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motivations for adaptations like foal forage training Mongols such as
Ušish’s charges habitually engaged in. In this way humans, animals, and
their surrounding environment were mutually conditioning, and their
relations conditioned policies intended to bring them under more system-
atic state control.
Beijing authorities had clearly been aware of milk’ssignificance
before 1736. Indeed,“milking mares”(Ma:sun sara geo)constituted
an intrinsic part of a Mongol military banner unit’sownregulation
complement of livestock.^77 Ušish, however, was compelled to remind
Beijing of its own pertinent rules covering herders, which had been
issued more than twenty years before. In 1714 ,theShangsiyuan(Palace
Stud; Ma:Dergi Adun i Jurgan)allocatedfifty milking mares to each
gelding and gelding camel herd to provide for human consumption.
Ušish proposed that“moderate milking”of mares in these herds, as
well as existing prohibitions against “unauthorized milking,” be
allowed to continue with mares rotated when and where appropriate.
Ušish stressed that the lack of milking mares was“a situation harmful
to both horse herds and Mongols” andassertedherderscouldbe
effective only when they“obtain enough milk with which to pass the
winter.”^78
Ensuring a balance between the interests of humans and animals was a
fundamental principle of Qing state control on the steppe in general. It
was also, as in this case, often critical for the preservation of military
resources that were the region’s ultimate contribution to the Qing order.
Some sort of sustainable method to apportion this limited resource thus
needed to be worked out.
The general method seems to have been to maintain a very large
proportion of mares for both breeding and milk production. This
emphasis is visible at its most basic level in the ratio of mare herds to
the other major subcategory of state horseflesh, geldings. Herds in the
Taipusipastures in 1723 , for example, werefixed by statute at no more
than 152 mare herds of thirty-five thousand and no more than sixteen
gelding herds offive thousand to maintain a ratio between them of 7 : 1.
A few years later in 1731 , the Shangdu/Dabsun Nuur herds numbered
130 and 18 , respectively, at ratio of about 6 : 1.^79 Even when the mare
population is reduced to take account of the statutory internal herd
proportion of mares to studs at 5 : 1 , the ratio remains a significant 5. 6 : 1
in favor of mares. Yet another 1738 statistical report indicates that only
47 percent of a“mare”herd was actually mares.^80 Early Qing ratios of
40 mare to 8 gelding herds nevertheless suggest the relative importance of
The Nature of Imperial Pastoralism in Southern Inner Mongolia 141
