“I am seeking a bride for my son,” was his reply.  Dai Setzen then said that he recently had a dream, during which a white falcon had alighted on his hand.  “This,” he said, “Bordshig, was your token.  From ancient days our daughters have been wedded to the Bordshigs, and I now have a daughter named Burte who is nine years old.  I will give her to thy son.”

“She is too young,” he said; but Temudjin, who was present, urged that she would suit him by and by.  The bargain was thereupon closed, and, having taken a draught of koumiss and presented his host with two horses, Yissugei returned home.

On his father’s death Temudjin was only thirteen years old, an age that seldom carries authority in the desert, where the chief is expected to command, and his mother acted as regent.  This enabled several of the tribes which had submitted to the strong hand of Yissugei to reassert their independence.  The Taidshuts, under their leaders Terkutai, named Kiriltuk, i.e., the Spiteful, the great-grandson of Hemukai, and his nephew Kurul Bahadur, were the first to break away, and they were soon after joined by one of Yissugei’s generals with a considerable following.  To the reproaches of Temudjin the latter answered:  “The deepest wells are sometimes dry, and the hardest stones sometimes split; why should I cling to thee?” Temudjin’s mother, we are told, mounted her horse, and taking the royal standard called Tuk (this was mounted with the tails of the yak or mountain cow, or, in default, with that of a horse; it is the tau or tu of the Chinese, used as the imperial standard, and conferred as a token of royalty upon their vassals, the Tartar princes) in her hand, she led her people in pursuit of the fugitives, and brought a good number of them back to their allegiance.

After the dispersion of the Jelairs, many of them became the slaves and herdsmen of the Mongol royal family.  They were encamped near Sarikihar, the Saligol of Hyacinthe, in the district of Ulagai Bulak, which D’Ohsson identifies with the Ulengai, a tributary of the Ingoda, that rises in the watershed between that river and the Onon.  One day Tagudshar, a relative of Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, was hunting in this neighborhood, and tried to lift the cattle of a Jelair, named Jusi Termele, who thereupon shot him.  This led to a long and bitter strife between Temudjin, who was the patron of the Jelairs, and Chamuka.  He was of the same stock as Temudjin, and now joined the Taidshuts, with his tribe the Jadjerats.  He also persuaded the Uduts and Nujakins, the Kurulas and Inkirasses, to join them.