The Cat Who Pretended To Be A Lama

A long time ago there was a lama, a Buddhist monk, who spent his time in deep meditation. Next to him there lay a cat. One day the cat stole the lama’s snuff bottle and the lama went after the cat and got his snuff bottle back. Then another time the cat stole the lama’s rosary and hid in a hole. When the lama grabbed the cat by the tail, the tail suddenly got torn off.

not a Mongolian snuff-bottle but close enough

The cat went away and came upon a place where many mice lived. There she made herself comfortable and put the rosary around her neck. One day some mice came along the way and circled the cat warily. So the cat said: “Don’t be afraid of me! I’m one of those lama cats. Let me teach you the holy doctrine saying not to kill another living being. Come! Come here!” So the mice went to the cat and let her teach them. After a few days had passed Khuchin tuct, the khaan of the mice, told them: “Oh, it seems as if our teacher is eating us. In her excrements there are traces of bone and hair. Go back home and get a bell.” He sent a few mice to carry out his request.
The mice went home and came back with a bell. They said to the cat: “Teacher, please accept this jewellery from us!” And they put the bell around her neck. Khuchin tuct told his mice: “After today’s lesson will be over, we will exit one after another. If the bell should ring, we’ll turn around and hurry back.”
So when the lesson was finished, the mice went out together when suddenly they heard the bell ringing. The mice hurried back, and there the cat had caught one of the mice and was just about to eat it. Kuchin tuct said mournfully: “We believed the lies of our false, hypocritical teacher and so we lost several of our brothers and sisters.” And so the mice moved to another place.
The cat thought remorsefully: “If I had hidden my excrements, who would have ever found out about me?” And since then, it is told, cats hide their excrements by burying them.

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The Bear

A poor cooper*was on a search for a tree fitting to make it into rings for a barrel. When he came to an island in the lake, he saw a red willow. This one, he wanted to make into rings. But when he approached the willow to cut it down, it said to him: “Don’t chop me down, please! I will give you everything that you want.”
And it kept its word – soon the cooper became wealthy. Even rich, people say. After a little while had passed, he went to the red willow again and said: “Please make me the khaan.” And so the willow made the cooper the khaan. But after he had thus become khaan, the cooper and his khatan – his wife, the queen – got into a box wagon, took a great number of soldiers with them and went to chop down the red willow.

not a Buryat khaan but a Chinese emporor but look at the waggon

But as the soldiers raised their axes to fell the willow, as they had been ordered to, the willow spoke to them: “Look at the khaan and the khatan!” When the soldiers turned around, they saw that the khaan and his khatan had become bears and were fleeing into the wood. All of the soldiers feared them very much and ran off without even touching the red willow.
This is the reason, so the Buryat people tell us, that the bear had been khaan in earlier time. And when you meet a bear in the steppes, you just tell him: “Dear khaan, please be kind-hearted!” and he will toddle off. Or so they say.

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The Tale of the Khaan and the Badarcin

 

Once upon a time there lived a khaan, that is, the Mongolian equivalent to a king. On one very normal day, he suddenly announced: “I will leave my throne to the man telling a lie which makes a sitting man stand up and a sleeping man wake up.”
A tailor heard this and came before the khaan to become khaan in his stead. “Dear khaan, dear khaan! In the heavy rain of the day before last, the edges of heaven got torn and I went and sewed them up again using the tendons of a louse,” he lied. Happy with himself he thought: “Now I have surely told a lie which will make a sitting man stand up and wake up a sleeping one.”
But the khaan said: “Bah, you sewed it up badly. After all it rained again yesterday morning.” The tailor left the room without saying another word, his head hung in disappointment.
Then a herdsman stepped in front of the khaan and told him: “Dear khaan, dear khaan! My deceased father owned a whip with which he struck the stars from the sky.”
The khaan answered: “That’s nothing. My own deceased father, the former khaan, owned a pipe. When he lit it up, the smoke curled around the stars in the sky and tied them all together.” The herdsman did not know what to say and went away.
Just then a badarcin, a Mongolian itinerant monk, came into the room carrying a bucket. The khaan asked him: “Badarcin, what do you want?”
“What, don’t you recognise me?” asked the badarcin, “After all you have borrowed a bucket full of gold from me. I have come to get my gold back.”
The khaan jumped out of his seat and demanded to know: “And when should I have borrowed that gold from you? You are lying!” The noise woke up the khatan, the khaan’s wife, who had slept nearby. “You are lying when you claim to have borrowed me gold. Beat him, hit him!” the khaan yelled and gesticulated wildly at his guard.
The badarcin said: “If I am lying then leave me your throne, dear khaan.”
The khaan thought about that for a moment and then he replied: “Wait a moment! You are telling the truth. I did borrow the gold from you. I just remembered.”
Then give me my gold!” demanded the badarcin and the khaan did as he was told.
Thus the badarcin told a lie which made a sitting man stand up and woke up a sleeping woman. He gained a bucket of gold and taught the careless khaan a lesson.

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