Munkh-Erdene Lhamsuren
ABSTRACT
The main theme and motivation of Mongolian historiographical works of the seventeenth century onwards was the perpetuation and glorification of the Chinggisid lineage. The Mongol chroniclers presented the Chinggisid lineage as sacred and everlasting, like the flow of the sacred Ganges. This paper examines the significance of this perpetuation of the Chinggisid lineage in the construction and reconstruction of the Mongolian identity by examining the historiographical works of the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. The study (1) identifies the relevant lexicon and clarifies the concepts it conveys by analysing the lexicon’s usage; (2) determines the significance of the discourse concerning the Chinggisid lineage in constructing and imagining of Mongolian identity by analysing the structure of the narratives; (3) discloses and traces the evolution of the Chinggisid lineage lexicon into a lexicon of Mongolian nationality by analysing the relevant underpinning ideological, political and social developments. The study shows that the writing of the genealogy of the Chinggisid lineage, in fact, was an act of perpetuation and reconstruction of Monggol ulus. In the Mongol chroniclers’ legitimisation of the Mongol nobility’s rule of Mongolia, the Chinggisid lineage was not only the source of legitimacy and the symbol of the unity of the Mongol nobility but also was the everlasting stem of the Mongolian ‘nation’. Furthermore, the study argues that with the Mongolian independent state-building movement led by the Chinggisid nobility, the Chinggisid lineage became the unifier of the Mongols. Thus the lineage became the stem from which the Mongols traced their origin and as a network of ruling princely houses, it embraced the Mongols and drew them together. In addition, the Chinggisid lineage concepts and discourses, underpinned by a traditional Mongolian ethos of human genealogy and propagated by the Mongol nobility, evolved into the concepts of Mongolian nation and nationality with the rise and spread of the rhetoric of the independence of the Mongols and Mongolia.
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