What was the Religion of the Mongols?

for the first video in my new series about religion philosophy in history I decided to look at a people that really aren't very well known for their religion or philosophy at all of course the Mongols are much more famous for their armies and more specifically their cavalry and the violent way in which they exploded onto the Asian and European scene in the end of the 13th century of course they have a very interesting religion and there's not just one religion when it comes to what religion were the Mongols although in this video I'm going to focus on one specifically of course you had various Mongols who at various times and in various places were Buddhist or a special branch of Christian known as nestorianism which is an interesting video topic in itself as well as obviously later on various counts becoming Muslim although in this video I'm going to look at the native religion of indeed the Mongols and other Turkic peoples peoples who were similar to the Mongols who came from a similar area and lived in the same nomadic lifestyle on the steppe and the name of this religion that is given is Tengri ism now I'm gonna be using the name Tengri ism you might have heard it called Tengri anism sometimes it's referred to as Central Asian shamanism or Mongolian shamanism or as various other names as well although most of them sounds similar to Tengger ism now of course the largest element integra ism in the word is Tengri and this is indeed the name of the god that is worshipped in Tengger ism it's one part of this religion and this is one of the symbols of Tangra ism which I'm going to look into and this is how it's spelled in the old Turkic script and actually this symbol is related to what the traditional home the traditional house building of the Mongolian society which we in the West call the yurt although I believe in Mongolian they call it the ger and as you can see the ceiling is then related to this symbol as well with the various spokes in the same 10 Griest symbol being the top of the year because the yurt in many ways is a smaller version a sort of metaphor for the universe in the Tengri belief system which makes it very interesting and of course as well it has a double meaning because this can be taken to be a room with the various lines going across it being the beaters used with which to beat the drum as drumming and other instruments are very important for the shamanic practices which are a part of Tengri ISM so of course the main feature of Tengger ISM is Tengri and Tengri is the sky god now Tengri does have various names in the various languages because obviously there are different groups who follow Tengri ISM as I already mentioned so in Mongolian and I'm gonna do my best to get these pronunciations right you have Ruth hangry and the tangley is indeed the same as Tengri in the Mongolian language although in Turkish she is called tunnel and this is then another name of course both of these come from the meaning of Heavenly Father in the various languages so Turek is one of the names that they use for the early turks of this period as well and in mongolian obviously tanget XA is another name that they have for this heavenly father figure as he's referred to and as well as having tangley who is the sky god he is the lord of the heavens and the skies in juxtaposition to him you have edgy and edgy is the mother goddess kind of the gaia type figure in the tangora's relief system representing the earth whereas Tengri is the god of the sky the celestial heavens sort of the other side of that so it's very much about balance Integra is Integra is related to quite a few other gods as well like Zeus in the Greek mythology and tier in the Old Norse mythology the Germanic mythology who actually once upon a time it's thought was the chief God in that mythology as opposed to Alden who later took over and was revered more than two although originally it's thought that he was on the same level as use in the Germanic pantheon of course the idea of a sky God is and an interesting thing about a link between Tengu ISM and various of these indo-european traditions especially of the sky gods so this figure that's called I believe juice proto-indo-european which is where we obviously get from Latin Deus which is God but also then Zeus in the Greek mythology in this figure of turd in the Viking mythology or the I should say the Norse or a pagan mythology is that this is much closer to the ten Griest belief than it is to other cultures of the Near East so thorns that are geographically closer to where Tengri ism was founded and was being worshiped and to those of various other Mediterranean and civilizations of the antiquity which is a very interesting link there and actually Tengger ism has also been brought into Europe thanks to various migrations of people like the Huns all the bowl gars or the castles for instance so in Hungaria before they converted to Christianity around a believer was the ninth or 10th century the people there actually had this idea of a ten risk belief set as well which is where you get the kind of World Tree idea as I think someone mentioned in a comment recently but that's just some extra linking in there so what about the fundamental tenants of Tengger ISM well first I'm gonna have a quick look at the creation story in Tang Grayson and essentially they believed that to begin with Tengri was a white goose and he flew for eternity across an eternal expanse of water and water in this is very much as symbolism for time as well as for sky so an interesting point which I'll raise in another of this series is the shift from some gods that started off as sky gods and then became ocean gods and in a way it's very interesting because in Hungarian as I just mentioned they all see the Hungarians were ten jurists when they came into Europe their word for sea is actually Tengger which is very interesting because of course tangley is the sky god and in mongolian Tengger is sky so it's interesting to see the overlap there but with water there's also this idea that water is eternal and probably the idea of the sea and obviously then the sky is seen as this great big blue bowl which is similar to the water so the creation myth goes that he was this white goose flying over this eternal expanse of water and then from beneath the water a figure called AK Amma calls to him and she urges him to cry eight things so Tengri creates this other figure called air kisi and okay she isn't as pure and as white as ten Gray's who created him to get over his own loneliness because obviously he is eternally flying over this expanse of water and together they create the various worlds which I'll get into in just a minute and this is the reason why Integra ISM they believe there is good and bad because obviously Tengri who isn't described as being the kind of perfect God as you have in the Abrahamic traditions where God is omnipotent omniscient and omni-benevolent meaning he is all-powerful all-loving and all-knowing but Integra is and that's one of the reasons why there is good and evil in the world because this figure this air kisi he becomes a demon and tries to lead people astray and it's at this point that Tengri descends into the heavens takes command of the skies and he sends animals to guide the people in various forms which is where you get this kind of idea of totemism in the ten crius belief set so this symbol is another important one in Tengger ISM and it has a couple of meanings just like with the other one now it's actually one of the first things if you are sleeping inside the yurt that you will see when you wake up because you obviously put on your back and you look up and this is the top of the year with the various poles that are used to construct the year meeting in the middle with the kind of sort of overlap in the middle but it's also a symbol for Tengri at the same time and obviously the year is a very important part of Tangra culture of the the mongols and the various Turkic peoples who believed in this and it's thought that it is in a way a similar metaphor for the universe and for the cosmos and so people only travel in a clockwise motion inside the year because it's believed that this is the Sun wise way of traveling at the same time and there's also a very important sense of direction inside tengas and let's believe that everything is on an axis in life so with the various souls in the body they all need to be exactly on the right side of the axis all things become imbalance so for example the south side of the yurt is the least important site so that's where the children sit in the yet whereas the western side is seen as where the entrance always is to the yet so there's a lot of symbolism behind this and actually you may recognize this symbol because it is on the flag of Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyzstan is one of these Eastern nations where there are people who believe in Tengger ISM and it's also in a similar way although it's more the kind of symbolism of Tengri in the flag of Kazakhstan you there have also the Sun this figure of the this being in the eternal blue sky as well and actually an interesting fact about Kyrgyzstan is that in the Kyrgyz language Kyrgyz and means 40 and actually 40 this goes back to the time of the Byzantines when one of the tribes in the region sent 40 thousand warriors to aid the Byzantines in an operation against the Persians and because of this there are 40 Ray's on the flag of Kyrgyzstan all exactly the same size which is an interesting bit of trivia there although there are other explanation for it as well that there was the National Kyrgyz hero called manis and that he actually sent 40 of his men against the Mongols there's various stories there but there's obviously a lot of symbolism gone into this which has been brought into their everyday life so Mongols they Integris --ts don't really have temples so to speak later on I'm gonna cover where they do have shrines there are holy places but it's not like there are 10 Greece churches or ting Grist mosques or something like that they don't have a specific building of worship they do have various sites of course it's a Plains culture these were originally nomads so it wouldn't really make sense to have places where they'd have monasteries and things like that it's not like Buddhism but they do have these places and I think I'm getting the pronunciation here right called buboes and these are a kind of they are like Cairns in a way but then they have been venerated and they they build things on top of the cans a lot of the time with the little flags you see there these are representative of the various deities of Tang Gary as well as various spiritual forces and it's believed that spirits of the ancestors and animals and other important beings inhabit these places so this is where for instance they will put milk on it that's one of the dedications they do for the white spirits and then the rolls so these black spirits and for which they put liquor and other kind of things like that as I mentioned earlier Integra ISM there's a very important belief in balance and this idea of balance comes from living an upright life from being a good person and from doing good things for instance this is very much linked to the environment if you kill animals for no particular reason or you disrespect the spirits of a certain place all the animals of a certain place then this will essentially lead to you getting a bad boo Yin and boo Yin is a term that I'll cover a bit later on which is very similar to the Hindu or the Buddhist idea of karma and the reason being is that when there is balance in a person then it stabilizes the community as well obviously these are small nomadic groups initially so if you had one person acting old and not fulfilling their role in the group then it would have consequences on everyone else so really it advocates people taking responsibility being responsible for their actions and having balance in their lives and of course by having balance in a person you then have balance in the tribal group and if there's balance in the tribal groups then it also helps to stabilize in a small way the world so it's important that everyone who is a believer in Tengger ism every ten rest follows this way of keeping balance as well related to this is the idea that is similar to the sort of European or Abrahamic idea of the soul although it is rather different and this idea is of the Windhorse and actually the Windhorse idea is that everyone has this Windhorse inside of them and this is used to communicate with the spirits but also it's related to how healthy a person is so if a person has good boo-yan and they honor these spirits they don't disrespect them they honor the environment the nature they work well within their clan within that tribal group then the Windhorse is said to increase and this means they can then communicate with greater spirits and they can also live a healthier life but if they do bad actions then their windhorse decreases and they will essentially become less healthy now in Tengger ism it's also again believed that people are the center of their own and this is again leading to that they need to take responsibility because the actions that they do affect everything else as well they do believe that they are then supported on the ground by the earth goddess by AGA and supported from the celestial heavens of Tengri so people are essentially in the middle of this and this middling idea is again represented in the worldview of the tang rests that there are three different worlds now to begin with the upper world is similar to ours there are human-like creatures which inhabit this world but if we were to travel to this upper world they would be invisible to us and we would be invisible to them there is a certain barrier between each world although they are important now it's very bright in the upper world because it said that there are seven Suns and seven moons and the upper world is sort of something that our world should aspire to be it's like the the phrase and so all the as is in heaven it will be on earth that kind of idea that the upper world is where everyone lives the traditional ways of the forefathers and that's the way that we should live now we live in the middle wills and if you've ever studied in each of manic mythology you will be thinking wow this sounds an awful lot like the idea of middle-earth Midgard is the middle enclosure in Old Norse and it's the similar idea in Tengger ism that people inhabited the middle world between the other two and then of course we have the lower world which is in our world and there are similar human-like beings but they only have one soul and because of this they are cold blooded and little dark creatures it's very dark because the Sun and the moon of the lower world are only half orbs so they don't give as much light and guidance as they do in our world or in the upper world for instance and it's believed that when people die there is a certain belief in reincarnation that people are reborn in various ways and their souls are reborn into other creatures and start over again and it's thought that when this happens it is one of our souls cuz in tangora ism there are three souls one of them goes to this lower world before they are really or back into another body but actually sometimes this occurs before a person has died and obviously if you've been catching the drift of balance then you'll understand that this isn't a good thing and this is why a 10 grist might call upon a boo or an ad gun both of which are shaman's the first being masculine and the second being feminine to retrieve their spirits and this is why you might have seen with shaman's it's sometimes called a shame mystic religion 10 grism although it's important to realize that with shamanism they aren't worshipping the shame and they are worshipping obviously Tengri and that the Shaymin is kind of like a priest in the traditional Roman Catholic sense that people needed a shaman to act as a middleman between themselves and the spiritual and that's why when you see videos of Shaymin going into a trance probably doing some kind of drug or drinking some alcohol or getting into a frenzy to communicate with the spirit world what they believe they are doing is that while they are in body still in the middle world where Windhorse is going to either the upper world or whether they hardly ever do this most of the time in Tengger ISM they are going to the lower world to retrieve a person's soul now you might be thinking well you know our idea of the soul is that the soul is inside everyone this might be your idea it might not be and that perhaps if you are a duelist but then once we die our body might die but our soul goes to another place so if the soul disappears in a body how is this possible well as I mentioned earlier there are three souls in ten grism and one of them sometimes go adrift and this is when indeed you need the Shaymin now the Shaymin doesn't act alone necessarily it's believed the Shaymin goes to the lower world either and by going into this trance or sometimes it's believed that they physically go to this lower world but then obviously they are invisible just like if a person becomes ill you have this kind of idea that the Shaymin would come and chase them away that's why you often see shaman's doing things like screaming and shouting and banging cymbals and drums and all of this to chase the spirit away because remember they believe when you travel between worlds you are invisible but that doesn't necessarily mean you aren't there so they also believe in these minor deities which are called the tongue gree and the tongue gree obviously not to be confused with the big deity the the big powerful deity called Tengri the tongue gree are these smaller ones and there is it's some debate as to how many there are the classic number given for the amount of tongue gree r99 demigods living in the sky and these can be broken down into you the white and the black hungry now the distinction is a little confusing they are both these powerful sort of demigods almost minor deities in endless religion and the black ones are associated with black shaman's whereas the white ones are associated with white shaman's you need there's a distinction between the two white shame and can't connect with a black hungry and the white hungry are believed to be the forces of good in the world and the sort of it's hard to describe without trying to put them between into two categories because while they are the forces of good and the benevolent spirits the black tongue we shouldn't be seen in the Christian or the Islamic or the Jewish idea of evil either because of course Tengger ism is all about balance so while they believe the the white spirits are often don't mean harm to humans and the black ones can be more harmful they don't see the black ones as being bad they see the black ones as being necessary for the continued balance of the world and the black ones therefore are often honor ated and then they are interceded with by the black shaman's in times of war for instance which means that the black shaman's well they communicate with their maybe slightly dodgy as spirits they are the most powerful shaman's in ten grism and actually some of these tongue gree have very specific roles to fulfill and one of them is called by Atherton Gary and by a tip hungry and is worship again in this kind of idea for Heroes in warfare to offer them protection another one is kissy at hungry and he is the sort of the patron saint of riches and the souls so again this idea of the souls of keeping things in balance well another one of course is AI Italia hungry and he is the equestrian or the horse god of course horses are incredibly important to the mongolian and Turkic peoples of this time period especially traditionally when they needed these animals to function so it makes sense that they have a deity honor rating the sky of the middle world it's believed was held up by the pole star and that's with the pole star that an important symbol that you might see in Tengger ism is created and it's actually because the pole star while that's the scene as the center is taken and then people would look up into the sky and they would see the constellation of the plough also called the Big Dipper and this constellation actually if you take its position in spring summer autumn and winter so it's full year it forms one of these shapes and this shape although it does look an awful lot like a swastika and the swastika has been used throughout history by various peoples for various reasons this is the tenderest reason for using one and this is why it's an important symbol in Tengger ism that you might see of course it outlives it's used by fascists in europe by pretty much a thousand years and it's believed that they call the symbol the tund egg symbol so you might see this one quite a lot and it's just an interesting thing about the astronomy that they had as well now of course they do have a belief in various forms of afterlife depending on the various souls so it's thought that the ancestors remain as guides for relatives for generations after they die which is why ancestor worship has also included Integra ISM exonerating the ancestors and sometimes in some cultures they even build special houses for them to stay because they believe they can get guidance and help from the ancestors from beyond the grave essentially and they then believe that after several generations these ancestors obviously by the time that no one perhaps remembered them being alive they go off into the wilderness and these ancestor souls go and find a mountain or a stream or a tree or something like that and they stay around these places becoming the soul of that place and this is why it's sometimes called an animistic religion as well the idea that non animate objects also have souls which is another interesting parallel to Hinduism in which the Atman is the soul of most of these kind of objects as well it's believed that bushes and trees and mountains have souls and so in Mongolia really if you'd go back and you ask the people who live around these places they will know that the names quite a lot of the time are for people who have lived they believe that the spirits are in these places which is why they are so concerned with looking after the environment because they believe that their ancestors are actually there their souls are in the streams and in the mountains and as previously explained angering these will not lead to good things it will lead to an imbalance and that's what they try to avoid in Tengger ism now as well there are other various types of ancestor spirits and animalistic spirits as well which is again why some people call it a total mystic religion so some of these for example are the blue wolf the red deer and the bear and it was actually a very good book series written about Genghis Khan who is of course the probably the most famous Mongol and the one who really found that the empire called the blue wolf series and the blue wolf does come back again and again in the Turkic and Mongolian myth says about these various creatures that come and give guidance because of course Tengri is the one who from the heavens sends animals to guide the people which is very interesting because that then again leads to an interesting parallel with the kind of oven-like figure huse it's of course in val hall and he sends who yin and moon in his two Ravens and they often come and give aid and advice and they see things in the world and tell him about it so it's a very interesting sort of comparison between the two and of course and the Greek mythology's and Zeus often comes down as a bull for instance or as other creatures at the ena and the owl so it's interesting that this overlap exists between them again now of course the as I've mentioned previously they have a very specific system of the soul and there are some interesting comparisons once again with the kind of idea of the soul in the Greek schools of thought and the soul in Mongolian is called good I know there are everyone in the Netherlands is now laughing but this is the name that is given to them and they believe that you have very good inside the body I know instead of one one called the soul and the soul is the special soul that only humans have now the soul is what makes people specific as individuals it's what leads to the individualism that makes one person different from another and because only humans have it it kind of makes sense why they believe that animals are more on the same level as one another and this sold again it goes on to live in nature after people die so these these are the kind of spirits the soul that goes off into the wilderness and becomes the spirit of a stream or a mountain or a tree for example now the second type of soul is the Army and the Army is actually also used in their word for animal again to show and possibly that is also where we get animal from the kind of animated this kind of root in the indo-european languages but in Mongolian that's the same and this is the idea that Tengri breathed to the breath of life to animate things and we are well lives to angry and we live our lives and we die because that's how angry willed it and so that's why animals also have this soul because they are of course animated and after they die this soul will reincarnate and what's interesting is that this reincarnation isn't completely random it's actually this soul will reincarnate into a member of the family somewhere down the line which is perhaps how they explain why people pass on certain traits or why someone says oh you look a lot like your grandfather or even people much further back in time that tend to have similar interests or some weird connections between people as does happen and it's an interesting overlap again with certain cultures so for instance inquire of the Anglo and Germanic cultures people named their sons the same thing as they're more the same as their grandfathers to keep it alive inside the family this kind of genetic legacy and this is again sort of propagated in the idea of the army soul and now finally you have the sons soul and the sons soul is the most base soul so this is also the one that for instance the creatures in the lower world have and this then goes to the lower world after death to await reincarnation and these can actually return to the middle world to our world as ghosts not to spook people but rather to give advice again and to comfort grieving relatives which is it's quite a nice thought that this kind of interaction but then that again explains why they're invisible because of course the various souls when traveling between the worlds are invisible now of course I couldn't really make this video without mentioning the big man himself and actually one of the most famous Mongols Genghis Khan of course is also worshipped in Tengri ISM as a figure he's not worshipped as a God more a minor deity an important figure rather like one of the tungee actually and he is birth worshipped both in a white form which is as his steed soon as his horse and in a black form which appears as a rider on top of obviously the steepness again goes back to the distinction between the white and black to marry between having this balance which again is perfect on a horse because then you have the white side being the horse and the rider being the black side which is also an interesting and more nuanced view of Genghis Khan who obviously is the hero for the Mongolian people but a massive tyrant and warlord for pretty much everywhere he encountered and actually relics of Genghis Khan were kept at a special monastery kind of thing where people would visit again it shouldn't be seen like going on pilgrimage to Mecca like completing the Hajj for Muslims or something like that but people would go and revere these relics in this place in its in Mongolia although well it's in China but the area of Mongolia in China that exists there is no difficult situation but unfortunately these relics were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in communist China thanks to you big mouth although they have since recreated these relics and actually a lot of people do come to visit them especially obviously Mongols it's incredibly important now as well there is an important sense of direction in the Mongolian way of looking at things in the tenderest viewpoint and actually it's thought that from the West the hungry of the West are again the white hungry and that they made mankind as well as dogs and animals that are used for food so also horses on this side because they are the creatures that were created to help humans that humans could use for food or viously dogs are used as Watchmen horses for rides things like that and aren't actually the eastern side you have the eastern hungry and the black ones and it's believed that creatures like the eagle which it's forbidden to eat entangle a time because they have this big reverence for the Eagle a lot of the time because to travel between the worlds especially from the upper world people have to transform themselves into birds to get there again this idea of the eternal sky and that Tony comes down as a goose or as an eagle sometimes and so obviously you don't want to be eating one of the deities because that's very bad for balance so they refuse to eat Eagles as well as sickness and illness disease coming from the east as well and which is an interesting way to look at things but then again they don't view the East as being evil or bad it's more that it's the necessary juxtaposition for the West which is obviously the sustenance of life with obviously cattle that they can eat and then the East has to be this balance between the two the equal and opposite reaction which is again sort of as a central tenet of Tengger ism and because of this balance they surprisingly are very anti dogmatic which is surprising if you think of the Mongols as being this big tyrant so of course they're going to enforce their religion on everyone but actually this is not the case with Tengger ISM and there's a very nice quote from monk akan who is one of the the Khans one of the leaders of the carnate and he said that we believe that there is only one God by whom we live and by whom we die and for whom we have an upright heart but as God gives us the different fingers of the hand so he gives to men diverse ways to approach him which i think is a very nice quote again it's very similar to Hindu ideas a proper Hindu proverb is for example that there are many paths leading up the same mountain which again when viewed in terms of religion and philosophy shows that there is more there are more ways than one to interpret God that one religion isn't the be-all and end-all whereas in the Abrahamic faiths that's not really the case it's you either follow this one and you end up in the pit of hell most of the time and traditionally speaking I don't think that many people in the West especially really believed and that everyone who doesn't follow their religion is about to be consumed by the eternal Hellfire now again this leads me on to an interesting point of how as Tengger isms survived and how is it interacted with other religions because it definitely has now there is a form of course that the Buddhism has interacted a lot with Tengger ism now of course the various nations where Tengger ism is practiced especially Mongolia are now largely Buddhist countries and there is actually somewhat of a mixing between the two and this is where you get the idea of yellow shamanism now yellow is the color that the monks wear in Mongolia so that's why it was sort of chosen and this is where shamanism has been incorporated into Buddhist ideals so people can be Buddhists but still also be shamans at the same time something that you'll notice with Western philosophies is that they are much less boxy than ones in air or Eastern religions is that there's a lot less putting people into boxes than Western religions so Hinduism really isn't a religion there are so many different forms it's not like the Roman Catholic Church which is an entity that you can put inside a box in the East it's much more that people choose their own path and there are literally hundreds of thousands of paths that one can choose and so it's not that strange in the East that you have a shamanistic tradition being linked in to a Buddhist tradition and this is what happened in Mongolia for hundreds of years while some aspects of Tengger ism and shamanism were added into Buddhism as yellow shamanism when Elton Khan converted to Buddhism in the 16th century obviously changing the national religion of the carnot in Mongolia of the Western Mongolian Empire that some people were not happy with moving to this new religion of Buddhism and some remained and stayed solely faithful to the tenderest belief set and these were called black shamans and it's thought that this might have come about as a protest to this kind of Buddhism and that's why Sharman practices haven't just been absorbed into Buddhism as in the West obviously pagan traditions were absorbed into Christian traditions you also had a direct continuance of just pure Tengger ISM as well which remains today now of course during much of the 20th century and a lot of these practices were banned because obviously all of this area most of it at least came under the jurisdiction of various communist state so in Mongolia you had a search list Republic and of course a lot of the other countries were Tengger ism is practiced they came under the jurisdiction of the USSR and all of these shamanistic practices were they yellow shamanism or Buddhism or even the black shamanism the pure Tengger ism they were all banned and repressed and shamans could face time in prison things like that as well as shamans being murdered by these various states but of course today thankfully they are allowed to practice once again and the traditions have survived for the most part and interest is once again picking up in these native religions of Tengger ism and the very shamanistic traditions in the area so some numbers to look at first is that in Mongolia it's believed that 55,000 people identify as 10 wrists now of course with something like this unlike with the Roman Catholic and obviously Roman Catholic again it's a bit ambiguous do you go to church every Sunday does that not make you a Catholic but with Tanger ISM it's a lot harder to pinpoint with to put the finger on again some people could go to the Buddhist monastery one week and then obviously sacrifice a bull to Tengri the other week and they could identify as either or both but it's believed that there are 55,000 ten wrists in Mongolia now there are around 850,000 in Russia obviously the various areas so you won't find very many for instance in the very west of Russia but some of these siberian regions again it's hard to measure because a lot of the time on the censuses they don't ask are you a 10 grist it'll be what religion are you on one of the we'll be neo-paganism so quite a lot of the time Tengger ISM is linked into sort of the spiritual faiths all Slavic neo-paganism obviously worshipped by the Slavs who are going back to the ancient pagan traditions but of course this is my rough estimate in Turkey it's they believe that there are a thousand people of course the Turks are very proud of always online for some reason telling everyone that they were the Mongolians which isn't actually correct they are a Turkic people so they once lived their life similar to the Mongolians and indeed the languages do have some relation between the two so then it is coming back into Turkey but I think 98% of Turkey is still very very much Muslim at the time and in China again this figure is huge I very much doubt that this figure is the actual figure of 10 wrists in China but there could be up to almost six million Tenge wrists in China if I had to guess I think it would be at least ten times smaller that's a very large number of Tang wrists and but there are ethnic Mongolians inside China and their traditional religion was of course ten grism burn in China has always been difficult to express what religion you are of course especially under the stricter communist rule of it's still technically communist but it's not really but of course it's is difficult to express your religious views in China but it could be up to about five million eight hundred thousand now finally in kyrgyzstan there are up to I would say about or probably more than five hundred thousand ten rest's are there in Bishkek the capital there is an organization and that has five hundred thousand members so I reckon quite a lot of those will probably be kurdistani ten jurists or people interested in ten grism and interestingly enough they're people interested in tango ism in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan where there are around 55,000 is that it's mostly the intellectuals who are calling for a move away from Islam which they see is being an alien and an invasive religion which ultimately was these people weren't Muslims to begin with but the Islam was spread when the various cons converted to Islam or when other peoples like the Turks he became wasn't them as well in minutes their point of view that they should go back to the ten greased ideals of taking responsibility for one's actions being important to society and back to sort of the native religion of what the peoples here were before they were Muslim so that's a quick rundown of the numbers now this video has gone from on for a very long time and I know that people asked when I said would you like to see videos on philosophy religion and history and I mentioned the ancient Greeks a lot of people said Oh God not the ancient Greeks you know there are there's so much about the ancient Greeks and but I don't think anyone will really was expect them that I'd make a video about the ten Grisons all ten grism so I hope you have enjoyed this video it's been a bit random and very long but I feel with philosophy it's very hard to condense it it's much more of a thing that you have to talk through for quite a while but I guess some of the guys who were interested in maybe having a history with Hilbert podcast can just stick this on in the background and enjoy it so I hope you enjoy this I hope you've learned something new about the Mongols and Tengger ism and just let me know which sort of beliefs that you'd like to see covered in another one of these videos I've got a few in mind which I've been mentioning as I've been going through so it might be fun to make a few comparisons between these various beliefs sets and if you want to see some more information I'll have links in the description below so thanks very much for watching I've been history with Hilbert and this has been my religion my religion this has been my video on Tingler ism and the religion of the mongols so this has been the history and I'm Helmut

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 191,054

Keywords: What is Tengriism, What was the religion of the mongols, The Mongols, Mongol History, Genghis Khan Documentary, Mongolian History, Asian History, Eastern Religion, Eastern Philosophy, Chinese Religion, Eastern vs Western Philosophy, Mongol Religion, Tengri, Shamanism, Mongol History Documentary, Were the Mongols Buddhist?, Muslim Mongols, Who Were the Mongols?, Who was Genghis Khan?, History of Religion

Id: mgdqhG6tvxo

Length: 38min 58sec (2338 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 27 2018