Chinese Influence on Oral tradition in Mongolia: bensen üliger
Project description
The aim of the project is to examine the modern Mongolian literary genre bensen üliger (booklet story), part of a Mongolian oral folklore tradition as reproduction of the Chinese knight stories. The term bensen is derived from the Chinese ben zi 本子, meaning booklet in English or “Heft” in German; the second term üliger means story here. This genre bensen üliger first appeared in the last quarter of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. The “booklet stories” were reproduced by storytellers and singers from eastern and southeastern Mongolia where the influence of the Han Chinese was strongest. The use of Chinese motifs in these stories spread from these regions to the eastern parts of the Khalka provinces and to western and southern Mongolia.
Living in permanent contact with the Chinese, Mongols living in the southern border region who understood Chinese, adopted Chinese motifs after hearing Chinese originals or listening to Chinese theatre groups. These storytellers then combined topics from Chinese literature with motifs of local epics and tales and, in a syncretistic process of poetry production, generated a new form of rhapsodic poetry with its own cultural characteristics. The present understanding of the connections between Chinese knight- and adventure narratives and bensen üliger is that the Mongolian storyteller does not ultimately reproduce a Chinese subject but narrates a subject using Mongolian poetic means with the help of certain elements of the Chinese tradition. The language of the bensen üliger differs from other Mongolian oral traditions: Chinese words are used, and the language is understood only by the Mongols of Inner Mongolia, Mongols from outer Mongolia cannot understand the words.
Inner Mongolia is one of the five autonomous regions in China. The minority nationalities in China constitute 8 percent of the population and occupy 60 percent of the national territory. The Chinese nation building process, the invention and classification of minorities as well as the establishment of autonomous regions like Inner Mongolia also define the status and use of languages in these regions. The language of the Han Chinese, the largest of the 56 minzu, and believed to be superior to the other groups, stands at the top of a linguistic hierarchy (Dwyer 1998, Safran 1998). Bilingual education in Inner Mongolia introduces Chinese and achieves the transition from the speakers` native language to Chinese. Chinese words in the bensen üliger indicate that the sinification process brought its linguistic influence into the oral tradition of the Mongols. Even though Chinese and Mongolian are two different language families with different typological systems, Diglossia and bilingual education lead to code-switching and linguistic transfer phenomena also in the vernacular language of the Mongols in Inner Mongolia. Transfer phenomena can be found in the phonology, morphology and on the lexical level. New mixed Mongolian-Chinese word creations seem to defy the rules of the particular language family. People of Outer Mongolia do not understand this language, which indicates that regional Chinese influence in Inner Mongolia and language education plays a role. The literary genre bensen üliger is part of the oral tradition in Inner Mongolia and its language reflect the mixed Mongolian-Chinese word creations and language use that I also observed in Huhhot.
The bensen üliger tradition differs in several other respects from previous Mongol heroic epics. Aside from the use of prosimetrum (a shifting between narrative and rhyme poetry), the fantastic or supernatural moment found in heroic epics and fairy tales has vanished. Dangers to freedom really do exist, and monsters have been replaced by thieves, rebels and princes. Bensen üliger content is expanded and embellished as much as the storyteller desires and is filled with motifs of Mongolian storytelling or with prose of Tibetan or Indian origins. Compared with the heroic epics, the content of the bensen üliger has not just one, but several different plots with numerous motifs and role models. The new content developed by syncretism processes is narrated with a Chinese complexion. In comparison to the heroic epic, the bensen üliger are preformed with different types of melodies played on a horse fiddle (morin huur), that vary according to the respective motifs. A storyteller must be a good singer, performer and actor.
Chinese Influence on Oral tradition in Mongolia: bensen üliger
Earlier research
In 1984 and 1986, Professor Walther Heissig attended several bensen üliger performances and recorded them to produce a record of this kind of oral tradition. After his death in 2005, Heissig left 245 tapes and 87 books of handwritten transcriptions of the Mongolian folklore in the Uiguro-Mongolian script. Most of these have not been translated. Heissig seldom wrote summaries of the performances. His work on epics and bensen üliger did not include these tapes, which were transcribed only after his death. Their analyses, carried out so far only by Mongolian Literates have not found their way into the comparative study of literature. Further research was made in 1986 by G. Buyanbatu, Hai Longbao und Liu Wenxiang . A comparative analysis was written by Bai Yurong (百玉荣) in „五传“比较研究“, 2007. Kaare Grönbech (1901-1957) records in the Tsakhar region 26 tales of bensen üliger and published ten of them with summaries. Other summaries of bensen üliger have also been made by B. Riftin, N. Hasbatar, D. Čerengsodnom and A.G. Scholz.
Aim of the project
There are many interesting subjects to explore in this corpus of texts because the material is very rich and not sufficiently analyzed – neither by Mongolists nor by scholars in related disciplines. No translations into European languages exist to date. The material has not yet flowed into research in fields of comparative literature, religious studies, social anthropology, sociology, sinology or linguistics. My aim is to make a transcription, translation and commentary of a selected booklet story, which may form the basis for further study. Moreover the Chinese terms in the text need to be analyzed. Therefore I compiled a glossary of the Chinese- Mongolian terms. Additional to that I analyze the data of my field research in Inner Mongolia: the code-switching situation in Inner Mongolia needs to be studied in detail: what is the motivation for the code-switching? Do demographic variables like age or place play a role? What is the relation between language influence and cultural change in situations of language and cultural contact in Inner Mongolia? What effect does the sinification process have in terms of using Mongolian and Chinese Language in Inner Mongolia? Is the literary genre bensen üliger an indicator for Chinese language influence on oral tradition in Mongolia or even an indicator for an possible ongoing language change in that region?
Literature
Dwyer, Arienne M. The Texture of Tongues: Languages and Power in China. In Nationalism and ethno regional identities in China (ed.) Safran, Wiliam, London, Cass 1998.
HASBATAR, N: Mongolische Heftgeschichten und chinesische Ritterromane, Harrassowitz 1999
HESSIG, W.: Individuelles und traditionelles Erzählen, Wiesbaden 2000. Veröffentlichung der oben genannten Inhaltsangaben in
Heissig, Walther: Si Liyang. Varianten und Motiv-Transformationen eines mongolischen Spielmannsliedes, Harrassowitz 1996 (Asiatische Forschungen.131), XIII
Scholz, A.G.: Chinesische Stoffe und Motive in der populären mongolischen Literatur gegen Ende des 19. Jhd, Bonn 1975
Riftin, B.: Der Erzähler D. Cend aus Ulan-Bator und sein Repertoire, in: Fragen der Mongolischen Heldendichtung, Teil I, Harrassowitz,1981
Riftin, B.: Mongolian Translations of old Chinese Novels and Stories – A tentative Bibliographic Survey, in: C. Salmon (ed.), Literary migrations, Traditional Chinese Fiction in Asia, Peking 1987
Joshua A. Fishman : Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, Clevedon, 1989
William Safran : Nationalism and ethnoregional identities in China, London, 1998
Bulag, U.: Ethnic Resistance with socialist characteristics, Chinese Society, Change, Conflict and Resistance, New York 2000, S. 182.
Bilik, N.: Mongols: Moral Authority, Nationality and Racial Metaphor, in: Racial Identities in East Asia, Hong Kong 1996.