U569  Inner Modern Mongolia
Lecture, Tuesday, Week 2

 

  1. General Approach to social structure
    1. Top-down "social control" approaches
      1. The Qing "thought up" the banners, Buddhism to control the Mongols
        1. Common among IM nationalists (Qing as proxy for PRC?)
      2. Marxist-Leninist:  Qing, Mongol ruling classes oppress and exploit
      3. Both designed to make revolution look easy
    2. Problems with top-down approaches
      1. Does not describe system as Mongols understood it (etic vs. emic)
      2. Treats idiom of descent, kinship, marriage, religion as "false consciousness"
    3. Community approach (Susan Reynolds on medieval Europe)
      1. Society formed of inter-locking communities, each legitimates a hierarchy
      2. Describes hierarchy without reductive assumptions
  2. Mongolian community
    1. Ideal:  patrilineal family, worship of communal ancestor ("bone," "mountains")
    2. Reality:  lineage reproduces itself through women ("blood," "rivers")
    3. Image of rule:  one family ruling over others
  3. Nobility as Community--the Holy Lord (Chinggis) as Ancestor
    1. Descendants of Chinggis (and brothers):  called taiji (5-15% of society)
      1. Dayun Khan (c. 1500) unified Mongols, ancestor of most nobility
    2. Division not functional, but genealogical
      1. Commoners are a kind of pseudo-kin, analogized to soldiers, servants
  4. Banner as Community--Holy Lord (Chinggis) as Ruler
    1. Closed corporate community:  headed by jasag, other taijis don't rule
    2. Local ruler is (genealogical) incarnation of the Chinggis
    3. Banner cult of "things":  seal, banner standards, oboos (cairns), mountains
  5. All Mongols as Community--Holy Lord (Chinggis) as World Conqueror, Culture Hero
    1. No single government of Mongolia under the Qing
    2. Embodied in chronicle tradition (erdeni-yin tobchi, etc.) common to 1911
      1. Chinggis Khan subdues world, receives seal
        1. Problems:  linked to land, brothers not sovereign, death not final
      2. Links to Buddhism (Indo0Tibetan ancestry), alms-master/offering-site
      3. Oirats (non-Chinggisids) challenge Chinggisids, defeated
      4. Second conversion, Manchu rule, then genealogy of all nobility
    3. Mongols were an ulus (country), so was the Qing empire
      1. the five colors and four aliens
      2. Synecdoche:  banner is Mongolia, Mongolia is the world
      3. Chinggis is culture founder and world creator (Inner Asian pattern)