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Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski Project Gutenberg File Converted into HTML pages by Nalanda Digital Library under Etext Conversion Project (ECP)
PART-4
CHAPTER XLV - THE VISION OF THE LIVING BUDDHA OF MAY 17, 1921
"I prayed and saw that which is hidden from the eyes of the people. A vast plain was spread before me surrounded by distant mountains. An old Lama carried a basket filled with heavy stones. He hardly moved. From the north a rider appeared in white robes and mounted on a white horse. He approached the Lama and said to him:
"'Give me your basket. I shall help you to carry them to the Kure.'
"The Lama handed his heavy burden up to him but the rider could not raise it to his saddle so that the old Lama had to place it back on his shoulder and continue on his way, bent under its heavy weight. Then from the north came another rider in black robes and on a black horse, who also approached the Lama and said:
"'Stupid! Why do you carry these stones when they are everywhere about the ground?'
"With these words he pushed the Lama over with the breast of his horse and scattered the stones about the ground. When the stones touched the earth, they became diamonds. All three rushed to raise them but not one of them could break them loose from the ground. Then the old Lama exclaimed:
"'Oh Gods! All my life I have carried this heavy burden and now, when there was left so little to go, I have lost it. Help me, great, good Gods!'
"Suddenly a tottering old man appeared. He collected all the diamonds into the basket without trouble, cleaned the dust from them, raised the burden to his shoulder and started out, speaking with the Lama:
"'Rest a while, I have just carried my burden to the goal and I am glad to help you with yours.'
"They went on and were soon out of sight, while the riders began to fight. They fought one whole day and then the whole night and, when the sun rose over the plain, neither was there, either alive or dead, and no trace of either remained. This I saw, Bogdo Hutuktu Khan, speaking with the Great and Wise Buddha, surrounded by the good and bad demons! Wise Lamas, Hutuktus, Kampos, Marambas and Holy Gheghens, give the answer to my vision!"
This was written in my presence on May 17th, 1921, from the words of the Living Buddha just as he came out of his private shrine to his study. I do not know what the Hutuktu and Gheghens, the fortune tellers, sorcerers and clairvoyants replied to him; but does not the answer seem clear, if one realizes the present situation in Asia?
Awakened Asia is full of enigmas but it is also full of answers to the questions set by the destiny of humankind. This great continent of mysterious Pontiffs, Living Gods, Mahatmas and readers of the terrible book of Karma is awakening and the ocean of hundreds of millions of human lives is lashed with monstrous waves.
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| PREJEVALSKY'S EXPLORATION IN MONGOLIA |
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PREJEVALSKY'S EXPLORATION IN MONGOLIA
Prjevalsky's travel among the natives of Mongolia
| Prejevalsky's Exploration in Mongolia |
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The renowned traveller and explorer, Colonel Prejevalsky, to whom a reference is made in our St. Petersburg letter, arrived there on his return journey from Mongolia, the earlier part of the present month. A correspondent of the London Times says that this expedition of Colonel Prejevalsky, lasting two years, and costing over 43,000 roubles of government money, has been the most remarkable one ever undertaken in the wilds of Mongolia and Tibet. The intrepid explorer, as his published letters have already shown, literally fought his way into these inhospitable regions, at the head of a well-armed party of thirteen Cossacks, four grenadiers, and a host of other attendants; and, as he stated at Moscow, more than one hundred natives, who at different times waylaid the explorers, were made to feel the deadly effects of the Berdan rifle-fire. The exact numbers of the killed and wounded were stated in the extremely interesting letters addressed to the Grand Duke, at various stages of the journey. This is scientific exploration with a vengeance, and goes beyond anything that Mr. Stanley did with his 'six-shooter' among the negroes of Africa.
In the last of the above-mentioned series of letters, the colonel also expressed the ardent with of the Mongolian natives to be taken under Russian protection, and shielded from Chinese oppression. The same idea he has again impressed upon his friends, in answer to their many inquiries, as they greeted the tall, sun-burnt traveller. The Viedomosti, referring to this, says, "Among the natives visited by Colonel Prejevalsky there exists a deep conviction that sooner or later the 'great white czar' will enter their country and take them under his domination. At one place the explorer showed a portrait of the emperor to one of the natives, who went into raptures over it, and soon large crowds of inhabitants, with women and children from the neighbouring districts, gathered round the colonel and implored him to show them the likeness of the 'white czar.'"
The regions visited by Colonel Prejevalsky are generally supposed to be, nominally at least, within the dominions of the emperor of China. No wonder, therefore, that rumors of a protest have come from Peking. The grenadiers who accompanied the expedition have been promoted, and, besides receiving pecuniary gratifications, have had their portraits distributed throughout the regiment. Colonel Prejevalsky has given a number of Russian names to newly-discovered places, such as the 'Moscow-Chain,' the 'Kremlin Rock,' and the 'Czar-liberator's Mountain.' One hundred and fifty photographs and sketches were taken, and a large number of geological and other specimens were collected. The expedition will no doubt have important scientific, and perhaps other results.
-- Bibliographical information: Science, Vol. 7, No. 159 (Feb. 19, 1886).
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by Junius B. Wood, National Geographic Magazine, June 1922
Passengers Carry Wood For The Locomotive
At regular intervals the train stops and the conductor plods along the side, shouting "Tovarishchi--za drovami"! It is the call for the "comrades" to pile out and carry sticks from the neighboring woodpiles to the locomotive. It is a crude study in communism (see photo "Where Communism Is Tested").
Most of the passengers, women and girls as well as men, make their way leisurely across the fields. Some climb on the tender, and the fuel is loaded as by a bucket brigade at an old-time fire. Others stretch themselves in the sun to doze, gossip aimlessly, stroll with the girls, picking the yellow flowers or carving on the white birch trunks, or hang out of the car windows, unmindful of the gibes from the more industrious fellow-passengers.
For thousands the railroad provides the only home. An official may get a passenger coach or private car for himself and his family, but the proletariat--men, women, and children--are herded by dozens in boxcars, anybody who can crowd in being free to pick out a corner for a home (see photo "The 'Last Word' in Residences in Chita").
In Chita and Verkhne-Udinsk hundreds are housed in boxcar cities, cooking, eating, and living in the open during the day and at night sleeping on rough shelves which have been built into the cars.
Some are on the move, getting nearer Soviet Russia whenever a locomotive can be spared to pull their trains, while others have been waiting for months. Included in this westbound tide are about a hundred American artisans each month, bound for Soviet Russia--"A country where men are free," as they explain.
Eastbound were long trains carrying 20,000 Chinese refugees from Ungern's sack of Urga in Mongolia--wounded soldiers, merchants with Russian wives and Eurasian children, coolies, and an occasional European--being transported by Soviet Russia back to China.
At night every spare spot in the railroad stations--tables, benches, the tiled floors, the platform outside when the weather is good--furnishes a bed. Women muffled under blankets with babies and children; soldiers with rifles and mess kits under their arms, and travelers with their stale bread, pans, and bundles snore contentedly in the fetid atmosphere.
Subudai Ba'adur (c1176-1248) 15-04-2004
 Text copied from: "Genghis Khan & the Mongol COncuests 1190-1400" from Stephen Turnbull by Osprey Publishing, see Sources.
In most accounts of the Mongol conquests Genghis Khan's subordinates come over as two-dimensional characters, mounted automatons moving as stereotypically as the myth of Mongol supremacy would always have us believe. Yet in the service of Genghis Khan were many leaders of great military talent who were personalities in their own right. One of them was Subadai Ba'adur, whose name variously appears as Subedei, Sabatai, or Subodei. He was born in about 1176 the son of a blacksmith of the Uriangqadai clan and joined Temuchin's band when he was still a youth in about 1190. Along with his brother, ]elemei, Subadai rose quickly in Mongol service and commanded cavalry at the age of 25. Subadai appears to have been a heavyweight in more ways than one, and had to travel to battles in some form of carriage to spare the backs of the slight Mongol ponies!
Subadai is the exemplar of that remarkable and commendable loyalty shown by subordinate generals of the Mongols towards their ruling Khan. ' As felt protects from the wind,' he promised to Genghis Khan, 'so I will ward off your enemies.' His first independent command was in 1205-06 when he successfully pursued and killed Kutu and Chila'un, sons of the defeated Merki leader, Tokhto'a. Subadai commanded a tumen (10,000 men) in the wars against the Xixia, and we read of him being given joint command of the 3,000 Mongols sent in pursuit of the Shah of Khwarazm after the Samarkand operation. When the Shah died in 1221, Subadai was one of the commanders entrusted with the reconnaissance mission 'to the Western lands' that took the Mongols into Russia for the first time.
This operation was a remarkable feat that brings great credit upon Subadai. Having destroyed several towns in Azerbaijan, the Mongols were bribed to spare Tabriz, and he and his men wintered in eastern Armenia. In 1221 the two generals defeated King Giorgi the Brilliant of Georgia near Tbilisi. From there they returned to Azerbaijan and were on the point of marching against Baghdad to destroy the Abbasid Caliphate, but instead returned to Georgia, defeating another Georgian army using the tactic of false retreat. They then swung north and advanced into southern Russia and captured Astrakhan. Pushing on across the river Don they penetrated the Crimean peninsula and were in the Ukraine to winter the snows of 1222-23. In 1223 they began to return home, only to be intercepted by an allied enemy force. These were the soldiers Subadai and his colleagues led to their deaths at the battle of the Kalka river.
 Their earlier conquest of the territory of the Shah of Khwarazm had taken the Mongols as far as the borders of Azerbaijan, at which point Subadai and Jebe asked permission to proceed north and reconnoitre the 'Western lands'. This led to the conquest of Azerbaijan and Georgia, after which they came upon the nomadic Polovtsians, referred to in the chronicles as Kipchaks or Cumans (Kumans). By 1223 the Mongols had completed these operations and regrouped in the southern Russian steppes.
At that time what we now know as Russia and the Ukraine were ruled by a number of princes who jealously defended their own territories. These Russian princes would appear to have had no intelligence about the campaigns and conquests of Genghis Khan, and the first information that a new enemy had appeared in the southern steppes was brought to Mstislav Mstislavitch in Galich his Polovtsian father-in-law, Khan Kotyan, whose nomadic territory lay close to the eastern most bend of the Dnieper. The Chronicle of. Novgorod tells us:
He brought them numerous presents: horses, came/s, buffaloes and girls. And he presented these gifts to them, and said the following, 'Today the Tartars took away our land and tomorrow they will come and take away yours.'
The name Tartars or Tatars is the expression often used in Russian source materials for the Mongol hordes. The original Tartars were a rival tribe wiped out by Genghis Khan, but the expression may also derive from Tartarus meaning 'Hell', the supposed origin of these strange warriors who had appeared from nowhere.
Map copied from: "Genghis Khan & the Mongol COncuests 1190-1400" from Stephen Turnbull by Osprey Publishing, see Sources.
Mstislav of Galich immediately summoned a council of war in Kiev. The two other southern regional princes attended it: Mstislav Romanovich of Kiev and Mstislav Svyatoslavich of Chernigov. They made the decision that the Russians and Polovtsians should move east to seek out and destroy the Mongols wherever they might be found. When the expeditionary force was on its way the Mongol envoys met the main body at Pereyaslavl and tried to persuade them from fighting. But when a second attempt at parley failed the army crossed the Dnieper and marched eastwards across the steppes for nine days, little knowing that they had been misled by a Mongol false retreat conducted on a grand scale. Here they encountered a Mongol army at the Kalka river and were heavily defeated:
...his Kuman warriors failed, and retreated in such haste that they galloped over the Russian camp and trampled it underfoot. And there was not time for the Russian forces to form ranks. And so it came to complete confusion, and a terrible slaughter resulted.
Mstislav of Kiev defended himself inside a hastily erected stockade until he was persuaded to give himself up by Ploskyn, a Cossack leader fighting for the Mongols who swore 'on the holy cross' that Prince Mstislav would be released for ransom, but:
...this accursed Ploskyn lied, and he bound the princes hand and feet and turned them over to the Tartars. The princes were taken by the Tartars and crushed beneath platfoms placed over their bodies on top of which the Tartars celebrated their victory banquet.
Following the death of ]ebe on the return journey, Subadai successfully led the Mongol army home having covered around 6,500 km (4,000 miles) in less than three years.
Subadai may have served in Genghis Khan's last campaign against the Xixia, but the next action for which he is renowned was the successful siege of the ]in's southern capital of Kaifeng in 1232, where Subadai had to contend with thunder crash bombs thrown by catapult. That was the last Subadai was to see of campaigning in China, although in 1257 his son, Uriyangkhadai, led an army into the country now known as Vietnam, and his grandson, Bayan, was to accomplish the destruction of the Southern Song in 1276.
Subadai's last and greatest campaign was the invasion of Russia and eastern Europe, described in detail above. Batu, son of Jochi, was the overall leader, but Subadai was the actual commander in the field, and as such was present in both the northern and southern campaigns against Russia and the Ukraine. He commanded the central column that moved against Hungary. While Kaidu's northern force won the battle of Leignitz and Kadan's army triumphed in Transylvania, Subadai was waiting for them on the Hungarian plain. The newly reunited army then withdrew to the Sajo river where they inflicted the tremendous defeat on King Bela IV at the battle of Mohi. Subadai masterminded the operation, and it was to prove one of his greatest victories.
The king had summoned a council of war at Gran, an important settlement on the south of the Danube bend upstream from Buda and Pest. As Batu was advancing on Hungary from the north-east it was decided to concentrate at Pest and then head north- east to confront the Mongol army. When news of the Hungarians' apparent intentions reached the Mongol commanders they slowly withdrew, drawing their enemies on. The Mongols took a stand near Eger to the east of the river Sajo, on a flat plain bounded to the north by the famous wine-growing area of Tokay. It was a strong position. Woodland prevented their ranks from being reconnoitred, while across the river on the plain of Mohi, the Hungarian army appeared to be very exposed.
Subadai launched the battle of Mohi during the night of 10-11 Apri11241, only one day after his compatriots had won the great battle of Leignitz. One division crossed the river in secret to advance on the Hungarian camp from the south-east. The main body began to cross the Sajo by the bridge at Mohi. This met with some resistance, so catapults were used to clear the opposite bank. When the crossing was completed the other contingent attacked at the same time. The result was panic, and to ensure that the Hungarians did not fight desperately to the last man the Mongols left an obvious gap in their encirclement. As they had planned, the fleeing Hungarians poured through this opened trap which led to a swampy area. When the Hungarian knights split up, the light Mongol archers picked them off at will and it was later noted that corpses littered the countryside for the space of a two days' journey. Two archbishops and three bishops were killed at the Sajo. By late 1241 Subadai was discussing plans to invade Austria, Italy and Germany, when the news came of the death of Ogodei Khan, and the Mongols withdrew.
With his return to Mongolia Subadai's name disappears from history. Perhaps he retired from active service, because we know he was dead by 1248. He remains one of Genghis Khan's most celebrated generals, and there is a statue of him in Ulan Bator, honouring a fine soldier and a loyal and honourable follower of the Mongol Khans.
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