XVI. The Factitious Genealogies of the Mongol Rulers

Extract

When the various tribes of Mongols and Kalmuks were definitely converted to Lamaism in the sixteenth century it was not unnatural that the Lamaist monks, who formed their only literary class, should have tried to affiliate their famous heroes and their princely families to the old royal stock of Tibet, which had become for them a sacred land. Hence we find the two Mongol chronicles, one known as the “Altan Topchi” and the other generally quoted from the name of its author as Ssanang Setzen, and the Kalmuk legend derived by Pallas from the Tibetan work called the “Bodimer,” all concurring in a pedigree for the Mongol royal race which traces them first to the early Tibetan kings, and through them up to the alleged Indian ruler Olana Ergükdeksen, and through him again up to Sakiamuni Buddha himself. This pedigree was probably the invention of the author of the “Altan Topchi.”