from the upper world and were astonished, saying, "We have not heard about Geser for a long time, we do not hear the galloping of his horse Beligen." They then sent Bukhe Beligte's three older sisters down to earth to see what had happened.
After traveling to many places the three sisters came to Uha Loson's land and found Geser. They slapped him on the right cheek and he vomited up a black object, then they slapped him on the left cheek and he vomited up the rest of the drug that had deprived him of his senses. They then smudged him with juniper and sprayed him with spring water so that his body returned to normal.
Geser went out hunting, killed a moose, and threw the carcase before his father in law, announcing to Uha Loson that he was returning to his own country, saying, "You do not catch foreigners in a net, you should not put guests in a moosehide bag." and he left taking his wife and two daughters with him. When Uha Loson brought them to the shore of the lake it was night. Geser immediately went looking for his horse. When he found Beligen, his horse was barely alive, but Geser hugged him around the neck, happy to find him again.
Once Beligen the bay horse had regained his strength Geser, his wife Alma Mergen, and his two daughters returned to the land of the big river, the eternal lake, the Hatan river, the black lake. Geser then built three houses for his three wives. With happiness filling his heart he would say to them affectionately, "Is the sun in the sky beautiful, or is Tumen Jargalan beautiful? Is the sun in the heavens beautiful, or is Urmai Goohon beautiful? Is the golden sun beautiful, or is Alma Mergen beautiful?
The Buryat heroic epic Geser is one of the landmarks of Buryat Mongolian folklore and mythology. While there is some tenuous relationship between it and the Tibetan legends of Gesar of Ling, the Buryat Geser is a shamanist epic while the Tibetan legends are Buddhist. In fact the more important name for Geser is his original name, Bukhe Beligte, which was his name when he was a sky spirit (tenger) of the 55 tenger of the western direction. This name is used much more frequently than Geser in the first section of the story. This may possibly be because the name "Geser" was added in later after contact with the Buddhist legend. Similarities between the Geser myth and heroic myths of the Native Americans in Alaska and Canada suggest that this story has its origins from myths thousands of years old.
Geser is a very long epic, it was traditionally performed over nine days by a bard playing the Mongolian horse head fiddle (moriin huur).
Geser is actually a key to understanding the intricate cosmology of Buryat shamanism. In the opening chapters of the epic are descriptions of the creation and earliest days of the world. Here is a short summary of the creation story (I will put the full text on this page once I have finished translating it).
In the very earliest days, there was nothing but heaven and the oceans below, no land, no sun, moon, or stars. Tenger was very lonely and bored, so he created a sun and moon to light the skies. He then created the goldeneye duck, and he sent it to the bottom of the sea to bring up some mud. The duck was gone for a very long time, but finally it came up with a little dirt in its bill. Tenger placed the mud on the back of a turtle, and its legs extended down to the bottom of the sea. The mud spread out and became dry land, and Tenger shaped the mountains, lakes, and river courses with his palm and fingers. He then created the birds, fish, and animals. However, since the sun and moon shone at the same time, it was too warm and the animals complained. Tenger then commanded the moon to shine only at night, and so it remains today.
The story then tells of how the various sky spirits came about, how they are related, what direction they inhabit, and what their qualities are. Over time, the eastern and western tenger feuded among each other, and as a result of this feud several monsters and diseases appeared on the earth. This was a danger to the early human inhabitants of the earth, so the tenger conferred among themselves and decided to send one of their own, Bukhe Beligte (Gilga mesh), to incarnate on earth in order to kill off the monsters and save mankind. This myth has many intriguing parallels to the Monster Slayer and Saya myths of the Dene tribes of North America.
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| Monasteries and temples Geser Sum, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia |
Furthermore, the life of Geser exemplifies the Mongolian/Siberian shamanist ideal of living, tegsh, which means living in balance and in consciousness of one's true nature and life purpose. This principle means there must be balance between good/bad, compassion/hardness, male/female, self-denial/excess. Geser in his life embodies these ideas in his life and as the culture hero of the Buryats preserved the central philosophy of his people through the oral tradition. These same principles are what allowed the native peoples of Siberia to live in such perfect balance with their ecology for thousands of years of history.
It is very likely that Chinggis Khan himself heard this legend as he was growing up and he may have been inspired by the heroic ideals and character of Bukhe Beligte. Like this hero, Chinggis Khan was successful many times not because of superior physical strength as much as by cunning and perserverance. He appears to have consciously evoked the imagery of Geser in the organization of his court and in the symbolism of the imperial cult. Even today Buryats see many strong parallels between the character of Bukhe Beligte/Geser and Chinggis Khan.
To this day Bukhe-Beligte/Geser is a hero and national symbol for the Buryats. Shrines to Bukhe Beligte Tenger have been erected in many places throughout Buryatia since the repression of shamanism ended in 1991. There are some 30 sacred sites in Buryatia and in Buryat territories adjacent to it (Ust Orda, Irkutsk, Chita, and Aga) that are related to Geser. The most important sites, however are the birthplace of Geser in the Sayan Mountains and the Geseriin Buuts (the place of Geser's descent) outside of Ulaan Ude, the capital of Buryatia. The Geseriin Buuts is to be the center of a center dedicated to Buryat culture in the future. The shrine in the Sayan Mountains has a most interesting story connected with it. When it was to be consecrated in 1994 a shaman warned that to dedicate the shrine would awaken Bukhe Beligte Tenger and bring about his return to his people. At the time when the dedication ritual was held, an earthquake shook the Sayan Mountains.
Bukhe Beligte has returned to his people. At this time of spiritual renewal of the human race, what will the return of Bukhe Beligte mean for the future of the Buryat Mongols and for mankind?
Here is a short version of the Geser story read by students in Buryatia.
The War Among the Tenger
This happened in the very earliest of times. At that time, the mountain Sumber stood at the center of the world and extended up to heaven, but Lake Baikal was nothing more than a small pond.
In the upper world, beyond the downy clouds, were the 55 tenger of the western direction and the 44 tenger of the eastern direction. The leader of the tenger of the west was Han Hormasta, the leader of the 44 eastern tenger was Atai Ulaan. Between them was the land of Sagaan Sebdeg (Blue Ice) Tenger. One time Han Hormasta and Atai Ulaan happened to meet at the border of the lands of Sagaan Sebdeg. Atai Ulaan asked, "What business do you have coming here?" and so they argued and argued and finally it turned into a fight. Han Hormasta won after smashing Atai Ulaan into pieces. He then tore off Atai Ulaan's head and tore his body into bits and scattered them in the air. When the pieces drifted down to earth they turned into evil spirits and all sorts of diseases.
The people living on earth were ruled by three brothers, Sargal Noyon, Sengelen Noyon, and Hara Zutan. Suddenly there appeared on the land all sorts of evil spirits in strange forms which wreaked havoc among mankind. First they polluted the waters. Then all the animals got sick with plague and anthrax and started to disappear. Animals were hungry and were dying off.
The shamaness which served the three brothers, Sharnaihan Shara, shamanized, calling to the tenger to help the suffering of the world, and when she reached ecstasy, she threw her drumstick to the sky, and it flew to the upper world and landed on the table of Manzan Gurme Toodei, mother of all the sky spirits. When the drumstick came flying up to her, Manzan Gurme Toodei was very astonished, and took out her shaman mirror and when she gazed into it she saw that the animals and humans on earth were in danger of disappearing. Knowing this, she called the tenger to meet and decide what to do to save mankind.
Han Hormasta had three sons, the middle son was Bukhe Beligte. The tenger decided to send him down to earth to become a human. After being born as a human he would kill off the monsters and save the people.
When the Hero was Born on Earth
The oldest of the three leaders of the people, Sargal Noyon, had a dream. He said,"On the north side of Sumber Mountain I saw a lark singing , it was a bird from the tenger. If it can come down to earth it would save us from our troubles!"
Hara Zutan, while hunting in the mountain forests, saw the lark come down. It turned into a remarkably beautiful maiden. It was Naran Goohon, the daughter of Naran Dulaan Tenger (tenger of the sun). Hara Zutan brought the maiden home with him and presented her to his brothers.
Sargal Noyon said, "We will marry her to Sengelen Noyon. But since she is now living as a human we have to change the face of this heavenly woman and make her ordinary. She will live with Sengelen Noyon in a tepee and they will eat out of carved wooden pots like poor people."
Hara Zutan said, "I will mutilate this woman!" He then slashed her hands and feet, and disfigured her face so that she was no longer beautiful.
After this was done, Sengelen Noyon and Naran Goohon were married. They were sent far away to live in a smoke-filled tepee and were completely helpless. They had no dog, not did they have a child to raise upon the knee. They had no livestock and practically no possessions. They survived by gathering wild onions and garlic, netting small fish and catching rabbits with snares.
One night while Naran Goohon was sleeping inside the tepee she awakened suddenly. Her bedcover suddenly raised up, and then she heard the steps of a man walking away, but she saw no one. She then realized that the slashes on her hands, feet, and face had disappeared. That night she became pregnant and she rejoiced that she would have a child.
Finally the day that the couple was waiting for arrived. When the little red infant was first born, he raised his right hand up as if to strike, bent his left leg, and looked at them with the right eye wide open and the left eye squinted. Then the newborn baby spoke these wise words, "I hold up my right hand to show I will strike my enemies. Bending the left leg shows I will kick my enemies. My wide open eye shows that I will always see the right path. My squinted eye shows that I will be able to see through deceit."
Thus the middle son of Han Hormasta, Bukhe Beligte, was born as a man on this earth.
He starts to defeat enemies while still in the cradle
While Bukhe Beligte was lying on his cradleboard, the enemies he was born to defeat learned about his arrival on earth. The evil spirits lived in a place that was dry, sunless, all plants were withered in this clearing in the forest. They met and decided that they would kill the newborn child. They sent a giant rat with a bronze muzzle to kill him. The little baby grabbed a whip with 18 tails, and struck the rat so that it shattered into ninety tiny mice.
The evil spirits then sent a raven with an iron beak and claws, black as night. The boy smashed the raven into bits, then with great strength threw the beak and claws so that they flew all the way back to the clearing in the forest where it had been sent from.
The hateful enemies of the child then sent a giant mosquito as large as a horse. The baby took a red whip and struck it with great force, saying "forever be hungry and fly among the grasses!" and the giant mosquito turned into a cloud of mosquitoes and gnats.
Seeing that the three monsters they had sent were destroyed, the boy's enemies were much dismayed. Nine hundred monsters and ninety evil spirits met together and said to their leader, "O great powerful one, a magical boy has been sent to earth by the will of Tenger! We need to kill this child, to smash him, to beat him into a pulp, to crush him!"
Therefore after some time the leader of the evil ones traveled to the boy's native land with the purpose of exterminating him. Upon reaching the border of Sengelen Noyon's lands he changed his appearance into that of a shaman. According to the custom of hospitality he walked into the dwelling of Sengelen Noyon's family, saying, "I am a shaman who has traveled from a long distance away. I have heard that you recently gave birth to a child. I have come to help and protect him."
The baby started crying loudly. The shaman said "Why is the boy crying, is it because of his illness?" and approached the cradle. As he neared the child the guest turned back into the monster he truly was. He shouted "I will take away your suld, cut off your life, and eat your ami!" and showed a mouth full of iron fangs.
The baby was ready for him. He grabbed the iron muzzle of the monster, and kicked his neck so that his head was torn off. He then threw the monster's head to the ground.
The hero's growth did not go from year to year like most children, nor from month to month, but rather day by day he grew larger and stronger. His parents said, "Before he turned even four years old he has defeated four enemies!" and rejoiced at having such a child. When he would sleep they would wrap him in a sheep's skin, but soon it was too small and they had to wrap him in a cowhide instead. While playing he would run, jump, and yell.
How the boy came to be called Nuhata Nurgai
Heroes usually are born into and spend their early years in poor households. When they are small they do not wear brocades and silk but rather wear poor and nasty clothing. For this reason they will never get cold.
The elder brother of the child's father, Sargal Noyon, came one day to visit his younger brother Sengelen Noyon. He regretted that he had married off Naran Goohon and sent her with his brother to live in exile as poor people. Therefore, when he saw that they had a child he was very happy. He wanted to adopt this child who showed the temperament of a warrior. He said, "Let me take this child with me, and he can grow up and play with my own two sons!"
The boy's parents agreed. Sargal Noyon then released his brother from his exile and Sengelen Noyon returned with his wife Naran Goohon to her own family in the upper world.
The child that was to become Geser in the future was quite a troublesome and confusing little boy for his parents. He would urinate in his swaddling great amounts of water like a river, and when he would defecate in his cradle the smell was powerful. He would run around barefoot with snot running out of his nose.
When Sargal Noyon came home he gave a feast to celebrate the arrival of the boy. He told his guests, "Up to this time this boy has no name. Find me a suitable name for him!" he told his people, "To the one who gives me a name I will give meat enough to cover his head like a hat and a lump of fat as big as his head!" From among the people an old man leaning on a white walking stick said, "He has snot running from his nose, he is sweaty and muddy. Why not call him Nuhata Nurgai (Slimy Face)?"
Everybody laughed, and, smiling, Sargal Noyon embraced the old man warmly. After that time Nuhata Nurgai watched Sargal Noyon's animals.
Sargal Noyon's own two sons were called Altan Shagai and Mungun Shagai. They constantly tested his strength, tested his quickness of mind with riddles, and sent him out on the hunt. He succeeded at any test that they put him to. Sargal Noyon then thought, "Any man who can endure such tests at this time was certainly born to defeat the monsters and evil things on the earth!"
At that time the leader of the people of the northwestern lands, Temeen Ulaan, has a very beautiful daughter named Tumen Jargalan. He announced that he would give his daughter in marriage to any man who was able to win three demonstrations of strength. Warriors came from many different households and gathered for the contest. Nuhata Nurgai also came, wearing old clothes and riding a mouse brown two year old colt. But once the contests began he won every single one. He picked up a huge liver colored rock and threw it so forcefully that it shattered into flints. He then uprooted a pine tree from the forest and threw it so that it shattered into splinters. He then pulled up an ephedra bush and threw it further than anyone else. No one was able to match this kind of ability. Among them was the boy's uncle Hara Zutan, and from that time onward poisonous hatred boiled in his heart toward his nephew. Having won all the contests, Nuhata Nurgai took Tumen Jargalan back to his own country as his wife.
After returning home, before long Nuhata Nurgai went out again on his travels. He still rode the little mousy colt, and was armed with a simple red willow bow and horn tipped willow shafted arrows. He went here and there about the world. He arrived at one country where its ruler, Shaazgai Bayan, was promising to give his daughter in marriage to any man who was able to defeat a giant warrior.
The giant had a powerful black body, a chest as wide as the sea, armor of forged iron, a broad strong bow, a quiver made of planks, rode a buckskin horse and had a powerful booming voice.
With the power of his body and the quickness of his mind Nuhata Nurgai was able to win the contest. He therefore was able to take Shaazgai Bayan's daughter, Urmai Goohon, back to his home as his second wife.
How the Hero was transformed into Geser
Tumen Jargalan, Urmai Goohon, and Nuhata Nurgai had a very dull life together. Their life became poorer and worse every day. The two wives were very astonished, for after he had brought them home he never slept with them. Instead, he would always go out at night and would not return until daybreak.
One night Nuhata Nurgai climbed to the summit of Mount Sumber and did a ritual to honor Etseg Malaan Tenger. There, at the summit of the mountain, his face changed into his true appearance as Bukhe Beligte. Instead of a boy's body he had the appearance of a warrior, a dark red brown face, broad white teeth, a powerful broad chest, powerful black fists, multicolored eyes, and black hair a fathom long!
Looking down from the upper world Bukhe Beligte Tenger's father, Han Hormasta saw his son upon the summit of the mountain. He took back the warrior's equipment that Bukhe Beligte had entrusted to Etseg Malaan Tenger before his birth. He then sent these things down on a warrior's horse, a bay that came down from heaven. It had hooves that would never slip, legs that would never get cold, and a mane that was three armfuls worth of hair. When it alighted upon the mountain its hooves struck sparks upon the rocks and lightning glittered in its eyes! The horse was named Beligen (gift).
The warrior who had now become Geser grabbed the red reins of the horse, put his feet into the silver stirrups and sat upon the silver saddle. He rode down toward the world, and saw the seven lands while riding his horse. His bay steed Beligen galloped between heaven and earth through the skies, the hero had become like the eagle.
On his way back to his home Geser met thirty three warriors, three thousand and ninety soldiers, and three hundred captains for his army. They followed him as he traveled toward his home. Thus Geser came to the world to kill the monsters, suppress the evil spirits, and bring life and happiness to all people and living things.
Sengelen Noyon and Naran Goohon rejoiced to know they had borne such a heroic son. When Tumen Jargalan and Urmai Goohon realized that they were married to such a handsome warrior they were content.
He was then asked, "Where shall the people's famous hero Geser make his home?" He answered, "By the great river, on the shores of the eternal lake, by the Hatan River, and on the shores of the black lake, in the land of the larks!" (the eternal, black lake is Lake Baikal) In this beautiful land Geser lived happily for three years and a day.
Geser's Third Wife Alma Mergen
One day Geser got up and told his family, "I am tires of eating beef, I miss eating game. I will go hunting in the Altai and Sayan mountains."
Thus Geser went hunting among the peaks of the Altai and Sayan Mountains. After three days of hunting he had not killed a single deer. On the fourth day he saw a spotted deer running in the forest and he followed it. Then suddenly a young man riding a chestnut horse appeared and shot the deer before Geser. While at a trot the boy reached down, grabbed the dead deer, swung it up on his horse, and galloped away.
Geser was angry and shouted after the boy. He then rode after him and continued to shout, but the boy ignored him and continued riding. Geser did not want to return home without the deer. In great anger he struck Beligen with his whip and pursued the boy. The boy and his horse were starting to get tired, and they were approaching the shores of Baikal. But the youth rode fearlessly into the waters of the lake and disappeared.
Geser tied his horse to a tree and entered the waters of the lake supporting himself with his spear. He then discovered that he had found the entrance to the country of Uha Loson, the head of the water spirits. The rider of the chestnut horse was none other than the daughter of Uha Loson. When she had met Geser she had taken on the appearance of a young man while hunting.
He came to the house of Uha Loson and announced who he was, and he was introduced to Alma Mergen. When he was young, Uha Loson had known Han Hormasta quite well. Furthermore, they had agreed that his daughter Alma Mergen and Han Hormasta's son Bukhe Beligte would be married. According to this custom, Alma Mergen became Geser's third wife.
After ten days of feasting Geser announced his intention to return to his homeland. He had still not slept with his new wife. Alma Mergen used her own guile to keep Geser from leaving and put a drug in his food that made him lose all his thoughts and worries about his former life. He did not know whose son he was, where he came from, where he was going, he was powerless to remember anything. At this time Alma Mergen became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter.
Days and months went by, and became years. Geser had become stupid, and did not remember his home, his lands, or his livestock. Instead he watched the animals belonging to his father-in-law. On the shore of the lake his horse Beligen had turned into skin and bones and was barely able to stand. At that time the western tenger looked down from the upper world and were astonished, saying, "We have not heard about Geser for a long time, we do not hear the galloping of his horse Beligen." They then sent Bukhe Beligte's three older sisters down to earth to see what had happened.
After traveling to many places the three sisters came to Uha Loson's land and found Geser. They slapped him on the right cheek and he vomited up a black object, then they slapped him on the left cheek and he vomited up the rest of the drug that had deprived him of his senses. They then smudged him with juniper and sprayed him with spring water so that his body returned to normal.
Geser went out hunting, killed a moose, and threw the carcase before his father in law, announcing to Uha Loson that he was returning to his own country, saying, "You do not catch foreigners in a net, you should not put guests in a moosehide bag." and he left taking his wife and two daughters with him. When Uha Loson brought them to the shore of the lake it was night. Geser immediately went looking for his horse. When he found Beligen, his horse was barely alive, but Geser hugged him around the neck, happy to find him again.
Once Beligen the bay horse had regained his strength Geser, his wife Alma Mergen, and his two daughters returned to the land of the big river, the eternal lake, the Hatan river, the black lake. Geser then built three houses for his three wives. With happiness filling his heart he would say to them affectionately, "Is the sun in the sky beautiful, or is Tumen Jargalan beautiful? Is the sun in the heavens beautiful, or is Urmai Goohon beautiful? Is the golden sun beautiful, or is Alma Mergen beautiful?
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