Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #12

I have already written about Amarsanaa’s Rise to Power and the deteriorating situation in Khalkh Mongolia. Events soon turned for the worse. The country had been stripped of the able-bodied men who had been sent to fight in Zungaria and impoverished by the huge amounts of horses, meat, butter and other supplies that had been requisitioned for the Qing armies. Then in the winter of 1755–56 disastrous zuds, winter ice and snow storms which prevent livestock from grazing, had hit, impoverishing many herdsmen, and on top of this a small-pox epidemic had broken out. Morale was at an all-time low when word came that in Zungaria Amarsanaa had raised the banner of revolt against the Qing Dynasty. Disaffected elements among the Khalkh Mongols soon followed his example.

Amarsanaa had apparently laid the groundwork for this uprising while in Mongolia helping to organize the Northern Route Army, further evidence that he had planned in advance to defect from his Qing overlords once Davatsi had been defeated. He had met with Khan Chingünjav and a nobleman named Rinchindorj and attempted to coordinate uprisings against the Qing in both Zungaria and Khalkh Mongolia. The Khalkh side of the plot was soon exposed and orders were issued for the arrest of the conspirators. Chingünjav escaped but several others were seized. The rebels were taken to Beijing where they were tortured and then publicly executed. To further drive his point home, Qianlong had both the Second Bogd Gegeen and the Tüsheet Khan brought to Beijing to witness the executions. The Second Bogd Gegeen (1724–1757), son of Dondovdorj, himself the son of Zanabazar’s nephew, was forced to watch his own brother die at the hand of Qing executioners.

Qianlong had meant to impress upon the Mongolians the price to be paid for rebellion against the Qing and thus ensure their good behavior, but his actions had an entirely opposite effect. Word of the executions soon reached Mongolia, along with the rumor that the Qing intended to imprison the Bogd Gegeen in China, and in response still more insurrections broke out. Qianlong had to dispatch the Bogd Gegeen and the Tüsheet Khan back to Mongolia with orders that they to quell the disturbances, but already events had overtaken them.

In the summer of 1756 Chingünjav sent a letter to Qianlong formally renouncing his allegiance to the Qing Dynasty. With a initial army of about 2,000 men he set up headquarters near Lake Khövsgöl, near the Russian border in what is now Khövsgöl Aimag, and from there appealed to other Mongols khans to join his revolt. He also sought aid the Russians, apparently promising to switch allegiance from the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Czar in exchange for help in ousting the Qing from Mongolia. Initially there were uprisings all over Mongolia and numerous Qing outposts and post stations were overrun. Flush with early successes Chingünjav attempted to organize a convocation of Mongol noblemen in Örgöö where Mongolian independence would be declared. But soon the reality of what they were doing began to sink in, and many noblemen got cold feet. The Qianlong emperor was still capable of sending enormous armies, now equipped with muskets and cannon, to Mongolia to put down the insurrectionists, and many nobleman had become quite comfortable with the perks they were receiving from the Qing government.

Most crucially, the Second Bogd Gegeen refused to support the insurrection. To isolate even further the Bogd Gegeen from the rebels a detachment of Qing troops put him under virtual house arrest. As Russian diplomat who was negotiating with the rebels at the time put it, “Where the Jebsundamba Khutukhtu is, there is Mongolia, and where Mongolia is, there, too, is the Jebsundamba Khutukhtu.” Without the support of the Bogd Gegeen the revolt was doomed.

Malcontent Mongols at the time may have muttered, “Of course the Bogd Gegeen supports the Qing; his mother was a Manchu.” The Manchus were of course the founders of the Qing Dynasty, and the grumblers would have been referring to Khichenguy Amarlinguy, a.k.a. The Peaceful Princess, who according to some accounts was the Manchu Emperor Kangxi’s own daughter (he had a lot and it was not doubt hard to keep track) and thus Qianglong’s great-aunt, or according to other versions a daughter of a first degree Qing prince. It can be said for sure that she was Qing nobility. The dates are muddled, but apparently Kangxi gave Khichenguy Amarlinguy in marriage to Zanabazar’s nephew Dondovdorj in 1697.

Dondovdorj became the Tüsheet Khan upon the death of his father Chakhuundorj, Zanabazar’s brother. He was a gay-blade who liked women and booze and even wrote poetry, perhaps a suitable occupation for a scribbling hanger-on in an khan’s entourage but hardly suitable for a khan himself. After various indiscretions involving the wives of other Mongolian noblemen—there is no word of scraps with other poets—he was finally forced to step down as Tüsheet Khan, yielding the throne to a relative. But he was not without his martial qualities and he went on to distinguish himself on the battlefield against the Zungarian Mongols lead by Galdan Bolshigt’s nephew Tsevan Ravdan. When Kangxi died in 1722 Zanabazar traveled from Mongolia to Beijing to pay his respects. In his entourage was Dondovdorj, his earlier indiscretions forgiven or forgotten.

While in Beijing, Zanabazar, divining which way the wind was blowing in post-Kangxi China and sensing his own mortality, issued some instructions on how to find his reincarnation. Dondovdorj should take as a wife, Zanabazar hinted, a Mongolian woman born in the year of the monkey or chicken and have a son by her. The boy would be the 17th incarnation of Javzandamba, just as Zanabazar was the 16th.

Dondovdorj rushed straight back to Mongolia, apparently with Khichenguy Amarlinguy in tow (and perhaps with another Manchu wife he had picked up on this trip) and married a Mongolian woman named Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu who had been born in the year of the monkey. Zanabazar died under cloudy circumstances in Beijing in 1723. In 1724, “at daybreak on the first day of the middle of the spring moon in the Wood Dragon Year” a son was born to Dondovdorj. This boy, Luvsundandidomne, became the Second Bogd Gegeen.

Most sources say Dondovdorj’s Mongolian wife Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu was the mother of the Second Bogd Gegeen. Yet there are legends which persist down to this day that the boy’s mother was in fact Khichenguy Amarlinguy. There are any number of variants to this tale, but one maintains that both Khichenguy Amarlinguy and Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu had a baby around this time and that the babies were switched in their cradles so that the Manchu princess’s baby could be recognized as Bogd Gegeen. A thangka now in the Zanabazar Art Museum in Ulaan Baatar shows a woman who some monks identify as Khichenguy Amarlinguy holding the baby Bogd. This thangka, they now claim, was produced to memorialize the true story of the Bogd Gegeen’s antecedents.

In any case, Khichenguy Amarlinguy came to love her adopted country. She considered herself a Mongolian and stated that he want to be buried in Mongolia: “It is not necessary to take my corpse back to China. I became a Mongol person because of being the wife of a Mongol. It is thus necessary to bury me in Mongolia.” Her wishes were honored and after she died a temple to house her remains was built near the headwaters of a tributary of the Terelj River about thirty-six miles north of Ulaan Baatar. In the mid-nineteen thirties her tomb was dug up by thieves looking for gold statues and other valuables believed to be buried with her. Her body was burned and the exposed ashes eventually blew away. The temple, known as Günjin Süm, or the Temple of the Peaceful Princess, was heavily damaged, but the ruins have became a popular pilgrim and tourist destination.

With support among the Mongol nobility having faded away, and the Bogd Gegeen uncooperative, Chingünjav’s revolt failed and he himself attempted to escape to Russia. North of Lake Khövsgöl he and his party stopped to camp, believing they were safely across Russian border A detachment of Qing troops caught up with the party early in January of 1757 and claiming that they was still on Mongolian territory seized Chingünjav and his sons. They were taken to Beijing and subjected to torture. According to legends now retold in Mongolia, large coins with a square hole in the middle were heated until they were red-hot and then placed on Chingünjav’s back. When his seared flesh rose up through the holes in the coins it was slashed off with a razor. After these excruciating tortures he was executed in March 2, 1757.

Monument erected by Chingünjav in the Khoogiin River Valley, Khövsgöl Aimag. The exact purpose of this monument is unknown.

Chingünjav remains a hero to this day among many Mongolians for his for his ultimately quixotic stand against the Qing. At least he had stood up to the oppressors, unlike other Mongolian noblemen who were more interested in saving their Qing-granted titles and perquisites. When I was researching my book on Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, I was told by numerous informants that Galdan Bolshigt, the Oirat, and Chingünjav, the Khalkh, were true warriors who had fought for Mongolia while others, for instance Zanabazar himself and his relative the Second Bogd Gegeen, were wimps who had only caved in to the Qing.

A monument north of Lake Khövsgöl now marks the spot where Chingünjav was arrested. The monument is now on Mongolian territory, but local people still claim that back then it was Russian territory and thus Chingünjav had been illegally seized. There is also now a street in Ulaan Baatar named after Chingünjav. But while Galdan Bolshigt has had a brand of vodka named after him—the ultimate accolade in modern-day Mongolia—to my knowledge Chingünjav has not yet been accorded this honor.

As for the Second Bogd Gegeen, he died in late 1757 at the age of thirty-three, apparently while still under house arrest. Although in the final showdown he had sided with the Qing, or at the very least simply refused to encourage the insurrectionists, he may still have incurred the displeasure of Qianlong. There are persistence rumors that he was assassinated by Qianlong’s order. Maybe Qianlong got the idea from his father Yongzheng, who according to legend had Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen, assassinated at the Yellow Temple in Beijing in 1723. In case Qianlong’s displeasure with the Second Bogd Gegeen would have lasting consequences. Not wanting any more Mongolian Bogd Gegeens becoming possible rallying points for Mongolian rebels, he declared that henceforth all incarnations of Javsandamba must be found not in Mongolia but in Tibet. All subsequent Bogd Gegeens, including the current one, now living in India, have been Tibetans.

While he was putting down the rebels in Mongolia Qianlong had by no means ignored the situation in Zungaria. By November of 1756 he had amassed an immense army of some 400,000 men and sent it west to finally, at long last, once and for all, deal with the incurably rebellious Amarsanaa and the Zungarians. He had also found an unlikely ally in his battle against the Zungarians—Kelsang Gyatso, the Seventh Dalai Lama of Tibet. According to one historian, “[Qianlong] asked him to use his religious influence among the Oirats to rouse them to the Chinese cause and to forsake Amarsanaa. This the Dalai Lama willingly did. He asked the Oirats to stay loyal to the Chinese as part of their religious duties.” This was quite a turnaround from the days of the 5th Dalai Lama, who had been put on the throne of Tibet by the Oirat chieftain Güüsh Khan, and who had whole-heartedly backed his one-time disciple Galdan Bolshigt, ruler of the Zungarian Empire (it was the Great 5th, it will be remembered who gave Galdan his title of Bolshigt, or Khan by Divine Grace). First the Second Bogd Gegeen had refused to back the Khalkh rebels against the Qing, and now the Dalai Lama was throwing his support to the Qing against the Zungarians. Those who were reading the tea leaves of Inner Asian destiny must have divined that the days of independent Mongol states were very quickly coming to an end.

The huge Qing army had no trouble seizing Ili and had soon subduing most of the Oirats, except of course for Amarsanaa. With a mere 2500 soldiers he left made a last-ditch stand against a detachment of the Qing soldiers, holding them at bay for seventeen days. Then around the end of June the ever-elusive Amarsanaa simply disappeared. Not until November 1st of 1757 did the Qing authorities find out that he had absconded to Russia.

It turned out that after disappearing from Zungaria Amarsanaa had fled west with about of 4000 followers, many of them woman and children. His father-in-law and erstwhile protector Sultan Ablai of the Kazakh Middle Horde had himself just recognized the authority of the Qing Dynasty and was under strict orders not to aide Amarsanaa. He could expect to find no quarter there. Instead he fled to Russia, where he sought asylum at the fortress of Semipalatsinsk. The Czar himself, not wanting any trouble with the Qing, declared that Amarsanaa could stay in Russia only if he settled in Kalymkia, far to the west, and agreed not to mount any further campaigns in Zungaria. But then Amarsanaa fell ill to small pox, the scourge of the nomads. He was transferred to Tobolsk, in western Siberia, and there the great warrior transmigrated on September 21, 1757, finally laid low not by the might of the Qing Empire but by a virus. He was only thirty-five at the time, but no one could say that his short life had been uneventful. He had stood up time and time again to the greatest power in East Asia and in the end had eluded capture. He would never be paraded as a prisoner before the jeering throngs in Beijing like Davatsi, or tortured to death like Chingünjav. He would became a fitting exemplar for Dambijantsan, the Dörböt from the Caspian Steppe who had his own grudge against the Qing.

Earlier, the Russians had misled Qing officials about Amarsanaa’s whereabouts, claiming that while escaping from Zungaria he had drown trying to cross the Irtysh River. The river was diligently dredged for a month but no body was found. Finally apprized of Amarsanaa’s death in Russia, Qianlong demanded that the Russian officials return his body to China so that he could make sure the surly insurgent was truly dead. “The state only needs to capture Amursana. When he has died, and his body is retrieved, the entire Zunghar affair can be called a success,” pronounced Qianlong. The Russians, who did not want to be seen as caving in to Qianlong’s demands, refused to hand other the body. Instead they offered to take it to Selenginsk, in Siberia, just north of the Russian-Mongolian border, and allow Qing officials to examine it there. Qianlong became virtually unhinged by his failure to get his hands on Amarsanaa alive or dead. Throwing a furious fit, he halted all trade between China and Russia through Mongolia and even threatened to send an army north into Siberia to smote the insolent Russians. This threat was taken quite seriously. A fortress wall was built on the exposed side of Irkutsk, then the capital of Eastern Siberia, located at the confluence of the Irkutsk and Angara rivers below Lake Baikal, in anticipation of a Qing attack. The wall is long gone, but its former path is now taken by one of Irkutsk’s main streets. By March of 1758 Qianlong had cooled down. The more diplomatic-minded members of his court finally arranged for a delegation of Manchus, Chinese, and Mongols to go to Selenginsk and examine the body. They determined that is was indeed the earthly coil of Amarsanaa. The question of Amarsanaa was settled, but the Oirats of Zungaria who had revolted time and time again against the Qing were just beginning to receive their chastisement.

Qianlong’s retaliation against the Oirats was an early precursor to what is now called ethnic cleansing. For two years Qing soldiers tracked down Oirat men, women, and child and killed them, burned all gers they found, and seized Oirat livestock. Figures vary, but according to some sources from 500,00 to 600,000 people died in this holocaust. Some may have succumbed to illnesses like small pox which swept through the decimated population. Others managed to escape to Russia, where they were granted asylum. Again figures vary, but in the end maybe ten percent of the original Oirat population survived in Zungaria after the onslaught. One historian puts it succinctly, “As a political entity the Zunghar khanate went out of existence forever.”

Huge swaths of Inner Asia steppe had been depopulated by the decimation of the Zungarian people. Some areas were given to faithful Qing subjects from Mongolia and Manchuria. Ironically, many of the Kalmyks who took part in the Great Exodus of 1771 from the Caspian Steppe back to China also ended up on the lands vacated by the extermination of their relatives, the Oirats.

Although Amarsanaa may have lived on in the minds of many of the surviving Oirats as a hero he was eventually portrayed as an arch-villain even among Eastern Mongols, some of whom had for a brief moment in time joined up with him in revolt against the Qing. Dharmatala, the Mongolian author of the above-mentioned Rosary of White Lotuses, first published in 1889, refers to Amarsanaa a “man of evil.” Although a Mongolian, Dharmatala was loyal to the Qing Dynasty—or at least was not going to say anything bad about the Qing in print—which then ruled Mongolia, and could be expected to take the Qing line regarding the Oirats. Thus he was just echoing Qianlong on Amarsanaa. According to Dharmatala, in his Rosary of White Lotuses, the emperor had proclaimed:

There will be no more disturbances in this land [Zungaria], and all its nobles and commoners are to remember to keep the path of peace. The deeds of that evil man [Amarsanaa] destroyed the kingdom and made it desolate. If even his bare name be mentioned—him who caused so much harm to so many—it will bring no good, and therefore his name is not to be uttered ever again.

Not content with just degrading Amarsanaa, Dharmatala assigns mystical powers to Qianlong:
In the old days there were no rains in Hothon [roughly the old territory of Zungarians, especially the Zungarian Basin], but after the Emperor [Qianlong] entered the country he issued the following order to the Nagas:

“From now on, all the rains, storms, thunders etc. [in Zungaria] must follow the patterns of my own country!” Thus the land became indistingable from China; the whole Hothon resounded in fear and wonder!

Nagas, it should be pointed out, are serpent-like being who in Buddhist mythology rule the underworld and watery realms, thus influencing the weather. Thus Qianlong had come to rule not only the territory of Hothon—Zungaria—but also the realms of mythical beings! And twenty-first century travelers to China’s western-most province of Xinjiang, part of which is made up of Dharmatala’s “Hothon,” might well agree that it is now largely indistinguishable from the rest of China.

A whole welter of myth later grew up around Amarsanaa and his exploits. Indeed, some suggested that he had never in fact died, but had somehow discovered the secret of immortality and was living in a cave in Russia waiting for the right moment to return and lead a new struggle for Mongolian independence. He had also been granted magical powers. Using the traditional abilities of Oirat shamans, he could call down rain and snow storms to impede his enemies and summon a rainbow to hang his deel and other gear on. Buddhists believed he was an incarnation of Mahakala, the fierce warrior Bodhisattva. He himself had supposedly prophesied that he would return to Zungaria in 120 years to avenge the destruction of the Zungarians. According to this prophesy, ten years before his return “water would flow in the deserts northeast of Khobdo [Khovd], and grass and trees would return. Four years before his return, a light gray horse would appear that would ride around the region and lead the Oirat people away.”

Amarsanaa himself did not reappear 120 years after he left, but In 1890, 133 years after his death, Dambijantsan did materialize in Zungaria claiming to be his descendant, and in 1911, 154 years after Amarsanaa’s death, Dambijantsan Would Suddenly Appear in Khovd, where he would lead many Oirats into his idealized realm, the basis for what he hoped would be a new Zungarian state.