Alan Gua- Mongolian FigureMortal"Divine Ancestress"

The Golden Light

The Borjigin traced their blood back to a blue-grey wolf called Börte Chino and a fallow doe called Gua Maral. Generations later, their descendant Dobun Mergen married Alan Gua, known as Alan the Fair. The Secret History of the Mongols records that Dobun Mergen died while their two eldest sons were still young.

After his death, Alan Gua bore three more sons: Buqu Qatagi, Buqatu Salji, and Bodonchar Munqaq. Her older sons whispered about her. Alan Gua gathered all five and told them what had happened. Each night, a shining golden being entered through the smoke hole of her tent, caressed her belly, and slipped away at dawn as a yellow dog in the light of the sun and moon. Her younger sons were sons of Heaven. She told her older boys to stop their whispering.

To drive the lesson home, the Secret History says she gave each son a single arrow and told him to break it. Each did, easily. Then she bound five arrows together and told them to try again. None could. Alone, they would snap. Together, they would hold.

Bodonchar

The youngest of the three celestial sons, Bodonchar Munqaq, seemed at first to be the least of them. The Secret History describes him as dull and silent. His brothers dismissed him. But Bodonchar left camp on his own, tamed a wild hawk, and used it to hunt along the Onon River. He lived on what the hawk caught and what he could scavenge. When he found a group of people living without a chief, he gathered them under his authority.

Rashid al-Din's Compendium of Chronicles adds that Bodonchar raided a neighboring camp and took captives, proving himself bolder and sharper than his brothers had believed. From Bodonchar descended the Borjigin clan. Through that line, the golden light that had entered Alan Gua's tent passed down the generations until it reached Temüjin, born to a minor chieftain on the steppe, who became Genghis Khan.