Divination with Khulil as Practiced by Mongolians

Abstract

Introduction. Various collections of Mongolian xylographs and manuscripts may contain works on divination practice with eight khulils. What does the word khulil mean? Why does one use eight khulils? What are the texts devoted to the khulil divination? This article deals with the practice of khulil divination in Mongolia, while introducing a Mongolian text devoted to this form of divination. Results. The divination practice goes back to the oldest Chinese source on divination Yijing (I Ching, Book of Changes, about the seventh century BC). Divination is carried out with the help of the trigram, or the three dashes, which are the result of casting coins or of some other method. A combination of trigrams means a particular future. These three lines are called khulil in Mongolian (gua in Chinese). Divination by 8 gua, or 8 khulils, and 64 (8 × 8) or 512 (8 × 8 × 8) combinations is the most common form of divination in China. Later, each trigram was represented by a year of the 12-year animal cycle so that the ninth year was the beginning of the next cycle. Thus, each of the 8 years symbolizes a certain trigram, or khulil, according to the ordinal number of the latter. Granted the number of Mongolian manuscripts on khulil divination in various collections, this divination form was widely practiced by Mongolians. By way of introducing the literature on the subject, the present article presents the Russian translation of the initial fragment of manuscript MN 1145 originating from Ts. Damdinsuren museum in Ulaanbaatar. This is a Mongolian translation from Chinese made relatively late that has few traces of Mongolization or efforts of adaptation to nomadic realia. Besides concerns for the illnesses of relatives or issues of choosing a son-in-law or a bride, which are of a universal character, the most popular topics are questions about farming, such as: should one expect rain? what will be the harvest of grain and raw silk? Also, there are many questions related to promotion and career, e.g., passing exams for the degree of an official. The text contains numerous Sinicisms, including idioms, expressions, and names of Chinese astrological signs; there is also a reference to buying a jins, which points to the Manchu period. Notably, neither Tibetan items nor Buddhist deities are mentioned in the text.

Keywords

• divination
• the written tradition of the mongolians