Sunday, November 30, 2008

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #9

Who was Dambijantsan?

A Buddhist monk; a freedom fighter for Mongolian independence; the descendant of Amursanaa (1723–1757), the Western Mongol who led the last great uprising against the Qing Dynasty of China; the incarnation of Mahakala, the Buddhist god of war; bandit, torturer, murderer, or evil incarnate? During his lifetime no one was sure who he really was, and even today the controversy about his life continues.

Born in what is now the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation, Dambijantsen traveled throughout Tibet, India, and China before arriving in Mongolia in 1890 where he tossed gold coins to bystanders and announced to one and all that he had come to free Mongolia from the yoke of the Qing Dynasty of China. After disappearing almost twenty years he returned to lead the attack on Khovd City, the last Chinese outpost in Mongolia. Honored by the Eighth Bogd Gegeen, the theocratic leader of Mongolia, for his efforts in achieving Mongolian independence, he went on to establish his own mini-state in western Mongolia, which he hoped to use as a base for establishing a Mongol-led Buddhist khanate in Inner Asia. His dictatorial nature and unbridled sadism soon came to the fore and he was finally arrested and imprisoned in Russia. After the Russian Revolution he returned to Mongolia, gathered new followers around him, and established a stronghold at the nexus of old caravan routes in Gansu Province, China. He robbed caravans, grew opium, and once again dreamed of creating a new Mongolian khanate in Inner Asia. Finally the new Bolshevik government in Mongolia, fearful of his rising power, issued orders for his assassination. Dambijantsan died in 1922, but in Mongolia legends persist to this day that his spirit still rides on the wind of the Gobi and continues to haunt his former lairs.


For more on Dambijantsan see False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan


Friday, November 28, 2008

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Venus and Jupiter

I don't know why I waste my time on you dolts, but I am going to point out Yet Again that Venus and Jupiter are now presenting a gorgeous sight on the southern horizon just after sunset.


According to Sky & Telescope:
The Venus-Jupiter pairing in the southwestern twilight is becoming a head-turning spectacle, as shown at right, and it will become more impressive all week . . . Jupiter and Venus may look close together, but Jupiter this week is nearly six times farther away from us than Venus is. That's part of why Jupiter is less bright even though it's a much bigger planet. The other reason is that, being farther from the Sun, Jupiter is lit much less brilliantly by the Sun's light . . . With Venus and Jupiter just 2.4° apart this evening, the thin crescent Moon steps onstage about 20° to their lower right as shown here. The two planets will be closest, 2° apart, on Sunday and Monday evenings — when, coincidentally, the Moon shines near them as well.
For those fortunate enough to be in Ulaan Baatar the Venus-Jupiter alignment is stunningly obvious to the south-southwest just over the ridge of Bogd Khan Uul. Even the most directionally challenged among you should be able to spot them very easily. So before stumbling into the dens of dissipation where you usually waste your evenings take a few minutes to lift your earthbound glance to the skies and take in this spectacular sight.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Lam Rim Monastery

Wandered up to Lam Rim Monastery, on Zanabazar Street just below Gandan Monastery in Ulaan Baatar. I have gone here many times over the years but I never really knew the story behind the founding of this monastery. The other day I dropped to see Bayantsagaan, the director of the monastery, and by chance his daughter Erdenetsetseg was there. She lived in Malaysia for several years and speaks near perfect English, so with her help I was able to get some background information.

Erdenetsetseg

Lam Rim Monastery

Bayantsagaan

Lam Rim Monastery was founded in 1990 by Erdenetsetseg’s father S. Bayantsagaan. Originally from Khovd Aimag in western Mongolia, Bayantsagaan studied the Lam Rim Teaching and Buddhist philosophy at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and the Zanabazar Institute in Ulaan Baatar. He has a Geshé degree from the Zanabazar Institute and is fluent in Tibetan. In the early 1990s he played an active role the democratic movement in Mongolia and for much of the 1990s he worked as the director of the Mongolian Believers Association. During this period about seventy monasteries and temples were activated under his leadership. He has also initiated and strengthened communications between Mongolia and Tibet and in recent years has organized visits of the Dalai Lama to Mongolia.

Lam Rim Monastery was founded to promote the Lam Rim Teaching of Tsongkhapa (Mongolian=Bogd Zonkhov), who in the fifteen-century founded the Gelug Sect in Tibet.

Bogd Zhonkov

Bogd Zhonkov is author of one of the primary Lam Rim texts, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path of Enlightenment. Bayantsagaan would like to emphasize that the Lam Rim, or Graduated Path, is not just for monks, but for all practitioners who wish to proceed on the path to Enlightenment. The three main Protectors of the monastery are Gombo, Namsrai, and Choijoo, three deities who have promised to protect Bogd Zonkhov’s teaching wherever it may be.

Interior of Lam Rim Temple

Interior of Lam Rim Temple

Monk at Lam Rim

Ninety-six year old monk, the oldest at Lam Rim Monastery

Lama Gombo, a mere stripling at ninety-five years old

New Generation of monks at Lam Rim

Monks giving blessings

Lam Rim Monastery also specializes in the Kalachakra (Mongolian = Duinkhor) Teaching believed to have come from the Kingdom of Shambhala. Kalachakra ceremonies are performed here on the 10th and 25th day of the Lunar Month. One of the goals of the monastery is to prepare people for the eventually arrival of the 25th Kalkin King of Shambhala under whose reign Buddhism will flourish throughout the entire world.

Kingdom of Shambhala depicted on Thangka at Lam Rim Temple

One of the Thirty-Two Kings of Shambhala on display at Lam Rim Temple

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #8

Who was Dambijantsan?

A Buddhist monk; a freedom fighter for Mongolian independence; the descendant of Amursanaa (1723–1757), the Western Mongol who led the last great uprising against the Qing Dynasty of China; the incarnation of Mahakala, the Buddhist god of war; bandit, torturer, murderer, or evil incarnate? During his lifetime no one was sure who he really was, and even today the controversy about his life continues.

Born in what is now the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation, Dambijantsen traveled throughout Tibet, India, and China before arriving in Mongolia in 1890 where he tossed gold coins to bystanders and announced to one and all that he had come to free Mongolia from the yoke of the Qing Dynasty of China. After disappearing almost twenty years he returned to lead the attack on Khovd City, the last Chinese outpost in Mongolia. Honored by the Eighth Bogd Gegeen, the theocratic leader of Mongolia, for his efforts in achieving Mongolian independence, he went on to establish his own mini-state in western Mongolia, which he hoped to use as a base for establishing a Mongol-led Buddhist khanate in Inner Asia. His dictatorial nature and unbridled sadism soon came to the fore and he was finally arrested and imprisoned in Russia. After the Russian Revolution he returned to Mongolia, gathered new followers around him, and established a stronghold at the nexus of old caravan routes in Gansu Province, China. He robbed caravans, grew opium, and once again dreamed of creating a new Mongolian khanate in Inner Asia. Finally the new Bolshevik government in Mongolia, fearful of his rising power, issued orders for his assassination. Dambijantsan died in 1922, but in Mongolia legends persist to this day that his spirit still rides on the wind of the Gobi and continues to haunt his former lairs.


For more on Dambijantsan see False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan


Friday, November 21, 2008

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #7

I wrote earlier about the circumstances leading up to Dambijantsan’s Enrollment in a Monastery in Dolonnuur.

The beginnings of Dambijantsan’s monastic career at Dolonnuur are unclear. He may have taken the preliminary vow known as Rabjun, which is given to young boys when they first enter a monastery. In addition to learning to read and write Mongolian, he probably began to study at least written Tibetan, since at that time most Buddhist texts were in the Tibetan language, and he would have received lessons in elementary Buddhism teachings, including the doctrines of the Gelug, or Yellow Hat, sect, one of the four main divisions of Tibetan Buddhism and the one to which the Dalai Lama belonged.

From his fellow Mongolian students, many of them from Khalkh Mongolia, the young boy who had been born in Russia may have imbibed the anti-Manchu sentiment then growing among a people ever-increasingly impoverished by their Qing masters. And perhaps he even got a sense that all was not well in the Qing Dynasty itself, then still reeling from the disastrous Second Opium War of 1856–60. In 1860, the year Dambijantsan was born, British and French forces had entered Bejing and sacked the Summer Palace, then forced on the Qing government to sign the so-called Peking Convention, which opened several Chinese ports to foreign trade, gave foreigners the right to travel in the interior of China, allowed Christian missionaries into the country, and, perhaps most importantly, legalized the importation of opium, the mainstay of British trade at the time. It was a blow from which the Qing Dynasty would never really recover. The emperor Xianfeng, totally mortified by China’s defeat in the Opium War and the onerous settlement forced on him by the foreign powers, died a broken man a year later at the age of twenty-nine. One of his concubines would lead a coup état and subsequently rule China for the next forty-seven years as the Empress Dowager Cixi, overseeing the slow but inexorable decline leading to the final extinguishment of the Qing Dynasty. When the Qing Dynasty finally did fall, in 1911–12, Dambijantsan would be in western Mongolian, leading the fight for Mongolian independence.

Maisky and George Roerich both allude to Dambijantsan’s youthful soujourn in Dolonuur but give no details. According to one of his Russian biographers he excelled in his studies and was soon marked out for advancement in the lamaistic community. Talented and ambitious young monks were inevitably drawn to Lhasa, the wellspring and lodestone of Tibetan Buddhism, so it is not surprising that Dambijantsan would have set his sights on the Tibetan capital. There was a problem, however. Although a Kalmyk, he was apparently a Russian citizen, and most foreigners, including even Buddhists from Russia, were not allowed into Tibet. The earlier fraternal ties the Kalmyks had enjoyed with Tibet had ended at least a hundred years ago. But as a Mongolian-speaking Kalmyk studying in Doloonuur he might well have been able to pass himself off as a Khalkh from Mongolia. As such he would have been allowed to travel to Tibet and enroll in a monastery there. As we shall see, he would not have been the only Russian citizen to attempt this ploy. Dambijantsan’s propensity for assumed false identities might well have begun at this point.

In any event, we soon find Dambijantsan in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet and home of the Dalai Lama, enrolled in the Drepung Monastery, one of the “Great Three” monasteries of Tibet, along with Sera and Gandan. Drepung (literally “rice heap”) Monastery had been founded in 1416 by Jamyang Chöje Tashi Pelden (“Dashi-baldan“ in Mongolian accounts), born in Tibet near Samye Monastery, and a close disciple of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug sect. He was believed to be the Eleventh Appearance of Javzanbamba, the line of incarnations of which Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, was the sixteenth. In addition to Drepung, he established more than one hundred other monasteries, retreat centers, and hermitages all over Tibet.

Drepung, located at the base of Gambo Utse Mountain about five miles west of the Potala, was once reputed to be the largest Buddhist monastery in the world, with as many as 8,000 monks in residence. The second, third and fourth Dalai Lamas lived at Drepung—this was before the completion of the Potala, later the residence of the Dalai Lamas—and their bodies were emtombed here. Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia stayed at Drepung during his visits to Tibet in the years 1649–51 and 1655–56. Drepung was divided into colleges (dratsangs) which specialized in a particular teaching or hosted monks from some specific area in the Buddhist world. One college, for example, hosted monks from Kham, in eastern Tibet. Gomang College was famous for its Mongolian monks, and it was here that Dambijantsan gravitated.

Drepung in general was renowned as an institute of higher learning, with many monks studying for fifteen or twenty year to achieve the Buddhist equivalent of a doctorate degree. Any monk aspiring to reach the pinnacle of Buddhist teachings could fulfill his ambitions here. According to George Roerich, Dambijantsan spent “many years” at Drepung. Unfortunately we do not know who his teachers were, what specific teachings he specialized in, or what initiations he might have taken. His years at Gomang College were not wasted, however. “People who knew him well,” according to Roerich, “affirm that his knowledge of Buddhist metaphysics and secret Tantric teachings was unusually vast and it seems he enjoyed a high reputation among the high lamas of Mongolia.”

Later in life Dambijantsan would claim that the met the great Buryat-Mongol Lama Agvan Dorzhiev while in Tibet. He did not relate when and where they met, but they both would have been at Drepung Monastery at about the same time, and it is quite possible they crossed paths at Gomang College, the traditional haunt of Mongolian monks in Lhasa. If their paths did not cross they certainly moved in parallel directions. Both were of Mongols born in Russia; both would study in Tibet, both would enter the political realm—Dorzhieff in Tibet and Dambijantsan in Mongolia; both would dream of estabishing a Buddhist-oriented realm on Inner Asia; and both were men who assumed very public roles but whose lives were always surrounded in mystery.

Look behind the curtains of late nineteenth-early twentieth century Russo-Tibeto-Mongolian affairs and you are more than likely to find there, directing the hesitant actors, prompting the tongue-tied, and ready to stride on stage himself whenever necessary, the enigmatic figure of the always-present but paradoxically ever-elusive Dorzhiev, or Ngawang Losang, as he was known in Tibetan. Dorzhiev was born in the valley of the Uda River, which flows into the Selenga River at the city of Ulaan Ude (in Dorzhiev’s time, Verkhneudinsk) in the current autonomous republic of Buryatia in the Wood Tiger Year of the 14th sixty-year cycle of the Kalachakra calendar (1854 according to the Gregorian calendar). A precocious student with obvious linguistic talents he soon excelled in Russian—his native language was Buryat—and, oddly enough for the time and place, French. He showed an early interest in Buddhism and quickly added Tibetan, the language of most religious texts, to his resumé. At the age of thirteen he received an Amitayus Long-Life Empowerment from a local lama, who also advised him to go to Tibet for further studies.

Tibet, however, was far off; and Dorzhiev’s means were limited. Örgöö, in Mongolia, was much closer, and it was there that Dorzhiev went a year later, in 1868. He took the precepts of an upsaka, or religious layman, restraining himself from killing, stealing, lying, irresponsible sexual activity, and the use of intoxicants. Apparently at this point he was not totally convinced of his religious vocation and not yet ready to become a fully ordained monk. Instead he soon married a woman named Kholintsog and may have fathered a child—coitus in the married state not being considered irresponsible sexual activity. He quickly discovered that “the household life, both in this and future births, is like sinking into a swamp of misery.” After consulting with his teacher, the revered Mongolian lama Penchen Chomphel, he decided to advance a further step on the path of his religious vocation by taking the vows of a celibate layman, or ubashi. At this point wife and purported child disappear from his curriculum vitae, never to be heard from again.

Agvan Dorzhiev

For the really serious student of Buddhism there was only one ultimate destination—Lhasa, the lodestar of Inner Asian Buddhists. Dambijantsan himself had reached this conclusion. Dorzhiev was nothing if not ambitious and he soon trained his sights on the Tibetan capital, where he hoped to eventually acquire the degree of geshé, the Buddhist equivalent of a doctorate. But here we get the first whiff of intrigue that was to hover like a miasma around Dorzhiev for the rest of his life. Historian of Russian and Tibetan relations Alexandre Andreyev has speculated that even at this early date Dorzhiev may have working for Russian intelligences services. Documents in the archives of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society propose “sending one or more Buryat Buddhists to Lhasa . . . with a Mongolian mission which was to bring back to Urga a new incarnation of the recently deceased Khutukhtu.” The Buryats were to concern themselves with “intelligence gathering.”

According to one source Dorzhief and Penchen Chomphel left Mongolia for Lhasa in the winter of 1873. They may well have been accompanying the caravan sent to bring back the little Tibetan boy, a relative of the Dalai Lama, who had determined to be the 8th Bogd Gegeen. As mentioned, all Europeans and citizens of the Russia empire were still strictly barred from entering Tibet at this time, and Dorzhiev, although a Buryat and a Buddhist, was still a citizen of Russia. Thus he went along on the caravan disguised as a Khalkh Mongol attendant to Penchen Chomphel. This was quite a dangerous undertaking for the Buryat. If exposed he would have been subjected to severe punishments, perhaps even ending up in a Tibetan dungeon. Any Tibetan who aided him risked having his property confiscated, or might have even be sewed up in a leather bag and thrown into the Tsangpo River to drown, the fate of Lama Senchen, the Shigatse monk who in the early 1880s had befriended the Indian pundit Chandra Das, who was in the pay of the British.

In Lhasa Dorzhiev found temporary refuge at Gomang College in Drepung Monastery. Here he could blend in with Mongolian monks who would be unlikely to expose him even if they know his true status. We cannot say for sure if Dambijantsan was there at the time. If our chronology is correct he entered the monastery at Dolonnuur around 1867 but we do not know how long he studied there before moving on to Drepung in Tibet. If they were both at Drepung at they had one thing in common; as Russian citizens they were both in Tibet illegally. Dambijantsan, perhaps already at this time a master of assumed identities, did not seem to have a problem, but word seems to have leaked about Dorzhiev’s true origins. His position precarious and running low on funds, he decided to forgo for the moment his dream of pursuing Buddhist studies in Lhasa and instead return to Örgöö. Here the record is clearer; he and Penchen Chomphel did accompany the caravan bringing the little four-year-old 8th Bogd Gegeen to Mongolia.

The Tibetan monk Luvsanchoijinimadanzinbanchug (1870–1924) was the twenty-third incarnation of Javsandamba and eighth in the line of Bogd Gegeens of Mongolia established by Zanabazar. He would witness the fall of the Qing Dynasty and oversee the rise of an independent state of Mongolia; in additional to his role as head of Buddhism in Mongolia he would eventually be crowned king of Mongolia; and he would live to see his power usurped by the Bolshevik communists who had seized control of the country in 1922. As his life was inextricably intertwined with that of Dambijantsan’s we will have more to say about him later.

By the time Dorzhiev returned to Örgöö he had decided on his religious vocation. At the age of twenty-one he was given full ordination as a monk by Penchen Chomphel and began studies with a number of other venerable monks who initiated him into various tantric practices, including the sadhana of Vajrabhairava, which would become his life-long practice. He also studied at monasteries at Wutai Shan in Shanxi Province, China, a mountain (actually a cluster of five peaks) dedicated to Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. He had not given up his dreams of continuing his studies in Lhasa, however. Informed by knowledgeable lamas at Wutai Shan that the obstacles he had previously faced could be overcome by generous offerings to monasteries and officials in Lhasa, he returned to Buryatia and managed to solicit a considerable amount of alms from his fellow countrymen, duly impressed as they were by the energetic and charismatic monk who already seemed destined for greater things. Part of this booty was given to Dzasak Rinpoche, a high-ranking lama at Wutai Shan. This worthy, who apparently had good connections in Tibet, smooth the way for Dorzhiev’s trip back to Lhasa and even determined an auspicious time for him to leave on his journey.

The twenty-six year old Dorzhiev arrived back in the Tibetan capital in 1880. Upon his arrival he made generous offerings to the Big Three monasteries of Sera, and Gandan, and Drepung, with an extra and especially munificent donation to Gomang College at Drepung. “By this means,” relates his biographer, “which may not exactly have been bribery, but something very much like it, the earnest and energetic young Buryat was able ‘to create favourable conditions for my studies’”. The matter of his Russian citizenship was for the time being forgotten.

Dorzhiev’s subsequent career at Lhasa was nothing short of meteoric. He studied with some of the most distinguished lamas in Tibet and in 1888, just eight years after his arrival in Lhasa, he was awarded the Buddhist equivalent of a doctorate, passing the exams with the highest honors. Normally it took fifteen or twenty year to earn such a degee. “It is . . . a little puzzling how he managed to complete the course so quickly,” observes his biographer, “for there is usually a waiting list and ample funds are necessary to pass the final hurdles. Everything points to Dorzhiev having an influential patron and sponsor. Perhaps money was reaching him from Russia—and perhaps from high places in Russia. Naturally he is reticent about anything of this kind.” He immediately began instructing Mongolian and Buryat students in Buddhistic logic and metaphysic and soon became “a recognized member of the monastic elite.”

All this would pale in comparison to his next assignment. That same year, 1888, he was appointed as tutor of the-then twelve-year old Thirteenth Dalai Lama. For the next ten years he was the Dalai Lama’ ‘inseparable eattendant,” himself instructing the Dalai Lama on a near-daily basis and present when other lamas gave him initiations into the highest teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism. He would also eventually rank as the Dalai Lama’s closest political advisor. The fact that he was a Russian citizen had been forgiven but not forgotten. Some in the Dalai Lama’s entourage were appalled that a foreigner should have became the religious leader’s right hand man, and they intrigued to have him dismissed and thrown out of Tibet. But he had the support of the Dalai Lama himself and all their objections were in vain. The Buryat monk who had first slunk into Lhasa in disguise had become one of the most powerful men in the country.

Indeed, to this day Dorzhiev has not been forgotten at Drepung Monastery. When questioning monks there in 2001 about Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, I described him as “a famous Mongolian lama who had once studied at Drepung.” The monk I was talking to at first thought I was referring to “Ngawang Losang, the Mongolian monk from Russia.” This was of course Dorzhiev. (It turned out he also knew about Zanabazar, and was even aware that the Ninth Bogd Gegeen is now living in India.)

Much of Dorzhiev’s subsequent career lies outside the scope of our narrative. Suffice it to add here that he became the leader of the pro-Russian faction in the Tibetan court, and the British would use his Great Game intrigues with Russia, intended as they were to bring Tibet into the Russian sphere of influence, to justify their 1904 invasion of Tibet by the Younghusband Expedition. The Dalai Lama, accompanied by Dorzhiev, would flee Tibet in advance of the British invasion and eventually turn up in Örgöö, now Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia. And we will see that in addition to their probable encounter at Drepung, Dorzhiev is linked with Dambijantsan several more times, so we might well have to return to his story later on.

Given his apparent talents, Dambijantsan, like Dorzheiv, might have gone to beome a teacher himself at Drepung or some other monastery and eventually become a high-ranking lama in the Buddhist hierarchy. It was not to be. According to Roerich, “From his youth, he manifested an ambitous, impetuous, and cruel character.” This aspect of his character now came to the fore. “It is generally said,” continues Roerich, “that he killed his roommate in the monastery because of a dispute and had to flee Llhasa in order to escape from the stern monastic law. This fact is generally known in Tibet and Mongolia.”

Obviously any advancement in the monastic world was now impossible. A new stage of Dambijantsan’s life was about to begin. As Roerich notes, “It seems the murder was the crucial point of his life for from then on begins his life as an errant warrior monk, full of wonderful adventures, messianic prophecies, and cruel deeds.”

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Mongolia | Life and Death of the False Lama #6

Earlier I wrote about the Exodus of the Kalmyks and how Dambijantsan’s tribe, the Dörböts, had been left behind in Kalmykia . . .

At the time Dambijantsan was born, at the beginning of the 1860s, Tibetan Buddhism, despite the continued pressure to convert the Kalmyks to Russian Orthodoxy, was still prevalent in Kalmykia, the land of the Kalmyks. In all likelihood Dambijantsan was born into a family which adhered to Buddhism to one degree or another. The first news we hear of him is that at the age of seven he was supposedly enrolled as a novice in a Buddhist monastery in Dolonnuur, in what is now the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. Maisky heard this story while in western Mongolia in 1919, when Dambijantsan was still alive. Dolonnuur was firmly in the orbit of the Eastern Mongols, the Chahar of Inner Mongolia and Khalkh of what was then considered Outer Mongolia, and at first glance it appears strange that a young Dörböt from the Volga River in Russia would have gravitated there. Kalmyks wishing to enter a monastery outside of Kalmykia, we would think, would have been more drawn to western China, including the modern-day provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Gansu, the traditional strongholds of the Torguts, Dörbots, and other Oirats, both those who not migrated westward in the early seventeenth century and those who had returned in the great exodus of 1771. Fred Adelman, in his introduction to Pozdneev’s Mongolia and Mongols makes precisely this objection, and John Gaunt in his doctoral thesis on Dambijantsan repeats it: “it would be unlikely to find a Volga Kalmuk at Doloon Nuur, as they were not oriented toward Inner Mongolia’s monastic net.”

The French scholar Isabelle Charleux, an expert on Inner Mongolian monasteries, offers a different interpretation: “There were many monks and students [at Dolonnuur] from all of the Mongol world, given the reputation of the Dolonnuur monasteries and their high reincarnated masters that attracted people from very far away . . . The Dolonnuur monasteries were not only connected with the Khalkh Mongols; but also with the Inner Mongolians of Alashan and Kholun Buir . . . Also the migrant population of the Chahar banners included many Oirat Mongols. If Dambijantsan’s parents were especially fond of the Dolonnuur monasteries—because they knew a lama there, because of the reputation of the monasteries, etc.—they would have sent their child there.”

A Russian researcher adds that Dambijantsan’s parents moved to Inner Mongolia “for all the usual reasons”—presumably they were traders—when he was a very small boy, which would explain how the seven-year old boy also ended up there. Therefore it is entirely possible that this entry into Dambijantsan’s curriculum vitae was not simply a later invention meant to burnish this reputation among the Khaklh Mongols but that he actually was enrolled as a monk at Dolonnuur at an early age. In any case, this is the last we hear of his parents.

Dolonnuur (doloon = seven, nuur = lake; Seven Lakes) is located in the grasslands (now suffering from increasing desertification) 210 miles north of Beijing, about fifty-two miles beyond the first major pass leading to the Mongolian Plateau.

Ovoo at the first pass on the Mongolian Plateau

Statue of Khubilai Khan at the first pass on the Mongolian Plateau

The area is much hallowed in Mongolian history. Fourteen miles from the current town of Dolonnuur is the site of Shangdu, originally established in 1256 as the headquarters of Chingis Khan’s grandson Khubilai. After Khubilai founded the Yüan Dynasty he made what is now Bejing the primary capital of his empire, but he retained Shangdu as his summer capital, where he and his court retired each year to escape the enervating heat of the North China Plain. Shangdu was destroyed in the so-called “Red Scarf Rebellion” of 1358, a precursor to the upheavals which led to the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 and the rise of the Ming Dynasty. Later the city became known to some as the Xiancheng, or Apparition City, since people claimed that at certain times the old city as it was in the days of Khubilai appeared suddenly before their eyes and then disappeared just as quickly, leaving only the ruins as we see them today. Shangdu is also remembered as the subject of Coleridge’s much celebrated poem "Xanadu”:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea . . .
Ruins of Khubilai’s Palace at Shangdu

The ruins are now a popular tourist attraction and the area still serves as a summer getaway, only now not for Mongol potentates but for Beijing’s middle classes. More important to our story, however, it was at nearby Dolonnuur that in 1691 a fateful meeting took place between the Kangxi emperor of China and Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia and the nominal head of the Khalkh Mongols.

Tourist Camp near Shangdu

When we last left Khara Khula he was organizing the four tribes of the Oirat into the Oirat Confederation. He died in 1634 and his son Baatar-Hongtaiji assumed the throne. In 1635 the Dalai Lama officially recognized Baatar-Hongtaiji as the leader of the Oirats and gave him the title of Yerdyen. By 1640 Baatar-Hongtaiji’s realm become known as the Zungarian Khanate. The name derives from the Mongol zuun gar, “left hand“, or “eastern side;”; although the Oirats dwelt in the western end of the lands inhabited by Mongol peoples, the Choros tribe to which Khara Khula and Baatar-Hongtaiji belonged was the easternmost of the Oirat confederation and thus on the “left hand“ looking southward, as the Mongols always oriented themselves.

Following a long internecine struggle between Baatar-Hongtaiji’s offspring, replete with fratricide and rivers of blood, Galdan, probably the youngest of his eleven or so sons, seized the reins of the Zungarian Khanate. Under Galdan the Zungarian Khanate eventually encompassed a huge swath of Inner Asia, including the western edge of current-day Mongolia, the current-day Chinese province of Xinjiang, including the Silk Road cities of Hami, Turpan, and Kashgar, the legendary cities of Bukhara of Samarkand in what is now Uzbekistan, and the eastern part of current-day Kazakhstan. Although little remembered today, during Galdan’s reign the Zungarian Khanate was a formidable adversary of both Czarist Russia and Qing-Dynasty China.

Galdan would become one of the role models of Dambijantsan, and we will return for a more detailed examination of his career in good time. Suffice it to say here that in 1688 Galdan, hoping to add the territory of the Khalkh Mongols to the Zungarian Empire, invaded what is now the country of Mongolia. Meeting little opposition from the disorganized Khalkh, his army first trashed the great monastery of Erdene Zuu, built on site of the old Mongol capital of Kharkhorum, and the Monastery at Khögno Khan Uul (now known as Khögnö Taryn Khiid), just to the east. Advancing farther eastward, Galdan’s men then demolished Saridgiin Khiid, located in the Khentii Mountains north of Ulaan Baatar, the monastery which had been established by Zanabazar himself and intended to be the center of Buddhism in Mongolia. Zanabazar, his brother Chakhuundorj the Tüsheet khan, the leaders of the other Khalkh khanates, and, according to one source, at least 30,000 of their followers fled southeastward before the advance of Galdan’s troops, eventually reaching the edge of the Mongolian Plateau near Dolonnuur, land of the Chahar Mongols, who had already accepted the authority of the Qing Dynasty. Here the Khalkh Mongols, by now almost destitute, threw themselves at mercy of the Qing emperor Kangxi.

Dolonnuur
was at that time already an important monastic center, with no less then twelve incarnate lamas in residence. The town, strategically located at the edge of the Mongolian plateau, was also a busy Chinese-Mongolian entrepôt. Because of deposits of copper ore nearby it became a center of mining and smelting, and its factories were well-known for their weapons, and later its workshops became better known for the bronze Buddhist Artwork of the Dolonnuur School.

Dolonnuur School White Tara in the Bogd Khan Winter Palace Museum

The Kangxi emperor, apprized of the arrival of the Khalkh Mongols in his domains, decided to meet with their leaders and if possible bring them into the fold of the Qing Dynasty. He left Beijing on May 9, 1691 and made his leisurely way north, stopping to do a spot of hunting on the way. From May 29 to June 3 Kangxi finally meet with Zanabazar and the other Khalkh leaders in Dolonnuur. A great banquet was followed by a display of Qing might in the form of cannons, newly acquired from Jesuits in Bejing, the firing of which caused the Mongols “to tremble with fear and admiration,” at least according to Qing sources. The upshot of all this was that in exchange for protection from the forces of Galdan Bolshigt and a promise from Kangxi to restore to the Khalkh their lost lands in Mongolia, Zanabazar accepted the suzerainty of the Qing Dynasty, in effect making Mongolia a province of China. The country which Chingis Khan and his sons had conquered and his grandson Khubilai had once ruled as the first emperor of the Mongol Yüan Dynasty now dominated Mongolia. Mongolia would remain under Chinese control until 1911, when the Qing Dynasty fell. Those 220 years of subjugation by the Qing Empire are seen by some as a direct consequence of Zanabazar’s capitulation to Kangxi, and as a result many Mongolians resent him to this day. Dambijantsan himself would devote the greater part of his life to undoing what Zanabazar had done and restoring the independence of Mongolia.

But that was all in the future. In 1691, In honor of his meeting with Zanabazar and the capitulation of the Mongols, Kangxi ordered the construction of what would become the Khökh Süm, or Blue Temple. (One prominent Mongolian incarnation, the Kanjurwa Khutagt [1914–1980], maintains that on the contrary Mongol nobles built the temple in honor of Kangxi, a telling interpretation of events from a Mongol viewpoint)

Front of the Khökh Süm, which is currently being restored

The Khökh Süm was completed around 1700 and it eventually began the center of a sizable monastery. About a half mile away, the Shar Süm, or Yellow Temple, was built between 1729 and 1731 and it too became the foundation of a monastery.

Ruins of the Shar Süm

Ruins of the Shar Süm

Both monasteries were overseen by a line of incarnate lamas known as the Jangjya Khutagts. Sedendonub, the first Jangjya Khutagt, was instructed by Kangxi himself to “spend the chilly wintertime in Peking and in the summertime heat govern here and the direct the local clergy.” The Jangjya Khutagts maintained residences at both the Blue Temple and and the Yellow Temple.

The Jangjya Khutagt’s residence at the Khökh Süm

Side buildings at the Jangjya Khutagt’s residence at the Khökh Süm

The second Jangjya Khutagt, Rölpé Dorjé, was described by one scholar as “an intimate of the Qianlong emperor and thus perhaps the most powerful Tibetan hierarch in the Qing Empire.” Dolonnuur’s importance as a monastic center was underlined by the fact that the Third Panchen Lama visited here during his trip to China in 1780. The Panchen Lamas along with the Dalai Lamas were the highest ranking incarnate lamas in Tibet. The Panchen Lama arrived in Dolonnuur on the 20th day of the 6th month, and according to hagiographic Tibetan accounts was greeted by one million people, although this is almost certainly an exaggeration. In any case, while in Dolonnuur the Panchen Lama reportedly “performed a purification ritual that pacified the restless demons of Mongolia.” He also gave a Yamantaka initiation to the Jangjya Khutagt and read prayers dedicated to the sacred land of Shambhala, a realm about which he had already written a guidebook entitled Shambhala Lamyig.

From Dolonnuur the Panchen Lama proceeded to the Qing Summer Resort at Jehol where he was amazed to discover not only a Huge Replica of the Potala in Lhasa, already alluded to, but also a replica of his own Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse. This complex of temples and facades, known as the Xumifoushou Miao (Happiness and Longevity Temple of Mt. Sumeru) was hurriedly constructed in 1779 and early 1780 by order of the Qianlong emperor. In front of it he had placed yet another stele declaring that the complex had been built to provide the Panchen Lama with “a restful place for meditation.” The Xumifoushou Miao too is now a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately, the Panchen Lama never returned to Tibet from this trip. From Jehol he proceeded Beijing to where he contracted small pox and died in late November of 1780.

The Russian ethnographer A. M. Podzneev visited Dolonuur in 1893. By then the monastic center seems to have lost some of its luster. The Yellow Temple had some 400 monks and the Khökh Temple some 500, not a lot compared to monasteries in Lhasa in Tibet and Örgöö (now Ulaan Baatar] in Mongolia. The fourth Jangjya Khutagt, who died in 1891, spent most of his life in Beijing and had not visited Dolonnuur in fifty years. Pozdneev was by that time a very seasoned traveler in Mongolia and China but even he was shocked by conditions in Dolonnuur: “It would be hard to imagine anything dirtier and in greater disarray than Doloon Nuur’s street and alleys. The street in all Chinese cities are normally narrow and dirty, but here they are even narrower and dirtier . . . In the rainy season these ditches used as thoroughfares are so full of water and mud that some of the streets become iiterally impassable.”

Presumably this is more-or-less the same Dolonnuur Dambijantsan would have experienced in the late 1860s when he arrived there at the age of seven and became a novice monk.

The streets of Dolonnuur are in better shape today

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #5

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 Valley

The 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 Chengde

The 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.

Qianlong’s stele in front of the Putuozongcheng Temple
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.)

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 Quincey

As 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.

Mongolia | Slovakia | Taurid Swarm Year

I mentioned earlier the Taurid Meteor Shower which will be visible in the Heavens from late October to mid-November. I should add that 2008 is a Taurid Swarm Year, which means that this year there is a much greater chance of seeing meteoroids capable of producing Taurid Fireballs. As an indication of just how lucky we are, consider that the last good Taurid Swarm Year was in 1954 and there will not be another one until 2015. On the night of Nov. 5, 2008 there was a Spectacular Fireball sighted from Bratislava, in Slovakia.

Slovakian Fireball at bottom of photo

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Soyolma and Her Works

Wandered out to the artist Soyolma’s studio. The lovely, gracious, and charming Soyolma is a member of a whole family of renowned artists. Soyolma herself was declared Mongolia’s “Top Female Artist of the Year” in 2007.

Soyolma

One of Soyolma’s works

Another of Soyolma’s works

Detail

Still another of Soyolma’s works

Painting of Narkhajid

According to legend the wife of Hari, the Eighteenth Kalkin King of Shambhala (Khaan Sengeychagya in Mongolian) was an emanation of Narkhajid. Dorjinnaljirma, the consort of Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, was also believed to be an emanation of Narkhajid.

A different version of Narkhajid

Narkhajid drinking blood from a human skull. My kind of gal!

A White Tara by Soyolma

Some of Soyolma’s works are currently on display at the Union of Mongolian Artists’ Gallery located on the south side of Sükhbaatar Square, in the same building with the Jumbo TV Screen outside. (Just today the Jumbo TV was showing ads for Macbooks; how bizarre is that!) If you are in the neighborhood drop on by. And the Silk Road Restaurant is only a couple of minutes’ walk away! Stop in and chew the fat with Batbold!

Building with the Mongolian Artists’ Gallery

Monday, November 3, 2008

Mongolia | Taurid Meteor Shower

Canvassing various correspondents, I have discovered that most, if not all of you, ignored my advance notice of the Orionid Meteor Shower back on September 21. Now you will get a reprieve. The Taurid Meteor Shower, weak but long-lasting, will be active from late October through mid-November. Actually, "weak" may not be quite the right word. Taurids are indeed few, but some of them are spectacularly bright. So keep an eye out for fireballs. It is always possible that another Chintamani Stone will fall to earth. Unlike many meteor showers, this one can be seen in the evening as well as the morning hours, so sluggards who cannot get up in the wee-hours of the pre-dawn no longer have an excuse.

And if you go out in the evening of November 7 you will be treated to a jaw-droppingly awesome view of the Sagittarius Teapot cradled between Venus and Jupiter. (You may recall that I mentioned the Sagittarius Teapot Earlier) I am giving you advance notice so you can make your viewing plans now. Don’t miss this one!

Graphic courtesy of Sky & Telescope

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #3

Who was Dambijantsan?

A Buddhist monk; a freedom fighter for Mongolian independence; the descendant of Amursanaa (1723–1757), the Western Mongol who led the last great uprising against the Qing Dynasty of China; the incarnation of Mahakala, the Buddhist god of war; bandit, torturer, murderer, or evil incarnate? During his lifetime no one was sure who he really was, and even today the controversy about his life continues.

Born in what is now the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation, Dambijantsen traveled throughout Tibet, India, and China before arriving in Mongolia in 1890 where he tossed gold coins to bystanders and announced to one and all that he had come to free Mongolia from the yoke of the Qing Dynasty of China. After disappearing almost twenty years he returned to lead the attack on Khovd City, the last Chinese outpost in Mongolia. Honored by the Eighth Bogd Gegeen, the theocratic leader of Mongolia, for his efforts in achieving Mongolian independence, he went on to establish his own mini-state in western Mongolia, which he hoped to use as a base for establishing a Mongol-led Buddhist khanate in Inner Asia. His dictatorial nature and unbridled sadism soon came to the fore and he was finally arrested and imprisoned in Russia. After the Russian Revolution he returned to Mongolia, gathered new followers around him, and established a stronghold at the nexus of old caravan routes in Gansu Province, China. He robbed caravans, grew opium, and once again dreamed of creating a new Mongolian khanate in Inner Asia. Finally the new Bolshevik government in Mongolia, fearful of his rising power, issued orders for his assassination. Dambijantsan died in 1922, but in Mongolia legends persist to this day that his spirit still rides on the wind of the Gobi and continues to haunt his former lairs.


For more on Dambijantsan see False Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan


USA | Alaska | Bears Axed | Feds F#&ked

The news just keeps pouring out of Alaska: Black Bear Fatally Shot Rummaging for Trash Can Treats on Halloween. It's not like the bear did not deserve it. He was a “repeat garbage offender,” according to police. On the bright side, his remains will be donated to one of the city’s soup kitchens. Those lucky Street People! I haven’t had any good bear stew in a long time. Anyhow, this reminds me of the time a bull moose charged into the middle of an Easter Egg hunt in Anchorage and had to be gunned down by State Troopers. Then they called in mental health counselors to deal with the traumatized children. As I recall, the moose carcass was also donated to charity. Being poor in Alaska has its rewards.

But now the bears are fighting back: Eagle River Bear Attacks Moose. Recently convicted in Federal court and now running for reelection, Alaska Senator and felon Ted Stevens is also fighting back. His followers are telling the Feds to go f#&k themselves: