The Ritual of Ancestor Worship among the Ordus Mongols

The ritual of worshipping Toloi Ejen, the youngest child of CinggisQaan, had been maintained in the Ordus region in Inner Mongolia until1956. In Mongolian society, based on ultimogeniture, the youngestchild is considered to be "the son who keeps the furnace and fire" and inheritsall the property from his forefathers. At the same time, theyoungest child is under an obligation to perform rituals to worship hisfamily's ancestors.In the Ordus region, the ritual clan, which administers the ancestralritual for the youngest son, Toloi Ejen, is called "dargad". The darqadusually worship Toloi Ejen, but they also worship the successiveancestors of the Cinggis Qaan family, on behalf of Toloi Ejen. Theritual in which Cinggis Qaan's ancestors are worshipped is administeredby the same darqad, the ritual clan worshipping Toloi Ejen, and theserituals are called yaril-un tayily-a.This paper will focus on the Toloi Ejen ritual during the era of thelate Ching dynasty and the early Republic of China, and analysehistorical documents. Analysis will also be made of the social structureof the ritual clan, the darqad, which had been administering the ToloiEjen ritual, mainly on the basis of data and materials obtained throughthe field work of the writer. Following that, the actual state of the ToloiEjen ritual is described and particulary, the connection between theToloi Ejen ritual and yaril-un tayily-a will be analyzed. By this, themulti-layered structure of the ancestor worship ritual of the OrdusMongols will be examined. The Toloi Ejen ritual and yaril-un tayily-aare both political rituals to demonstrate the superiority of the prestigiousBorjigin family from which Cinggis Qaan was descended.