Alan Gua

Alan Gua and her sons, from Jami' al-tawarikh, by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani

Alan Gua (Mongolian: Алун гуа, Alun gua, lit. "Alun the Beauty". Gua or Guva/Quwa means beauty in Mongolian) is a mythical figure from The Secret History of the Mongols, eleven generations after the blue-grey wolf and the red doe, and ten generations before Genghis Khan.

Her five sons are described as the ancestors of the various Mongol clans. (That is, the Dörvöd are said to have been the descendants of Alan Gua's brother-in-law, Duva Sokhor, and the origins of the Khori Tümed and Uriankhai are not explained at all.) She also figures in the Central Asian version of the parable of the five arrows, known in Western sources as The Old Man and his Sons.

Secret History of the Mongols

The Secret History says that Alan Gua's clan was originally from the area of the Khori Tümed, and moved to the Burkhan Khaldun when their hunting grounds were fenced off. Alan Gua was first spotted by Duva Sokhor, and later married to Duva Sokhor's brother, Dobun Mergen.

Five arrows

Alan Gua had two sons (Begünütei and Belgünütei) during the lifetime of Dobun Mergen, and three more (Bukha Khatagi, Bukhatu-Salji and Bodonchar Munkhag) after her husband's death. This caused her two older sons to suspect the three younger sons were fathered by an Uriankhai servant.

Hearing of these suspicions, Alan Gua summoned her five sons for a meal, then gave each of them one arrow and asked them each to break it. Next she made a bundle of five arrows and asked them to break it, and they could not, showing them the power of unity: a lesson Hogelun later discussed with her own sons.

The glittering visitor

Alan Gua's explanation for the conception of her three younger sons is the visit of a glittering visitor, who come through her yurt's roof opening each night and left each morning by crawling on the sun- or moonbeams "like a yellow dog". She concluded that the younger sons must be children of heaven and that it was therefore inappropriate to compare them to ordinary people. Her older sons suspected that their family's Bayad servant was the likely father. She advised her five sons that if they tried to stay on their own, they would be broken like the five arrows. But if they stuck together like the bundle of five arrows, nothing could harm them. Therefore, the so-called "Nilun" Mongols might be the descendant of Bayad tribesmen who made love to Alan, it is more than likely that Alan has remarried secretly to the Bayad servant and gave birth to what would later become "Nilun Mongols". Due to the favoritism, Alan Gua is able to use the religions to manipulate her sons who are Dobun Mergen's descendants into believing the illegitimate "Nilun" Mongols are the descendant of gods. The descendants of Dobun has therefore became the "Dilegun?" or "Commoners".

Statue

The Secret History states that Alan Gua's clan is from a place called Arig usun (= pure water), and some Mongolian authors believe that this refers to the Arig gol in Mongolian Khövsgöl aimag. A statue of her, three metres high, has been erected at the river in 1992, at the confluence with the Khökhöö gol and twelve kilometres from the center of Chandmani-Öndör sum.