Mongolia | Life and Death of the False Lama #15

The family of Diluv Khutagt lived near the border of Zasagt Khan Aimag, not far from Uliastai, the Qing military headquarters, which was in Sain Noyon Khan Aimag. It’s safe to assume that Dambijantsan visited the Qing capital soon after his arrival in the area. The Russian ethnologist A. M. Pozdneev visited Uliastai two years later, in 1892, and left quite a detailed account of the city and Qing fortress. Although he admits that the origins of the fortress are hazy, he cites a Chinese documents which says the fortress was built at its current site in 1734. This would be in keeping with the general belief that the Uliastai fortress was built after the Khovd fortress, the first version of which as we have seen was started a few years earlier. Pozdneev does mention that an earlier fortress had been built about fifteen miles west of Khovd at a place called Aldar. In 1892, when Pozdneev was in the area, the ruins of this fortress were still visible at or near the then flourishing Yaroo Monastery. Today the considerable ruins of Yaroo Monastery are still visible near the new Uliastai City Airport; indeed some of the ruins may be those of the first Qing fortress in the area.

Ruins of wall around Yaroo Monastery

Ruins of wall around Yaroo Monastery

Current research suggests that this first fortress was founded in the late 1690s by General Fei Yanggu, the leader the West Route Army, one of the three expeditionary forces sent into Mongolia to track down Galdan Bolshigt. After the defeat of Galdan at Zuunmod, Fei Yanggu had marched north and established this fortress on the western edge of the Khangai Mountains, apparently at a place named Aldar. In 1734, then, because of unsuitable conditions at Aldar, the military camp was moved fifteen miles east to Uliastai—“a place with poplars”.

Street of Uliastai lined with the poplars which give the city its name

The original fortress built here in the late 1730s proved inadequate and in 1759 a new and more substantial version was built. This Uliastai Qing fortress became known as the “Rear Camp,” because it was closer to the supply lines from Qing China—a caravan route from Kalgan on the edge to the Mongolian Plateau, north of Beijing led directly here—while Khovd, farther out west, on the frontier of the Qing Empire, became known as the “Front Camp.” Uliastai eventually became “the principal fort of Khalkha [Khalkh Mongolia], and the the center of the supreme military authority of Khalkha, observed Pozdneev, who continues.

Although Uliastai is the second among the cities of northern Mongolia in size and area . . . it must necessarily be regarded as the chief city of Khalka as a consequence of its administrative position. Uliastai is in direct contrast with Urga [Örgöö, i.e., Ulaan Baatar]. The latter, as the residence of the supreme Buddhist pontiff of the Mongols [the Bogd Gegeen], is nothing more than an enormous monastery. Uliastai, on the other hand, is the central point of Chinese administration in Mongolia and is chiefly a military fortress . . . for the quartering of defense garrisons of Manchu troops.

Uliastai also served as an important marketplace, at least up to the 1880s. It was the original headquarters of Da Sheng Kui, a Chinese trading company which had its peak had enormous influence in Mongolia. The trading company of Da Sheng Kui had been founded a man who became known as Pedlar Wang. He was originally from Tangu County in Shanxi Province China, but later moved to Qixian County, an area which straddled the main trunk of the old Silk Road. According to Martha Avery, historian of the tea trade in China, Mongolia, and Russia, “This place lay not only on the old Silk Road trade routes that connected East and West and that injected Islamic financial expertise in a Chinese environment, it was also located on the edge of the two systems to the north and south, the pastoral high steppe and the agricultural plains.” As such, the residents of Qixian County became famous for their business acumen. The tentacles of trading firms they organized penetrated throughout northern China and eventually Mongolia (the elaborate Shanxi Merchants Trade Compound in Dolonnuur—where Dambijantsan supposedly studied as a young boy—complete with business offices, residences, theaters, temples, etc, has now been immaculately restored and is a minor tourist attraction) and the capital they amassed became the foundations of banks which eventually became indispensable to the Qing Dynasty itself—the Dowager Empress Cixi borrowed heavily from the Qu family banks in Qixian County.

Downtown Uliastai Today

Ger District of Uliastai today
Stupas of the “Nine Famous Khutagts—including Diluv Khutagt—in Uliastai

Pedlar Wang himself—his full name was Wang Xiangqing—began his career as a simple traveling salesman, displaying his goods draped from a pole he carried on his shoulder. In 1696 Pedlar Wang fell in with the West Route Army led by General Fei Yangge which after the defeat of Galdan Bolshigt went on to established the original fortress in the Uliastai region. He sold the troops tea, tobacco, extra food, and attempted to provide anything else they might need. He followed the army north and established himself in the new military camp near Uliastai. Soon he was buying livestock and other commodities from the nomads in the area. He learned the Mongolian language and eventually arranged for one of his sons to marry the daughter of one of the local Mongolian noblemen. The company he founded, Da Sheng Kui, would become the biggest and by the most powerful of the nine or so Chinese trading companies operating in Mongolia, employed some 7,000 employees. In the 1770s Da Sheng Kui moved its headquarters to Khovd City and still later to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. By strictly controlling the buying and selling of commodities and making loans at exorbitant rates of interest Da Sheng Kui, and to a lesser extent other Chinese trading companies, soon gained a virtual strangehold on the Mongolian economy. Eventually the Qing government even made Da Sheng Kui its official tax collector in Mongolia, giving it even greater power. The end result was the impoverishment of a large portion of the Mongolian population.

By the time Dambijantsan arrived in the Uliastai area in 1890 the fortunes of the Mongols were in steep decline. The region had still not recovered from the devastating raids of Tungan Moslems, who during the uprisings in Xinjiang alluded to earlier had penetrated far north into Mongolia and in 1869 had destroyed much of the town of Uliastai, including many of its Buddhist temples. In the aftermath of the Tungan incursions the number of soldiers in the garrison was decreased, resulting in less local trade, while requisitions of livestock by Qing authorities had increased. In 1880 a revolt among Mongolian soldiers in the Qing garrison, led by a man Onolt, had broken out. The rebellion was soon put down, but resentment seethed. Then the late 1880s epizootic diseases had swept through the area and further decimated the herds of the local people. By 1890 resentment again the rule of the Qing Dynasty was probably at its highest level since the uprising lead by Chingünjav back in the 1750s.

It was in this volatile atmosphere that Dambijantsan launched into his by-now practiced line that he was the descendant of Amarsanaa (most accounts say grandson, but as mentioned, it was more likely he claimed to be the great-great-grandson of the Khoit chieftain) who had returned to free the Mongols from the Qing yoke. According to I. M. Maisky, the Russian investigator who picked up the tale while traveling through western Mongolia in 1919, Dambijantsan soon linked up with three local Mongol princes who shared his anti-Qing sentiments, one of whom was the son of a local nobleman named Khandachin-Van. Maisky also claimed that Dambijantsan made contact with high-ranking lamas, the Jalkhanz Khutagt and the Ilgusyn Khutagt. At Dambijantsan’s instigation this group composed a petition complaining about the alleged bride-taking and other misconduct by Qing authorities in Uliastai, which as we shall see was the headquarters of the Qing administration in Mongolia at the time. The petition, which was forwarded it to the Qing Emperor in Beijing, bypassing the Qing amban in Uliastai, stated that if such activities continued Mongols would have no other alternative but to take up arms and overthrow Manchu authority in Mongolia. The infuriated amban immediately ordered an investigation into the matter. Two lesser-ranking lamas, in order to save the other participants in the complaint, soon came forward took full blame for the petition. According to Maisky:

The conduct of the inquest was entrusted to Khandachin-Van’s father, who, though fully appear of the real facts of the complaint, did not deem it necessary to reveal them. In his report to the Peking government, Khandachin-Van, the elder asked for leniency for the culprits and advised against their execution. But the government view the matter differently, and both lamas were sentenced to death. On the eve of their execution, however, the two condemned men took poison and died.

There are, admittedly, some problems with Maisky’s account of this episode. Sodnomyn Dambinbazar (1874–1923), known as the Jalkhanz Khutagt, was one of the thirteen “seal-holding” reincarnations in Mongolia who were officially recognized by the Qing authorities. He also happened to be a blood relative of the Diluv Khutagt. The Ilgusan, or Ilaguksan, Khutagt was another “seal-holding” reincarnation whose home monastery was on the upper Ider River in current-day Zavkhan Aimag. The Ilaguksan Khutagt had reportedly been incarnated eleven times starting in India and then Tibet and what is now Inner Mongolia in China. The twelfth incarnation appeared in Mongolia for the first time. The thirteen was born in near Khovd City and eventually became the abbot of Shar Sum in Khovd. The fourteenth built the monastery on the Ider Gol and moved there in around 1867. He died in 1880 and his remains were kept in a large golden stupa at the monastery. The fifteen was born in 1881 and was installed to the Ider Monastery in 1886. This monastery was completely destroyed in the 1930s, and when I visited the site in 1997 I was able to locate only a few foundation stones sunk to ground level.

As can be seen, the Jalkhanz Khutagt would only have been sixteen in 1890, and he was reportedly a novice monk at Ikh Khüree in Urga between the ages of sixteen and twenty. The Ilaguksan Khutagt would have been only nine in 1890. Their ages shed doubt on Maisky’s account of their role in Dambijantsan’s petition to the Qing authorities in 1890. In any event, Jalkhanz Khutagt as we shall see would later play a prominent role in the Mongolian independence movement and along with Dambijantsan would be instrumental in the Defeat of the Qing garrison at Khovd in 1912.

At this point in time it is impossible to further identify Khandachin-Van, either father or son, other than to say there were nobles in western Mongolia. This incident is not related in any other source I am aware of. Yet such complaints by Mongols against the authorities were not uncommon. Most, however, seemed to have been directly at Mongolian noblemen themselves who worked in league with the Qing adminstration. The fact that one of the complainants in this case was himself a nobleman and that that petitioners appealed directly to the Qing emperor is the probable cause of the severity of the sentence against the two lamas.

There is no record of what what happened to Khandachin-Van’s son and the other two young nobles involved in this affair. Perhaps Khandachin-Van was able to use his influence to extricate them completely. Nor do we know if the Jalkhanz Khutagt and the Ilaguksan Khutagt, assuming they played any role in these events, suffered any repercussions. Dambijantsan was apparently not directly linked to the petition, but his activities had not escaped the attention of the Qing authorities in Uliastai.

Soon he was hauled into the Yamen, or administrative office, of the Uliastai fortress and charged with entering Mongolia without any passport or other documentation. Two Mongolians named Nanrad and Avari were called in to question him. These two men were from the western aimags and were apparently Oirats, but both “had outstanding reputations” among the Khalkh or Eastern Mongols. Subjected to interrogation, Dambijantsan replied “in a very supercilious manner,” Dambijantsan:

Although I am a Russian citizen, I am a Mongol—and what does it matter to you whether a Mongol has documents or not, traveling in his own land? You two, being Mongols, would do well to pay attention to the affairs of your own people, whose time is coming to arise, instead of oppressing a comrade of your own people on behalf of a foreign people [the Manchus] whose time of decay has come. I stayed in Ili City more than a month and though I met the Janjin Amban he let me pass without a word. Moreover, I am sure, in this huge land of your great people, you have nothing to fear from a solitary pilgrim priest. Since I have done nothing wrong, the most you could do would be to send me back to my homeland.

Nanrad and Avari were completely taken back by this bold speech and could make no reply. Then two Russian merchants residing in Ulaistai came forth and “stood surety” for him—whatever that might mean—and finally he was released. He was on his way out of Uliastai when his Mongol interlocutor Avari caught up with him and asked what he had meant by his declaration that the authority of the Manchus was in decline while the Mongols were becoming more powerful. Dambijantsan replied:

The fact that that the Manchus are about to fall is already clearly self-evident. You certainly know it and why should you ask me? If the Manchus are finished should not the Mongols rise again? I must say the way you people do not look after your own Mongol interests but let yourselves be led on by the Manchus is a pity.

According to the Diluv Khutagt, Avari later said that Dambijantsan “was beyond doubt a competent, clever, and unusually sharp man.”