Preface
The origins of the Mongolian tribes have always been the focus of attention, and Genghis Khan, as the founding emperor of the Mongolian nation, has a family history that everyone talks about.
Legend has it that Genghis Khan's ancestors turned out to be descendants of wolves and deer, which undoubtedly added to the mystery of the great emperor.
So, where did such a legend come from, and how did the Mongolian totem develop?
Totem worship is associated with the marriage of the two clans
The word "totem" first appeared in the late 18th century when a man named John Lange learned the word totam, meaning "his kin", in his dealings with Aujibwa-speaking and Chippewa-speaking Indians.
The study of totem worship began in the second half of the 19th century by the British scholar John Ferguson MacLennan (1827-1881), who published a series of papers on "Animal and Plant Worship" in the Fortnight Review between 1869 and 1870, which caused great repercussions in the academic circles.
McLeannan wrote: "We shall explain in detail what a totem is, and what is the usual accompaniment of a totem; Indicating the extent to which they have, or have recently occupied, some status within the living tribal populations, we will try to shed light on what we call the state of mind of the human being in the stage of totemic development.
Second, we shall examine the evidence that the ancient peoples went through a totemic period in prehistory, and that animals, plants, and celestial bodies regarded as animals were used as deities before the appearance of the personal gods, and we will consider the various explanations that have been offered for this evidence.
We are to conclude that the ancient peoples went through the totemic phase, and that this assumption satisfies all the conditions necessary for a sound hypothesis. ”
The totem is the symbol of the clan, the symbol of the marriage group.
It is both a religious institution. Again, the social system.
The emergence of the totem system is a leap forward in the history of human development, and it is the first form of exogamous marriage in the history of mankind "The prohibition of intermarriage within the clan in order to ensure the merits of intermarriage with outsiders who have no kinship relationship is the most fundamental principle of this kind of organization, and it is also one of the most difficult principles to establish." ”
That is, the form of social organization of the relationship between the sexes between different totemic groups established in the form of a contract when all sexual relations are prohibited within the same totem, that is, all the women of clan A are the wives of all men of clan B, and correspondingly, all women of clan B are also wives of all men of clan A.
Whether the clan marriage alliance originated from the same primitive collective, or from the union of two primitive collectives, has been debated for decades, beginning with the debate between L. Faison and E. Taylor in the last century.
Mr. Chua Chun Sang concurred with and further argued Taylor's insistence that the clan marriage alliance came from two different original collectives, which made the issue a complete solution.
In fact, the clan marriage alliance or the clan marriage alliance developed by the clan organization until now has two clans or clans, each with a different totem.
Obviously, it can only be concluded that the clan marriage alliance was formed by the union of the two original totemic groups. If this is not the case, then there should be a marriage alliance between two clans with the same totem, which has never been discovered.
All the oldest known forms of marriage between clans are two-in-one, reciprocal, rather than marital alliances between three or more clans. All other forms of marriage between clans are later than the Marriage Alliance of the Two Clans, and can be pushed up to the Marriage Alliance of the Two Clans.
The appearance of Bhata Chihan marked the demise of totem worship and the establishment of ancestor worship.
The clan totem of Genghis Khan's distant ancestor
The "Secret History of the Mongols" begins with the words: "The root of Genghis Khan is that the pale wolf and his wife's miserable white deer, who were born by the order of heaven, crossed the Tengjisi water, and came to live in front of the Buerhan Mountain, the source of the Troubled River, and gave birth to Bata Chihan." ”
"All the Mongol tribes were born from the clans of two men who fled from [at some time] to Ergune and Kun, and among the descendants of those two men was a revered Mimi named Borthei Ichina, who was the head of several tribes, and who had many wives and children.
The eldest wife named Huo'ai and Mahal gave birth to him a son who was the most prominent of all the sons and who came to the throne, and this son was named Bhata Chihehan.
This narrative in the "Collected History", except for retaining the names of the two totemic animals of Borthei and Chena and Huo'e and Ma, is added according to the ideology of the author's time.
In the Ming translation of the Secret History of the Mongols, all the names of people are annotated with "names" or "names" without translation, except for the translation of "Borthechina" and "Huoema Pal" as "pale wolf" and "miserable white deer". This is an important point, and the translator must have a basis for it, and will never be oversightly on such an important issue.
After the matrilineal clan would develop into a patriarchal clan society, totem worship would be replaced by ancestor worship. After entering the patriarchal clan society, the totem has lost its original conceptual meaning, and there is no written record at that time, but it is passed down by word of mouth and passed down from generation to generation. In the process of circulation, the original conceptual significance of the totem has been weakened or even disappeared.
By the time the "Secret History of Mongolia" was written, people did not know that the wolf and the deer represented the totems of the two clans, so they became born of the wolf and the deer by marriage.
"Historical Collection" cloud: "About 2,000 years ago, the tribe known as the Mongols in ancient times had internal strife with other Turkic tribes, which finally led to war. According to a story [relayed] by trusted nobles, other tribes defeated the Mongols and slaughtered them, leaving them with only two men and two women.
Fearing the enemy, the two families fled to an inaccessible place, surrounded only by mountains and forests, and where there was no other way but through a sheep's gut path that could be reached through all odds and tribulations. In the middle of these mountains, there are abundant grasses and grasslands with a good climate. This place is called Erguneyikun.
The word Kun means "hillside; And "Ergunne's will is dangerous"; This place means mountain. The names of those two are: Pinch Gusi and Qi Yan. They and their descendants inhabit this place to live and multiply. ”
"When this people live in these mountains and forests, and [their territory] becomes more and more narrow and inadequate.... So, they found an iron ore field where iron used to be melted.
There are caves in the mountains, and there are Pyongyang lush grass in the caves, and they are surrounded by mountains for hundreds of miles. The wolf hid among them, and gave birth to ten boys. Ten men grew up, and their wives were pregnant, and after that, each had a surname, and Ashina was one. The number of children and grandchildren gradually increased to hundreds. After several generations, the phase and the hole, subordinate to Ruru, living in the sun of Jinshan, for Ruru ironwork. The shape of Jinshan resembles a whole of Dou, and it is commonly known as the whole of the Turkic, so it is because it is called Yan. ”
From the above records, it can be seen that not only did the Mongols and the Turks have the same experience and the geographical environment of their migration, but also that the Mongols' "iron molten mountain" coincides with the Turks' "Ruru ironworkers".
Some people believe that "Ergune-Kun refers to the mountainous land of the Erguna River basin". It is clearly explained in the "Historical Collection" that the word "Kun" means "mountain slope", and "Ergunne" means "steep", and this place means "steep mountain". That is to say, "Ergune Yikun" is not a proper name, nor is it a place name, but only describes the mountain range as "dangerous", and has nothing to do with the Erguna River.
Moreover, the Ergun River basin is not surrounded by mountains, and Pyongyang's lush grassland is in the middle. "Book of Zhou: Turkic Biography" cloud: "The wolf fled to the north mountain of Gaochang Kingdom. There are caves in the mountains, and there are Pyongyang lush grass in the caves, and they are surrounded by mountains for hundreds of miles. "
This is exactly the same as the landscape described in the Collected Chronicles.
Totems are also evolving and changing
To the north of Gaochang is the Bogdo-Ola Mountain, which is the Bogdo-ola in the north of the present-day Turpan Basin. The mountains in this area have been famous for producing copper, iron and coal since ancient times. "Water Jing Note: River Water Chapter" quotes the cloud of "Shi Shi Western Regions Chronicle": "There are mountains in the north of Quci (Qiuzi) 200 miles, and the night is fire, and the day is smoke. People take this mountain of coal, and smelt this mountain iron. ”
It can be seen that before the wolf and deer clan came here, there were already people here to rule iron. According to the ban of the Liao Dynasty that "Ya Ban exposed raw wrought iron in Dadan and other realms", some people speculated that "the story of the legend of the Mongolian ancestors turning iron molten mountains is purely fictional according to historical facts." This is tantamount to saying that the ancestors of the Mongols who live in the cities and agricultural areas today never practiced nomadic pastoralism.
Rasht said the Mongols fled to Ergune about 2,000 years ago. Pushing forward 2,000 years from the Rasht era, the Mongol ancestors were in the historical stage of a matrilineal clan society.
As for the year when the Turks moved to the north mountain of the Gaochang Kingdom, there is no record in history. However, when the Turks moved to the northern mountains of the Gaochang Kingdom, they were still a matriarchal clan with wolves as their totems.
It can be inferred from the different times of migration that after the Turks moved away from the northern mountains of Gaochang Kingdom, the Mongolian ancestors and some of the wolf tribes did not leave with them, but still "lived and multiplied" in this place until "when the area they occupied became increasingly narrow and insufficient", that is, more than 100 years after the Turks moved away (in the middle of the 6th century AD), they "turned iron into the mountains" and moved to the area of Kent Mountain, so there are records of two marriage groups with wolves and deer as totems moving to the south of Mount Buerhan (Mount Kent).
The Ilkhanate Prime Minister and court historian Rasht made use of the palace archives and "everything preserved in oral legends and stories" when he was ordered to compile the Imperial Historical Collection, which was greatly appreciated by the Khan the Completer.
Therefore, it is not child's play to refer to the Mongols as "the Turkic tribes that are now called Mongolia" and "the Turkic tribes that were called Mongolia in the past" in the "Historical Collection", and Rasht did not dare to make up false opinions.
In fact, in the process of formation and development, any ethnic group has continuously absorbed and integrated members of many other ethnic groups, and at the same time, there are constantly some people who have been separated and joined into other ethnic groups, but the formation of the nation must have a continuous mainstream Among the wolf clan and its deer clan who moved to Jinshan Zhiyang mentioned above, the original Mongols were the mainstream, and the wolf clan was assimilated by the deer clan and developed into the Mongol clan.
In the process of assimilating the wolf clan, the original Mongols absorbed Turkic language, culture and other factors, such as the imported Turkic vowel system and a large number of Turkic words.
Totemic use in history
A gold plaque unearthed in 1983 from the Xianbei Tomb of Zaguinuoer (now preserved in the Hulunbuir Museum of Nationalities) depicts three deer standing side by side. According to archaeologists, this gold plaque is a waist ornament with a hook for the Xianbei people.
"Hanshu Xiongnu Biography" Yan Shigu Note: "Rhino Bi, the hook of the Hu belt, also known as Xianbei, also known as the teacher's ratio, the total thing is also, the language has light and heavy ears." Zhang Yan said: "Xianbei Guo Luo brings the name of Rui Beast, and Donghu is easy to obey." ”
"Guo Luo" is the righteousness of the beast, and "Xianbei" means Ruixiang or God, and it is a Rui beast or a divine beast. Xianbei people hook it with a deer-beast-like cast belt, that is, the so-called "Xianbei Guoluo belt", which is translated as Rui beast belt or divine beast belt.
Therefore, this "Donghu good clothes" gold jewelry plate is "deer". As we all know, "the Mongolian people originated from Donghu" has become a consensus in the historical circles, and Donghu worships the deer and regards the deer as a "sacred beast".
With the development of history, after the disappearance of the social and historical background of totem worship, people have long been ignorant of the conceptual meaning of totem, and the new surreal "divine" meaning given to totem animals is the result of knowing that it is not knowing why it is, although the rock paintings of "deer", "deer stone" and "deer" gold ornaments contain different conceptual meanings, but the form can be traced back to the distant era of totem worship.
As mentioned earlier, totem worship was born in the matrilineal clan society, "the lineage is based on the matrilineal, and the totem is passed down from the maternal line", and "deer" is the clan totem of Genghis Khan's distant ancestors.
The formation of the nation has gone through the evolution process of a clan, a clan, a tribe, a tribal alliance and a nation, and the Mongolian nation is composed of many clans, and each clan must have its own totem.
The Mongols worship of trees, crows, owls, bears, eagles, births, etc., some of which are likely traces of totem worship. The Deer Totem clan is just one of the many clans of the Mongol nation.