The culture of Mongolia has been shaped by the country's nomadic tradition and its position at the crossroads of various empires and civilizations. Mongolian culture is influenced by the cultures of the Mongolic, Turkic, and East Asian peoples, as well as by the country's geography and its history of political and economic interactions with other nations.
Etügen Eke is an earth goddess in Tengrism. She was believed to be perpetually virginal. The word "etugen" associates with woman and daughter of Kayra. Also her name may have originated from Ötüken, the holy mountain of the earth and fertility goddess of the ancient Turks. Medieval sources sometimes pair Etugen with a male counterpart named Natigai or Nachigai, although this is probably a mistake based on a mispronunciation of Etugen. In mythology Etugen is often represented as a young woman riding a grey bull.
Traditional Mongolian medicine developed over many years among the Mongolian people. Mongolian medical practice spread across their empire and became an ingrained part of many other people's medical systems.
Üliger, tale is the general term given to tales and popular myths of the Mongols of north-east Asia. They are an important part of the oral traditions among the Buryats and other Siberian tribes, and among other functions, were used to orally transmit Buddhist birth stories. The tales are significant in Mongolian literature, given its long-standing tradition of passing stories on by word of mouth.
Isaac Jacob Schmidt was an Orientalist specializing in Mongolian and Tibetan. Schmidt was a Moravian missionary to the Kalmyks and devoted much of his labours to Bible translation.
Sengge was a Choros-Oirat prince and the chosen successor of his father Erdeni Batur to rule over the Dzungar. Sengge ruled over a section of the Dzungar from 1653 until his murder in 1671 by his two older half-brothers Tseten and Tsodba Batur. Sengge is best known for defeating Erincin Lobsang Tayishi, the third Altan Khan, in 1667 and eliminating the Altan Khanate as a potential future threat to the Dzungar.
Pan-Mongolism is an irredentist idea that advocates cultural and political solidarity of Mongols. The proposed territory, called "Greater Mongolia" or "Whole Mongolia" usually includes the independent state of Mongolia, the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, and the Russian region of Buryatia. Sometimes the autonomous republic Tuva, the Altai Republic and parts of Xinjiang, Zabaykalsky Krai, and Irkutsk Oblast are included as well. As of 2006, all areas in Greater Mongolia except Mongolia have non-Mongol majorities.
Mongolia under Qing rule was the rule of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China over the Mongolian Plateau, including the four Outer Mongolian aimags and the six Inner Mongolian aimags from the 17th century to the end of the dynasty. The term "Mongolia" is used here in the broader historical sense, and includes an area much larger than the modern-day state of Mongolia. By the early 1630s Ligdan Khan saw much of his power weakened due to the disunity of the Mongol tribes. He was subsequently defeated by the Later Jin dynasty and died soon afterwards. His son Ejei handed the Yuan imperial seal over to Hong Taiji in 1635, thus ending the rule of the Northern Yuan dynasty in Inner Mongolia. However, the Khalkha Mongols in Outer Mongolia continued to rule until they were overrun by the Dzungar Khanate in 1690, and they submitted to the Qing dynasty in 1691.
Gada Meiren was the Mongol leader of a struggle and, eventually, an uprising against the sale of the Khorchin grasslands to Han settlers in 1929.
Ulrike Ottinger is a German filmmaker and photographer.
Walther Heissig was an Austrian Mongolist.
Crazy Shagdar was a wandering lama from the Baarin banner in Inner Mongolia. He is the hero of a number of, usually quite critical, tales, in which he mocks corrupt nobles, other lamas etc. One tale deals with how he rebuked Chinese traders on a temple fair:
The annual Baarin temple fair had always attracted many traders from Inner China.
Shagdar came very close to the side of the tent of one of these traders, made a fireplace from three stones, pulled a Tibetan cooking pot from his bundle, then he helped himself to the water from the traders' clay ton and made a fire from their wood. When the eldest of the traders scolded him and called him crazy, Shagdar replied
That is how he swore at them in both Mongolian and Chinese.
Duguilang is a term for Mongolian secret societies from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These duguilangs typically articulated popular discontent with higher authorities, especially with banner princes. The name is derived from the circular lists in which the members signed petitions to authorities. The circular lists were meant to conceal who the ringleaders were. Duguilangs did not always limit themselves to petitions and lawsuits, but in a number of cases resorted to more violent means; in one resolution against the sale of banner land to Chinese firms, the reasons for forming a duguilang are given as
Because all we people have no water to drink, no land to live on, but cannot bear this, we have formed the duguilang society and will not follow the princes' orders.
The Two White Horses of Genghis Khan is a Mongolian epic in alliterative verse, with a number of different versions. It is one of the oldest Mongolian literary works and supposedly hails from the 13th/14th century.
Gerhard Doerfer was a German Turkologist, Altaicist, and philologist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages, especially Khalaj.
Manhan folk songs. Melody and lyrics are its two principal features. Its melody primarily follows boginoduu. In lyrics, it largely relies on Mandarin Chinese, also employing Mongolian Well-known tunes include “Wang’ai Lama Temple”, “Planting a Willow”, “Chairman Mao brings us Happiness”. Manhan employs a pentatonic scale. The intervals of octave or even over octave are frequently used.
In the pantheon of Mongolian shamanism and Tengrism, tngri constitute the highest class of divinities and are attested in sources going back to the 13th century. They are led by different chief deities in different documents and are divided into a number of different groups—including black (terrifying) and white (benevolent), and eastern and western. While there generally seem to be 99 tngri, some documents propose three others, and while they are generally the highest divinities, some liturgical texts propose an additional group of 33 chief gods alongside the tngri. They were invoked only by the highest shamans and leaders for special occasions; they continue to be venerated especially in black shamanism. Chief among the tngri are Qormusata Tngri and (Khan) Möngke Tngri.
Qormusta Tengri (Cyrillic: Хурмаста, Хормуста-тенгри, Хан-Хурмаста; from the Sogdian Хурмазта/Khurmazta; also transliterated as Qormusata (Tngri), Khormusta (Tngri), Hormusta (Tngri), and Qormusda (Tngri)) is a god in Tengrism and shamanism, described as the chief god of the 99 tngri and leader of the 33 gods. Hormusta is the counterpart of the Turkic and Mongol deities, Hürmüz and Kormos Khan.
Between 1205 and 1227, the Mongol Empire embarked on a series of military campaigns that ultimately led to the destruction of the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty in northwestern China. Hoping to both to plunder and acquire vassalage, Genghis Khan commanded some initial raids against the Western Xia before launching a full-scale invasion in 1209. This was the first major invasion conducted by Genghis, and his first major incursion into China.
Religion in Inner Mongolia is characterised by the diverse traditions of Mongolian-Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, the Chinese traditional religion including the traditional Chinese ancestral religion, Taoism, Confucianism and folk religious sects, and the Mongolian native religion. The region is inhabited by a majority of Han Chinese and a substantial minority of Southern Mongols, so that some religions follow ethnic lines.
