Boma

The Boma lived in the far north, near the northern sea. Their land lay fourteen thousand li from the Tang capital and beyond the Göktürks.^[1] They took their name from their horses, which were all piebald. They did not ride them.^[1] They fought the Kirghiz often.^[1] In 652 they sent tribute to the Tang.^[2]

The Chinese description

The Tongdian reaches the Boma by way of five great Göktürk camps.^[3] It gives them 30,000 soldiers and 300,000 horses. It says that their ruling title is irkin, as among the Göktürks. They bear bows, swords, spears and shields. They keep no guard and give no rewards.^[3] Their land is a month’s travel from east to west and fifty days from north to south. The cold is severe. Each winter the snow lies so deep that only a foot or two of the trees stands above it. In the thaw they follow the sunny slopes and plough with horses and men together, sowing the five grains.^[3]

They live by fishing and hunting. They eat fish, deer, otter, sable and rats, and make their clothes from the skins.^[3] Iron is scarce. They cook in clay pots and eat from bowls of birch root.^[3] They move in search of water and grazing, and they leave when the grass is eaten. Their houses are timber piled up like the curb of a well and covered with birch bark, with earth beds, grass bedding and felt.^[3] The horses give milk and curds, and nobody rides them.^[1]

The Xin Tangshu gives the same picture with a few additions. The Boma shave their heads and wear birch-bark caps. They have small chiefs, and the chiefs cannot make one another subjects.^[4] The Tongdian, by contrast, has a single irkin leading the nation.^[3] The sources do not reconcile the two.^[3]

The Kirghiz and the Boma

The Tongdian says that the Boma were often at war with the Kirghiz. In appearance they looked like the Kirghiz, but the two peoples could not understand each other’s speech.^[1] The Xin Tangshu says that the western Göktürk Duolu Khan set up his court at Beiting, west of the Zuhe mountain. When he did, the Boma and the Kirghiz states all submitted to him.^[5] The Tongdian also gives a route. From the Boma it is thirty days south to the Türgesh. From there it is twenty days to the tribe of the Yanmonian under the Duolu Que irkin, and eight days north of that to the Keshidan.^[3] The Boma and the Yanmonian have no cattle or sheep. They marry as the Göktürks do. They pay a yearly tax in sable, otter and squirrel skins to their chief.^[3]

A reading in Kyrgyz scholarship counts the Boma among the peoples that stood especially close to the Kirghiz. These peoples may have contributed to the making of the Kirghiz people. The reading cites a later Chinese geography that puts the Boma north of the Kirghiz state, and Kyrgyz genealogical traditions of piebald-horse people.^[6] The Chinese texts report enmity and a language the Kirghiz did not share. They mention no union.^[1]

The names

駁馬ChineseXin Tangshu 217
弊剌ChineseXin Tangshu 217
遏羅支ChineseXin Tangshu 217
曷剌ChineseTongdian 200

The Xin Tangshu gives three names for the Boma: Boma, Bila and Eluozhi.^[4] The Tongdian adds that the Göktürks call them Hela.^[3] Chinese specialists read Hela as the Turkic ala, “piebald”. Two Japanese scholars read Eluozhi as alakçı, which fits the Chinese explanation of the name.^[6]

The name Bila also stands in the Tongdian’s notice on the Basmïl. The Basmïl live south of the Northern Sea and south-east of the Kirghiz.^[3] In the Tongdian, the Boma and the Basmïl therefore share a Chinese name and a position near the northern sea.^[3] The Tongdian gives no explanation.^[3] The reference literature lists Pi-la as a second name of the Basmïl.^[7] The Tongdian describes skis for the Basmïl, who run deer down on wood. Its notice on the Boma mentions none. Wooden Horses treats the device.^[3]