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SEPTEMBER, 1880.]
CHINGHIZ KHAN AND HIS ANCESTORS.
18
Madun Khorilartai had moved with his family to the neighbourhood of the Burkhan mountains, where he had heard they were plentiful, and where the ruler was called Shinchiboyan. Let us now try and analyse this statement. Kolbarkuchin or Gol Barkuchin, i. e. the river Barkuchin, was a famous feeder of lake Baikal, and is still known under the name of Barguzin or Barkujin, giving its name to the town of Barguzinsk, while from it the country south-east of lake Baikal is still known as Bargu or Barakhu. It is called the plain of Bargu by Marco Polo," and is called Bargujin Tugum by Rashidu'd-dîn. Georgi in describing the river Barguzin says it is so called by the Buriats and Tunguses, who are thinly scattered along its banks. It springs from a small lake in the mountains. These mountains also give birth to the Maslen, a feeder of the Angara and the China which falls into the river Witim. The river and its tributaries water a district, part of which is very fertile, and is called the steppe of Barguzin. The district, especially on the banks of the Chirkan and Koluktei, two small feeders of the Barguzin, is covered with traces of ancient agriculture and with graves similar to those on the Argada and Karga. These graves are marked by stone mounds. In these are found weapons, stirrups, etc. The remains of fields shew the Barguts to have been agriculturists. Small ploughshares of cast iron are still found in them, and there is a tradition that they could make cloth out of birch trees. These primitive inhabitants who inhabited the district before the Tunguses are called Barguts in the local traditions. This agrees with the statement of Rashidu'd-dîn, who calls the inhabitants of this district Barguts, and devotes two paragraphs to them," apparently making two distinct tribes out of them. I have little doubt that they were the ancestors of the Bargu Buriats, one section of whom, according to the Chinese geographical work translated by M. Hyacinthe Bituriski, and appended to Timkofski's Travels by Klaproth, lives on the right bank of the Amur (the Argun) in the country of the Solons," while another lives to the north of lake Baikal and on the Lena. This latter speaks a
10
18 Erdmann, Temudschin, p. 189, note 4.
17 Marco Polo, Yule's ed, vol. I., p. 261.
Erdmann, Volst. uebersicht, etc. p. 181; Abulghazi, p. 46, note 2.
19 Georgi, Reisen, vol. 1, pp. 123, 127-8.
30 Erdmann, op. cit. p. 59 and 119.
23
rough dialect, and is still Shamanist, and ignorant of writing, according to Schmidt." The Bargu Buriats are in fact very pure and unsophisticated Mongols. Rashidu'd-din links with the Barguts in one passage the Kurluuts, or as Von Hammer reads the name Kurolewauts or Kolowrats, while in Abulghazi the name appears as Kurlat or Kurlat." This again is a name which has been duplicated by Rashidu'd-din, and no doubt connotes the same class as the Kurulas, a division of the Kongurut. In the notice first cited where he calls them Kualuuts, he says they lived near the Kongurut, the Iljigins" and the Bargut. These tribes were allies, and had the same tamgha or seal. This notice is very curious, and it seems to follow that the Turkish race of Kongurut was at this time divided into two sections, one living, as I shall shew afterwards, near the Khingan mountains, and the other in the country of Barguchin. The passage from the Yuan-ch'ao-pi-shi therefore means that a chief of the Kurulas, having married a daughter of the chief of the Bargut, became the father of Alun Goa. She was therefore in the legend the daughter of a Turkish father and a Buriat mother. As I said, Alun Goa is made the ancestress of the Mongol Khâns in the official history of the house contained in the Yuan-shi. We must now devote a few more lines to this work, laying Dr. Bretschneider under contribution for the purpose. According to the Mingshi or official history of the Ming dynasty, the Yuan-shi was composed in the year 1369, the year after the Mongols were expelled from China, in which year the records of the thirteen Yuan emperors were brought together, and the composition of the history commenced under sixteen scholars superintended by Sung-lien and Wang Wei. The work was finally completed in the 6th month of 1370." Dr. Bretschneider says the work was very carelessly composed. Several editions of the Yuan-shi appeared during the domination of the Ming dynasty, while three have appeared during the domination of the Manchus, one in 1659, another in the middle of the last century, and a third during the present century. The second of these was
21 Timk. op. cit. vol. II. p. 242.
Ritters, Asien, vol. 11, p. 116.
215
33 Erdmann, op. cit. p. 56.
25 A section of the Kunkurats.
3. Op. cit. p. 60.
26 Erdmann, op. cit. p. 56.
7 Bretschneider, Notices of Medieval Geography, p. 4, 5,
