Geser’s buusa – the stopping place
Sword of Geser
Geser’s tethering posts (Geserai serge)
The epic of Geser and its main personages are connected with the ancient cults and the pre-Buddhist views of the Buryat people (it is in the Buryat variants in contrast to the other Mongolian versions that preserved is the ideology of the white shamanism or tengrianity). Therefore in the context of the old customs and rites the emphasis was laid on the sacral proto-ecological idea of the epic concerning the centuries-old unity of the Sky and the Earth.
This is accompanied by not only rites of worshipping the sacred places but with the putting of Geser’s tethering posts (Geserai serge) as the ritual memorial tokens symbolizing and consecrating the unity of man and his home place – toonto, the continuity of the age-long traditions and their continuation in future from the ancestors to the descendants. One could claim that the memory of Geser is preserved by the Buryat land itself, by its hills and steps from the Angara banks to the Onon river, from the tops of the Sayans to the Yeravna lakes, and that is evidenced also by the memorial signs such as the tethering posts.
Such tethering posts were set along the whole route of Geser’ banner march including Ust’- Orda, Khori – Yeravna - Kizhinga – the Chita region – Aga – Mukhorshibir – Kyakhta district – Gusinoozyorsk – Orongoi – Cis-Baikalia – Tunka – Oka. The complex of Geser’s tethering posts in the Selenga district presents three grand posts made of age-old pines, the local experts decorated them with carving. Erected around them are the thirty three tethering posts of lesser size for the the main hero’s bator’s horses.
According to the epic the deity Geser will come back on the Earth to establish peace and justice therefore erected was Geser’s buusa – the stopping place. The place for his expected landing was offered by P. Zilberman, the chief architect of the city of Ulan-Ude. That is the Shaman-hill on the left bank of the Selenga-river. Set up in the locality of Baga Tolugai is Geser’s stopping place – Geserai buusa which was consecrated by the Tibetan lamas. Erected here are the three great tethering posts – serge five meters high, made of tree in the traditional Buryat style.
Closer to the conical top one of the bulges on the post is covered with a copper ring with a chased pattern framed by the yellowish horse’s hair that that acquires a golden tint in the sunlight. It is here that the Great Geser-khan and his suite will tie up their bogatyr horses on coming to the land of ancient Buryatia after the far and customary for the nomads travels in the endless spaces of Central Asia. Put higher on the slope of the hill there are the three huge boulders. Carved on the biggestof them are the symbolic images of the three jems (erdeni) and the inscriptions in the old Mongolian script, in Russian and Buryat stating that it is here that Geser’s camp is located.
And it is on the very top of the mountain according to the plan of the creators that Geser’s temple will be erected in the near future. It has been built in fact and for now is on the territory of the Ethnographical museum.
Geser’s camp is to become the central key object of a big cultural complex. Located on the right and on the left of it on the territory of 50 hectars located there’ll be the various structures, facilities, installations erected by the associations of fellow countrymen, the national societies of culture; there will be a united center for the traditional cultures of the peoples inhabiting Buryatia.
The Buryats were the first among the Mongols who built “Geser’s camp”. Thereby they secured on the Buryat land the place for the eternal camping and site of the great khan Geser. And this placw should become a sacred symbol of the mythical hero where the inhabitants, guests and newly married couples of Buryatia will worship Geser’s powerful spirit.
Geser’s camp is quite an important historical attribute of the nomad life of the steppe peoples; when it was built the picturesque, typically Asian locality with the curved valleys that all of a sudden as if heave with its woodless hills and mountains of fanciful shape, with the Selenga river that flows slowly, full of eastern restraint and tranquility but winding, concealing a threatening force, acquired a deep sacral meaning suggesting the images and the spirit of the deep ancient Asia. Laid in the center of Ulan-Ude in Pobeda prospect is a cornerstone of the monument to Geser and his 33 bogatyrs.
The “Geserai sergenuud” memorial dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the Geseriade is erected at the mountain pass known as Daraashyn dabaan (the Russian for Daraashyn is “Убиенная” which means “the slain”; the Russian for dabaan is перевал which means “pass”) on the Kyakhta highway not far from the city of Gusinoozyorsk. It is an architectoral composition in the form of a circle formed by the 33 tethering posts that symbolize Geser’s 33 bogatyrs.
Erected in the middle of the corner are the three majestic tethering posts made of age-old pines decorated with artistic carving performed by the local craftsmen. Those three tethering posts symbolize Geser himself and his sons Oshor Bogdo and Khurin Altai according to M. Emegev’s variant.
