I wrote earlier about the Rise of the Oirats and the factors leading to the great migration westward of the people who would become known as Kalmyks. The Torguts and Dörböt, the tribe to which Dambijantan belonged, were the two main components of the Kalmyks.
The Torgut who lived in the upper Irtysh River in what is now Xinjiang Province of China were particularly susceptible to pressure from the Altan Khan centered just to the north in what are now the Mongolian aimags of Khovd and Bayan-Ölgii. Hearing of rich pasture land to the west the Torgut chieftain Kho-Urlük had sent out scouts west to search for new grazing lands as early as 1608. Starting in the summer of 1615 some 15,000 Torgut starting moving westward toward the steppes south of the Siberian towns of Tara, Tiumen, and Tobolsk. In the early 1630s the Torgut, along with a contingent of Dörböt and a smattering of dissatisfied Choros and Khoshut, moved still farther westward to the Rich Steppes North of the Caspian Sea, described by historian of the Kalmyks Michael Khodarkovsky as “pastoral El Dorado, glorified in songs and epics of many nomadic people.” The Torgut alone who migrated may have numbered over 200,000. These new arrivals quickly overcame the disorganized nomads already inhabiting the area and by the beginning of the 1640s occupied the entire Caspian Steppe from the Emba River in the east to the Terek River in the west, including the rich basin of the lower Volga River, the biggest tributary of the Caspian Sea.
These are the people who became known as Kalmyks, a word about which there is some dispute. It would appear that the word Kalmyk was used to describe Oirats as far back as the fourteenth century by Arab geographer abn Alvardi. This was of course long before the migration to the West of the people now known as Kalmyks. Some popular and even scholarly literature continues to refer to the Western Mongols, or Oirats, who did not migrate to the West as Kalmyks. I adapt here the usage proposed by Khodarkovksy and “reserve the name Kalmyk only for the group of Oirats who came from Jungaria to roam the Caspian steppes in the early seventeenth century.”
For the next hundred years or so the Kalmyks nomadized on the steppe north of the Caspian Sea while gradually acceding to the overall authority of the Russian government. In 1724 they officially accepted Russian suzerainty. By the 1740s, however, relations between the nomads and the Russian empire began to deteriorate. One of the main bones of contention was the continuing encroachment of Russian colonists into the Kalmyk pasture lands. Cossacks from the Don River began emigrating to the lower Volga, followed by Russian and Ukrainian settlers. They built towns, established industries, and began plowing up the traditional Kalmyk pasture lands. By the mid-1740s some 10,000 Kalmyk families no longer had enough livestock to support themselves. Many were forced to take work with commercial fishing operations and other Russian-owned industries. Between the years 1764 to 1768 alone more than one hundred new settlements of Russian and Ukrainian colonists were established on the lower Volga. The Kalmyks who attempted to maintain their nomadic lifestyle were shoved off onto arid, inhospitable desert-steppe far from the major rivers.
Another contentious issue was the forced recruitment of Kalmyk cavalrymen into various Russian military campaigns. When they had first arrived on the Caspian steppe the Kalmyks were more than wiling to help the Russians in campaigns against other nomads who were competing with them for pasture lands and from whom they could expect considerable booty, the traditional motivation for steppe warfare. As the Kalmyks became more and more impoverished they were less and less eager to fight those with whom they had no real beef and from whom no immediate treasure would be forthcoming. The matter came to a head when the Russo-Ottoman War broke out in 1768 and empress Catherine II tried to impress 20,000 Kalmyk cavalrymen to fight the Ottoman Empire and its minions. The Kalmyks could only provide 10,000 men and after disputes with the Russian army commanders many of these deserted.
Then there was the dispute over religion. The Kalmyks had continued to practice the Tibetan form of Buddhism which they had brought with them from Inner Asia. They maintained close ties with Tibet and regularly sent embassies to the Dalai Lama. Kalmyk lamas went to Tibet for training and Kalmyk noblemen and others who could afford it (the roundtrip often took several years) made pilgrimages to Lhasa and other religious sites in Tibet. As their political and economic situation deteriorated, however, the Kalmyks came under more and more pressure to convert to Russian Orthodox Christianity. According to Khodarkovsky:
The Russian government encouraged conversion by all possible feasible means. Those Kalmyks who chose to convert and settle down with the Don Cossacks were put on the military payroll and for the next few years were paid a higher salary than the cossacks. On other occasions, the [converted] Kalmyks were granted tax exemptions for three to five years. The Kalmyk tayishis [noblemen] who chose to convert were rewarded with handsome salaries and could live in towns or settlements especially built for them.When Donduk-Dashi Khan (r.1741–61) attempted to build a Buddhist temple in Astrakhan, the largest city on the lower Volga, he was told by the Russian government in St. Petersburg that “it was not appropriate to build a temple for idol worshipping in the empire of Her Majesty . . .” Traditional-minded Kalmyks in general were deeply offended by these assaults on their religious beliefs. Some noblemen were so infuriated by what they viewed as subversion of their Buddhism-based society that they went so far as to burn down settlements of Christian converts. Russo-Kalmyk relations were quickly reaching their nadir.
As early as 1747 some Kalymks, intensely disillusioned with life in Russia, had raised the possibility of leaving the country altogether and returning to their original homeland in Inner Asia. The sentiment picked up steam throughout the 1750s and 60s. In 1771, at long last, the Kalmyks had had enough. They decided to return to Inner Asia. Thus began the tragic epic of the Kalmyk Migration, what Khodarkovsky calls “the last known exodus of a nomadic people in the history of Asia.”
In late 1770 the nobleman Tsebek-Dorji had addressed the issue in a speech to the governing council of the Kalmyk Khan:
Look how your rights are being limited in all respects. Russian officials mistreat you and the government wants to make peasants out of you. The banks of the Yayik and Volga are now covered with cossack settlements, and the northern borders of your steppes are inhabited by Germans. In a little while, the Don, Terek, and Kum will also be colonized and you will be pushed to the waterless steppes and the only source of your existence, your herds, will perish. Ubashi’s son has already been ordered give as a hostage, and three hundred from among the noble Kalmyks are to reside in the Russian capital. You can see your situation, and in the future you will have two options—either to carry your burden of slavery, or to leave Russia and thus end your misfortunes. Dalai Lama himself selected two years in which a migration to Jungaria could be undertaken. These two years have arrived. So your present decision will determine your future.Ubashi Khan and Louzang Jalchin, the head lama of the Kalmyks, agreed that the time had come to act. At this time the majority of the Kalmyks, including most of the Torgut, were on the east side of the Volga. The Dörböt and Khoshut, along a few Torgut, were on the west side. Ubashi Khan himself had moved to the east side of the Volga in the autumn of 1770. The decision to leave Russia had been made, but Ubashi wanted to wait until the Volga was frozen over so the Kalmyks on the west side could cross over and join the exodus. Events forced his hand. Rumors of the planned departure of the Kalymks had leaked out and there was a chance the Russians would take military action to stop them. Then Russian authorities called up 10,000 more Kalmyk cavalryman for service with the Russian army. This was the last straw.
On the morning of January 5 all the Kalmyks on the east side of the Volga—31,000 families, some 150,000 men, women, and children, mounted up and headed eastward to Inner Asia. Various detachments of Cossacks, Russians, and Bashkirs (Moslem tribesmen) were send to halt the escaping Kalmyks and force them to return to the Russian dominions, but they were outnumbered and eventually returned empty-handed. The Kalmyk horde reached the banks of the Emba River, where they camped while awaiting Spring and fresh grass. Yet more detachments of Russian troops were set out after the Kalmyks but they too were rebuffed. The Kalmyks moved on and by early June had reached Lake Balkash in what is now Kazakhstan. Here they encountered their hereditary enemies the Kazakhs, who were thirsting for revenge for earlier Kalmyk attacks against them. Outnumbered and surrounded, the Kalmyks only managed to escape by means of an unexpected night-time breakout and a forced march onward. Most of their sheep herds they had brought with them were lost in the fighting and soon famine set in. By the time they reached the Ili River in what is now Xinjiang Province of China over 100,000 Kalmyks had died from fighting, famine, and lack of water. The survivors, numbering at most 50,000, were greeted by Qing officials and given emergency aid of tents, wheat, rice, sheep, and other commodities.
The Ili River in western Xinjiang
Ili River ValleyThe Qing viewed the return of the Kalmyks as a huge propaganda victory, demonstrating to other nomads the advantages of living under Chinese rather than Russian rule. The Qianlong emperor found even greater significant in the return of the Kalmyks. His mother Hsin-mao was celebrating her 80th birthday in 1771 and in her honor Qianlong had commissioned the construction of an enormous temple in the Qing Summer Resort of Jehol (current-day Chengde).
The Putuozongcheng Temple in current-day ChengdeThe Putuozongcheng Temple, as it was called, was supposed to be replica of the Potala in Lhasa. Then came news of the return of the Kalmyks, coinciding with the dedication of the temple. Qianlong caused a stele to be erected at the temple with an inscription on it in Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Manchurian which read in part:
Our vassals over the border all believe in the religion of Sakyamuni. Jehol was the spot where our grandfather the Emperor K’ang-his [the Kangxi Emperor], pacified and appeased them, and there he granted them audiences . . . Now the temple is finished in time for a great national event [Hsin-mao’s birthday] that is to be celebrated by all, in a unique manner . . . In addition to this, the Torgot [Kalmyks, including the Torgut], who have lived in Russia for some time, have returned for religious reasons. The whole of their tribe—which numbers many ten-thousands—arrived just at this time, after wandering about for more than six months. Here is a connection that is mystic.Ubashi himself was invited to Jehol and sumptuously wined and dined by Qianlong. He was told he could keep his title of Khan but in fact his people were divided into separate banners and dispersed throughout Xinjiang. They were now under Qing jurisdiction and Ubashi was their ruler in name only. Despite Qianlong’s honeyed words, the Kalmyks quickly discovered that Qing rule was anything but benign. As Khodarkovsky puts it, “The Kalmyks had escaped Russian tentacles only to be ensnared in Chinese ones.” (The immense pile of the Putuozongcheng Temple, which is actually little more than a hollow façade, looms over the city of Chengde to this day; Qianlong’s stele is still prominently displayed out front.)Qianlong’s stele in front of the Putuozongcheng Temple
In the meantime, Russian Empress Catherine II was infuriated that 150,000 of her subjects had managed to escape her domains. She issued ultimatums to the Qing government demanding the return of “these rogues and traitors” but they were ignored.
This great exodus of the Kalmyks inspired Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), the eccentric English author perhaps better known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater to pen an ode entitled Revolt of the Tartars, which begins with an exegesis of the whole episode:
There is no great event in modern history, or, perhaps it may be said more broadly, none in all history, from its earliest records, less generally known, or more striking to the imagination, than the flight eastwards of a principal Tartar nation across the boundless steppes of Asia in the latter half of the last century. The terminus a quo of this flight and the terminus ad quem are equally magnificent—the mightiest of Christian thrones being the one, the mightiest of pagan the other; and the grandeur of these two terminal objects is harmoniously supported by the romantic circumstances of the flight. In the abruptness of its commencement and the fierce velocity of its execution we read an expression of the wild, barbaric character of the agents. In the unity of purpose connecting this myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a mark so remote, there is something which recalls to the mind those almighty instincts that propel the migrations of the swallow and the leeming [sic] or the life-withering marches of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy vengeance of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung upon the rear and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we are reminded of Miltonic images--such, for instance, as that of the solitary hand pursuing through desert spaces and through ancient chaos a rebellious host, and overtaking with volleying thunders those who believed themselves already within the security of darkness and of distance.
Thomas de QuinceyAs we know, Dambijantsan was a member of the Dörböt tribe. The Dörböt, who in the early years of the Kalmyk occupation of the Caspian steppe had roamed the westernmost stretches of the Kalmyk realm, along the River Don, a tributary of the Azov Sea, had in 1743 been moved en masse further east to the steppes bordering the west bank of the Volga River by Donduk Dashi Khan, who had been granted power over them by the Russian government. Residing as they did on the west bank of the Volga, most if not all of the Dörböts remained behind after the great migration of the Kalmyks back to Zungaria in 1771.
In retaliation for the exodus the Russian government on October 19 1771 stripped these remaining Kalmyks of “the last vestige of their political independence” and ordered that they all remain of the west side of the Volga River year-round. Thus it was on the Caspian Steppes on the west bank of the Volga that Dambijantsan was born, perhaps as we have posited, in 1860. As noted, he may have been born into the Sanaev family, but this is by no means certain. From his very earliest age he must have been aware that he was one of the ‘left behind people,” and that the vast majority of his fellow Mongols were off somewhere to the east in Inner Asia. He would spend most of his life trying to reconnect with these people.
