The ruling house of West Sünit Banner
Hereditary Chinggisid princely line that governed West Sünit (Sönöd/Sunid) Banner in the Qing-era Shilingol League banner system; its best-known head, Demchugdongrub, later led the Mengjiang regime.
The banner and its ruling line
West Sünit — also transliterated Sönöd or Sunid — was one of the banners (khoshuu) of the Shilingol League in Inner Mongolia, part of the Qing dynasty’s banner-and-league administrative system for the Mongols. The Sunid people’s submission to the Manchus is dated to 1638, when the Right Flank of the tribe, led by a man named Susai, surrendered; in 1642 the Manchu ruler Abahai conferred on Susai the hereditary title of jasag toroyin junwang (a second-ranking ruling prince) over the Right Flank of Sunid, establishing the line that would go on to govern the banner (Jagchid). Mongol noble houses of the period, including this one, claimed descent from Chinggis Khan’s Borjigin clan; Jagchid describes the aristocracy generally as taiji — blood relatives of the altan urag, the Golden Clan (Jagchid). Rule of the banner passed by hereditary succession within this line, subject to formal confirmation by the Qing court, into the early twentieth century.
The end date given here (1949) marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the broader collapse of hereditary banner rule across Inner Mongolia under the new government. The exact point at which hereditary authority formally ended in West Sünit specifically is not established by the sources used for this entry.
Demchugdongrub, its most prominent head
The line’s best-documented and most consequential head was Demchugdongrub, invested as jasag toroyin junwang of the Sunid Right Banner in 1908 after a six-year gap in the succession following his father Namjilwangchug’s death (Jagchid). Demchugdongrub went on to lead the Inner Mongolian autonomy movement of the 1930s and then chaired the Japanese-sponsored Mengjiang regime from the late 1930s until its collapse in 1945.
His prominence should not be read as making this princely house synonymous with Mengjiang. Mengjiang was a multi-banner, Japanese-sponsored state that drew its leadership from several Mongol noble lines, not an extension of one banner’s ruling family — this house is not “the royal house of Mengjiang.”
Genealogy (unverified)
The specific genealogy of Demchugdongrub’s immediate family — spouse, children, and their dates — is much less solidly sourced than the institutional history above, and is recorded here separately for that reason.
D. Zorigt’s account of the family’s fate after 1945 lists his wife as Renchintsoo, and names four sons (Dugarsüren, Galsanjigmed, Ochirbat, Ochirkhuu), a daughter (Batnasan), a daughter-in-law (Serjmyadag), and two grandsons (Nasan-Ölzii, Baatar-Ölzii) (Zorigt, “Fate of His Family”). See the Demchugdongrub entry for the separate, unresolved conflict between this source and Jagchid’s biography over his wife’s name (Jagchid names her Sebjidma). Jagchid’s index independently names “Serjimideg” as the wife of his eldest son Dugursurung — plausibly the same person as Zorigt’s “Serjmyadag,” allowing for transliteration differences, though the two accounts aren’t detailed enough to call this a confirmed match rather than a likely one.
Beyond this, a family chart is known to exist giving further birth and death dates for Demchugdongrub’s children and descendants. It has not been reviewed for this entry, and none of its specific claims are repeated here — it should be checked and properly sourced before any of its detail is added.
Sources
- Sechin Jagchid, The Last Mongol Prince: The Life and Times of Demchugdongrob, 1902–1966 (Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 1999) — cited above as “Jagchid.”
- D. Zorigt, “De Wang and the Fate of His Family,” drawing on Mongolian Ministry of Internal Affairs and General Intelligence Authority archives — cited above as “Zorigt, ‘Fate of His Family.’”