Mongolians

“ Many of these people, for whom the old name of MONGOLIANS may be retained, are nomades; others, as the Chinese, have attained a remarkable and apparently indigenous civilization, only surpassed by that of Europe.
At the north-western extremity of Europe the Lapps repeat the characters of the Eastern Asiatics. Between these extreme points, the Mongolian stock is not continuous, but is represented by a chain of more or less isolated tribes, who pass under the name of Calmucks and Tartars, and form Mongolian islands, as it were, in the midst of an ocean of other people. ”

“ If you ask a Tomo or Tibetan to-day why their women smear and daub themselves in this unbecoming manner, they invariably reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu, that it is custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves about causes. ”

“ The almost entire absence of beard is a remarkable feature in the Mongolians. As regards this and other marks of race, it may be useful to compare the Mongols with their near neighbours the Chinese. The two races have a sufficient number of broad characteristics in common to warrant their classification under one great type of mankind. ”

“ Early Expansion.—Mongolia, Siberia, China, Indo-China, Malaysia, Mesopotamia (?) . The earlier Mongolians were extremely migratory, but the more settled tribes developed into the later Japanese, Chinese. Burmese, Siamese, and other peoples in the southeast and east of Asia; and the native tribes of the Siberian plains. The wandering tribes developed into the Turks, Magyars (Hungarians) , Finns, Laplanders, and Samoeids, of Europe, and the Esquimaux of America.
Religion.—Animism in the widest sense is the dominant note of Mongolian religions. ”

“ Yet in every instance wherein we detect Mongolians on the monuments, they are represented as foreigners and enemies. The annexed wood-cut, with the small and somewhat depressed nose, shaven head, and crown-lock, scanty beard, moustache, and sallow complexion, seems clearly to indicate a man of that race. It is copied from a drawing in Rosellini, in which Rameses the Third is represented fighting against the Sheto or Scythians, among whom the Mongols appear to be allies or mercenaries. ”

“ The Turanians in respect to their physical conformation are a branch of the Mongolians; the Chinese, Eskimo and others, being members of similar and equivalent divisions. b. In respect to their language, they are the [178] highest group recognized, a group subordinate to none other.
To change the expression of this difference, the anatomical naturalist of the Human Species has in the word Mongolian a term of generality to which the philologist has not arrived. ”

“ Mongolians are all the inhabitants of the Asiatic continent, with the exception of the Hyperboreans in the north, a few Malays in the southeast, the Dravidas in Further India, and the Mediterraneans in the southwest. The species is represented in Europe by the Finns and Lapps in the north, the Osmanlis in Turkey, and the Magyars in Hungary. The color of the skin is yellow, with either a white or a brown tinge; the hair is straight and black; the head is either short or medium in size, long heads being rare; the face is round; the eyes are small, and often oblique ”

“ In regard to the living people, the writer had the opportunity of seeing numerous Buriats, representatives of a number of tribes on the Yenisei and Abacan Rivers, many thousands of Mongolians, a number of Tibetans, and many Chinese with a few Manchurians. On one occasion alone, that of an important religious ceremony, he had an opportunity to observe over 7,000 natives assembled from all parts of Mongolia. ”

“ These Mongolians are great stalwart men, with broad faces, clad in homespun woollen cloth of many folds, which is seldom taken off till it is worn off. They are accompanied by a few women and children. They take their religion with them in their praying-wheels, which they keep going. They are an intensely religious people, as Mr. ”

“ The eastern steppes and deserts of Mongolia was the region of origin of the Hunnish or Mongolian or Tartar or Turkish peoples—for all these several peoples were akin in language, race, and way of life. And as the Nordic peoples seem to have been continually overflowing their own borders and pressing south upon the developing civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean coast, so the Hunnish tribes sent their surplus as wanderers, raiders and conquerors into the settled regions of China. Periods of plenty in the north would mean an increase in population there ”

“ It is a small market town, with a daily fair. The surrounding neighbourhood is peopled with Mongols and Chinese in about equal proportions. The Mongols are mostly lords of the soil, and style the Chinese slaves, that is in the country. The real trade of the whole locality is in the hands of the Chinese. The Mongols all speak Chinese, and the town resident Mongols have, many of them, forgotten Mongolian, and laugh at themselves as not being able to speak their own language. ”

“ There is almost nothing of Mongolian manufacture,—just rugs and felt and saddles; and most of the work is done by the women. Nor does the Mongol till the soil; nothing is found growing near his yurt. Unlike the rice-eating people just across the Great Wall, his diet is almost wholly meat, and milk in some form or other,—cheese, curds, koumiss. The tea which he drinks in enormous quantities, so that even my "boy" opened his eyes, is brought by the Chinese traders.
The Mongol has great endurance; days in the saddle are nothing to him, and he sleeps as soundly on his camel as on the ground. ”

“ They may have marched across the island or skirted around its southern cape and spread themselves out in the province of Hyūga, where in the Japanese accounts we first find them. This migration probably occurred long after the first, and came evidently from a more cultured tribe of the great Mongolian race. That they came from the same race is evident from their understanding the same language, and having habits and methods of government which were not a surprise to the new-comers, and in which they readily co-operated. ”

“ So far, Mongolia is a succession of plains and gentle undulations, much resembling the long swell of the ocean, and here and there the country is a little rough and hilly. The undulations stretch across our track from east to west. The whole face of the country looks like the sea. There is not a tree or any object to break the monotony of the vast expanse, but occasionally the yourt or tent of a Mongol family. The sunrise and sunset encourage the illusion, and the camel has been aptly called the ship of the desert. ”

“ Men, flocks, and tents have vanished, and nought remains to mark the visit of this wandering race, but the curling smoke of their unquenched fires, or the birds of prey hovering over the carcase of some dying camel, or feeding on the remains of their late repast. The Mongols are irreclaimable nomads, though some tribes of them, as the Tsakhars, Ortous, and Solous, cultivate the soil. The four khanates of the Kalkas are called Outer Mongolia, and comprise within their borders, several well built towns, though none of any size, compared with the cities in China. ”

“ In the heart of Asia lies the enormous, mysterious and rich country of Mongolia. From somewhere on the snowy slopes of the Tian Shan and from the hot sands of Western Zungaria to the timbered ridges of the Sayan and to the Great Wall of China it stretches over a huge portion of Central Asia. The cradle of peoples, histories and legends; the native land of bloody conquerors, who have left here their capitals covered by the sand of the Gobi, their mysterious rings and their ancient nomad laws ”

“ Three great races have met in Urga and each carries on, in this far corner of Mongolia, its own customs and way of life. The Mongol yurt has remained unchanged; the Chinese shop, with its wooden counter and blue-gowned - 64 - inmates, is pure Chinese; and the ornate cottages proclaim themselves to be only Russian.
But on the street my wife and I could never forget that we were in Mongolia. We never tired of wandering through the narrow alleys, with their tiny native shops, or of watching the ever-changing crowds. ”

“ THE DESERT OF GOBI. The population of Mongolia, an elevated plateau lying about four thousand feet above sea-level, is roughly estimated at between three and four millions, but the difficulties of obtaining anything like an accurate census of the tribes inhabiting this vast tableland are obvious. Of this number, over thirty thousand inhabit Urga, the capital and residence of the “Kootookta,” or living God of the Mongol religion, “Buddhism.” The power of this human deity is purely nominal. ”

“ In Mongolia the population is essentially nomadic, its wealth consisting in herds of horned cattle, sheep, horses and camels. The Turki tribes, occupying western Mongolia, are among the least civilized of human beings, and it is chiefly to their extreme barbarity and cruelty that our ignorance of central Asia is due. The climate is very severe, with great extremes of heat and cold. The drought is very great; rain falls rarely and in small quantities. The surface is for the most part a hard stony desert, areas of blown sand occurring but exceptionally. ”

“ These cities, lying at the very southwestern extremity of the Great Wall of China, look out over the vast steppes of Mongolia, where there are nothing but Mongols belonging to many hordes, who live in the saddle and drive their flocks of sheep and their herds of ponies in front of them, forever moving. It is nearly two thousand miles in all; no European armies could ever follow, not in five years. They would slowly melt away on that long, interminable road. With such a line of retreat open the Court is absolutely safe, and knows it. It can act as it pleases. ”

“ Towards the Great Wall, Chinese industry glides like a serpent into the desert. Towns arise on all sides. The Land of Grass is crowned with harvests, and the Mongol shepherds find themselves driven back northwards, little by little, by the encroachments of agriculture.
Sandy plains occupy, perhaps, the greater part of Mongolia; you do not see a single tree there; some short, brittle grass, which seems to have much difficulty in issuing from this unfruitful soil, creeping briars, a few scanty tufts of heath, such is the sole vegetation and pasturage of Gobi. Water is very rarely seen ”

“ Islām at that period had not yet obtained predominance in Central Asia, and in Mongolia its propaganda was practically non-existent. Over the Uïghūrs, the nearest neighbours of the Mongols, Buddhists and Nestorian Christians still had the upper hand. These latter even succeeded in converting some of the most powerful tribes of the black Mongols, such as the Keraits and the Naimans, to Christianity. The savage Tatars, whom the Mongols called “forest peoples,” led a roving life in the forests of the modern province of Trans-Baikal and the north-west of Mongolia. ”

“ No arc lamp on Fifth Avenue blazed more brightly than did this one on the edge of the Gobi Desert where none of its kind had ever shone before. With the motor cars which had stolen the sanctity of the plains it was only another evidence of the passing of Mongolian mystery.
Usually when we camped we could see, almost immediately, the silhouettes of approaching Mongols black against the evening sky. Where they came from we could never guess. For miles there might not have been the trace of a human being, but suddenly they would appear as though from out the earth itself. ”

“ Mongolia, inhabited by the East Mongols, is a part of the Chinese empire, lying south of Siberia and shut in by mountain ranges. The people lead a wandering life, dwelling in tents and having flocks of sheep and herds of horses, cattle, camels and goats. They are mostly Buddhists in religion, and fond of making long pilgrimages. There are about 2,600,000 of them under Chinese rule. ”

“ Throughout the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, there was a steady drift of Mongolian peoples westward. The Huns of Attila were merely precursors of this advance, which led at last to the establishment of Mongolian peoples in Finland, Esthonia, Hungary and Bulgaria, where their descendants, speaking languages akin to Turkish, survive to this day. The Mongolian nomads were, in fact, playing a role towards the Aryanized civilizations of Europe and Persia and India that the Aryans had played to the Ægean and Semitic civilizations ten or fifteen centuries before. ”

“ They are consequently exceedingly difficult to reach by any other method than that of sharing their roving tent life. In the southeastern district of Mongolia there are large numbers of agricultural Mongols who speak both Chinese and Mongolian. The towns in this part are almost wholly inhabited by Chinese.
The winter in Mongolia is both long and severe; in the summer the heat is often very oppressive, and the great Plain is subject to severe storms of dust, rain and wind.
Buddhism is all-powerful, and the larger half of the male population are lamas or Buddhist priests. ”

“ The Mongolian of Asia is not indeed to be spoken of as one unvarying type any more than the American. But the extent to which the Mongolian head-form and peculiar physiognomy characterise one widely diffused section of the population of the eastern continent, gives it special prominence among the great ethnical divisions of the human race. Morton assigns 1421 as the cranial capacity of eighteen Mongol, and only 1234 as that of 164 American skulls other than Peruvian or Mexican. ”

“ To return, however, to the Tamulian family, meaning thereby a branch of the great Mongolian stock, speaking, either now or formerly, a language more or less allied to the Tamul of the Dekhan.
The first members of the class, as we proceed southwards from Behar, are certain hill-tribes of the Rajmahali Mountains—the Rajmahali mountaineers. Their Mongolian physiognomy is unequivocal;—a Mongolian physiognomy but conjoined with a dark skin. They have "broad faces, small eyes, and flattish or rather turned-up [137] noses. Their lips are thicker than those of the inhabitants of the plain." ”