A Tibetan prince at the sacred mountain: where the Mongol khans came from
Editorial contextJigme Namkha begins the Mongol royal line not with the wolf and doe of the Secret History but with a son of the Tibetan king Drigum Tsenpo, called Borte Chino in Mongolian, who went into Mongolia with his wife and came to the mountain Burkhan Khaldun. The local people, learning of his noble descent, made him their ruler. It is a Buddhist retelling that ties the Mongol khans to Tibet's royal house.
That youngest son of King Khri gum btsan po, named Nya khri, or in Mongolian Borte Chino, took a wife named Go(a) Maral from the land of Kongpo, went with her into Mongolia and came to the mountain Burkhan Khaldun on the shore of Lake Baikal.
Working translation
Original wording
Jener jüngste Sohn des Königs K'ri gum btsan-po, mit Namen Na k'ri oder mongolisch Porta Zeba, nahm sich aus dem Lande rKoii-po eine Gattin G-n-ö Maral mit Namen, ging mit ihr in die Mongolei und kam an den Berg Porhan Galtona am Ufer des Päigal -Seees.
About Mongols (the Chinggisid line)
Keep in mind
Huth's transliteration of Mongol names is idiosyncratic ('Porta Zeba' for Borte Chino, 'Porhan Galtona' for Burkhan Khaldun), and the OCR garbles some letters; the placing of Burkhan Khaldun by Baikal is the author's.
Thomsen: the Tatars of the stones were Mongols, not Turks
Editorial contextIn his notes Thomsen comments on 'Otuz Tatar' (Thirty Tatars) and 'Toquz Tatar' (Nine Tatars): the name meets us here 'for the first time in history', appears in Chinese books only in the ninth century, and belongs to the Mongols or one of their tribes, not to a Turkic people. He places them between the Oghuz (Uighurs) to the west and the Khitan to the east, near the Kerulen river. So the original Tatars were a real Mongolic group on the edge of the Turk empire.
a well-known name that we meet here for the first time in history. In Chinese literature, Ta-ta appears at the beginning of the ninth century. This name belongs to the Mongols, or rather to one of their tribes, and not to any people of Turkic race.
Working translation
Original wording
nom bien connu que nous rencontrons ici pour la première fois dans l'histoire Dans la littérature chinoise, Ta-ta se présente au commencement du IXe siècle. C'est aux Mongols ou plutôt à une de leurs tribus que revient cette dénomination, et non à aucun peuple de race turque
About Otuz Tatar and Toquz Tatar
Keep in mind
Thomsen's 1896 identification; later scholars still debate how Mongolic the eighth-century Tatars were.
Checked against the page image.
The lost ancient nation of Lake Baikal: no trace
Editorial contextTurner had read a European theory, fashionable in the 1700s, that a lost ancient people near Lake Baikal had taught arts and sciences to India and Europe. He asked the Manchu-born chamberlain Soopoon Choomboo, who had travelled along the Baikal, about it. The answer: the area was thinly peopled and he knew of no monument showing remote antiquity. A striking early test of a 'lost civilisation of Tartary' idea.
My inquiries respected an ancient nation, supposed to have once inhabited the borders of the Baikal sea, in the interior of Tartary, and from which some persons conjecture, the learning, arts, and sciences of India, and even of Europe, to have been originally derived. If such a nation ever existed, the remembrance of it seems now to be buried in deepest oblivion.
About Mongols and Siberian peoples ('northern Tartars')
Keep in mind
The same page adds Soopoon Choomboo's answer: 'nor to his knowledge, was any monument existing, that bore marks of remote antiquity.' Turner's own view is only that the tradition, if real, is forgotten.
