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Notes on Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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(ā)ān-ü āmünā; SCHMIDT, 171) or «at the white chamber», or «at the eight white chambers» (Altan
tobči, 189, 193; «Sanang Setsen», in SCHMIDT, 193, 199).
It is in connection with the «eight white chambers» that the name of the Ordos tribe first
occurs. In the same speech in which Dayan-khan addressed the Uryanqai as the keepers of the
treasures of [the tomb of] Chinghiz-khan, he said to the Ordos (SCHMIDT, 191) : «You Ordos, who
have watched over (qara'ula-) the eight white chambers of the Lord, are a nation with a great
destiny (yākā jiya'atu ulus)». The standard-bearer (tuqči; see «Tuc») of the «black flag» (qara
süldä) of the Lord was an Ordos man (SCHMIDT, 193). The name of the «Ordos» is not met with
before the first half of the 16th cent., and SCHMIDT (p. 389) has already proposed the obvious
explanation that this tribal name is due to the fact that the Ordos were the descendants of the
people attached to the «great ordos» of Chinghiz-khan.
The history of the Ordos has still to be written; the sketch in HOWORTH (I, 399-415) is hardly
satisfactory (it begins with a serious blunder, when HOWORTH maintains against SCHMIDT that
bara'un and jā'ün mean «left» and «right» in Mongolian, and not «right» and «left»; moreover,
the question of the bara'un γar and the žā'ün γar [> Dzungar] is much more intricate than
HOWORTH imagined). It may be that, in the beginning of the 16th cent., the Ordos were still in
northern Mongolia. But they soon migrated to the south, first towards the Kökö-nör, and finally
settled within the great bend of the Huang-ho, now known as the Ordos region. No Mongol tribe
lived there before the 16th cent. Under such conditions, it is clear that there can be no question
of the tomb of Chinghiz-khan being in the region of the Ordos. But when the Ordos, the former
keepers of the ordos of Chinghiz-khan and of their relics, had settled in what we now call the region
of the Ordos, they brought with them their old traditions, as well as relics of a more or less ancient
date, though none of these probably went back to the time of Chinghiz. It would be interesting to
have the so-called relics now existing carefully examined, but they have certainly no bearing on the
question either of the place where Chinghiz-khan died, or of the site of his tomb.
In 1634, at a time when the Ordos had already migrated to within the bend of the Huang-ho,
a last mention of the «white chamber of the Lord» occurs in «Sanang Setsen», but the passage,
which is difficult and slightly corrupt, has been misunderstood by SCHMIDT (p. 281); cf. the Chinese
translation, 8, 13 a). The text does not speak, as in SCHMIDT, of a man called «Ssereng Bodomal»
and of a «golden pyramid», but says that the Jaisang (< Ch. 宰 相 tsai-hsiang, «minister»)
Tsereng (< Tib. Che-riṅ, «Long life») of Altan-suburγan («Golden-stupa») of the Čahar (< Čaqar
< Iran. čākār, «lifeguardsman», > Ch. 柘 枝 chê-chieh; cf. CHAVANNES, Documents sur les Tou-
kiue, 365) lodged the Tuba (= Tuwa) Taisong Hong-taiji (< Ch. huang-t'ai-tzŭ) Tägüldär at «the
white chamber of the Lord called Bodomal» (Bodomal kāmākü āj̄ān-ü čayan gār). I read
«Bodomal» the name of the chamber to conform with SCHMIDT and with the Chinese translator,
but there can be no doubt that the word is the same as budumal of the dictionaries, meaning
«painted», «coloured». It belongs to the same root as Mong. budaq, «colour», which has the
same first -u- vowel in Kalmuk (cf. RAMSTEDT, Kalm. Wörterbuch, 57). But this first vowel is
-o- in the corresponding Turkish word bočuy of Kāšyarī (BROCKELMANN, 39) and in modern
Turkish dialects, like Turkī boyaq, Osm. boya. The Chinese translator (or the Manchu translator
from whose version the Chinese translation was made) must have heard the word from a Mongol
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391
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441
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531
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541
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551
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561
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571
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581
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591
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601
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611
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621
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631
632
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