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The Secret
History as a Source
on the Rise of Chinggis Qan
The Secret History
of the Mongols, which exists in Chinese and Mongol versions,
is by far our most important source on Chinggis Qan's early
years. Other fairly detailed sources include Rashid
ad-din's history (written in Persian) and the anonymous Chinese Sheng-wu
Ch'in-cheng Lu, both of which are derived from the lost
Mongol Altan Debter. Scraps of other information can also
be obtained from two reports by Sung ambassadors to the Mongols,
from Ye-lu Ch'u-ts'ai's report of his meeting with Chinggis in
Afghanistan, from Juzjani's Persian history, and from the Yuan
Shih.
There are numerous
discrepancies within and between the various sources, almost all
of which were written down secondhand long after the fact, and
like all sources, they have to be read critically.1 At the earliest, the
Secret History was written down in 1228 immediately after
Chinggis' death. However, the book also discusses Ogedei's
reign, so at the very least we can assume that it was
supplemented later. Other considerations make it likely
that the existing text was also altered after Ogedei's death, and
many have given the work as a whole a date several decades later
than that. These questions have been discussed for some time now
without being resolved, and I think that it is best to conclude
that a written text was indeed produced in 1228, but that it was
significantly different than the present Secret History.2
Criticisms of the Secret
History
are mostly of three kinds: first, that it is a heroic
poem rather than a history; second, that the chronology and
sequence of events is often wildly inaccurate; and third, that it
is biassed in one way or another.
A poetic work?
I have dealt with the first
criticism in greater detail than necessary here. Briefly, the
Secret History
does
not portray as a hero, but as a leader of men who relies upon the
efforts of his followers. The supernatural element is
quite muted, and the poetic passages almost always represents the
voices of characters in the story, rather than the narrator's
voice. Furthermore, long passages (including the whole of Chapter
Nine) are devoted to fascinating but rather dry and non-epic
descriptions of the new politico-military forms established by
Chinggis Qan.
That said, the open
passages of the book (#1 -- #51) do represent a legendary or
mythical geneology of Chinggis Qan which obviously should not be
taken at face vakue. #52-#57 represent Mongol memories of
actual historical figures. Some of these passages can be checked
against Chinese histories, but they seem to have a considerable
legendary element. #59--#140 describing Temujin's childhood
and early career is mostly uncheckable (except for the 1196 fight
with the Tatars in #134), but the portrait of Temujin's mother
Ho'elun and the story of Temujin's escape to Mount Burqan Qaldun,
in particular, do seem poeticized. (Chinggis Qan was almost sixty
when he died; most and perhaps all witnesses to his early life
were also dead, so a poeticized legend was probably the only
source). Finally, much of the story of the defeat of the Naiman
Tayang Qan (#189--#196) has a highly-colored, poetic quality
– in particular, the dialogue between Jamuqa and Tayang Qan
in #195, which even seems to take a stanzaic ballad form as
Tayang Qan retreats further and further up the mountain. (More
on Jamuqa below).3
Errors of
Chronology
The
Secret History's most glaring problems are chronological. Not only
are all of the dates uncertain before 1202 (except for the 1196
battle with the Tatars, which was recorded by the Chinese), even
the sequence of events is often uncertain. In many cases there is
a discrepancy of twelve years, when events of a given year of the
12-year animal cycle are assigned to an earlier cycle than they
should be. Examples include Temujin's birth, which took
place in 1167 but is often assigned to 1155, Sube'etei's western
expedition in #199, and Muqali's invesituture in #202.
I believe that these errors give us a clue as to the nature of
the work, however. No one contemporary with the events
could date a 1218 event in 1206. This may only mean that the
scribe who compiled the book in 1228 was very young and had no
first-hand memory even of events of ten years earlier
– something which is quite possible, since Mongols were
regarded as adults at age fifteen, and since we can guess that
Mongol scribes were still few in 1228. Alternatively, we
can conclude that the Secret History was produced (or more
likely, amplified and altered) at some time after 1228.
However, the significant point is that the work seems to have
been pasted up from a variety of oral sources. The Mongols
of Chinggis Qan only started to become literate in the year 1202,
and even after that time written records presumably were sketchy. We can thus imagine that in 1228 the scribe interviewed
a number of sources and gathered material wherever he could, only
later patching the pieces together into a connected narrative.
This would account not only for the errors of sequence and
frequent lack of continuity, but also for the lack of uniformity
of the narrative voice. The passages mentioned above from
#189-#196, for example, may have been pasted in from an
already-existing heroic tale featuring the treacherous Jamuqa and
the craven Tayang Qan.
A second respect in which the pasteup method may have affected
the work is that in some cases, especially during the period
before 1202, two events may have been merged into one, while in
other cases two reports of a single event may have been reported
as two different events. In this piece I
compare the treatments of the battles leading up to Chinggis
Qan's decisive final battle with Ong Qan in the Secret History,
Rashid ad-din, and the Sheng-wu Ch'in-cheng Lu.
Bias
Bias is characteristic of all historical records and in
itself never disqualifies a source. Two types of bias can
be assumed for the Secret History: first, the book can be
assumed to place Chinggis Qan himself in the most favorable
light; second, everything written can be assumed to be in the
interest of the individuals producing the text (interviewees,
scribes, and adapters) and the factions to which they belonged.
The Secret History, besides being the official biography
of Chinggis Qan and the founding legend of the Mongol people and
their empire, also served as a charter of nobility for the
descendants of those who gave significant support to
Temujin in his rise to power.
Perhaps the most important respect in
which the Secret History is problematic is the way
it treats the major figures whose relationship to Temujin during
his rise to power reflected badly on the future Qan. Chinggis
Qan as portrayed in the Secret History is bold, generous,
loyal, and dominant. But we know that during the early part
of his career he was in the service of Ong Qan, and possibly
later of Jamuqa. It can also easily be seen that a large
number of those who gave him key support during his career ended
up dying at his hand. These include not only Ong Qan and Jamuqa,
but also ; the shaman Teb-tengri, the Kereit Jaqa-gambu, and
Temijin's kinsmen Altan, Seche-beki, Taichu, Buri Bökö, his
brother Bekter, possibly his uncle Daritai, and very nearly his
brother Qasar. (I also suspect that there is more than
meets the eye to the death of Temujin's sworn brother Quyildar of
the Mangqut in #171-#175. After fighting against Temujin under
Jamuqa's command, the Mangqut-Uru'ut had joined him later and
seemed to have had more or less equal status with him in this
battle, but they fade into relative significance after Quyildar's
death.)
Besides obscuring Temujin's possible treachery during his rise,
the tendency of the Secret History tends to minimize the
significance of embarassing figures such as these. In the
cases of Teb-Tengri and Jamuqa, so little is told of their other
activities that it is difficult to see how they could have
opposed Temujin as stiffly as they did, and there is also reason
to believe that Temujin's brother Qasar played a much more
important role during Temujin's rise than he was given credit
for.
Perhaps most significantly, the Sung
ambassadors to the Mongols in Northern China reported that they
were told that Temujin had been a slave of the (Jurchen Chin)
Chinese for a considerable period of his life. None of the Mongol
sources report this, but Ratchnevsky and others have noted that
there seems to be a blank period in Temujin's story between the
time when he was defeated by Jamuqa after their split (about 1189
according to Onon, when Temujin would have been 22) and 1196 when
he fought the Tatar (in alliance with Ong Qan and the Chinese).
Summary
In sum, I
believe that the Secret History is an indispensable
historical source when used with due care. It is one of the
only sources we have which is told from the point of view of the
nomads who threatened the civilized world for two millenia, and
it is likewise one of our very few sources giving us a detailed
insider report of the process of state-formation.
Endnotes
1 Dating and provenance**
2 Both the Secret History
and the lost Altan Debter came from the Mongols
themselves. Why two versions of the same story? (These
two works differ in may respects, and neither depends on the
other) What seems most likely to me is that the Secret History
was produced under the auspices of Ogedei, Chinggis Qan's heir,
whereas the Altan Debter came from the Toluid line which
gained power under Qubilai. The Persian and Chinese adaptations
of the Altan Debter both were produced under Toluid
auspices, and the Chinese Sheng wu Ch'in Cheng Lu uses
special honorifics ("yeke noyan" or "ta t'ai
tzu") when speaking of Tolui. Furthermore, some of the
suspected tampering to the Secret History (e.g. in #255)
seems to have been intended to reinforce the Toluid claims
against the Ogedeids.
The Yuan Shih depended primarily on the Sheng wu Ch'in Cheng
Lu, so the Secret History must have been unavailable
to its compilers. By this account, the Secret History was
kept secret primarily because even after tampering it did
not sufficiently reinforce the Toluid claims, and not because
Mongol secrets were being hidden from the Chinese. The Altan
Debter thus came from an independent Toluid tradition
different than the Secret Historytradition. The presence
of the Mongol honorific "yeke noyan" for Tolui in the
Chinese version makes it likely that the original Mongol version
was of Toluid origin also.
3 Jamuqa in the Secret
History has many of the characteristics of the flatterer /
deciever / traitor who plays a major in other heroic epics.
His role in the Secret History is extremely confused, and
perhaps actual historical events have been merged with an epic
portrayal which shows him as a very stylized stereotype
character.
Some features of the Secret History which have been
described as folkloric are really just pervasive aspects of
Mongol life, whether institutional or real. Thus, when
Chinggis speaks of his "four hounds" or his "four
chargers", while this seems like a poeticism it can more
easily be explained as an instance of the proclivities of the
steppe peoples back at least the the Hsiung-nu to organize groups
into fours (pairs of pairs). Likewise, the descriptions of
Ho'elun and Borte, while reminiscent of the descriptions of the
legendary Mother Alan, are more or less realistic given what we
know about the actual role of mothers and widows in Mongol
society.
4 The colophon reports that
the book was finished at an assembly at Dolo'an Boldaq during the
Year of the Rat. Usually this is thought to have been the 1228
assembly after Chinggis' death, but 1240, 1252, etc. have also
been suggested. Since there were no assemblies at Dolo'an
Boltaq during the other years, however, these speculations seem
unjustified. The alternative explanation is that some sort of
history was produced in 1228, but that it was significantly added
to and altered at later dates. This doesn't really solve
any of our problems, but does seem to be the most plausible
answer.
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