________________
APRIL, 1880.]
CHINGHIZ KHAN AND HIS ANCESTORS.
91
In this table I have mainly followed the de- tailed list as given by Abu'l-ghazi, excluding only the three names of Yolduz Khan, Mingh Khan, and Tenghiz Khân, whom he places in succession after Ai Khin, and which do not occur in other authors. They have been clearly interpolated by him, and two of them merely repeat two names of brothers of Ai Khân. I onght here to add that the list has been recently illustrated at great length, and apparently with a full belief in its credibility, by Major Raverty, in the Transactions of the St. Petersburg Congress of Orientalists, but the whole is clearly fabulous. In it we have & curious medley of artificial and of real names, of mere eponymous creations, and of mythological figments. They are clearly also derived from the legends of the Western Turks. Kara Khân, Oghuz Khân, and Il Khân are famous names in Turkish tradition. We are told by Rashidu'd-dîn and his followers that this race of princes lived in the Urtagh mountains and the Karakum steppe, that is in the old land of the Western Turks, and it was no doubt the anxiety of the courtly Persian historian to find a suitably dignified ancestry for his hero, which made him link him to the legendary heroes of Turkish tradition.
I need not say that these early links in the chain are entirely absent from the Chinese and Mongol rescensions of the Saga about the origin of the Mongol royal stock, and may be accepted as of no value whatever, except as a proof of the religious loyalty and the diplomatic skill of Rashidu'd-dîn. From Japhet to the two chiefs Kian and Nokuz we may cheerfully erase the whole list of names from our memory as utterly irrelevant to the Mongols. Rashidu'd-din tells us these two last-named princes took refuge with their people in the retired valley of Irgenekon-where their descendants remained for 400 years. We are not told who the princes were who reigned during this interval, and after its close the story really begins again. The gap is interesting as showing how the patchwork story was built up. After the interval of 400 years just mentioned the Mongols are said to have broken the yoke of the Tartars, and to have issued from the defiles of Irgene-kun under
chief named Burtechino, descended from Kian, and of the race of the Kurulas. Burtechino
. Senang Setzen, p. 25. • Ssanang Setzen, p. 317 note 8; se also Schmidt, For.
and those who succeed him in Rashidu'd-din's story are well known also to the more primitive legend preserved in China and Mongolia, and to them we shall revert presently.
While Rashidu'd-din traces the Mongol Khans to the Semitic patriarchs, the indigenous Mongol chroniclers in a similar manner trace them to the royal stock of Tibet, and through it to Hindustan to the sacred founder of their faith Säkyamuni himself. In this the Altan Topchi, Ssanang Setzen, and the Kalmuk legend as reported by Pallas agree, and they all name the Indian sovereign, Olana Ergükdeksen, as the stem-father of the race. The two former authorities deduce the Tibetan royal stock from this chief, and trace it through several generations to Digum-Dsanbo Dalai Subin Aru Altan Shireghetu, who had threo sons, Sivaghochi, Borochu, and Burtechino. We are told that their father having been killed by his minister Longnam, who usurped the throne, the three brothers fled; the first to the land of Ngangbo, the second to that of Bubo, and the third to Gongbo.
The story of the usurpation of Longnam is told in the native Tibetan books, whence it has been abstracted by Schmidt. In the original story the three brothers are called Ja-thi, Nia-thi and Sha-za-thi. Thi, which is written Khri, means throne, and is the surname of all the early Tibetan kings. Ja means bird or fowl, Nia means fish, and Sha-za means the flesh-eater. The two former are similar in meaning to Sivaghochi and Borochu, which respectively mean the fowler and the fisherman. While the third brother, the flesheater, has been ingeniously identified with Bar. techino, a name, as I shall show presently, meaning the blue-grey wolf,' assuredly a very typical flesh-eater. As Klaproth, to whom we owe the dissection of the story, has argued, it is clear that on the conversion of the Mongols to Buddhism in the 16th century, the Lamas naturally dhirm in the 16th desired to connect their royal race with Buddha himself, and found in the plausible resemblance in meaning of the two names Sha-za and Burtechino a link by which to bridge over the incongruous lineage they desired à priori to establish. I need not say that none of this part of the story, any more than the earlier part of Rashidu'd-dîn's table, occurs either in the Yuanch'ao-pi-shi, or in the Chinese annals, which schungen, etc. 16; Klaproth Tableaus Historiques de l'Ano' p. 157-8, note.
