CHAPTER XXVI

THE MONGOLS

IN the year 1282, Nichiren, reviewing his own life, said that there were three things for which he considered himself deserving of commendation. He had published his treatise of "Rissho Ankoku," and presented a copy to the Regent, at great personal risk to himself, thereby calling the Regent's attention to the evils of the State, and the only apparent remedy for them. He had next, some years later, dared to tell the same exalted personage that the only safety for the State lay in the adoption of the doctrines which he himself so earnestly advocated. This boldness had almost cost him his life. And, lastly, not content with general warnings about the Mongols, he had foretold the exact time when the much-dreaded invasion was going to take place, and events had fully justified his prophecy.

We have spoken of Nichiren's famous writing; we have also treated of the doctrines which he preached in season and out. It remains for us to speak of the Mongols and their attempted invasion of Japan.

Central and North-Eastern Asia was for centuries the cradle of fierce and barbarous races which started out on a career of conquest, and acquired permanent homes for themselves in the fertile and more favoured districts of Europe. Scythians and Goths, Alans and Huns,

[paragraph continues] Bulgarians and Cumani, Yuetchi and Uighurs, were merely "reshuffles of the same cards," different strata, as it were, of the same peoples, going forth from their homes in Central Asia to worry the civilized nations of two continents.

In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, it was the Mongolian power that made itself feared throughout the world. The Mongols and the Tartars were, as it were, the aristocracy and plebs of a large semi-barbarous tribe of nomad herdsmen, hunters, and warriors, whose home lay to the north of China proper, around the Gobi Desert, by the banks of the Amur river, and among the mountains south of Lake Baikal. Here was born in the year 1162, in the tent of the tribal chief, a child to whom was given the name of Temujin, a name afterwards exchanged for that of Gengis-Khan, or the Perfect Warrior. Gengis Khan in due time succeeded to the chieftaincy of the Mongol and Tartar tribes (1206), and then commenced a series of victories, campaigns, and conquests, which fairly throws the exploits of Alexander and Napoleon into the shade, the Mongol conqueror having this advantage over his two European rivals, that he was able to transmit his power and military genius to descendants as remarkable