Mongolia | Life and Death of the False Lama #2

In an earlier post I wrote about my First Meeting with Dambijantsan, A.K.A. the Ja Lama in the pages of Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski.

Ferdinand Ossendowski

I also wrote about the Ja Lama’s dubious claim to have visited The Kingdom of Agharttha, the underground realm described by the notorious French Occultist Saint-Yves d'Alveydre in his book the Mission de l'Inde en Europe.

Saint-Yves d'Alveydre

A few years late, in the mid-1980s, I again encountered Dambijantsan in the unlikely setting of the great-domed Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. Perusing the catalog of the library’s Mongolia-related items I noticed a book entitled The Diluv Khutagt: Memoirs and Autobiography of a Mongol Buddhist Reincarnation in Religion and Revolution, published in 1982. I had never heard of the Diluv Khutagt but the title was intriguing. The book was retrieved from the stacks and brought to my table amidst the hushed precincts of the reading room. Cracking the book open at random I was startled to see a chapter entitled “Dambijantsan.” A quick perusal revealed that it was the one and same Dambijantsan described by Ossendowski and Pozdneev.

Starting over with the Introduction to the book—written by Mongolist Owen Lattimore, who I would soon discover had himself made considerable contributions to the Dambijantsan mythologem—I learned that the Diluv Khutagt (1883–1964) had been the incarnate lama in charge of Narobanchin Monastery in western Mongolia. He certainly had a distinguished pedigree. According to the tradition the first incarnation of his line had been a disciple of the Buddha himself. A later incarnation in Tibet had been the famous Milarepa (c. 1052–1135), author of the classic Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. Still more incarnations turned up on the Ordos Desert in what is now China. The Diluv Khutagt who authored the book in my hand was the third incarnation to be born in Mongoiia and one of the fourteen incarnations in Mongolia officially recognized the Qing Dynasty. He eventually fell afoul of the new communist government and fled to China. After a stint in Tibet as advisor to the Dalai Lama he emigrated to the United States, where in ended up in New Jersey, of all places. In collaboration with Lattimore he then wrote his “Political Memoirs” and “Autobiography,” both of which were combined in one volume. Both sections of his book contain information about Dambijantsan, but the “Autobiography” has an entire chapter devoted to him—the only individual to merit such attention. He was six years old when he first met Dambijantsan, would encounter him many times in later life, and was eventually involved in the plot to assassinate him. Of the few Mongolians who left written accounts of Dambijantsan the Diluv Khutagt probably knew him best, but even to the Diluv Khutagt he remained an enigma: “He called himself a lama, but nobody knew if he really was one,” he said, . . . no one knew the real truth about him.

Also buried in the stacks at the Library of Congress was an English translation of I. M. Maisky’s Sovremenennaia Mongoliia (Contemporary Mongolia). Ivan Maisky, who later achieved considerable renown as the Soviet ambassador to England, visited Mongolia in 1919 on a fact-finding mission for the Soviet authorities in Irkutsk, the city just west of Lake Baikal in Siberia. He had traveled through what are now Khovd and Uvs aimags in western Mongolia when Dambijantsan was still alive and interviewed several people who knew the elusive lama. Maisky then inserted an entire chapter about Dambijantsan into his report about of the mission, which was otherwise a mundane collection of economic statistics, census reports, and brief essays on the then-current political situation. As in the Diluv’s Khutagt’s “Autobiography, ”Dambijantsan was the only individual to merit his own chapter. “The story of his man is obscure in many details so that to construct his complete biography is hardly possible at the moment, but I have managed to learn the following facts about him,” Maisky begins, then recounting what was known or rumored about Dambijantsan’s past. At the time, however, Dambijantsan was holed up in his Fortress at Gongpochuan, in Gansu Province, China, and Maisky unable to get any information about his current activities. Maiskii suspected, however, that the lack of news was just the lull before the storm.

But there is hardly a doubt that this is only a temporary stage in the stormy career of the ambitious monk. No one in Mongolia believes that his inactivity will last long. But he is keeping out of sight, like a cat, waiting for the right moment to make his leap. Who knows, we may very well hear about this man again. Who knows what role he is destined yet to play in Mongolian history.

If the Diluv Khutagt, who actually knew Dambijantsan, and Maisky, researching while he was still alive, were unable to lift the veil of mystery surrounding him, then those who came later, after his death, and tried to make an account of Dambijantsan’s life had a much harder task. George Roerich, son of famous artist, mystic, and Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich, attempted to gather information about Dambijantsan during his Travels Through Mongolia and China in 1927, and in his book Trails to Inmost Asia, he, like the Diluv Khutagt and Maisky, included an entire chapter about him entitled “Ja Lama, The Militant Priest.” Here he noted :

. . . no one knows exactly where he came from or what his ambitions were. It is extremely difficult to piece together all the existing information about his life, so varied were his activities and so extensive were his travels. The arena of his activity was the whole of Asia, from Astrakhan to Peking and from Urga to distant India. I succeeded in collecting information about him and his life from Mongolian and Tibetan lamas and laymen whom fate brought into contact with the dreaded warrior-priest. This singular personality for some thirty-five years hypnotized the whole of Greater Mongolia. At present, some six years after the death of the man, Mongols feel an unholy dread of him, and worship him as a militant incarnation of one of their national leaders.

George Roerich’s arguably more famous father Nicholas noted in his own book about the expedition: “Ja-Lama was no ordinary bandit . . . What thoughts and dreams fretted the gray head of Ja-Lama? . . . All through the Central Gobi, the legend of Ja-Lama will persist for a long time. What a scenario for a moving picture!” Indeed, a movie was eventually made about Dambijantsan, and it is still occasionally shown on the Mongolian State TV.

The author and scholar Owen Lattimore, who had befriended the Diluv Khutagt and assisting him with his memoirs, also tried to gather information on Dambijantsan’s life. In 1926 he journeyed on the so-called Winding Road caravan route which went past Dambijantsan’s fortress at Gongpochuan in Gansu Province, China, where he was finally assassinated. In The Desert Road to Turkestan, his book about the trip, he too included an entire chapter about Dambijantsan. As in the books of Diluv Khutagt, Maisky, and George Roerich, Dambijantsan was the only individual to merit such attention. Lattimore noted:

Already the legend of the False Lama has been elaborated beside the tent fires into many versions, but from the choice of details it is possible to throw together a picture with life in it, of an adventurer who, during those years when Mongolia echoed again with the drums and tramplings of its mediaeval turbulence, proved himself a valiant heir in his day to all the Asiatic soldiers of fortume form Jenghis Khan to Yakub Beg of Kashgar.

In 1955 Lattimore, by then a renowned Mongolist, included a five-page summary of Dambijantsan’s life in his Nationalism and Revolution. He announced here that he intended to write a biography of Dambijantsan, but for reasons unclear this project never materialized.

Still others wrote about Dambijantsan. The Danish explorer and colonist Henning Haslund visited Dambijantsan’s fortress in Gansu in the late 1920s and included a chapter entitled “A Robber’s Stronghold” about it in his book Men & Gods in Mongolia (the title may well have been an attempt to cash in on the initial success of Ossendowski’s Beasts, Men and Gods). He attempts to recap Dambijantsan‘s life but relies mainly on the already published accounts of Maisky and the innumerable campfire tales then making the rounds. He had little new to add to the by-then snowballing legend. The Swedish explorer Sven “The Desert Wanderer” Hedin visiting Dambijantsan’s fortress in Gansu in 1934 and included a chapter about it entitled “Dambin Lama’s Robber Castle” in his book The Silk Road. He too mainly repeated what others had already wrote. For the 1971 English translation of A. M. Pozdneev’s Mongolia and the Mongols Professor Fred Adelman devoted six pages of the thirteen page preface to Dambijantsan, even though he is only mentioned once, as noted above, in the 749 pages of the two-volume set.

Thus there was no shortage of written material about Dambijantsan. It seems almost everyone who wrote about Mongolia from the 1890s to the 1930s had something to say about him. But much of what they had so say were admissions that they actually knew very little about his life. And in any case, some in modern-day Mongolia might dismiss his story as ancient history. Did anyone in current day Mongolia still remember his name, let alone know any details of his life?

On my first trip to Mongolia in 1996 I quickly discovered that Dambijantsan had by no means been forgotten. On a horse trip in the Khentii Mountains, in Khentii Aimag in northcentral Mongolia, an area not normally associated with Dambijantsan, I mentioned his name in passing to the herdsman from whom I had hired my horses and who was acting as my guide. It turned out that he had been born in Bayankhongor Aimag, in southwest Mongolia, and had lived for awhile in the small town of Shinejinst, where he claimed that several descendants of Dambijantsan’s followers lived to this day. He also mentioned places in Bayankhongor Aimag frequented by Dambijantsan, including Ekhiin Gol Oasis and Shar Khuls Oasis, and regaled me for several hours with tales about Dambijantsan’s exploits and alleged magical feats.

Two years later I traveled by jeep by Gov-Altai Aimag, just west of Bayankhongor Aimag. Passing through the town of Tsogt, on a high plateau between the folds of the Gov-Altai Mountains, my jeep driver said, “This town is famous for its beautiful woman.” I paid no particular attention to this, since every other town in Mongolia is famous for its beautiful women, but then he added, “Dambijantsan found two of his wives here.” At that time I was unaware of Dambijantsan’s connection with Gov-Altai Aimag and I had made no mention of him to the driver. “You know about Dambijantsan?” I asked. It turns out the driver knew a lot and from him I learned for the first time about Dambijantsan’s activities around the town of Bayan Tooroi and elsewhere in southern in Gov-Altai Aimag. On that trip, incidentally, I also visited the ruins of Narobanchin Khiid, the former home of the Diluv Khutagt.

I soon discovered that there was hardly anyone in Mongolia over the age of sixteen who had at least not heard of Dambijantsan. In large part this was due to the movie about him that had been made back in the 1980s. Yet many older people, especially in the southwestern aimags, knew stories and legends about Dambijantsan which had been passed down over the decades and many had very pronounced opinions about him. Some maintained he was a lama, a holy man who had tried to do good, but with not always the best results. while others asserted that he was a just a very shrewd and exceptionally cruel bandit. Still other maintained that he was downright evil. One thing was sure; although Dambijantsan had been dead almost eighty years he had certainly not been forgotten. Indeed, there were those who claimed that although his body may have died at Gongpochuan in 1922 his spirit still rode on the winds of the Gobi and continued to haunt his former hangouts. I myself would experience the uncanny fear and dread which seems to come over those who now visit his Secret Lairs.

Note: This is an amended and updated version of an earlier post.