Üliger (), ''tale'' is the general term given to tales and popular myths of the

Mongols Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...

(included in

Buryats The Buryats are a Mongolic ethnic group native to southeastern Siberia who speak the Buryat language. They are one of the two largest indigenous groups in Siberia, the other being the Yakuts. The majority of the Buryats today live in their ti ...

) of north-east

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. They are an important part of the oral traditions among the Buryats and other Siberian tribes, and among other functions, were used to orally transmit

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

birth stories. The tales are significant in

Mongolian literature Mongolian literature is literature written in Mongolia and/or in the Mongolian language. It was greatly influenced by and evolved from its nomadic oral storytelling traditions, and it originated in the 13th century. The "three peaks" of Mongol ...

, given its long-standing tradition of passing stories on by word of mouth.

Format

Traditionally, üligers are delivered orally in

alliterative verse In meter (poetry), prosody, alliterative verse is a form of poetry, verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying Metre (poetry), metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly s ...

s, often taking the form of

couplet In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there ...

s or

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four Line (poetry), lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India ...

s. Like other

epics Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

oral literature Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used v ...

, individual üliger can vary greatly in length and content from one occasion to the next. One famous performer, the

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's China–Mongolia border, border with the country of Mongolia. ...

n Muu-ōkin, "was said to be able to recite ''üliger'' that lasted for months." Like other epic poets, üliger performers accompanied themselves with an instrument, in this case a four-stringed fiddle.

Subject matter

Üligers generally tell the legends of mythological and historical heroes. Common as the villain in the üliger is a monster with several heads, known as the "manggus," whom the hero consistently defeats. Popular üligers include the proverbs attributed to

Genghis Khan Genghis Khan (born Temüjin; August 1227), also known as Chinggis Khan, was the founder and first khan (title), khan of the Mongol Empire. After spending most of his life uniting the Mongols, Mongol tribes, he launched Mongol invasions and ...

, and the epics surrounding Khan's life, including the tale about his two white horses. Still recited today by Mongolian singers are üligers based on the story of Hua Guan Suo, one of the warriors from the ''

Romance of the Three Kingdoms ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' () is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 184 AD and ...

''. Longer myths, such as the ''

Epic of King Gesar The Epic of King Gesar (), also spelled Kesar () or Geser (especially in Mongolian contexts), is an epic from Tibet and Central Asia. It originally developed between 200 or 300 BCE and about 600 CE. Folk balladeers continued to pass on the sto ...

'', were important vehicles for the transmission of shamanic traditions.

Oirad Oirats (; ) or Oirds ( ; ), formerly known as Eluts and Eleuths ( or ; zh, 厄魯特, ''Èlǔtè'') are the westernmost group of Mongols, whose ancestral home is in the Altai region of Siberia, Xinjiang and western Mongolia. The first docume ...

epics relayed in üligers are Jangar, the history of the four Oirad's Victory over the Mongols, Khan Kharangui, Bum Erdene, etc. Gesar Gruschke

The ''

'' is not only a part of Mongolian folklore but is also engrained in Tibetan and Chinese history. However, given the oral nature of the genre, a large number of variants have always existed, and no canonical text can be given. Despite the age of the tradition dating to the 15th century, the tale was put into Mongolian woodblock print, commissioned by the

Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 165420 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, personal name Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His reign of 61 ...

of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

in 1716. In the late 19th/early 20th century a woodblock edition of the story was compiled by a scholarly monk from Lingtsang. Üligers of King Gesar have even been told as far west as the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

, reaching

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

with the

Tibetan Buddhist Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Arunachal Prades ...

Kalmyk people. Chinese and Tibetan literature also underlies the ''Üliger-iin Dalai'' (''The Ocean of Parables'', see also

Kathāsaritsāgara The ''Kathāsaritsāgara'' ("Ocean of the Streams of Stories") (Devanagari: कथासरित्सागर) is a famous 11th-century collection of Indian legends and folk tales as retold in Sanskrit by the Shaivite Somadeva from Kashmir. ' ...

), a collection of Buddhist birth stories (including the set of stories "The Wise Man and the Fool") edited in 1837 by O. Kowalewski. There is some scholarly debate as to whether a Chinese or a Tibetan version of "The Wise Man and the Fool" is the direct source for the Mongolian text, but while there are small variations, on the whole the Mongolian version is quite faithful to its originals.

References

External links

Encyclopædia Britannica

Related bibliography

*Heissig, Walther. "Mongolen." ''Enzyklopädie des Märchens: Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung''. Eds. Kurt Ranke and Rolf Wilhelm Brednich. Walter de Gruyter, 1999. 812-23. . *Lohia, Sushama. ''The Mongol Tales of the 32 Wooden Men (γučin qoyar modun kümün-ü üliger)''. Harrassowitz, 1968. *Popke, Suzanne L. ''Buryat Uliger: The Adventures of Tolei Mergen''. 2005. {{DEFAULTSORT:Uliger Mongol mythology Mongolian literature