Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #13

In an earlier post I introduced the History of the Ili Basin.

This was the Ili Basin in which Dambijantsan suddenly appeared in the spring of 1890: the ancient home of Scythians, Yueshi, Wusun, Xiongnu, Türks, and Uighurs; the heartland of the Chagatayid Khanate, headquarters of Chagatai himself, and later of Moghulstan, or Western Mongolia; the wellspring of storied rulers like Tughug Temür and Baber, founder of the Moghul Empire in India; the favored grazing grounds of Esen and the Oirats of the first Oirat Empire, later of Baatar Khontaiji and Galdan Bolshigt and their Zungarian Khanate; the domain of Tseren Ravdan, Galdan Tseren, and Davatsi; the land from which Amarsanaa had fled and vowed to return; a place steeped in history, legend, and myth, inhabited by the descendants of a people who had very nearly been completely exterminated and who now harbored in their hearts a yearning for revenge against their oppressors, and the righting of past wrongs. By 1890 the Ili Basin and the rest of the Zungarian realm had been controlled by the Qing for 133 years. Now appeared a man who proclaimed that the days of the Qing were numbered and that Mongols would once again claim their independence and retake their rightful place in the world.

One can imagine the stir Dambijantsan created among the Torgut Mongols of the Ili Basin when he announced that he was a descendant of Amarsanaa. According to many accounts he would claim to be the son of Tömörsanaa, the son of Amarsanaa and thus Amarsanaa’s grandson. In all the now-available accounts of Amarsanaa’s life, however, I have not been able to find any mention of a son named Tömörsanaa. Even the relentless researcher Podzneev, who while in Mongolia in 1892–93 no doubt dug up information aplenty on the Oirats, says that Amarsanaa, “supposedly had a son, Temüsanu [Tömörsanaa] by name,” as if he himself doubted his existence. We known Amarsanaa married the daughter of Sultan Ablai and he presumably had other wives and various liaisons, but except for an infant son who escaped with him to Russia and reportedly died in a Russian prison in 1804 the record appears mute on children. In any case, Dambijantsan’s claim to be a grandson of Amarsanaa, who died in 1757, is chronologically impossible. Later, in Mongolia, Dambijantsan would enlarge on his pedigree. Supposedly Tömörsanaa had a son named Tövsanaa, who had a son named Tögrög Naran, and it was this Tögrög Naraon who was Dambijantsan’s father. Thus he claimed to be the great-great grandson of Amarsanaa. The oft-repeated claim that Dambijantsan was Amarsanaa’s grandson may just be a misunderstanding of Mongolian genealogical usage. I myself have been told numerous times in Mongolia that so-and-so was so-and-so’s grandson when this was clearly impossible, For example I was once informed that the grandson of Zanabazar, who died in 1723, was alive and working at a hotel in Ulaan Baatar. When I pointed out that this was not possible, my informant explained, “Well, you know, great, many greats, grandson.” This may be what happened in the case of Dambijantsan. It seems highly unlikely a people as deeply concerned, if not obsessed, with genealogy as the Mongols would be taken in a story as blatantly bogus as Dambijantsan being the grandson of Amarsanaa.

Dambijantsan appeared to be about twenty-five years old at the time (he would have been thirty, according to our chronology) and was dressed as a monk. He explained that at the moment he was passing through the Ili Valley, but that he would return on a certain day and month in the year of the dragon and begin the battle to liberate the Western Mongols. By his own account—for what it is worth—he stayed in Ili City for a month and even met with the Qing amban, or governor there. Although he said Ili City he probably meant not the current city of Yining, sometimes called Ili, but Huiyuan, where the Qing Military government had established its headquarters after the defeat of Amarsanaa. From 1759 to 1864 the military governor here had authority over all of what is now Xinjiang Province, including the Zungarian, Tarim, and Turpan basins, an indication of the strategic importance attached to the area. By the mid-nineteenth century there were over 50,000 Qing troops in Xinjiang, with four-fifths of them in the Zungarian and Ili basins. In the Ili River Valley alone there were nine Qing garrisons.

In 1864 the people know as Taranchis (now-called Uighurs), Dungans (Chinese Moslems, now known as Hui) and other disaffected elements in the Ili Valley took part in a rebellion against the Qing which would spread throughout all of Xinjiang during the next decade. From this turmoil rose the legendary adventurer Ya’qub Beg who established an emirate encompassing much of Xinjiang. In 1871, however, Czarist Russian, who by that time controlled much of the Kazakh Steppe to the west, occupied the Ili Basin, ostensibly to safeguard Russian citizens living in the areas and protect Russian business interests. By 1875 the Qing had rallied their forces and began the reconquest of Xinjiang. Ya’qub Beg died in 1877—probably of a stroke, but just as with Galdan Bolshigt, the Qing made up their own story, claiming he had committed suicide—and his emirate quickly collapsed. By January of 1878 Qing armies had retaken all of Xinjiang except for the Ili Valley, which remained in Russian hands. Not until 1881 would the upper Ili Valley be ceded back to China and a boundary established roughly along the current China-Kazakhstan border. In 1884 Xinjiang Province was formally established (it is only from then that we can properly call the area Xinjiang) and a new capital established at Urumqi, the provincial capital today. Thus the Qing amban who Dambijantsan claimed to have met in Huiyuan would have been a local official and not the governor of all of Xinjiang. In any case, the Qing military headquarters in Huiyuan—now a bustling little market town famous for its picturesque Qing-era bell tower in the main square, has been restored and is now a tourist attraction.

Market town of Huiyuan — Former Qing headquarters in Xinjiang

Qing-Era Bell Tower in Huiyuan

Restored Military Headquarters in Huiyuan. This may be the place Dambijantsan claimed to have visited.

Office of Qing Amban in Huiyuan

Qing-Era Wall around Huiyuan

What is not clear from available accounts is just how many Oirats remained in the Ili Basin by this time. The Zungarians themselves when they had ruled the area had brought in so-called Taranchis (Uighurs) to develop agricultural lands and they along witth Dungans (Huis) had continued to colonize the area through the nineteenth century. There were also Eastern Mongol and Manchu settlers from what are now the Chinese provinces of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang. The scant mention of Oirats in historical sources would seem to indicate that by that time they were a distinct minority, and they would have differed from the dominant Uighurs and Huis in both life-style and religion. It would appear that the Oirats—mostly Torguts—who still nomadized in the basin occupied the more arid grazing lands on the fringes of the rich agricultural belts along the rivers. The old core of Moghulistan had been largely taken over my non-Mongol Moslems ruled over the Qing. The hey-day of Oirat dominance in the area were now just a memory. It was among these disaffected people that Dambijantsan now spread his message that he was the descendant of Amarsanaa come to liberate the Mongols from Qing rule and restore them to their rightful place. He only spent at most a couple of months in the region, but he had certainly left an impression.

Fourteen years later, in 1904, a party of seven Kalmyks who had been sent by the Russian government on a secret mission to foment anti-British sentiment in Tibet passed through the Ili Basin on their way to Lhasa. On tributary of the Ili River they encountered a large encampment of Torgut nomads. A monk with the nomads asked the mission’s second-in-command, an emchin (doctor) and bagsh (teacher) by the name of Dambin Ulianov, if he was in fact the famous Kalmyk “Danbi Dzhal‘san,” a. k. a., Dambijantsan. Ulianov had no idea who the monk was referring to. The monk related the whole story about Dambijantsan’ sudden appearance in the Ili Valley in early 1890 and how had he had promised that he would soon return to liberate the Oirats from their Qing oppressors. Since then, apparently, there had been no word of him, but the nomads still remembered the charismatic Kalmyk and were still waiting for him to return and lead an uprising against the Manchus. As we shall see, Dambijantsan’s actual whereabouts at this time are a complete mystery.