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RACHEL MIKos
Byx T3pr33p
BypxaHbI OpoH OpoB
— Dpux rarax”
Entered the deity’s land
By locomotive
— Reading a rosary
byx mapae (in other words, the “bull’s wheel’, 6yx mapeaap is in the instrumental case)
is an expression dating from around 1950, when the railroad was connected from be¬
yond the Russian frontier to the border station of Erén in China for the first time. (This
is where, even today, the railcars must have to have their wheels switched from broad
to narrow gage.) The word 6yx (‘bull’) refers to the locomotive (strong like a bull,
with steam coming out of its ‘nostrils’). The more modern expressions for ‘train’ are
memep 3am (literally, ‘iron road’) or 2za2 mapze (‘fire wheel’). The ‘bull’ is at the same
time the head rosary, while the other beads are the many cars behind the locomotive.
There is a certain amount of humour in associating the head bead of the rosary with
a locomotive; and yet the metaphor of ‘rosary = spiritual vehicle’ is eloquent and
apt, referring as it does to the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, the branch of Buddhism
practised by Mongolians. The subject in the riddle (the one riding or driving the train/
rosary) is completely elided. This places the emphasis in the riddle on the movement
of the rosary as it is being read.
This riddle does, however, continue a very traditional riddle motif concerning rosa¬
ries. Many earlier riddles refer to reading a rosary as a form of travel — as, for example,
crossing a mountain pass, as seen in this riddle:
Oxo zaBaa JaBx GoJ10x
Ouup zaBaa JaBx Goroxr y
— DpHX, SPAXHAË XYALL*
Through many mountain passes one can pass
Through Vajra’s pass one cannot pass
— Rosary, the head bead?>
Jlozop, I. — Oxsuiixytar, L.: Moneon apdvin onBcoeo masaap, p. 286.
JIosop, I. — Oxsuiixytar, L.: Moneon apdvin onBcoeo masaap, p 255.
This riddle is translated by A. Taylor as: ‘It is possible to go over many passes / It is not possible to go
over the diamond pass. — Rosary and the end (head) of a rosary’. Taylor, Archer: An Annotated Collection
of Mongolian Riddles. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1954, p. 351.
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