Myriad Echoes of Heroic Songs: Field Notes on the Epic Tradition of the Oirat Mongols

Author: Chao Gelin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: At the foot of the majestic Tianshan Mountains, there lives a Mongolian group called the "Oirat." Today, their population is merely over ten thousand and they are not widely known to the outside world. However, the historical "Four Oirats"—the Junggar, Khoshut, Durbet, and Torghut—once rose to prominence in the vast Central Asian region, soaring through the clouds and storms, renowned far and wide, with their territory extending from the Xing'an Mountains in the east to the Altai Mountains, across to Lake Balkhash and the Pamirs in the west, from the Angara River and Lake Baikal in the north to the vast deserts in the south. They were known as the "Oirat Alliance" or "Western Mongolia" in history.
The era of a nation's rise is also an era of heroes. Among the Oirat Mongolians, for thousands of years, there has been a grand epic sung of a legendary hero—Jangar and his valiant cavalry—telling of the great achievements and historical deeds of their ancestors in defending the beautiful and prosperous ancestral homeland of "Bombo." This series of oral epics, titled after the hero's name, constitute one of China's "Three Great Epics" of ethnic minorities, "Jangar."
For years, the author has tracked and studied the Mongolian epic singing tradition, repeatedly delving into the northern and southern regions of the Tianshan Mountains to seek epic singers and the heroic songs passed down through generations by the Oirat herdsmen. With his scattered yet fluent narrative style, he has written these vivid, documentary field notes and ethnographic interview reports, which radiate the persistent epic passion of a Mongolian scholar, conveying firsthand insights and academic reflections on the pursuit of heroic traditions. They also condense the grandeur left behind by a great and ancient epic singing tradition amidst the dust of history.