by Joshua Fogel
Several days later, Chinggis attempted to ask Changchun what he thought of the quality of Yelü Chucai’s poems. The Daoist master answered that they were fine specimens, but when asked if he might like to meet the man, he replied that he had no special desire to do so. Finding this suspicious, Chinggis summoned Yelü Chucai and asked him the very same question. The young man with the full beard responded in his always resonant voice full of pride:
“I think these are excellent poems. But why must I meet this old man?”
“Hmm, Changchun replied in the same manner about you,” said Chinggis with a smile.
He nonetheless could not understand why these two men had no interest in meeting each other. When he mentioned the point to Yelü Chucai, the latter replied:
“Probably the master looked down on the fact that, while I follow the great khan’s armies and am always by his side, I do nothing for the great khan.”
“But why do you have no curiosity about the Daoist master?” asked Chinggis.
“Because, despite the fact that the Daoist master traveled an immense distance to come to the great khan’s camp, there’s not a thing he can do for the great khan.”
“What do you mean by ‘a thing’?” asked Chinggis.
“I am making sure that the name of the great khan will not be erased from history in the future,” answered Yelü Chucai, “and he can do nothing to help me.”
Chinggis’s expression quickly hardened as he said:
“Why do you say that my name may be erased? My name and that of the Mongols are indestructible in the realm of history.”
Betraying not the least timidity, the young man responded:
“I believe, unfortunately, that the name of the great khan will not be preserved in history, for the great khan’s subordinates have committed untold acts of butchery.”
When he heard this, Chinggis’s expression changed, and trembling with rage, he stood up. He walked into the adjoining room but soon returned and said in utter seriousness:
“I should have you put to death for this, but any punishment would be too light for what you have just said. Until I can come up with an appropriate punishment, I shall desist from having you executed.”
Then he blurted out with a smile: “You really can be terribly rude!”
Yelü Chucai’s words had left no significant unpleasantness for Chinggis, but in any case he did not intend to punish this young man of whom he was so fond.
Several days later, he again summoned Yelü Chucai and said to him:
“I shall soon learn the Way from the Daoist master. You will serve me at that time.”
This may in fact have been his punishment. As unofficial emissaries, Dian Zhenhai, Liu Zhonglu, and Alixian took down the words of the Daoist master. As official representatives, three court attendants did the same. Yelü Chucai was under orders to be in attendance at this meeting as well.
However, Chinggis’s plan to place these two extraordinary, defiant intellectuals together had to be put off for six months because of a sudden Uyghur uprising. To crush it, Chinggis mobilized his own army, and he fixed the day to listen to Daoist master Changchun speak of the Way to a propitious date in the tenth month of the year, some six months away. Changchun requested to spend the time until then in Samarkand, and he moved with a guard of over 1,000 cavalry to that lovely city to the north some 20 days’ journey away, which was now recovering from the depredations of war.
When Chinggis set out at the head of an army unit, neither Changchun nor Yelü Chucai was there. Numerous Uyghurs lived in the cities of Khorazm, and no small rebellion led by them could cover its own traces. For Chinggis, those who so much as harbored the idea of rebelling against him had to be eradicated from the earth, as one pulls grass out by its roots. The city of Herat was attacked by one of Chinggis’s commanders, its walls burned to the ground, and all of its residents massacred. The city of Merv came under attack a second time, and only a handful of its residents survived.
It was early summer when Chinggis’s forces attacked the city of Ghazna. He was looking for a new camp to escape the summer heat of the Hindukush. A messenger arrived at his new tent from the two units under Jebe and Sübe’etei, with whom contact had for a time been severed. He reported to Chinggis:
—The two army units circled around the southern shore of the Caspian Sea and crossed the Caucasus Mountains. They defeated the allied armed forces of the Kipchaks, the Aas, and the Rus, advanced farther west, and were about to enter Bulghar.
The messenger was reporting on the movements of the expeditionary army six months previous. About one month later, separate messengers arrived from each of the army units.
—We have defeated the Bulghar army everywhere, destroyed their cities, and turned to take the road into Russia.
This particular messenger was able to arrive comparatively quickly, and thus was reporting on military actions of only three months earlier.
The tracks taken by his two units seemed even to Chinggis to bear something of a dubious, almost haunting aspect. This was no longer the will of Chinggis but the wills of Jebe and Sübe’etei being carried out. Like arrows that had to continue cutting through the air until they fell to the ground, the two Mongol wolves had perforce to chase after the enemy, as if this were the ultimate will of their people. There was no respite from this and hence no end. They simply continued running until they expired.
According to the messenger’s report, the operations of the two army units were like a fire burning over a prairie. After they passed through, nothing remained. Cities that resisted were turned completely into ruins, with no city walls, streets, people, or even trees and shrubs remaining intact. Iraq Ajemi, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Georgia, Syria, Armenia, Kipchak, and Bulghar were all territories over which the blue wolves passed, and all of their important cities were sacrificed to plunder and slaughter.
On the day he received the messengers from Jebe and Sübe’etei, Chinggis twice sensed the impossibility of forestalling their movements on his own. It seemed to him that he could only assist them. By contrast, he had not even received a report from his eldest son, Jochi, who had marched north from the Syr Darya. Chinggis issued an edict congratulating his two commanders Jebe and Sübe’etei for their exploits on the battlefield. To Jochi he issued orders to complete his campaign on the Kipchak plain with alacrity, head north of the Black and Caspian seas, subjugate the peoples living there, and then join up with the forces of Jebe and Sübe’etei.
A messenger arrived regularly every few weeks from Muqali, who was continuing with the overwhelming task of pacifying the state of Jin. Although this campaign had no conspicuous developments, Muqali worked vigorously to conquer the northern portion of Jin. The cities in this area had come under Mongol dominion and then reverted to the Jin after Chinggis’s withdrawal. The present attack on these strongholds was being carried out by Muqali’s forces alone. Chinggis issued a respectfully worded edict of appreciation to Muqali for his efforts every time a messenger reported his accomplishments in camp.
At the end of the eighth month of the year, Daoist master Changchun returned to Chinggis’s camp from Samarkand. Chinggis, though, had decided to lead his entire army to the north and had moved in that direction. On the way toward Samarkand, the propitious day in the tenth month came on which it had been agreed he would listen to Changchun discourse on the Way. On this day, Chinggis had a splendid curtain installed, abstained from contact with women, and adorned his room with lustrous candlelight.
Although Chinggis had Yelü Chucai serve him on this occasion, Chucai and Changchun merely bowed silently to each other and did not exchange a single word. Three or four days later, Chinggis again invited Changchun to speak about the Way. On this occasion as well, Yelü Chucai was in attendance, and again the two men said not a word to each other.
“The Way gives birth to heaven and nurtures the earth. The sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, demons and goblins, men and animals—all come from the Way. Some men know th
e greatness of the Way and some do not. The Way first spawns the creation of heaven and earth and only then gives birth to mankind. Only when men were born did the light of the divine shine forth and move as if in flight. For food they ate everything alive. With the passage of time, their bodies became heavy, and the light of the divine flickered out. This is because their passions grew deeper.
“Originally, the great khan was a celestial being. Heaven is using the great khan to defeat tyrannical, violent men. When you overcome these grave difficulties and accomplish this task, the great khan will perforce ascend to heaven and become a celestial being once again. While you remain on earth, your tone of voice must drop, your appetites must diminish, you must restrain from slaughter, and you must peacefully protect your body. If you do all these things, long life will naturally reside in the great khan’s body.
“The divine is pure. He who follows the Way and obtains it will act with prudence and discretion day and night. If you act with goodness and pursue the Way, you shall rise to the level of heaven and become a saint.
“The way for the great khan to train is to promote secret charities without and strengthen the mind within. Having compassion toward the people, protecting the lives of the masses, and bringing a great peace to the world are to be your external practices; protecting the divine is your internal practice.”
These words poured forth from Daoist Master Changchun. Chinggis listened attentively to the master’s words from start to finish on these two occasions, but both times when “great khan” came dashing out of Changchun’s mouth, frequently he felt he was being cut short. For what Chinggis was actually doing was entirely in contravention of the Way. Yet the time spent listening to Master Changchun was quiet, austere time such as Chinggis had to this point never experienced. Although punctuated by the sounds of cracking whips outside, listening to these words of the Daoist master was by no means unpleasant.
Chinggis pitched camp outside Samarkand and did not enter the city. The area in and around the city had already revived completely from the conflagrations of war, and all manner of peoples lived there, pursuing their lives in a peaceful manner. The majority of residents were Uyghurs, and above them Han, Khitans, and Tanguts employed a great number of Uyghurs. Among the local officials were numerous Turks, Iranians, Arabs, and countless others with eyes of differing shades. And walking amid all these different peoples were Mongol soldiers.
Mongol troops, whether high or low in status, all enjoyed a luxurious life, frequenting restaurants and drinking establishments with women of different ethnic backgrounds and walking among the orchards on the outskirts of the city. Although corpses had been strewn all over this city and hell fires had been lapping at its buildings, after only two years, one could not even imagine those bygone days, looking at the prosperity of the city now.
Among the cities of Khorazm that the Mongols had attacked, Samarkand was the first to return to peace, and with the passage of a few more years, all the cities of Khorazm would follow this path. And not only Khorazm, for all the states of the Caspian and Black Sea regions, as yet unknown to Chinggis, which had been conquered by Jebe and Sübe’etei, would follow a similar pattern. In this sense Samarkand proved to be a model for many other cities in the future.
For some reason, though, Chinggis had no interest whatsoever in entering the revived Samarkand. There was a grand detached palace with luxurious pavilions and gardens that had been prepared for him, and if he had so desired, he could have released peacocks and elephants brought there from other conquered states. All of the officers and troops of his military units hoped to go into Samarkand, but Chinggis was resistant to doing so.
Chinggis pitched his camp at a site two days away from Samarkand and remained there until the eleventh month of the year. At that time, he announced that they would again move south for the winter months. As he had done since his youth, as his ancestors for countless generations had done, they had to fold up hundreds of tents, form themselves into large groups, and move, following the flocks with the seasons.
Chinggis decided that they would spend the winter at Buya Katur, in the mountains of northwestern India near the Indus River valley. Several days after he arrived at the new camp, Chinggis’s third son Ögedei, his entire body reeking from the stench of blood, came with his Mongol troops, who had spent many years in open warfare and who had eyes like those of wild animals, mountains of plunder, and Indian captives in a number roughly equal to that of his own troops. The Indians wore white cloths around their heads, so when seen from afar, Ögedei’s soldiers had appeared like troops with snow upon their heads.
When the New Year’s festivities for 1223 came to an end, Chinggis announced the return of military units to Khorazm, as they had expected. He was unable to have peace of mind unless he was back on the field of battle, or failing that, moving with his yurt.
The Mongol base camp and with it the principal military units once again marched through mountainous and desert regions toward Samarkand. Without entering the city, they moved the great distance to the upstream area of the Syr Darya and there pitched camp. While on this march, Chinggis listened on several occasions to Changchun discourse on the Way. Some of it he understood and some he did not, but he clearly enjoyed listening to Changchun speak on the subject.
While in camp on the bank of the Syr Darya, Chinggis often passed the time hunting. On one occasion, when he was in the midst of a hunt and in his last spurt in the attack on a group of raging wild boars that had run amok, he fell from his horse. Although he suffered no painful injuries, he could scarcely believe that he had actually fallen off a horse. At that point in time, Changchun said to him:
“The great khan has already reached an advanced age. The great khan’s fall was an exhortation from heaven. That the wild boars did not attack the great khan was a result of divine protection. Should you not reduce the number of hunts?”
For Chinggis, tumbling from his horse was a great blow. He had no choice but to follow Changchun’s words. Shortly after this incident, Changchun sought Chinggis’s permission to return home.
“Three full years have now passed since I left my home village by the sea. Originally, I responded to the great khan’s summons for a three-year period. The heaven-ordained time for my return has now arrived.”
Changchun had already asked twice for permission to return home, but Chinggis had not allowed it. Now, however, when he heard the Daoist master say that the “heaven-ordained time had arrived,” he saw no reason to detain him any longer.
Early in the third month of the year, Changchun left Chinggis’s camp, with Alixian as imperially designated emissary and Menggutai, Hela, and Bahai, among others, as vice-emissaries. Chinggis had a Mongol battalion guard Changchun on his journey to the east.
Soon after the Daoist master’s departure, Chinggis personally sensed a great change of heart. The desire to return to the foothills of Mount Burqan suddenly began to burn fiercely in his breast. He revealed this desire first to Qulan. Although five years had passed since they had left his home, Qulan had remained at his side the entire time.
“Should it be the wish of the great khan,” she said, “how could anyone oppose you?”
“Don’t you find the Mongolian plateau to your taste?” he asked.
“Why, do I have my own taste? My mind has always been one with that of the great khan. Even when the great khan lies in this very bed with concubines of other hair colors, my mind is one with that of the great khan.”
Qulan’s health had suffered while living on foreign soil for so long and always serving at Chinggis’s side, and she had for the past two years not shared a bed with him. Although she had once had a stout and radiant body, Qulan had grown emaciated, completely unlike her former self. Her skin, though, retained its tenacious luster like alabaster, and her eyes were even colder than before. Her grace, which was difficult to ignore, appeared along the lines of her tense cheeks, so that one could not say that her personal appearance had declined to any degr
ee whatsoever.
“If the great khan so desires, who am I to interpose an objection? Were I, however, to describe my own self-serving wish—” Qulan cut off her words midstream and stared directly at Chinggis.
“What?” he asked. “If you had a wish, what would it be?”
“I have heard that on the other side of the Himalayas there is a great and as yet unconquered kingdom. It is a hot land in which immense elephants live. It is the land where Buddhism arose, where men wear white turbans on their heads, and where women cover their heads in white cloth. It is a bit strange to me that the great khan does not want to bring this land under his dominion. What’s more, they say it is a strong land with a mighty army that holds untold wealth.”
“Perhaps I do not fully understand you, Qulan. You do not want the land on the far side of the Himalayas, but you do seem to want the ferocious battle that will ensue there.”
“To be sure,” replied Qulan, “I have lived together with the great khan through great difficulties. Neither a khan who would be king nor a khan who would sit upon a gem-bedecked chair in the Jade Palace did I wish to be with at all. Great khan, there is no task too difficult for you. Mongol troops now ride freely over the whole world. If there were a task that the great khan found difficult, then it might be crossing the Himalayas, traversing the Indus River, and confronting in battle large herds of elephants covering the surface of the earth, shaking as they came, and the soldiers guarding them.”
“Qulan, would your health be able to endure this? The Indus River is immense, and the snow covering the Himalayan peaks continues without end.”
“Great khan, was not the river to which we abandoned our son Kölgen greater than the Indus? And greater than the expanses of snow on the peaks of the Himalayas? I have gone as far as throwing Kölgen into it. I have no fear whatsoever about throwing my own life in.”