Download 1. Folk-religion.

1. Folk-religion.
Mongols believe that the truculent spirits of nature and gods of the universe must
not only be placated with libations and offerings but also charmed with music,
dance and song. The classification of long-song is linked to ritual landscapes that
comprise 13 of each natural phenomenon, for instance, 13 snow-capped Altai
mountains with 13 valleys and 13 rivers. The 13 horses who live there have 13
divisions and subdivisions of colour; these horse colours form the basis of longsong classification.
Mongolian myths describe how different forms of song, music and instruments
originate from the spirits of nature or from gods located in the upper or lower
worlds. The construction of instruments from parts of nature (plants, trees and
animals) is traditionally surrounded by ritual. Music is used to imitate the sounds
and rhythms of wind, water, animals and birds, and Mongols map the contours of
their landscapes in melody and dance movements. Certain sounds are believed
to influence the weather and the body: whistling is thought to call up the god of
the wind; listening to höömii is believed to have beneficial effects; and epic
performance is thought to influence health and fertility in both animals and
humans.
The most usual context for epic performance in pre-socialist west Mongolia was
in the homes of herders, and its prime function was ritual and magical. More
rarely, bards performed for princes and were sometimes retained. The bard was
believed to be supernaturally inspired, his instrument was thought capable of
exorcizing evil spirits, and the content of the epic able to ward off bad spirits and
cure animals and humans of infertility and illness. Non-structural narrative
differences relate to the ritual properties of the epic; for instance, the discovery
by the epic hero ‘Black Wrestler Dovon’ of a grain of corn fallen from heaven that
transforms into a son ensures its use as a cure for infertility. The unusual vocal
tone-colour, häälah, which differs radically from the normal speaking and singing
voice, serves to create an imaginary arena set apart from everyday experience,
in which the actions of the epic hero may take place and cures may be
accomplished.
Epic heroes, like other armed heroes on horseback, became the focus of
religious cults. Geser Khan was viewed by Mongols as a protective deity and
worshipped in temples of Geser still in evidence in Ulaanbaatar today (see INNER
ASIA, §3(I)).
In Ordos, Inner Mongolia, Mongol elders sound a tsagaan büree (white conchshell trumpet) daily at an altar standing outside their homes surmounted by windhorse flags and the stallion-tailed standard of Chinggis Khan. The player faces
the direction of the mausoleum of Chinggis Khan at Ezen Horoo, where his body,
saddle and other ritual objects are believed to reside.
2. Shamanism.
Traditionally, male and female Mongolian shamans had equal powers. Each uses
his or her own melodies for spirit invocation (duudlaga) and for renditions of the
spirits' words (tamlaga), which advise on concerns including illness, hunting
tactics and divination. A shaman may enter a semi-dissociated state known as
yavgan böölöh (walking shamanizing), during which the practitioner embodies
the spirits who speak through the song; or unaatai böölöh (mounted
shamanizing), a deeper dissociation during which the journey to the spirit world
and encounters with spirits are enacted.
The female shaman, a number of whom survived the communist regime in
Mongolia (1924–92), may call the ongod (spirits) with the rhythms and percussive
sounds of the aman huur (jew's harp), tayag (staff), hets (skin-covered frame
drum) and holbogo (small percussive iron pins attached to the drum, drumstick
and costume) or with unaccompanied song and other vocal sounds (e.g. blowing,
snorting, grunting, yawning, rolling and clicking the tongue). Her choices are
influenced by the traditions of her group. Among Buryats, the jew's harp is used
to call ‘white’ spirits to cure the sick (fig.4); a staff bedecked with metal cones is
thrust back and forth while singing to call ‘black’ spirits. When the spirit
approaches, the shaman makes the sound of the wind by blowing, and then
beats the drum while spinning and perhaps jumping.
Among Darhats, the female shaman plays the aman huur during the vocationary
period of illness and only when clearly ‘chosen’ is presented with a horse-headed
staff (morin tolgoitoi tayag) or a staff with two or three fork-like branches. During
the communist period, some Darhat shamans used this instrument instead of
their drums, which had been confiscated by the authorities. The Darhat shaman
uses three styles: a rhythmic ‘direct stroke’ (shuud tsohilt), which expresses the
journey along the road; a ‘tongue stroke’ (helnii tsohilt), which creates different
pitches by moving the tongue back and forth and is used to imitate the cries of
animals and to communicate with animal spirits; and a ‘spirit stroke’ (ongodyn
tsohilt), which imitates the trotting of an animal and is used when the spirit is
believed to have left the shaman's body and to be returning to its home in
mountains or rivers. Tsaatan shamans use the jew's harp while shamanizing
away from home, since it is easier to carry than a frame drum.
See also INNER ASIA, §3(II).
3. Buddhism.
The form of Buddhism that expanded from Tibet into Mongolia during the 13th
and 16th centuries was a blend of Mahayana Buddhism and Tantrism.
Performance traditions and repertories in Mongolian monasteries drew on
different Tibetan traditions and adapted them to their own needs. These
traditions varied according to the four religious orders – Nyingmapa (Tibetan
rnying ma pa), Kargyudpa (Tibetan bka' brgyud pa), Saskyapa (Tibetan sa skya
pa) and Gelugpa (Tibetan dge lugs pa) – and their subdivisions, as well as
between monasteries within the same tradition. During the 13th century
Saskyapa and Kargyudpa monks were active in the Mongol court. The lineages
and traditions of the Gelugpa school (called by Mongols Shar Malgaitai or ‘Yellow
Hat’) gained supremacy when Zanabazar (1635–1723) became the first
incarnate Bogd Gegeen of Urga, Öndör Gegeen. However, according to monks
who have been recently rehabilitated after the communist period, other schools,
collectively referred to as Ulaan Malgaitai or ‘Red Hat’, managed to retain some
influence until the communist period.
See also INNER ASIA, §3(III).
(i) Song texts and notation.
Each monastery had its own manuscripts of song texts and notations (yan-yig),
which were closely guarded. There have been few European published sources
on the forms that notation took or on any Mongolian Buddhist performance
traditions (see Pozdneev, 1887; van Oost, 1915; Pegg, 2001). Four manuscripts
entitled Gür Duuny Bichig, containing song texts used in Nomun Khan
monasteries in the early 18th century and the 19th, have recently been collected
in Mongolia. The second and fourth manuscripts also contain notations (see
NOTATION, §II, 7, fig.11), developed and composed by successive incarnations of
the Nomun Khan, that link the performance of songs in these monasteries with
the tuning of the ten-string, half-tube zither, yatga. Some of the songs share titles
with contemporary long-songs, for instance, Tümen Eh (‘First of 10,000’) and
Huuryn Magnai (‘Foremost of Fiddles’).
(ii) Instruments.
Pozdneev (1887) identified 24 liturgical instruments used in monasteries,
including aerophones, idiophones, chordophones and membranophones. The
only instrument indispensable to liturgical performance is said by Mongols to be
the honh, a small embossed bronze bell held in the left hand, together with the
dorje (‘diamond’, ‘lightening’ or ‘thunderbolt’), held in the right. A range of
cymbals (large-bossed, small-bossed, miniature) and drums are used, including
the double-headed, portable frame drum hengereg and the double-headed
hourglass drum with suspended pellet-strikers, damar. The thigh-bone trumpet,
gangdan büree, normally played in pairs, is used for invocation of fierce deities
and to signal entry of masked lama-dancers in the ritual dance-drama, tsam. The
bishgüür (double-reed aerophone) is said by Ordos Mongols to have been
created by gods to yield the sound of an Indian bird. In all schools, long metal
bass trumpets, büree, are used primarily in Tantric ceremonies of the higher
class. A pair that was on display in the Tantric temple museum of Choijin Lam in
Ulaanbaatar during the communist period was played at the reinstatement of
Danzan Ravjaa's monastery at Hamryn Hiid, East Gobi, in 1993. The white, endblown, conch-shell trumpet dun or tsagaan büree is played in pairs in Buddhist
contexts.
(iii) Masked dance-drama.
When the Buddhist masked dance-drama, tsam (Tibetan 'chams), reached
Mongolia, possibly in the early 18th century, it assimilated elements from the
indigenous shamanic and folk-religious complexes as well as developing
distinctive Mongolian characteristics. Until the communist period it was held
annually, in the first month of summer. A manual for performances at Mergen
Monastery, Inner Mongolia, was written in 1750 by Mergen Diyanci lama, but the
first evidence of performance is at Erdene Juu in 1787. In 1811 it was introduced
to Ih or Da Hüree (Large Monastery), a former name of the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
The masks, clothes and style of this tsam were initially based on the dance-book
('chams yig) of the fifth Dalai Lama Agvanluvsanjamts (Tibetan ngag dbang blo
bzang rgya mtsho). Intricate dances were performed by lamas, masked and
dressed to depict a variety of Tantric and local deities, evil spirits, monsters and
animals.
The most powerful tsam, Erlig-yin cim, invoked the Mongolian ‘Lord of the
Underworld’, the shamanic Erlig Khan. The central figure of the Gelugpa tsam,
Yama, Lord of Death, portrayed by an ox's head with a fierce countenance,
became the Mongolian Choijil, also identified with Erlig Khan. Black-faced, sixarmed Mahakala, worshipped in Mongolia since the days of Khubilai Khan, was
popular as a manifestation of the two-armed Gurgon, Lord of the Tent, favoured
by the Saskya order. The war god Jamsaran appeared rarely in Tibetan ritual
dances, but because of his status as protector of the Bogd Gegeens and
therefore the nation, he was an important figure in Mongolian tsam. In the annual
Khalkha tsam held in Ih Hüree, Erlig Khan was accompanied by the ‘Lords of the
Four Mountains’, situated in the direction of the four cardinal points from the city.
The Tsagaan Övgön (White Old Man) character appeared in most Mongolian
tsam. One of the folk pantheon of gods, he was transformed into a joker figure
when incorporated into Buddhism. Similarly, Kashin Khan appeared in most
Mongolian tsam, but his representation and actions varied.
Each monastery had its own versions of tsam, with narratives, characterizations,
dance movements and instrumentaria influenced by the beliefs, traditions and
ethnicity of the resident order. Many local gods and spirits of the earth and sky
were represented. The tsam at Hamryn Hiid monastery, for instance, featured a
demoness called Mam, with black face and pendulous breasts.
Monks participated in the tsam according to age, grade and level of mystical
knowledge, for characterization involved embodiment of a god and his attributes.
Dance steps and musical accompaniments were complex, carefully
choreographed and required lengthy and careful rehearsals.
(iv) Secular genres in Buddhist contexts.
Non-Buddhist musical genres were used in monastery contexts and by lamas
outside of monasteries in order to attract ordinary herders to Buddhism. This was
particularly the case with the ‘Red Hats’, whose path to Enlightenment allowed
more work with the community than that of the ‘Yellow Hats’. The ‘Red Hat’,
Danzan Ravjaa (1803–56), the fifth reincarnation of the Noyon Khutuktu of the
Gobi, staged musical dramas accompanied by an orchestra in a theatre in his
monastery. In Saran Höhöönii Namtar (‘Biography of the Moon Cuckoo’), put on
during the 1830s, he used dialogue-songs with melodies from long-songs, for
example Övgön Shuvuu Hoyor (‘Old Man and Bird’) and Galuu Hün Hoyor (‘The
Goose and the Man’). Performances were also given in the prince's palace,
where the actors were predominantly lamas, and monasteries paid for transport,
assistants and so on.
In west Mongolia, lamas invited epic bards to perform in monasteries, and the
monks themselves even performed and taught novices. The Dörbet bard
Namilan (b 1910) learnt the epics Geser and Khan Harangui from his lama
teacher in Tögsbuyant Monastery, and the bard Parchin learnt the epic Bum
Erdene from a performance by Sesren in the Bait monastery in present-day Uvs
province. Epic heroes took on Buddhist characteristics, in particular Geser, who
in Tibet eventually became equated with the Buddhist protective deity Vaiśravana
but in Mongolia continued to be worshipped as Geser.
© Oxford University Press 2003
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