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    Voices From the Twelfth-Century Steppe
    Voices From the Twelfth-Century Steppe
    Voices From the Twelfth-Century Steppe
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    Voices From the Twelfth-Century Steppe

    By Bryn Hammond

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    About this ebook

    A historical novelist explores the Secret History of the Mongols.

    If the Secret History is a communal memoir, who told its secrets? Did Temujin -- Chinggis Khan -- tell his own story? Whose voices are heard within the text?

    Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe has two strands. It practices interpretation of the Secret History of the Mongols from an oral and written arts standpoint ('literary') -- how does this differ from historical investigation? It exhibits ways a historical novelist engages with a primary source -- how does this tend to differ from a historian?

    'Voices' is a case study in close source work by a creative writer. Entangled with this, a case is made for arts criticism of the Secret History. Its artistry is integral to its sense.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBryn Hammond
    Release dateApr 16, 2017
    ISBN9781370558926
    Voices From the Twelfth-Century Steppe
    Author

    Bryn Hammond

    Writer, Australia, ex-UK.I've been quietly at work on my historical fiction about 12th and 13th-century Mongols since 2003. It's my main occupation/obsession.Before that, I spent years on a creative translation of Beowulf (unfinished) and wrote science fiction.Keen on: walks by the sea, where I live. Baroque opera, Shostakovich, David Bowie. Books, old and a few new. Doctor Who and Star Trek: Discovery.

    Read more from Bryn Hammond

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      Book preview

      Voices From the Twelfth-Century Steppe - Bryn Hammond

      Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe

      Bryn Hammond

      author of the Amgalant series

      http://amgalant.com/

      Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe first published by Rounded Globe

      © Bryn Hammond 2016

      Introduction

      1. A view of Chinggis Khan

      2. The past: Blue Jos’ reminiscence in verse

      3. The succession scene

      4. The word ‘black’ in the Secret History

      5. Political voices

      6. The emotional lives of kings

      Tolui’s end: the case for face value

      War stories

      Emotional lives

      Temujin’s memory

      7. End remarks: The novelist and the historian

      Notes

      About the author

      Introduction

      In the Mongols’ empire period, the histories they commissioned were written in the traditions of (mainly) Persian and Chinese historiography. Post-empire, Mongolia became largely Buddhist, and history writing then lays claims to a Buddhist tradition. For indigenous history telling, we have only the Secret History of the Mongols, pre-empire and pre-influence. The steppe had its own traditions: oral arts, stone inscriptions left by Turkic states before the Mongols, upon which the Secret History drew.

      Its date is in dispute. It says ‘finished in the year of the rat’, which can be the year after Chinggis Khan’s death, 1228, or later rat years in the twelve-year animal cycle. My interpretations stress the element of personal memory, and I am persuaded by the early date – my reasoning being contextual, not textual. Caroline Humphrey and Altanhuu Hürelbaatar, in an essay I use extensively for mine, footnote that ‘most scholars agree on 1228’.[1]

      At the outset we need to be aware that the Secret History’s prose-verse composition is perfectly normal in the world of steppe epic; we should not mistake what transitions from prose to verse mean. Humphrey and Hürelbaatar call verse ‘a Mongolian convention of emphasis’. The verse should not leap out at us as necessarily distinct in content; the peoples who compose in prose-verse on the steppe do not so distinguish, and certainly they do not devalue the verse against the prose. I think we tend to devalue the truth content of the verse, who are not used to verse interspersed in our histories.

      An apt short description of the work in front of us – as I see that work – comes courtesy of Paul D. Buell: ‘Not strictly a history, the work is a historical epic in which real events and actual documents are put into an epic-style framework. The way the story is told is as important as what happens.’[2] Most of my essay substantiates this last sentence. The epic style is a vehicle for history. Humphrey and Hürelbaatar: ‘It was intended as history, that is, the Mongols’ understanding of what had actually happened and their consciousness of past events as relevant to the present.’ However, the tellers of this history used their skill in the art of epic, and we must use our skills in art interpretation, to understand it.

      There are three main translations into English: Francis W. Cleaves (1982), Urgunge Onon (2001), and Igor de Rachewiltz (2004). Where I quote from one translation, I include the name in brackets; where I don’t say, I have used a mash-up of translations.

      One of my hopes with this essay, of course, is to excite more people about the Secret History of the Mongols. It is at times called a ‘monument of world literature’ or the like, but it has not enjoyed the world’s study in the way of more familiar monuments. At present the Mongols are profiting greatly from global medievalism, as they did from the rise of world history. Emotions history, now flourishing, seems very relevant for this emotion-laden source. In a piece titled ‘Que(e)rying Mongols’ Noreen Giffney challenges the field to take up contemporary theory.[3] The preserve of Mongol Studies is perhaps soundproofed by its walls of language; Giffney encourages theory-minded scholars to the area with a caution about ‘the linguistic mastery required for navigating Mongol Studies. Sources abound in Latin, Persian, Mongolian, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Turkish, and Armenian among others, and many of them remain untranslated and scattered in diverse locations.’ [4] To offset this, I cite another challenger, Kevin Stuart, with his book Mongols in Western/American Consciousness (1997) – still witty, and too much true. He says that the old-fashioned definition of a Mongolist was one whose prime time has been chewed up by six to ten languages, with a smattering of military affairs; this left scholars desiccated and fixated on linguistic niceties. To read the Secret History in its original language is not the same as to understand it, and Mongolist philology has often been of the sort that pays little attention to non-linguistic matters: to interpretation. We have had no Tolkien, a philologist in the word’s fullest sense, to write ‘The Monsters and the Critics’. While new students are frightened off by a six-language prerequisite we are unlikely to see interdisciplinary approaches, emotions history, arts study, and simply different views. A wider audience has much to contribute.

      1. A view of Chinggis Khan

      The khan your father, in his work to found the whole ulus [people or state] –

      black head being strapped to his saddle,

      black blood being poured into his flask,

      black eyes unblinking,

      not lying his flat ear to a pillow, making do with his sleeve,

      making do with his coat-skirts spread out,

      satisfying thirst with his saliva,

      eating his gums for meat –

      he struggled –

      until the sweat from his brow ran down to his soles,

      until the sweat from the soles of his feet ran to his brow –

      diligently he gave himself to the great work.

      The Secret History of the Mongols, §254

      I begin with this view of Chinggis Khan because, like much of the Secret History, it may be an unexpected view. The Secret History is the only place where we hear how the early Mongols spoke of themselves to themselves, and in that consideration we should expect the unexpected. In the above verses, an old comrade of Chinggis describes his life in terms of service and of sacrifice. Service: the words chosen are associated with toil, as the sweat of the brow still is for us, and even with toil in a master’s service. Who is the master here? Not Chinggis Khan – he is the servant. He serves the idea of the state, or the people – the ulus, a word of uncertain translation at this stage of the state’s existence. He has undergone privations; he has not spared himself, in this hard work of state-making; and his comrade pins his verses on the descriptor ‘black’ – three times, Chinggis’ head, Chinggis’ blood, Chinggis’ eyes. Black is the province of the common person, whereas white denotes the elite: a head is black without a hat, exposed to the weather; in short, a ‘black head’ can signify a non-aristocrat. Why is this said of Chinggis? It is stranger when ‘black’ is transferred to other body parts, to make his blood black. Then, the body parts are

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