In my continuing battle to understand Jakdan's poetry, I am currently wrestling with the following lines in Tolgiralame orire uculen:
ede
waliyaha jušuhun baju,
hohoko gosihon misun,
naracun hican,
buyenin duyen,
beye gincihiyan,
weri basucun,
geren-i geigen,
gisun-i fesin,
At this point in the poem Jakdan has become fed up with his miserable lot in life, and he wants to make a change.
Therefore
I’ve thrown out the sour dregs,
I’ve discarded the bitter fermented bean paste,
I long for the simple life,
I desire indifference,
for myself to be the beautiful one,
and the other to be the butt of jokes,
geren-i geigen,
gisun-i fesin,
How are we supposed to read these last two lines?
The easiest one to make sense of is gisun-i fesin. The word fesin refers to a handle, such as the handle of a sword or whip, and gisun is language or speech. There are very few ways to read this other than "handle of language", but what does that actually mean? Given the immediate context in the poem, it makes sense to read this line as referring to something that Jakdan wants, and since earlier in the poem Jakdan expresses envy towards people who are smooth talkers, I believe the best reading is something like "control over language" or "to be adept at language". The same semantic connection could be made in English by saying "having a handle on language".
The more difficult one is geren-i geigen. The word geren has meanings like "a crowd; the many; the multitude", while the word geigen refers to one of the ways that the anklebone (gacuha) can land. But what is the significance of this side of the gacuha?
Both Jakdan and the Staatsbibliothek poet(s) make references to geigen. SB 4.12 has the following lines:
utala sure,
tutala menen,
entekengge jata,
tentekengge geigen,
uttungge nekeliyen,
tuttungge jiramin,
Meaning:
So wise as this,
so stupid as that,
jata like this,
geigen like that,
thin in this way,
fat in that way,
The lines above pair antonyms with each other, so wise/stupid, thin/fat. We should conclude, then, that geigen is being used as an antonym for jata, which means (according to the Qianlong dictionary) "a weak or inferior person", or (according to Amyot) "an ordinary person without talent". So we can understand geigen to mean a talented or superior person.
This works well with Jakdan's other use of geigen in Soktorolame gingsiha ucun, where he concludes his description of the most fortunate people in society by saying:
ne je
niongnio deji,
geigen amban.
Most importantly
and best of all,
[they are] talented officials.
(There is a double-entendre in the last two examples which the reader is free to investigate, around the fact that geigen and geihen are homonyms, but that isn't strictly related to the topic of this post.)
My question now is: What is the connection between the meaning of "talented" and some particular side of the gacuha?
In the Mongolian practice of divination with anklebones, the anklebone is treated as having four sides. Two of these sides are considered "convex" and are treated as lucky, while the other two sides are considered "flat" and treated as unlucky. Of the two lucky sides, one is said to come up about three times more frequently than the other, and the same distribution is said to exist for the unlucky sides.
Norman's lexicon has an expression meke ceke tuwambi, "to see who is better, to compete", where meke and ceke are vaguely described as sides of a gacuha. The word ceke seems to come from Mongolian cege, meaning "the flat" (or unlucky) side of an anklebone, and is described in the Qianlong dictionary as oncohon, "face up". The word meke is not from Mongolian as far as I can tell, but would presumably mean the "convex" (or lucky) side, and is described in the Qianlong dictionary as umušuhun, or "turned over".
If geigen is one of the sides of a gacuha, and it is used in the meaning of "talented", it seems likely that it refers to the less frequent "lucky" side, the one that is worth most and hardest to achieve. This is the side called the "horse" in Mongolian.
So what does geren-i geigen mean as a full phrase? I think the best possible reading is "the most talented one in the crowd" or "the luckiest one in the crowd".
