An ethnonym is rightly considered an external manifestation of ethnic identity. The latter, being the most important feature of an ethnic group, expresses a sense of belonging to a certain ethnic community and is a reflection in the minds of people of real ethnic ties. Therefore, the correct identification of the origin and semantics of a self-name means the most effective identification and study of ethnic ties that developed within an ethnic group and led to its formation. This fully applies to the ethnonym Mongol. When studying the problem of education of the Mongolian people, it is extremely important to find out the etymology of its self-name, which, like any other, contains rare information about the history of its carriers in a concentrated form.
Keywords: Ergune-kun, early Mongols, Shiwei, Tang era.
The study of the ethnic name Mongol is closely connected with the problem of Ergune-kun, which is one of the key problems in world Mongolian studies. In the" Collection of Chronicles " of Rashid al-Din, it is reported that in ancient times the Mongol tribe had a quarrel "with other Turkic tribes"1, which ended in its crushing defeat. The remaining families fled to an inaccessible area called Ergune-kun, surrounded by mountains and forests. When their descendants "multiplied" and they became "crowded" there, they went out into the "expanse of the steppe" [Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 1, pp. 153-154; book 2, p. 9].
The work was carried out with the financial support of RGNF, project N 09 - 01 - 00569 a/G.
1 There is an opinion that in Rashid al-Din the word Turki is not so much an ethnic word as a generalized social and everyday character. Used in the meaning of "nomads", it cannot serve as a basis for establishing the origin of certain tribes [Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 1, pp. 92-93, note 1]. Unfortunately, this stereotype is quite firmly established in the scientific literature, although in fact Rashid al-Din initially conceived his work as a history of the peoples of the world, in which the history of the Turks and Mongols was given a worthy place. About how he intended to reveal the history of the Mongols, he, in particular, said: "What is transmitted orally from the era of Genghis Khan to the present time from [the area of] all the affairs of [the Mongol people], and the explanation of [the origin] of the latter-is the general purpose of [compiling] this [work]..." [ibid., p. 51]. Despite the fact that, following the tradition of his time, Rashid al-Din often refers to the Mongols as a Turkic people, he in many specific cases separates the Turks and Mongols and separately gives information about the origin of the tribes of either the Turkic or Mongolian group. Thanks to this differentiated approach, they compiled an extremely important and interesting classification of Mongol tribes, which cannot be attributed to the Turks in any way. It is based, like the entire Mongolian part of the" Collection", on irretrievably lost written Mongolian sources and oral reports of Mongol informants, and to this day, which also cannot but cause great regret, remains largely misunderstood by researchers of the ethnic history of the Mongolian peoples. According to this classification, there were tribes that were not previously considered Mongols, but were called them in the XIII century, and there were tribes known as Darlekins and Niruns, and Darlekins were already called Mongols in ancient times. This last remark is very valuable, since in the context of the legend about Ergune-kun, Rashid al-din referred to the period of stay of the Mongols in this area as antiquity. If in ancient times, i.e. in Ergune-kun, the Mongols were called Mongols, then the" other Turkic tribes " that forced them to leave for Ergune-kun were the Turks. These Turks could only be Tukyu Turks, often called ancient Turks in the scientific literature, because the word Turk as an ethnic name, unlike the other Turkic-speaking association tele, was used only by them.
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The significance of the Ergune-Kun period in the history of the Mongols consisted in the fact that a group of Darlekin clans began to form in Ergune-kun, on the basis of which, after its migration to the Mongolian Three Rivers (to the source of the Onon, Kerulen and Tola rivers), the modern Mongolian people began to form. Together with the Darlequins in Ergune-kun, the name Mongol was born, which should be emphasized especially in connection with the topic included in the title of the article. Since any ethnonym, when accurately deciphered, is the most valuable, and sometimes the only source for studying the origin of an ethnic formation, the etymology of the word Mongol has always attracted the attention of scientists. D. Banzarov was one of the first to solve it. He wrote that the name Mongol "is not a stretch... decomposed into Mongol, "Mon River". The meaning of these words directly indicates where this name came from, that is, from the river on which the people themselves lived." However, not having found the Mon River on geographical maps, but having found Mount Mona in Southern Mongolia, opposite Ordos, D. Banzarov suggested that a river flowed near this mountain, which was called and, perhaps, is now called Mongol (Banzarov, 1955, p. 169, 170, 172).
G. E. Grumm-Grzhimailo and later G. N. Rumyantsev expressed doubts about the correctness of D. Banzarov's hypothesis. Mount Mona, Mr. Rumyantsev pointed out, is indeed located in the Yingshan Mountain system. However, Banzarov's translation of its name is inaccurate. This is not Mona, but Mune-ula, i.e. a word belonging to the palatal, and not guttural, as Mongol, series of words. Therefore, it cannot have a common origin with the name Mongol [Banzarov, 1955, p. 306, ed. 274; p. 307, note 280].
For my part, I consider it necessary to explain that D. Banzarov's article "On the origin of the name Mongol" was published in 1849 in Kazan in the first volume of the "Library of Oriental Historians". But even before the article was published, D. Banzarov admitted that his assumption about the name Mongol was erroneous, as he wrote in his letter dated January 4, 1849 to Academician A. A. Shifner, but it was probably too late to correct anything in the article or remove it from the press. In the letter, D. Banzarov, in particular, wrote:: "Dear friend of Asia, Anton Antonovich! I am surprised at the rapidity with which you responded to my letter of inquiry about the Mons, whom you have so ingeniously brought to light. Now I know very well who they are and what kind of people they are; they will not deceive me and will not convince me that they are due to their relatives. For such a service, I thank you one hundred and eight times, i.e. once for each volume of Ganzhur... " [ibid., pp. 230-231].
Although D. Banzarov was wrong about the origin of the name Mongol, his hypothesis about the two-syllable construction of this ethnonym (mon + gol) had a noticeable impact on a number of subsequent researchers, leading them on the wrong path. Ch. Khasdorj wrote that the ancient homeland of the Mon tribe living in the upper reaches of the Onon was Ordos. Its name comes from Mount Mon, near which it roamed. Under Khabul Khan, the Mon tribe, having occupied the central position (gol) in the Three Rivers, became known as Mongol, which means "the main mon tribe". It played a crucial role in the formation of the state of Their Mongol Uls [Khasdorj, 1959, pp. 14-19].
A different interpretation of the word gol in the name Mongol was suggested by Tsetsenmonkh. In his opinion, it goes back to the word khor, which was the name of a large group of tribes that spoke the languages of the Altai family. A variation of hor was the word hu. The Hu tribes included the Xiongnu. Therefore, the meaning of the name Mongol is "the Mon tribe within the Xiongnu" (Tsetsenmonkh, 2002, pp. 349-359).
Namjiltsaveen believed that the name Mongol consists of the words myung ("true") and gol ("center"), which, when merged, became the name of the leading tribe. The Mongolian people consolidated around it as the "true center" (Dalai, 1996, p. 34).
According to Li Dongfang, during the Tang Dynasty, the Mengwu Shiwei tribe lived along the Wangjianhe River, i.e., along the Amur River. In the Chinese dialects of that time, the character wang was pronounced man, and the character jian gave the sounds k or G. Mank (mang) it is Mongolian
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the word menh means "eternal". Since the character he is translated into Mongolian as gol - "river", it turns out that the Mengu lived along the river with the Mongolian name Menkh gol. This name gave rise to the ethnonym mengwu, or Mongol, meaning "eternal river" (Li Dongfang, 2003, p. 1).
Highlighting the parts mon and gol in the name mongol, Ch. Khasdorj and Tsetsenmonkh repeated the mistake of D. Banzarov. Since there was no toponym Mon, the Mongols never had a tribe and, accordingly, an ethnic name mon, and therefore it makes no sense to search for the etymology of the word gol, let alone try to connect it with the word khor. As for the hypotheses of Namzhiltsevaen and Li Dongfang, their artificiality is also evident. It must be no coincidence that Li Dongfang does not cite a single reference to a source from which he could get information that in the colloquial Chinese language of the Tang era, the name of the Wangjianhe River was pronounced Menghol. In addition, the author did not take into account that, firstly, the Mongols call one of the largest Asian rivers Amur not gol, but moraine; secondly, the Amur basin has been known since ancient times as the habitat of Tungus-Manchu and Paleoasiatic peoples. The presence of these errors does not allow Li Dongfang's hypothesis about the name Mongol to be considered satisfactory.
H. Based on Rashid al-din's account of the devastating war between the Mongol and Turkic tribes that took place 2,000 years before the writing of his work, Parlee was inclined to believe that the name Mongol already existed in 700 BC, in the Bronze Age. Several families who had taken refuge in the Ergune-kun area survived the extermination of the Mongols. Long afterward, the Mongols referred to their ancestors as "mung-aa uzsen ", i.e., those who had suffered. This phrase formed the basis of the name Mongol (Purlee, 1969, pp. 91-96).
H. Purlee unduly absolutizes the digital detail of Rashid al-din's account of Ergune-kun. It is impossible to imagine that by the end of the 13th century, a legend that originated in the Bronze Age has come down in its original form. His attribution of the first mention of the name Mongol in the sources to the seventh century AD is close to the truth. However, it is impossible to agree with the explanation that it is not found in earlier times because the Mongols did not play a prominent role in the history of Central Asia. Consideration of hypothesis X. Perlee, taking into account the data on the time of the origin of the ethnonyms Mongol and Turk and through the prism of the ethnic history of their carriers, also does not bring us closer to solving the problem of the origin of the name Mongol.
Shortly after D. Banzarov, an unusual hypothesis about two Mongol possessions was proposed by V. P. Vasiliev. In his opinion, in the north-east of the Jurchens, at the mouth of the Amur, lived the Manchu tribe of Mengu and it was not at all the same people who later became known as Mongol and lived in the north-west of the Jurchens. The beginning of the name mengu is the word mangu, which is similar to the Manchu muke - "water " or"river". When Jurchen defectors came to Genghis Khan, who was fighting the Jin dynasty for supremacy in Northeastern China, they advised him to call the inhabitants of the state created by him by the name menggu, i.e. Mongol, which was done by Genghis Khan [Vasiliev, 1859, pp. 81, 134, 159-161, 165, 166].
The appearance of V. P. Vasiliev's hypothesis was met with bewilderment in Russian scientific circles. I was surprised by the statement of the question, according to which the Mongols were not called Mongols at first, this name was borrowed by Genghis Khan from the Manchus who lived in the lower reaches of the Amur, allegedly called Mengu. Expressing the general mood, I. N. Berezin remarked:"...A comparison of Muslim news with Chinese news leads us positively to the conclusion that the Mengu of Chinese writers are the Mongols who lived to the north-west of Kaluren, and not the Manchus who lived at the mouth of the Amur, as one of the Chinese chronicles wants, and then Professor Vasiliev" (Berezin, 1868, p.186).
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In the 70s of the last century, M. V. Vorobyov provided sufficient clarity on the location of Mengu in relation to the Jurchens. He noted the complete absence of written records of the Jurchens ' relations with the tribes living to the northeast of them. They were given an important explanation for understanding the problem that the authors of the Sung sources, indicating the north-eastern direction of the Menggu habitat, were guided not from Manchuria , the homeland of the Jurchens, but from the Chinese Plain conquered by the Jin state (Vorobyov, 1975, pp. 209-210).
It seemed that the long-standing and completely unproductive discussion from a scientific point of view was over, since the groundlessness of judgments about the existence of a second group of Mongols somewhere in the northeast of the Jurchens, whose name Genghis Khan allegedly adopted to designate his state, is obvious. But in the late 1980s, an article by E. V. Shavkunov appeared. Its author, using the hypothesis of D. Banzarov and the work of the South Sun scholar Li Xinchuan "Jian-yan i-lai Chao-ye za-ji" (1127), which is usually referred to by supporters of borrowing the ethnonym Mongol, also suggested that the Mengu first lived on the Lower Amur. This is evidenced by the Pokrovskaya archaeological culture of the 9th-13th centuries associated with Mengyu and the fact that the lower reaches of the Amur River are known to the Tungus-Manchu peoples under the common name Mangmu, Manggu, and Mangga. According to B. Karlgren, hieroglyphic records of the ethnonyms mengyu and mengu in the ancient Chinese vowel should read mungngot, manggot, monggo. Under these terms are hidden the old Mongolian words manggol and monggol, where the syllables mang and mong mean "strong", the syllable gol - "river". In general, manggol is translated as "strong, obstinate river" (Shavkunov, 1987, pp. 166-169).
Starting with a critical review of the hypothesis of E. V. Shavkunov, first of all it should be said that from the text of Li Xinchuan, which actually served as the author's methodological basis for constructing his entire hypothesis, he omitted the sentence "Under Tang, it was called the Mengu tribe", which, if you think about it, makes it clear that there are no Mengu in the mouth of the Amur it wasn't. The full text to which E. V. Shavkunov referred looks like this: "There was still some kind of Mongolian state. [It] was located northeast of the Jurchens. Under the Tang, it was called the meng-wu tribe. The Jin called it meng-wu, and also called it meng-gu. [These] people... made armor out of shark skins, [which] could protect them from stray arrows" [Meng-da bei-lu, 1975, p. 51].
In the withdrawn phrase, the pronoun his refers to the" state " of the Mongols, allegedly located to the northeast of the Jurchens. However, the whole meaning of the phrase should be understood in such a way that this very "state" during the Tang Dynasty was called the Mengwu tribe. Since it is well known from medieval chronicles that there was only one Mengu ethnic group in the Tang era, it is clear that there was only one Mengu community in subsequent times. It could be assumed that in the Tang or later time there was a division of Mengu into two parts, one of which, which went to the Lower Amur, E. V. Shavkunov considered the original Mongols who originally lived in this region. But then this event would have been a well-known fact, and in the work of Li Xinchuan, and not only him, there would have been an indication that under Tang or later both Mongol "states" were called mengwu. But there is no such fix in the sources. In addition, it is not clear why the remaining group in the northwest, if we really assume the division of Mengwu into two parts, should have borrowed the name Mongol, because it already had this name. At the same time, if we take into account such an extremely important fact for understanding the problem that the sources of the Tang era ("Ju Tang shu", "Xin Tang Shu") If they indicate the Mengwu habitat, which does not coincide in any way with the report of Li Xinchuan, then it should be recognized that M. V. Vorobyov's point of view is absolutely correct that the authors of Sung works, including Li Xinchuan, when determining the Mengwu lands (to the northeast of the Jurchens) counted from the Chinese Plain, and not from Manchuria, as, it seems like it should be.
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The Pokrovskaya archaeological culture, whose origin E. V. Shavkunov associated with Mengwu, is attributed by Russian and Chinese researchers to the Jurchens or their ethnic predecessors Mohe (Okladnikov and Medvedev, 1974, pp. 118-128; Nesterov, 1998, p. 96; Vasiliev, 2006, p.347). In addition, I repeat again, the Amur River, including its lower part and adjacent areas of Northeastern China, since ancient times was a zone of compact settlement of the Dongyi tribes, which included Proto-Tungusic and Paleoasiatic ethnic groups. Therefore, there is no need to talk about any Mongols on the Lower Amur, who allegedly belonged to the Pokrovskaya archaeological culture.
As for the transcriptions of hieroglyphic records of the ethnonyms mengu and mengu, proposed by B. Karlgren, they are not quite accurately read by E. V. Shavkunov. But even if these names were read mungngot, manggot, or monggo, the artificiality of dividing them into two parts and replacing the final letter t with the letter l in order to get the supposedly Mongolian word gol ("river") to argue for the hypothesis of Mongol habitation in the lower reaches of the Amur River is more than obvious.
Komai Yoshiaki and Fujita Toyohachi believed that the name Mongol goes back to the name of one of the ancestors of the Zhuzhans - Mugului [Materials..., 1984, p. 399]. A similar view was held by G. Suhbaatar, who was later joined by A. Ochir [Suhbaatar, 1996, p. 72-74; Ochir, 2003, p. 192-198]. G. Suhbaatar, referring to the history of the Wei Dynasty, wrote that Mugului was the nickname of a captive slave, received by him because of the fact that his hair they were on par with the eyebrows. Mugului is the Mongolian word for muhar ("komoly"), which in the Middle Ages referred to people deprived of power and privileges. Over time, the name Mugului turned into the name Mongol.
V. S. Taskin translated the legend about the captive slave from "Wei Shu" as follows: "Ruanzhuan, a descendant of Donghu, had the surname Yujiuliu... At the end of the reign of Emperor Shen-yuan, a Wei horseman engaged in looting obtained a slave whose hair on his head started from the brow line. Since he couldn't remember his last name or first name, his master gave him the nickname Mugului. Mugului means "the head is bald" "[Materials..., 1984, p. 267].
Analyzing the hypotheses of Yoshiaki and Toyohachi, V. S. Taskin noted (his words apply entirely to the hypothesis of G. Sukhbaatar): "In our opinion, it is more plausible to consider mugului as a transcription of the two words mugui and lu, and the latter sign, according to Karlgren's reconstruction, had the reading liwo in the Middle Ages. As B. Kh. Todaeva points out, the words "bad" and" bad "are transmitted in the Mongol language as in the minhe dialect of the Mongol language - mau, in the" Mongolian Dictionary "Muqaddimat al-Adab - u N. P. Poppe in the "Square Writing" - ta-ip, in the work "Das mongolische Sprach-material einer Leidener Handschrift " - mayui, in Mongolian written language-mayu, in Dongxiang-mau. Lui-liwo is close in sound to the Mongolian rãwa - "hair". Thus, mugului, or mugu livo, is a transcription of mayurãwa - "bad hair". It turns out not only phonetic, but also semantic proximity, since there is an undoubted connection between the meanings of "head is bald" and "bad hair" [ibid., p. 399].
C. Khandsuren also gave a different interpretation of the name Mugului from G. Sukhbaatar and at the same time close to V. S. Taskin. She writes that at the end of Emperor Sheng Yuandi's reign, a slave was captured. His head was shaved on top, and his hair was combed forward to his eyebrows, which is why he became known as Mugului, i.e. "bald". This is clearly stated in "Bei shi" and "Wei Shu" (Handsuren, 1994, pp. 6-7).
Interpretation of the word mugului given by V. S. Taskin and Ts. Handsuren, based on a more accurate reading of the sources and therefore preferred. Indeed, it is unlikely that a bald slave could be awarded the nickname komoly, even if it served in the Zhuzhan society, as G. Sukhbaatar claims, as an indicator of a person's social status. After all, a captive slave in his status did not have the slightest power, in the holy Spirit.-
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There was no point in giving him a nickname like that. Therefore, the hypothesis that Mugului is the very word from which the ethnonym Mongol originated is groundless.
In general, it should be noted that the version proposed by G. Sukhbaatar, A. Ochir and Japanese scientists that the origin of the name Mongol from the name Mugului is not confirmed by any reliably known fact. All this stems from the fact that not only they, but also the authors of all the other hypotheses discussed above, did not try or failed to find the correct original form of the ethnonym Mongol and did not take into account the accurately attested data of sources about the origin of this name and, accordingly, the Mongolian ethnic group during the Tang Dynasty among the Shiwei ethnic group. Here it was simply necessary to understand that the line of development of the medieval Mongol-speaking peoples was a chain of successive ethnic groups. After the Donghu, who can be confidently described as the ancestors of all Mongol-speaking ethnic groups, the Xianbi, Wuhuani, Zhuzhani appeared, and only then the new people who are now called the Mongols. In this regard, V. S. Taskin is undoubtedly right, who, summing up the analysis of the hypotheses of Yoshiaki and Toyohachi about the genesis of the ethnonym Mongol, emphasized: "The name" Mongol "is first found in Chinese sources in the "Ju Tang shu", compiled in 945. and, if the opinion of Japanese scholars were proven, the history of the Mongols would have to start seven centuries earlier. However, this tempting point of view is hardly credible, being based only on a certain phonetic proximity of the words mugului and Mongol" [Materials..., 1984, p. 399].
The Shiwei tribes, which according to the Chinese chronicles included the Mengwu community, occupied the territory from the Yablonovy Ridge to the Lesser Khingan during the Tang period (Zheng Yingde, 1994, p. 127, 128). Where was the area of Ergune-kun located here, where the ancestors of the Mongols took refuge after the disastrous war with the Turks, and what does the name mongol mean? In written sources, the toponym Ergune clearly means the modern Argun River. So, in the " Secret History of the Mongols "(hereinafter-TIM)2 it is reported that when Genghis Khan and Van Khan defeated the opposition led by Jamukha in the Koiten tract, in order to destroy its remnants, Genghis Khan turned to the pursuit of Auchu-Baatur, who retreated down the Onon, and Van Khan-Jamukha, who went down the Ergune River [Kozin, 1941, § 1]. The river Ergune mentioned here, which was located in relative proximity to Onon, is Argun.
The Collection of Chronicles gives a very clear idea of the question that Ergune is the now well-known Argun River. Speaking about the nomadic territory of Genghis Khan's brother Khasar, Rashid al-din writes that it "is located inside Mongolia in the northeast, within Ergune and Kule-naur and Kilar" [Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 2, p. 52]. Under Kule-naur and Kilar, oz is easily guessed. Hulun and R. Hailar. As for Ergune, this name, of course, means Argun.
The name Ergune is preserved not only in written sources. It is important to point out that the modern population of the northeast of the PRC, regardless of nationality, still calls the Argun River by its ancient name Ergune.
2 The original text of a remarkable work of medieval Mongols has two titles. One is in Chinese: "Yuan-chao bi-shi", which can be translated as "The Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty". The other is in Mongolian, transcribed in Chinese characters, which in the reconstructed form takes the form "Mongyol-un niyyuca tobchiyan" - "The Secret History of the Mongols". If we take into account that yuan ("beginning, origins") is the official name of the Mongol dynasty that ruled in China (1270-1368), and the word chao ("dynasty") was added later, perhaps in the first half of the 19th century by the first publisher of the monument Gu Guangqi, then the Chinese and Mongolian names, in fact, are not the same as the Chinese and Mongolian names. they match. Recently, there has been a tendency to revive the literal translation of the name of the monument - "The Secret History of the Mongols" [Bazarova 1995, p. 16-24]. This option, which is an exact translation of the original name of the monument, I also adhere to. It will be used even when the corresponding references will indicate the publications of S. A. Kozin and B. I. Pankratov, who translated the names "Yuan-chao bi-shi" and "Mongyol-un niyuca tobchiyan" as "The Hidden Legend" and "The Secret History of the Mongols".
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Thus, Ergune is identified with the name Argun. Rashid al-din writes that in his time there were Mongols who knew and saw the Ergune-kun area [Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 1, p. 154]. This suggests that there was no secret of Ergune-kun back in the 13th century. In this regard, it becomes clear why two names are mentioned separately in the sources - Ergune and Ergune-kun. The Mongols named Ergune for the Argun River, and Ergune-kun for a certain area located near it.
It is very important that the data of the Chinese sources of the Tang Dynasty era, which contain the first mentions of the name Mongol, echo the information of Rashid al-Din's work. In the Ju Tang Shu (Old History of Tang, compiled in 945), it is written in the form mengyu shiwei, in the Xin Tang Shu ("New History of Tang", compiled in 1045-1060) - in the form of menwa bu. In both chronicles, Mengwu and Mengwa are listed among the names of the Shiwei tribes. It is believed that the spelling mengwa appeared in "Xin Tang shu" as a result of a graphic error when transmitting the name mengwu [Pelliot, 1928, p. 126; Ratchnevsky, 1966, p. 228, note. 2; p. 238, note 5].
In the Ju Tang Shu, it is said that the Mengyu Shiwei live on the south (right)side of the mountain. on the side of the Wangjianhe River. "Wangjianhe," the source concretizes, " flows out of Lake Ju-lunbo. It flows east along the edge of the Xi Shiwei land. Further east, it flows south of Da Shiwei, capturing part of their territory. Further east, it flows north of Mengyu shiwei and south of Luoju shiwei. Further east, it merges with the Nahe and Huhanhe Rivers" (Tszyu Tan shu, 1959, 199 tszyuan, p. 5356). In the above text, Wangjianhe is the Argun and Amur rivers, and Juilunbo is the lake. Hulong, Nahe - Sungari River, Huhanhe-Mu-danjiang river.
On the historical maps of the Tang period prepared by scientists of the PRC, the territory of Mengwu residence is shown as a narrow strip along the southern bank of the Upper Amur River (Zhongguo..., 1982, pp. 32-33). It seems that the map makers underestimated the fact that the Chinese in the Tang period called the name Wangjianhe not only Amur, but also Argun. Since both rivers shared a common name, it is not clear at first glance which river the Mengwu tribe lived on the right bank of. But since the" Collection of Chronicles " mentions the toponym Ergune-kun, in which Ergune is the current Argun River, there is no doubt that the Mengu lived on the right side of the Argun and, therefore, the Ergune-kun area was located there. In the light of this conclusion, the opinion of E. I. Kychanov and Altanorgil, who believe that Ergune-kun was located to the right of Arguni, is valid [Kychanov, 1980, p. 140; Altanorgil, 1995, p. 41].
In 2004-2006, a joint team of the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of History of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, and the Museum of the Hulun-Buir Peoples (ARVM of the People's Republic of China) conducted a large-scale archaeological and ethnographic survey of the right-bank side of the Argun River and the Hailara Valley. The organizer and leader of this expedition was the author of this article. The task of the expedition was to examine the territory and determine whether there is an area on it that, based on the presence of archaeological sites, terrain features and other parameters, could be correlated with the description of Ergune-kun in the "Collection of Chronicles". The final and, of course, positive outcome of the expedition was greatly influenced by the fact that in Bulun-Buir, the members of the detachment finally clarified the question of where the Argun River originates. It became known that Argun and Hailar are two different rivers, although on modern geographical maps they are often depicted as one river. Argun flows out of the lake. Hulong, it is connected to it by a short narrow sleeve. Hailar begins in the mountains of the Greater Khin-gan range and joins the Argun River near Khulun, flowing into it from the right. Understanding this question was of great importance for the correct assessment of the Ergune-kun problem. It became clear that since Hailar has nothing to do with Arguni (the report of Rashid al-din, who called these two rivers separately.-B. Z.), was confirmed, then the area named Ergune-kun in its valley never existed. X's mistake became obvious. Purlee, who believed that Ergune-kun was located in the upper reaches of Hailar [Purlee,
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1969, pp. 99-100]. But since his long-published hypothesis is quite well known in the scientific literature, the expedition found it necessary to test it, for which it had to climb along the Hailar to its upper reaches. The squad members ' doubts were confirmed. The nature of the area, which completely excluded any similarity to the description of what is available in Rashid al-Din, and the complete absence of archaeological sites indicated that hardly any people ever lived in the upper reaches of the Khaylar.
The main attention of the expedition was focused on exploring the Arguni Valley, i.e. the southern part of the country. Ergune. The area to the right of the river is called Shiwei. The largest tributary of the Great Khingan, the Jiluhe, flows through it and flows into the Argun River. For 10-12 km to Argun, to the right of the mouth of the Tsilyuhe, the mountains and continuous taiga end abruptly and a relatively small, flat steppe expanse opens up, sometimes covered with small forests and groves. The steppe approaches the lower reaches of the Jiluhe River on one side, and the other side is adjacent to the Argun River, beyond which there is no such open space on the Russian side, where mountains and deep taiga begin immediately from the river. The general appearance of this area, located in the lower reaches of the Argun and separated from the outside world by many mountains and rivers, is surprisingly similar to the description of Ergune-kun in the "Collection of Chronicles".
Here, in 1991, Chinese archaeologists discovered two medieval ancient settlements and a settlement. Both settlements are located on high plateaus, one of which is located directly on Argun, the other-in the lower reaches of Jiluhe. Between them, on the crest of a low but steep mountain, there is a settlement that probably served as an observation post, while simultaneously connecting the ancient settlements into a single complex. On the surface of both plateaus, you can see the remains of protective ramparts and numerous round-shaped housing depressions (their diameter is 5 m), on the mountain - only traces of dwellings, their sizes are smaller than those found on the plateau. Below, in the flat territory, there are no archaeological sites, which indicates that the life of the inhabitants of the ancient settlements mainly took place on the plateau, therefore, they were not indigenous, but newcomers to Argun.
A key place in the complex was occupied by the ancient settlement in the lower reaches of Jiluhe, where, apparently, the headquarters of the leader of the entire alien population was located. This assumption is supported by the following facts: first, in the center of this ancient settlement, the largest depression with a diameter of 10 m has been preserved on all monuments, on the site of which, presumably, the chief's headquarters was located, and secondly, the plateau at the mouth of the Jilyuhe is more inaccessible and, consequently, better protected than the plateau located on Argun. Therefore, it was impossible to find a better place for the chief's bet.
On the plateau, in ancient settlements, lived representatives of one ethnic group. This is confirmed by the fact that the exploration of all three monuments by Chinese archaeologists using pits yielded exactly the same material (fragments of ceramics, bone products). In turn, this material is identical to the artifacts (remains of a coffin-deck hollowed out of a single tree trunk, fragments of ceramics, bows) that were found in burials in the Barun Uzur area west of Hailar. Since these burials are unambiguously identified by Chinese experts as Early Mongol (Mengyu shiwei), dating back to the end of the 7th century AD, they quite justifiably put forward the assumption that the ancient settlements and settlements on the right bank of the Argun River were also left by the early Mongols (Zhao Yu, 2003, pp. 58-62). This means that the area where they are located is probably the same Ergune-kun, where the origins of the ethnogenesis of the Mongols and the beginning of their history go back.
Rashid al-din, explaining the content of the toponym Ergune-kun, noted that the word kun means "slope", and ergune means "steep" [Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 1, p. 153]. Accepting this message, I would like to remind you, however, that in the" Collection of Chronicles " there is a precise indication that Ergune is the name of the Argun River, which is confirmed by the fact that the river is located in the same area.
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TIM and modern toponymic material. Therefore, taking into account this explanation, it can be argued that the meaning of "steep" was also derived from the kun component, i.e. Rashid al-Din understood the semantics of this term as "steep slope". My assumption was fully confirmed when referring to the names Nahu-kun and Djorkal-kun mentioned in Rashid al-din, in which kun denotes a single mountain with steep slopes [Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 1, p. 138; book 2, p. 129, 148]. This meaning of the word kun is also revealed in TIM [Kozin, 1941, § 117, 196, 237]. The description of Nahu-kun Mountain, on which Genghis Khan blocked the Naimans, which is available in both sources, gives a vivid idea of what mountains the Mongols used to call kun in the distant past. "Since it was night time and the army of Tayan Khan was defeated," writes Rashid ad-din, " and the army of Genghis Khan was defeated. the fugitives, out of excessive fear and terror, rushed into the difficult mountains. At night, many of the Naiman troops slid, rolled, and tumbled down steep mountains and hard-to-reach slopes.), whose name is Naku-kun, and they perished" (Rashid al-din, 1952, vol. 1, book 2, p. 148). A similar description of Mount Nahu-kun is given in TIM: "Then Genghis Khan, due to the late evening, limited himself to the cordon of Mount Nahu-gun. Meanwhile, the Naimans decided to run away that very night, but as they fell and slid down from the Nakhu-gun heights, they began to crush and stab each other to death: hair flew and bones cracked, breaking like dry twigs "[Kozin, 1941, § 196].
The same elevated places with steep slopes are both plateaus and a mountain on the bank of the Argun, on which there are ancient settlements and settlements. Since such hills, which can now be said confidently, were designated by the term kun in the language of the medieval Mongols, this word, together with the name of the Ergune River, formed a single toponym Ergune-kun, which was included in the "Collection of Chronicles". Then it turns out that the area on the right bank of the Argun can really be considered as the same area of Ergune-kun, where the ancestors of the Mongols lived during the Tang Dynasty, having escaped from the Turkic defeat.
Turning here again to the ethnonym Mongol and completing the analysis of its etymology, I will point out that the version about the origin of this name from the Tungus-Manchu word mangmu/manggu/mangga, whose meaning is "strong, elastic, tight", stands out from the many interpretations [Comparative Dictionary..., 1975, pp. 525-526, 529-530].. For the first time, such an assumption, let me remind you, was expressed by V. P. Vasiliev, and later it was supported by E. V. Shavkunov. But both researchers were wrong when they claimed that the word mangu / manga as a name was applied only to the Lower Amur, therefore, the ethnonym Mongol originated there. The study of the actual material shows that the Tungus-Manchu peoples called the entire Amur by this name [ibid., pp. 525-526]. Moreover, this hydronym exists in the basin of the right bank of the Argun River. The repeatedly mentioned Jiliuhe River, which flows into the Argun River, was called Mangu by the Chinese before its renaming. This is a Tungusic word that has the same meaning as its Chinese tracing paper Jiluhe - "rapid, stormy river".
The presence of the Mangu River on the right side of the Argun can be regarded as a vivid evidence of the Mongol habitation there. Since the leader of the emerging Mongolian ethnic group lived in the lower reaches of the Mangu, the name of this river was used as the basis for the name Mongol. This is convincingly proved by the original form of this ethnonym. Here it should be said that when studying the etymology of an ethnic name, it is important to find its original form, i.e. the exact original form, without which it is impossible to reveal the true content of the name. Mongol scholars are lucky in that they have at their disposal TIM, the earliest extant outstanding monument of Mongolian history and culture, created, which is very important, by the Mongols themselves. In the Mongolian text of the chronicle, the name mongol is rendered in the form mongol [Yuan-Chao Bi-Shi, 1962], which suggests that in the XIII century. this original form was still preserved. All other well-known variants of the ethnonym (menwa, manguzi, moal, etc.) appeared either in
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as a result of a distorted spelling of the protoform mangol, or they are derived from it and can be excluded from special consideration. The word mangol, in which the vowel sound o is an intermediate between the sounds u and o, consists of two parts: the root mango, which corresponds to the name of the Mangu river, and the plural suffix-l, which denotes a group of people. In total, both parts give the value "people living on the Mangu River". There is no other way to interpret the word mangol.
At first, the word mangol was a nickname received by the ancestors of the Mongols from the surrounding population. The new ethnic identity formed over time caused it to become fixed among them as a self-name, which was recorded by Chinese chroniclers as mengwu. The subsequent evolution of the name mangol led to the fact that after the XIII century, as a result of its internal development, it took the final form of Mongol, which became the official name of the Mongolian people. The ethnonym Mongol, despite its slightly different sound, has the same semantics as its original form mangol - "people living on the Mangu River".
The proposed explanation of the name Mongol is the most satisfactory among the existing hypotheses. Perhaps, one of the long-standing and difficult problems of Mongolian studies, which goes far beyond the scope of pure onomastics, has been solved. Clarifying the content of the ethnonym Mongol means not only revealing its etymology, but also lifting the veil over the early history of the Mongols. Now, based on all the accumulated material, we can say that after the defeat of the Turkic-Tukyu tribes of the Zhuzhan Khaganate by the coalition, a part of the Zhuzhans identified with the Chino clan (over time, at a late stage in the evolution of the ancestral cult, the ethnonym chino began to be understood as the name of the real ancestor of Genghis Khan who with his wife Hoai-Maral came from Ergune-kun. This is usually the beginning of Mongolian genealogical traditions (for more information, see: [Zoriktuev, 2006, p. 113-121]), for quite a long time it was located outside of its homeland, on the right bank of the Argun River, as a separate ethnic division, having penetrated into the environment of the Shiwei tribes. Living there in the remote area of Ergune-kun, the fugitives, based on the location of their chief's headquarters, located in the lower reaches of the Mangu, a tributary of the Argun, received from their neighbors the name mangol, which eventually took the now known form of Mongol.
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