Sejarah Abadi

                                wawoo


which can be rendered as “medical master,” and tölgechin with pu-jen,
“diviner” or “soothsayer.”3 As Roná-Tas rightly concludes, bö’e is the generic
term for shaman, while tölgechin designates the more specialized diviner. The
difference between the two is substantial: the bö’e/shaman conducts his business
by means of spiritual quests or trips, and the tölgechin/diviner through a
search for signs provided by burnt bones, bird flights, dreams, or even dice.4
Of the two, the bö’e enjoyed the higher status in Mongolian culture, but
both were extensively used by all segments of the populace. They of course
treated the sick, but are most often encountered divining.5 Their ability to
foretell the future was greatly prized and a crucial element in Mongolian political
culture. Future events, the rise of Chinggis Qan, the outcome of battles
were divined by anomalies of nature, reading stalks and, most frequently, by
scapulmancy: reading cracks on the burnt shoulder blades of sheep.6 Chinggis
Qan himself, according to Muslim tradition, read sheep bones during his campaigns
in India.7 Indeed, government business at large was conducted by such
methods. In the testimony of Rubruck, policy initiatives and the placement of
new encampments were in the hands of diviners.8
At one point, early in his career, Chinggis Qan had a chief shaman,
Kököchü, or Teb Tenggeri, who “revealed secrets and future events” and who
reported “heavenly foretokens” about future political developments.9 He soon
ran foul of the Mongol leader because of interference in family matters. He
was killed in 1206 and there seems to have been no replacement; very likely
Chinggis Qan and his successors preferred second opinions, alternative visions
of the future.
At first glance, this apparent reliance on divination may seem surprising for
so successful a political enterprise. But this is a modernist misunderstanding.
In Moore’s words, divination has a “positive latent function, that is, even
though magic fails to achieve its manifest ends, except by accident or coincidence,
it serves its practitioners and/or their society in other critically important
ways.”10 These other ways have been clearly delineated by Park: