Cosmological Keys
Nomadic civilizations are embedded in their natural environments and deeply influenced by natural phenomena. The order of a nomadic society is, in many ways, the reflection of patterns of the order in the natural world. As V. Ostrom underlines, “Human beings, given their existence as mortal creatures, cannot know the source of creation.
They can, however, presuppose the existence of a transcendent order from which all other orders derive their existence.” (Ostrom, 1994, p.55). Ostrom’s comments were an explanation of the covenantal basis of American federalism and are even more applicable with regard to the nomadic Mongolian society that worshiped Khokhe Monkhe Tengery (Eternal Blue Heaven) and Etugen Ekhe (Mother Earth) as its highest deities.
S. Dulam in his interesting research on the “Prologue” to the Khalkha and Oirad, north and south Mongolian versions of the “Prayers to the Eternal Blue Heaven ” (Mongke Tengriin bsang) found that these prayers are a good starting place to understand the Mongols’ veneration of Tengery (Eternal Blue Heaven ) as a source, which granted them all the structural elements of the universe and allowed their movement and development within physical and spiritual existence (Dulam, 1996). Mongols also worshipped the Earth as a procreator of mankind. Marco Polo has the following to say on the beliefs of the early Mongols,
They have one of their deities, whom they call Natigai, and they say that this is a deity of the earth or god of the country, who protects their women and their sons, their flocks and their grains... and they show it great worship and reverence, for each keeps an honorable place for it in his house. They make this god, namely out of felt and from other materials...This deity called by Marco Polo "Natigai" is the Etugen Ekhe (Mother Earth) of the Mongols. Between her, the ruler of the Golden World (altan delhe), and Heaven (Tengery), there exists a fertile polarity, from which all things proceed:
(Heissig, 1980: 102)
Above the ninety-nine tengery...The Eternal Blue Heaven involves a number of modifications and forms of expression of material and spiritual existence, in the Mongol tradition it is “ordinary ninety-nine supreme skies” (yeriin degeduu yeren yusun tengery). In this meaning, Eternal Blue Heaven or Monkhe Tengery is a “common object of belief”. Mongols personified Monkhe Tengery and believed that if he cast his glance on human beings all their desires and dreams would come true.
Below the Mother Earth of seventy-seven levels...
Mongolian nomads strongly believe in the power of the native land. A Mongol, for instance, comes to his place of birth where the placenta is buried to gain power and support for his life. This place is called toonto (little motherland) and is worshiped as a symbol of the whole native land. The nomadic lifestyle apparently must exclude the sentiments of the connectedness to a particular place, but in reality Mongols are attached to their land. The Mongolian expression nutagtaa elegtei baihaa literally means to have liver to the place. The expression is odd when rendered in English, but the English word liver has the same root as the word live and therefore this expression makes perfect sense even in English. It represents a sort of spiritual attachment and embeddedness in the land upon which the very existence—being alive—of humans depend. This connection with the land manifests during numerous migrations when a nomadic family takes with them a rock from the hearth as a symbol of the native land and puts it on the base of the hearth in their new place.
In Mongol cosmology, the heavenly universal order serves as a model for the order underlying human society on earth. In case this order is broken, Eternal Blue Heaven will send his messenger to the earth.
Subordination and Obedience to Law in Mongol Society
Each nomad living under conditions, which reflected the universal order, had his own personal ties with the highest deity, the Heaven . V. Ostrom, following Hobbes, suggests that the first step in understanding the foundations of order in human societies is to understand what it means to be human. (Ostrom 1994). To be human for a nomad meant to live according to the cosmic order, order that must be maintained through the obedience to taboo. I would argue it equals to the upholding one’s own personal ties with the Heaven . For Mongols, the Heaven “has produced everything” and only the Heaven and his envoy were entitled to manage “everything”, everyone else had restrictions.
The restriction were imposed by both rules of the customary law and traditional taboos. The law in Mongolian society had punitive functions. Taboos, to my mind, carried conditioning/ educational functions. The laws cannot “educate,” they warned, prevented and foresaw events. Taboos stating that a particular action is not allowed set very clear educational aims of self-discipline. In the first case—that of violating the law— physical or social-verbal punishment followed; however, in the case of taboo violation, the person had to deal with himself. (bieree baiha)
Through Self-Education Toward Obedience To Law
The mechanism of achieving self-discipline by the means of taboo has clearly educational, instructional, and informative functions.*
An example of the importance of taboo in self-education occurs in the Buryat story, “Swans.” Once upon a time nine white swans - daughters of the higher Tengery Esege Malan Tengery came down to the Earth to Lake Tengery at the foot of Munko-Saridak Mountain to the South-West of the ninety-nine glacier peaks of Mundarga. They then traveled to the Aha River, to the Cliff Hairhan below Zima. There the three swans had a misfortune, they “buzarhadaa,” or desecrated themselves. Buzarhadaa means to violate a ceremonial taboo (to visit a prohibited place, to eat "unpure" forbidden food, to wear "unpure" dress, etc.)
The description of the events is very detailed. All the geographical features and names are real. Such a detailed description of the event serves not only to confirm the reality of a story and to convince listeners that the violation of a taboo really took place, but also and more important, to underline that the place itself was an active participant in the incident. In this story, swans—daughters of the higher Deity—remained on the Earth forever. The loss of their divine status was the consequence for violating a taboo.
-----------------------------
*I think I need to explain how I am using the word ‘education’. “Die Erziehung” in German derives from the verb “ziehen,” which means “to pull out” which expresses very explicitly the purpose of education—to pull out the individual potential of a child. Another word “Bildung”—from the verb “bilden” which means “to construct,” “to form,” which implies another goal of education—to form a personality, using a child’s potential through formal instruction and training. In Russian the word “vospitanie” derives from the verb “pitat,” which means to feed, and the prefix “vos,” which indicates the motion upwards, so the blended meaning would be to give food for growth—both food for thought, for emotions, feelings, convictions, and food for physical development. Another word “obrazovanie” almost entirely coincides with German “Bildung.” As for the English word “education” its original meaning from Latin “educare”—to take care, to rear—is probably the most sympathetic, but the problem is that different dictionaries give definitions of “education” primarily as formal schooling, training, and instruction. When using the word “education” I am never sure whether it combines everything—teaching, training and rearing, bringing up. I feel more comfortable with the Mongolian word for education—“humuuzhuleh,” which literally means the art of helping humans become humans in relations to each other. Although all of the above-mentioned terms do imply in different degrees the same thing, the Mongolian “humuuzhuleh” incorporates all of their nuances. So, when I use the term “education” in this paper I always mean the totality of connotations as in Mongolian term.
Taboo is an institution of restrictions that delineate the limits of a nomad’s actions and behavior. Human will and energy as defined by taboo are limited and narrow. Society supports the idea of heavenly authority enforcing the institution of taboos. Taboo was not a human creation, but the keeping of taboo is the responsibility of each person, a man himself had to maintain proper behavior. Thus, taboo being the reflection of the unity of the nomadic society and natural environment, developed obedience to law and selfdiscipline among future warriors of the invincible army of Chinggis Khan long before it was created.
An important feature of the code of taboos is that no one could violate them. The nomadic Mongol society could not control each of its members as to how they adhered to taboos. A Mongolian nomad was both the actor and the controller, the ruler and the ruled. A human realized himself as an integral part of the human community by maintaining his own ties with the Heaven through obedience to taboos.
Autocratic Self-Governance: Oxymoron or Logical Extension
Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty implies that the prerogatives of rulers are unlimited, inalienable, absolute, and indivisible. This conclusion warrants support with an additional caveat in the case where customary law becomes state law, as in Chinggis Khan’s Empire. There is no doubt that Chinggis Khan’s state was an autocratic regime of the early medieval epoch, but the mechanism of equality is implied in the structure of authority relationships practiced at that time. Chinggis Khan had responsibility toward people who selected him for the maintaining the law, which in a sense placed his subjects in a position of authority.
In 1206 Chinggis Khan was declared by the Khurultay the Ruler of All-Mongolian State. The ruler was a mortal human being selected by the Highest Deity Tengery (Eternal Blue Heaven). The Khurultay’s function was to manifest Tengery in the human world and represent the will of the Etugen Ekhe (Mother Earth).
The ruler could not, according to customary law or the Great Yasa later, proclaim himself as the sovereign. In 1206 as a representative of the Mother Earth Deity, Khurultay declared a new representative of the Blue Heaven Deity, the Ruler of all Mongols. It was only after this act that the ruler received his new title, Chinggis Khan.
The constitution which was thereafter created unambiguously stated that the responsibility of the ruler was to the deities of Heaven and Earth and to the people on behalf of Khurultay. Both deities and people chose Chinggis Khan as a ruler to restore and maintain order. Chinggis Khan had a right to follow his own individual decisions in the implementation of Khurultay’s decisions as both the messenger of the Heaven and as selected by Khurultay.
V. Ostrom’s conclusion that “laws viewed as the command of a sovereign is a precarious way to constitute patterns of order in human societies” is very true for the assessment of Chinggis Khan’s role in establishing order in Mongolia and elsewhere. An elected ruler, Chinggis Khan asserted that “for times to come the things that I have legitimated are not to be changed” (Mongoloi Nuuca tobsho, Ch.102). I would argue that the articulation of the statement is only seemingly authoritarian since it was simply institutionalizing a common customary law that had been followed by people in the Mongolian steppes for centuries. One can assume that the law abiding condition of Mongol society was sustainable due to the fact that the true source of the law wasn’t a ruler but rather the traditional nomad society with its elaborate system of common customary rules and taboos. The life purpose of a nomad, including Chinggis Khan, is to follow established and traditional norms. Chinggis Khan wasn’t therefore above the law, he maintained the law and he was within it. Chinggis Khan was not at a higher station than others, he was a simple mortal Mongolian leader elected by the highest deities. He stressed his equality in an address to his closest associates: “you and I (are) like shafts of one cart, like shoulders of one body.” (Kychanov, p.135). Juveini in his chapter on Yasa states the following:
“… and also they have a laudable custom, that they closed the doors for the servility, respect for ranks, for bragging; and forbade the extremes of self-exaltation and inaccessibility. Who ever is on the khan’s throne only one title he receives Khan or Khaan, that’s it. They do not write anything more, and his sons and brothers are called by their names, given them upon their birth, regardless of addressing them to their face or behind their back, regardless be they noble or common people. When they write letters they address (Khans) only by their names and they didn’t discriminate between sultan and commoner. They write only the essence and the goal of an affair while disregarding titles and excessive expressions”. (Juveini, chapter 16 on the content of the Great Book of Yasa article 3)Abul Faradzha’s fragment of Yasa states:
“Do not give to kings and nobles various and florid names…For those who sit on the king’s throne only one title is sufficient – Khan or Khaan. Let his brothers and sons be addressed only by their first given name.” (from the Syrian chronicle of Abul Faradzha On Chinggis Khan’s Laws, Article III).It seems to me that the prerogatives of Chinggis Khan were limited and alienable. Autocracy, if it departs from customary law, does not confer on any Khan monopoly in power relations.
Golden Rule of the Nomads
Relations between nomads, both those chosen by Heaven and ordinary people were constructed on the patterns of the original heavenly equality. A nomad knowing own lineage considered himself as being a part of a whole that had a divine origin. The nomads considered particular heavenly animals or birds to be their forefathers. Such a cosmological view singled out a narrow circle as the originators of life. A nomad perceiving himself as equal to others didn’t feel his own superiority. Superiority was possible in case of the “ancientization” of one’s clan. European aristocracy takes pride in the age of its family tree, it justifies own superiority vis-à-vis other clans and commoners on the basis of seniority. Mongols drawing their origin from the mythical first forefather excluded debates over “ancientism” of their clans. Indeed it is not easy to define who is older in the circle of the animals, birds and fish – the initiators of a clan’s life. A nomad could not be distinguished or honored by his clan affiliation and lineage age; his clan, his bird or animal forefather and he himself were not better than others.
The moral conduct of the steppes declared: you are equal among equals; you are not better than others. In terms of the Golden Rule it could be articulated in following way: it was done to me in the same way as it was done to others. The Golden Rule in V.
Ostrom’s interpretation of taking and understanding perspective of the other in Mongolian society can be understood and acted upon as: I look at the world with my own eyes, (my own perspective) that are not different than everyone else’s. V. Ostrom rightly suggests that “… care must be exercised to discount one’s own passions and self-love so as to add no weight to the scale” (Ostrom, 1994, p.65).
A nomad who knew his own place among seven generations and in his real life was an equal in the unit of ten warriors. In steppe life there was no room for wild outbursts of selfish passion or for celebration of self-love.
continue reading...
No comments:
Post a Comment