The Center for Central Asian Literatures in Translation

Once, father took part in a regional music festival called "Three Days of Art and Culture".  He was there on stage both at the beginning and at the end.  He brought his fiddle and sat down behind the curtain.  The red curtains opened and, as he listened to the applause, father would begin to play the fiddle.  When the curtains closed, father stood up and went to greet Möögdii, one of his relatives, who was sitting in the audience.  The crowd realised precisely what was happening and began to make fun of father for having violated the traditions of the stage, and as a joke they blocked his way.

So it was that they exchanged news of the family, it was far and away more valuable to honor ceremony than to keep these so-called traditions of the stage.  After this, nothing could happen on stage unless father had been invited.

He would put on his deel with ceremonial gold braid.  It was lovely for us to listen to him playing the fiddle on the stage, under the shining electric lights.  The smoke from the dungfire fluttered about the cuffs of the old deel at the rear of our ger but, just as when my father's fiddle brought forth music, my mind was not bestirred.  The melody is for me more artistic and more meaningful when heard, not from the stage, but from the place of honor at the rear of the Mongolian ger.  And when the fiddle is played, the colt neighs from where he is tethered and the lark sings upon the roof and so it is ornamented. 

Injeenorov's grandson was a fine musician named Gombodorj.  I'm imagining the brightly colored flowers upon the wild steppe, its distant outline of watery blue, as though a carpet has been rolled out, and there's a haze sloping down over the grey horses.  And there's an outlaw, his hat against the nape of his neck, the folds of his silken brown summer robe thrown open, he's coming to our town and he's singing The Little Sharga.

This image which I saw through the open door stuck in my mind like an image on canvas....I heard The Little Sharga quite a bit, all the way through the artistic relay.  This side of the curtain, in the light blue mists of the steppe, like the pacing rhythm clipclop of the horses' hooves, the moment never repeats itself. 

When I was young, I heard a story about a stick.  Thinking about it now, it was a story not only about a stick but about a long song.

In this story, the foot of a beautiful woman touches an Indian tree called the ashoka and brings forth flowers.

THE STORY OF THE ASHOKA TREE

In a garden, shaded from the arid heat,
I cooled down by the Ashoka tree, the sorrowless.
I sensed the vapor of the Ganges wafting up into the grove,
A poet from afar, I sang the Song of the Parched Tree.

The Gardener:
This withered tree puts forth leaves.
Its legend has been rubbed away - how did it get its ancient
blessing?
Though the trees in this elegant garden are all in bloom,
I'm an old gardener, my body's like a dried-up branch.

Without being soaked by the rainwater that falls from the clouds,
This dried-up branch blossoms when touched by the foot of a
beautiful woman.
Just as our fate lot is tied to the rising of planets,
So it is with the Ashoka tree.

The Poet:
Coming to the Ganges, where roots grow deep,
Isn't it amazing how the tree grows green?
An old man's staff gets cut from its roots,
It stills the voice of power, its legend rooted firm!

The Gardener:
A hermit on the Buddha's path comes from abroad,
Asking just one thing - the elixir of return.
Asking in song just enough for a staff
From these ancient branches of the Ashoka tree.

The Poet:
The man who cut the staff from the Ashoka tree
Says ashoka means sorrowless, means getting free from all things.
To lean upon the staff of truth, he says, is to find holiness.
His question - was the earth eternal from the beginning?

The Gardener:
The gardener is not allowed to give what's taken
From the holy tree which pleases Buddha Ashoka.
For a hundred days the withered branch has sung forth blossoms -
He says it was the Khan who gave the half-fathom branch.

The Poet:
Around the yellow oasis, where the horses are mottled brown,
In the ger of a lean and dark old man, belching yellow smoke,
Is the staff of Ashoka, kept for ten generations.
The holiness within the trunk is more valuable even than gold.

Once the old man is asleep within the folds of eternity,
They say his son takes up the staff.
The silversmith and goldsmith take their time to ornament it,
And then, they say, the trunk is laid to rest.

The chill of autumn falls, the voice and fiddle at rest.
Feet begin to move, bowls of airag are drained.
They load their gers, and cranes surround the dried-up marshes.
The stick in the back of the ger has blossomed.

The Gardener:
The theme of my story is cherished in the garden,
Amid the heat and cold which crisscross Gimalai.
Through your lineage of Chingis Khan, in song and lyrics,
A withered old man has thought forth the Ashoka tree.