Mongolian myths and folktales: Creation myths
Myths and folktales have long been one of my biggest fascinations in life and my absolute favorite thing to explore. Even before I learned to read myself, my aunt used to read me stories from our own little book of folktales that was made out of newspaper clippings. I also remember tagging along with her on her trip to Narantuul market, where kids who could not have been much older than me would be selling little fairytale books. And from each trip, I would come back with at least three little books that I would read and “rank”. I put the term rank in quotes because my method of ranking was quite ridiculous and involved PowerPuff Girls stickers. If I liked one book the most, then that book would get a Bubbles sticker and my least favorite would get a Blossom. I also remember being introduced to Greek mythology in 7th grade with Homer’s Odyssey. Only a little part of the story was included in our literature textbook and I yearned for years to find out how the story ends because the textbook abruptly cut the story when Odyssey faced Charybdis. Throughout the next few years came Rick Riordan’s books, which I found to be quite an easy read for someone who is just learning English. But in the last few months, I realized how little I know of Mongolian myths and folktales. Hence, this idea of discovering Mongolian myths myself and analyzing them against the common tropes of myths from other cultures, was born.
That long first paragraph was my wee attempt at conveying that this little project means a lot to me and most importantly, I am doing it for my own amusement only. Moreover, since I am clearly not a mythologist and neither have the time nor the resources to do a perfect in-depth research, it is going to be limited to what I have managed to find. Mistakes will be inevitable, and I will certainly not be able to dive deep into the bottom of an endless and rich sea of myths and folktales. All Mongolian myths will be translated by me, which means double disclaimers on both the content and the translations.
I hope that some of you will enjoy it as much as I did and with that, I welcome you to the first part of the series, which made me think, “Man, so much of these myths involve gods throwing dirt at water.”
Creation myths
Every culture has their own set of creation myths and most of the religious texts contain stories on how the universe got started. Many of them share some commonalities despite the cultural difference. For instance, in ex nihilo myths, the universe is created out of void and nothingness, but mostly with the help of a divine figure.[1] In a way, ex nihilo myths remind me of the big bang, the actual cosmological model for the creation of the universe. Everything starting from nothingness is a bizarre concept to wrap our heads around, but for me, it gives me hope that somewhere down the line, the universe might kick its engine again after every star had and even black holes have died out and the universe turned back into nothingness.
The fist story that comes to mind when I think about ex nihilo origins is the creation of the universe out of Chaos in Greek mythology. First, even before time existed, there was Chaos. In Hesiod’s Theogony, the creation of the universe is stated as follows,
“First Chaos came into being. But then Gaia broad-chested [the Earth], always the unshakable seat of all the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dark Tartarus in the recesses of the wide-wayed earth, and Eros…”[2]
In some versions, it is translated as Chaos was already in existence instead of first coming into being and represents the “before” even before the creation.
Another one of the most well-known ex nihilo stories is in the Bible,
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless, and void; and darkness was over the surface of the deep.”[3]
Here, the universe is created out of darkness and void, but with a help of God.
I was thrilled when I recognized ex nihilo elements in one of the Mongolian creation myths and also discovered a new word that describes chaos in Mongolian: “yolom jolom”, a word in which I expected to have something to do with horses, apparently means disorder and chaos. This is how it goes (with a little paraphrasing):
“Before the line between the sky and the earth was set, the universe was a hazy figure floating in yolom jolom. This state of the universe continued for countless years until light and darkness came to be and the softly illuminated part of the hazy universe became the sky, whereas the shadowy part became the earth. Out of the illuminated sky, 99 tengri formed and the divine gods ruled the heavens. But the earth was still an empty hollow land without a sign of life. That is, until the divine gods created fertile soil, picked living creatures from the heavens and placed them on earth. Life prospered, with no suffering, pain, plague or sin to condemn us.”[4]
From this, we can clearly see the ex nihilo origin of the universe created out of chaos (yolom jolom) or the chaos was the initial state of the universe until the light and darkness came to be. But even after the chaos has settled, the earth was still a barren land until the divine intervention.
I like to think of the separation of light (the sky) and darkness (the earth) in this story as a slow process that just occurred on its own, not unlike how the heavy elements fall down to the bottom of the glass. As this story further progresses, it also reveals the creation of the humanity and suffering on earth, which will be addressed later on this series.
So, back to that initial comment on gods throwing mud into water. At first, I found the idea of the universe being created out of a handful of dirt to be rather ridiculous and thought to myself, “How the hell am going to I compare it to other stories?”. As usual, I was wrong and as it turns out, there are whole sets of myths like this that the academics even had a name for it: the earth-diver. It is the most common creation story in the North American Indian mythology[5], and I was delighted to find many similarities between the stories of the Native Americans and Mongolians.
In one Native American creation myth, humans lived on a floating island suspended in the sky and the earth was all covered in water. One day, a Sky Woman fell to the watery earth.
“…Water animals already existed on the earth, so far below the floating island two birds saw the Sky Woman fall. Just before she reached the waters they caught her on their backs and brought her to the other animals. Determined to help the woman they dove into the water to get mud from the bottom of the seas. One after another the animals tried and failed. Finally, Little Toad tried and when he reappeared his mouth was full of mud. The animals took it and spread it on the back of Big Turtle. The mud began to grow and grow and grow until it became the size of North America.”[6]
The earth was created out of a handful of mud, mostly brought back to the surface from the bottom of the oceans by animals or divine figures, hence the name, earth-diver. This Iroquois myth is very similar to another Mongolian creation story of the land:
“In the beginning, there was no earth and only water and air made up the universe. Ochirvaani god lived in the sky and yearned to create land instead of this expansive water. But he could not single-handedly complete such task and went on to search for a partner. Ochirvaani god went on a journey together with Sitatapatra (Цагаан Шүхэрт) and they spotted a giant turtle in the middle of the ocean. To create the land, Sitataptra grabbed a handful of dirt from the bottom and placed it on the belly of the turtle. The small land grew bigger and bigger and soon, the turtle was nowhere to be seen… While the gods slept soundly on the land, a demon saw them and carried them on its back, intending to throw them in the water. However, the demon could not run to the edge of the massive land that covered the universe. In exhaustion, it fled, leaving the gods behind. When gods woke up, Ochirvaani god said, “The land saved us from an evil-doer who wanted us drowned.”[7]
Just like the Iroquois myth, the earth is created on the back of the turtle by someone bringing mud from beneath the waters. There are many other creation stories similar to this both in the Native American and Mongolian myths, albeit it being Buddha spreading a pinch of dirt or divine figures sending beavers or water birds down to bring mud from the bottom. These similarities were a pleasant surprise especially considering that some scientific studies[8] trace back the origin of Native Americans to Mongolians.
Upon reading these creation stories, the Buddhist influences were quite evident in almost every story that I encountered (I am still in the process of grasping the idea Quormusta Tengri and how to interpret it). But I end this first part of the Mongolian myths and folktales series with my favorite story:
“In the beginning, an infinite expanse of water covered the entire universe. Quormusta Tengri sent Galbingaa bird, which had a lifespan of thirty thousand years. In every ten thousand year, Galbingaa bird would lay one egg. Hovering over the never-ending body of water, Galbingaa bird could not find a spec of land to lay its egg. In desperation, the bird plucked its own feathers and laid its egg in the tiny feathery nest. In the coming years, fine grains of dust collected over the nest and soon grew into becoming the entire land.”[9]
I like this story because it reminds me that life finds a way even in the face of most desperate times and also makes me hopeful that even the tiniest bits of contributions collected over the years can make up something great, like the fine grains of dust making up the entire universe. Maybe this series is my grain of dust, an attempt at understanding my own culture and would hopefully inspire others to do so.
Thanks for reading, little cosmic dusts.
[1] Creation from the Void: Crash Course World Mythology #2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eVFgfQ2694&t=186s
[2] Theogony, Hesiod. https://msu.edu/~tyrrell/theogon.pdf
[3] Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. https://biblehub.com/genesis/1-2.htm
[4] Домог үлгэр. Б.Батцэцэг, П.Оюунгэрэл. Уб., 2018 он. 51 дэх тал.
[5] Earth-Diver: Creation of the Mythopoeic Male. Alan Dundes. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 64, №5, Part 1 (Oct., 1962), pp. 1032–1051
[6] Iroquois Creation Myth. http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_12.html
[7] Домог үлгэр. Б.Батцэцэг, П.Оюунгэрэл. Уб., 2018 он. 47–50 дахь тал.
[8] The Central Siberian Origin for Native American Y Chromosomes. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707617698
[9] Домог үлгэр. Б.Батцэцэг, П.Оюунгэрэл. Уб., 2018 он. 44 дэх тал.
