Mongolian National Archery

Mongolian National Archery                                                 
                                                                                                                                     　 Bayartsetseg   

Of course, archery in Mongolia has had a long and famous history. Our folk legends tell of Erekhe Mergen, the great archer who saved the people from a drought by shooting down six suns. And when the legendary mother of the Mongolian nation wanted to instill the idea of unity into her feuding sons, she sat them down before her and gave each an arrow telling them to snap it. Of course, they could do that easily. Then she gave each of them six arrows and told them to snap them all together. None of them could. This is how the Mongolian people first learned about strength through unity.

From the time of Chinggis Khan and the Mongolian nation proper, there are many accounts of great feats of archery. In the ‘Blue History’, there is a story of Chuu Mergen who his a target from on horseback at about 130 meters. There are accounts of a national competition in which renowned archers such as Tsulegtii, Golgon Baataar, Subgetei Baataar, Toghtong Baataar and Khuldar all competed over a distance of about 600 meters, shooting at a cap of deer leather placed on the ground. All could hit the target with one of three shots.

Since achieving independence once more in 1921, our Government has promoted our traditional archery skills. Although few of us can still shoot well on horseback, many practice traditional archery on foot. Each year in July there is a traditional sports festival, the ‘Naadam Festival’, in which we compete at the ‘three manly sports’ : horse racing, wrestling and archery. Although our women don’t wrestle, we like to compete in horse racing and archery. Women are able to achieve outstanding results with the bow and arrow.

Today, the sport has three main divisions based on regional styles of archery and different construction of the bow. Your shot in the last year’s style is ‘Khalkha’ which is the tradition of the people of the central part of Mongolia. Another style is ‘Buryat’ practised by the people of the northern eastern region of our country. Finally, there is the ‘Uryankhai’ style which represents the Western Mongolian people.

We shoot different targets and distances. In the Buryat style archers shoot at 35 meters, in the Uryankhai at 45 meters and in the Khalkha style at 75 meters. We are all united by the Mongolian Archers’Union, (of which I am a counsellor.) Buryat and Khalkha archery have many women competitors. Uryankhai archers are by tradition men. Each of our traditions has a special style of singing which is used by the scorer to indicate the score of each competitor. This helps us tell from a distance how our shooting is progressing.

Each of our different traditions has a different style of bow: but in fact, we can chose the type of bow we want to use freely. There are different sizes and draw-weights to suit men, women and children. The three styles of bow are ‘Gung’- a deep form of bow based on the Manchu style; ‘Tomor’ (‘Iron’) and Khagas (‘Half Horse’). The ‘Gung’ style comes from the east of the country, the ‘Iron’ style from our central, Khalkha area, and the ‘Half Horse’ from the Western Uryankhai region.


All these bows are made in the traditional fashion, using wood, sheep’s horn and sinew. Here is a diagram-

Upper bow:

1: Grip. 2: Sayah. 3: Splice. 4: Limb. 5: Belly. 6: Back. 7: String nock. 8: String pad. 9: String bridge.

Lower bow:

1: Insert at grip. 2: Build-out at grip. 3: Horn belly. 4: Sinew back. 5: Sayah. 6: String nock. 7: String pad. 8: Birch-bark covering. 9: Bamboo core.

(The line drawing illustrations in this article are reproduced from a book on Mongolian national archery by Baldandorj published in 1976, with the kind permission of the Mongolian National Sports Institute which controls the copyright.)

We often pull a draw-weight of about 50 - 60 pounds. These traditional bows often risk splitting - especially as some of the modern chemical glues are not as reliable as the older, traditional fish glue we used to use. Therefore, you will often see Mongolian bows wrapped in nylon fishing line. These reduces the risk of sudden failure of the bow during use.

This is the string we use-

Nowadays we use a dacron string with nylon whipping. The string is quite thick ? about 5 mm diameter. We wrap a piece of leather at the nocking point (marked ‘1’ in the diagram.) The points in the string marked ‘4’ in the diagram are left bare so that the string will fold away easily. At the ends, there are two loops (‘6’) made of sheep-gut which go over the string nocks on the bow.

Here is the arrow we use-

The arrow shaft is about 75 cm long and tipped with a bone blunt with a brass point. The fletching is the same depth as the diameter of the shaft. As you can see, we aim to hit our target but not for the arrow to stick in it.

In fact, our national archery contest uses the target rather like a game of skittles. The target is made up of a wall made of cylindrical baskets made from sheep gut with a measurement of 8 cm x 8 cm. The cylinders are built into a wall like this-

There are two classes of target shooting: ‘Khana’ and ‘Khasaa.’ First we shoot 20 arrows at the Khana target, which is four metres long and 48 cm high; then we shoot 20 arrows at the Khasaa target, which contains 30 cylinders. You can see the arrangement of the targets in the illustration above. A scorer stands near the target and calls out the results of each shot in a traditional melody: overshoot, fall short, go wide or bounce before the target and pass over it. An arrow which passes between to cylinders still scores. (This won’t happen with the Khasaa target because the cylinders are stacked too close together.)

It is difficult to say that there’s any ‘spiritual’ side of Mongolian archery as there is in Japanese Kyudo. Actually, we Mongolian archers just want to hit the target. But that said, to hit the target without perfect concentration and control of the body is not easy. So we regard archery as a very advanced form of mental and physical training.













Khalkha style
















^{Uryankhai style}