Mongolia | Life of Zanabazar | Second Trip to Tibet

Most traditional accounts do not mention Zanabazar’s trip to Inner Mongolia to met the Dalai Lama in early 1655. Skipping over this episode, they relate instead  that in the summer of 1655 Zanabazar decided to make another trip to Tibet: “. . . I should like to accomplish my pious desire of again making obeisance to the Dalai Lama,” Zanabazar announced, “and especially to the Holy Panchen Vajradhara Lama [Panchen Lama] and hear the initiations and empowerments and so on which I meditated on before.” In preparation for the journey he decided to go into meditation for several months at his newly established retreat of Tövkhon near Erdene Zuu. In the autumn of 1655 he left for Tibet. See Zanabazar’s Second Trip to Tibet.

 Portrait of Zanabazar at Amarbayasgalant Monastery

Also see:


See also Kindle Version

Russia | Kalmykia | Elista | Telo Tulku Rinpoche

The next morning I have breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which is plush with carpets and still more blonde-wooded furniture. The house breakfast is frugal however; an small omelet, some paper-thin slices of cold cuts and cheese and bread, plus an expresso cup of instant coffee. At the table next to me are four Russian businessman in suits. They order a liter and a half bottle of vodka and consume it with their breakfast. Some things in Mother Russia never change.

The night before Andzha had given me a Russian SIMMs Card for my cell phone and now he calls me. Telo Rinpoche had been in India but he had just arrived yesterday with his teacher, the head of Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India. At noon there will be a greeting ceremony for the Drepung Tripa, the official title of the lama from India, at the big Altan Süm (Golden Temple), the Rinpoche’ headquarters here in Elista, and the Rinpoche will have a few minutes to speak to me in his office beforehand. Also the monastery’s guest apartment is now ready to be occupied and Andzha will take me there before we go to the Golden Temple.

The apartment is in Microrayon #2, about a mile from the Golden Temple. The building is a Khrushchev-era construction exactly like apartment buildings in Ulaan Baatar from the same era. The builders could have used the same blueprints. Even the doors are the same. I have lived in several of these kinds of apartment buildings in UB so I immediately feel right at home. There’s no furniture but there are a a couple of mattresses propped against one wall. I put one of these on the floor and cover it with a carpet, not a handmade silk carpet like the one I sleep on in Ulaan Baatar but a machine-made woolen carpet from Turkey, but, hey, one can’t have all the comforts of home while traveling. In a corner is a pile of blankets and pillows. The kitchen has a gas stove but there is no hot water.

From here we proceed directly to the Golden Temple. This imposing structure is the largest Buddhist temple in Europe. It was completed only in 2005.

Golden Temple

Andzha drives in the private entrance at the back of the monastery and after taking off our shoes in the first floor entry hall take an elevator to the fourth floor where the Telo Rinpoche has his residence and office. From the elevator we step into a large room which at first glance seems to contain an enormous Buddhist-oriented craps table. But no, it is in fact an immense conference table, seating twenty-four, with a mandala embedded in the middle of it.

Conference Table with Mandala in the middle

Closer view of Mandala. The bottom side of the Mandala is visible in the ceiling of the Main Hall of the Temple.

I have a sudden vision of the 25th King of Shambhala sitting here with his staff, including General Hanuman, the Final Incarnation of the Bogd Gegeen, directing the final battle against the barbarian unbelievers. Andzha adds that the main temple hall is directly below this room, and that the bottom side of the mandala, painted with the same design, can be seen in the ceiling of the hall. All the prayers offered in the main temple ascend through the mandala and concentrate themselves here in this conference room.

The Telo Tulku Rinpoche’s luxurious office, appointed like that of a now disgraced CEO of a Too-Big-to-Fail bank in the USA, is off to one side of this awe-inspiring conference room. The redolence odor of rancid butter, mutton fat, and juniper incense common to monasteries in Mongolia, some of which have not felt a broom since before the fall of the Qing Dynasty, is noticeably absent here.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche

The Telo Rinpoche, the latest in a line of incarnations going back to Mangala, one of the original disciples of the Buddha and including Tilopa, one the 84 Mahasiddis of India, and the last Diluv Khutagt of Mongolia, whose book I have mentioned, greets me warmly. He must meet the Drepung Tripa shortly but he says that afterward he will give me a guided tour of the temple. In the meantime what can he do for me? I tell him that I would like to talk to historians who might know something about Dambijantsan, who was born here in Kalmykia and whose life I am researching, and who like the Rinpoche himself is considered to be, in some circles at least, an incarnation of one the 84 Mahasiddis of India, in Dambijantsans case the mahasiddi known as Güwari. The Rinpoche summons his secretary and instructs her to call one of the local research instittutes and track down any scholars who can shed some light on the up until now shadowy existence of Dambijantsan here in Kalmykia.

Then we take the elevator down to the first floor of the temple and proceed out into the immense main hall. Telo Rinpoche goes out to front gate to meet the Drepung Tripa and I remain behind. A couple hundred people have assembled to greet Drepung Tripa, and many are buying khadags (prayer scarves) from a small shop out front to present to him. Finally a procession of monks lead by Telo Rinpoche proceeds from the front gate to the entrance of the main hall of the temple. The Drepung Tripa, who appears to be in his sixties, comes last, bestowing his blessings on all those who approach him.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche (left) leading the procession into the Temple

The Drepung Tripa blessing people outside the Temple

He is the head of Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India, which was founded by Tibetans who fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959 and named after Drepung Monastery in Tibet. Gomang was one of the several colleges at Drepung in Lhasa and the one at which most Mongolians monks who studied in Lhasa attended. Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, stayed at Gomang during his visits to Mongolia.

Ruins of Gomang College at Drepung in Lhasa

Many other famous Mongolian lamas studied here, including Agvan Dorzhiev, the Buryat who eventually became a tutor to the 13th Dalai and who Accompanied the Dalai Lama to Mongolia in 1904 when the latter fled Tibet after the invasion of the Younghusband Expedition.

Agvan Dorzhiev

Dambijantsan also reportedly attended Gomang College at Drepung in Lhasa. It was here that he allegedly killed his monastic roommate after a quarrel, an act which of course ended his monastic career and put him on the path which would eventually lead him to Mongolia. As George Roerich, in his book Trails to Inmost Asia, 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.”

The Drepung Tripa

The Drepung Tripa mounts the throne in the main hall of the temple and a chanting ceremony begins. After he is served a ceremonial offering of tea and rice people line up to again receive his blessing, after which everyone receives a small portion of rice (Drepung, I might add here, means “Rice Heap”). This greeting ceremony concluded the Drepung Tripa proceeds to the Telo Rinpoche’s office on the fourth floor. The Rinpoche asks me to come with along. At this office he is greeted by a camera crew from a Russian television station. It seems they want an interview with him. “I wanted to give you a tour of the temple,” he said, “But now I must talk to these people. But the monks are going to give the Drepung Tripa a complete tour of the temple, so just tag along with them and you will see everything.” The Drepung Tripa and his group go up to the fifth floor and I follow. The public is normally not allowed above the fourth floor, since the fifth floor contains a huge suite reserved solely for the Dalai Lama should he ever visit Kalmykia again. He has not visited since the temple has been built but there are high hopes he will soon.

At the entrance to the Dalai Lama’s suite on the fifth floor a guard stops me, the only person not in monks’ robes, and says, “Sorry, the public is not allowed up here.” Like a groupie who says, ”I’m with the band,” I said, “I am with the Drepung Tripa.” The guard said, “Oh, excuse me, I am so sorry!” Putting his hand together he bowed and said, “Please, please, go in!”

Sitting Room of the Dalai Lama’s Suite

The suite is immense, with magnificent carpets and sumptuous sofas and chairs. Should the Dalai Lama feel homesick, on one wall there is a painting of the Potala, his former home in Lhasa. I have toured the Dalai Lama’s living quarters in the Potala several times and oddly enough they are preserved just the way he left them, although apparently not in anticipation of his return.

Painting of the Potala in the Dalai Lama’s Suite

On the facing wall is a painting of the Golden Temple. To one side of the sitting room is the Dalai Lama’s bedroom, complete with double bed. Instead of a chocolate, there is a prayer scarf on the pillow.

Dalai Lama’s bed: there’s no chocolate on pillow but there is a prayer scarf

Just off the bedroom is a small study and meditation niche with a mat on the floor and low table. Off to the other side of the sitting room are conference rooms and rooms for the Dalai Lama’s attendants.

Dalai Lama’s Meditation and Study Niche

The sixth floor, which is actually a walkway around the cupola at the top of the temple is also normally closed to the public but of course we get to go up for a look. From here we get a good view at the very modest city of Elista, which ends abruptly less than half a mile away, beyond which treeless steppe stretches off to the horizon. It is windy even here, and even bit cool, but the Drepung Tripa lingers, seeming to enjoy the view from all four sides of the cupola.

View of Elista from the cupola of the Temple

Another view from the cupola

The Drepung Tripa enjoying the view from the cupola

From here we descend back down to the first floor for a tour of the monastery’s Scriptorium, which in additional to a large collection of regular books and Tibetan-language sutras has high speed internet free for the public. The Drepung Tripa asks to see several Tibetan language sutras and lingers over them for awhile.

Drepung Tripa perusing tome in the Scriptorium

I cannot help noticing a display case contaiing a collection of books about the Oirat Zaya Pandita (1599–1622), whose path I keep crossing in the most unexpected places.

Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), The Oirat Zaya Pandita

He is the inventor of the so-called Tod Bichig Script, a variation of the traditional vertical Mongolian script. While researching the dialects of western Mongolia he stayed at Tögrög Monastery in the small town of Mankhan, on the Dund Tsenger River in what is now Khovd Aimag. Dambijantsan’s camp, where in 1912 he assembled his troops for the assault on the Manchu Fortress in Khovd City, was located on the Dund Tsenger Gol not far from Mankhan. The Zaya Pandita also accompanying the little six-old prince Galdan to Lhasa in 1649 when the latter went there to become a monk. Galdan, who later renounced his vows as a monk and became the khan of the Zungarians, or Western Mongols, would launch a disastrous war against the Eastern Mongols, led by Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen. Seeking protection from Galdan, Zanabazar in 1691 accepted the suzerainzy of the Qing Dynasty in China, making Mongolia a province of China and leading to the subjugation of the Eastern Mongols by the Manchus for 220 years. To free Mongolia from China became the overriding goal of the first part of Dambijantsan’s life.

From the Scriptorium we moved on to the very finely appointed museum of the monastery. Among the plethora of displays here, too numerous to detail, was another exhibit about the Zaya Pandita and also one about Agvan Dorzhiev, the enigmatic Buryat, mentioned before, who did much to revitalize Buddhism in Kalmykia at the beginning of the twentieth century. As mentioned, Dorzhiev reportedly studied with Dambijantsan at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa. Next to the Museum we peek into the lusciously appointed Conference and Film Viewing Hall.

Conference Hall

The Drepung Tripa then retired to his quarters. Andzha and I went to the monastery’s canteen for a late lunch of hearty beef and barley soup (Andzha, despite his years as a monk in India, is not a vegetarian). While we were eating he got a call from Telo Rinpoche, who said that a meeting had been set up for me tomorrow at the Kalmykian Institute of Humanistic Research. Apparently the panditas there know something about Dambijantsan.

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #18

After Dambijantsan was Deported from Mongolia in 1891, we hear nothing more about him, apart from a couple of unsubstantiated rumors, for the next twenty years. How does a man like Dambijantsan, who had electrified the populace of Mongolia during his sojourns there in 1890 and 1891, almost immediately becoming the stuff of legend, and whose charisma, will power, and apparent magical abilities had left an indelible impression on almost everyone who met him, simply disappear for twenty years? This is just one of the many mysteries of Dambijantsan’s life. I might note parenthetically that arguably the greatest magus of the nineteenth-century, Helena Blavatsky, also disappeared completely for twenty years, a lacuna which even her most assidious biographers have been unable to fill in, and that the likewise arguably greatest magus of the twentieth century, George Gurdjieff, also disappeared for twenty years, another lacuna which has left biographers scratching their heads in puzzlement and dismay. And need I add that Jesus of Nazareth also disappeared for twenty years, a period about which the Bible has absolutely nothing to say? It is intriguing that legend, if not historical documentation, places Blavatsky, Gurdieff, Dambijantsan, and Jesus in India and Tibet during at least part of their missing years, but this is a topic which I must put aside for the moment while I deal with Dambijantsan’s reappearance in 1910, when he suddenly materialized in the town of Karashahr, in what is now Xinjiang Province, China.

Here he sought out the Brothers Kryajev, Russian merchants who were operating in the area at the time. One of the brothers may have been P. I. Kryajev, who back in 1891 had been living in Uliastai and had been instrumental in gaining Dambijantsan’s release from the Qing authorities. Dambijantsan was traveling under an alias and had “somewhat changed exterior; his face was shaven now whereas formerly he wore a beard.” Karashahr, now known as Yanqi, just west of Bosten Lake, on the south side of the Tian Shan Range, was in an area inhabited by Torgut Mongols, many of them descendants of the Torguts who took part in the Great Migration of Kalmyk Mongols from the Caspian Steppes in Russia back to China in 1772. Today the area is in the Bayangol Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang and is still home to many Torgut Mongols.

As noted earlier, Dambijantsan probably visited this area during his 1890 Sojourn through Xinjiang. Dambijantsan, himself a Dörböt, like the Torguts one of the tribes which made up the Kalmyks, would have found himself at home here among the descendants of the migrants from the Caspian Steppes along the Volga River where he was born, and he ended up staying in the Karashahr area for over a year. He must have had his ear to the ground and his political senses no doubt told him that the decrepit Qing Dynasty, tottering on its last legs, was about to come to an ignominious end. Perhaps he was just biding his time among the Torgut Mongols near Karashahr, waiting for the proper moment to make a dramatic return to western Mongolia.

According to Diluv Khutagt he arrived back in the Khovd area in late 1911 in the company of “man got up like a lama, and they had two riding camels.” The man’s man was Jimbe, and at this point he was apparently Dambijantsan’s sole disciple. At first Dambijantsan did not give out his name, but he soon became known as Khoër Temeed Badarchin, the Wandering Monk with Two Camels, the same nickname he had gotten during his earlier stay in Mongolia Soon the rumor spread that he was either Amarsanaa himself, in accordance with the legend that Amarsanaa had in fact never died, but had learned the secret of immortality, or that he was a descendant or perhaps reincarnation of Amarsanaa, returning to avenge Amarsanaa and continue his quest to free the Mongols from the hated Manchus. The legend of Amarsanaa’s return to Mongolia in one form or another dated from the late eighteenth century, and people might well have remembered the Dambijantsan’s earlier appearance in 1890-91 when he was claiming to be Amarsanaa’s descendant or incarnation. The Russian trader Burdukov noted that upon returning to Mongolia each spring from Russia, people would “naively ask when Amarsanaa will come and save us.” Now it appeared their prayers were about to be answered.

The mysterious badarchin, according to the Diluv, “was a very powerful man and the saddlebags which his men couldn’t lift he could lift onto a camel . . . He was armed with a long old-style Mongol flintlock. Although he came from the Volga, he spoke the Khalkh dialect very well. He called himself a lama, but nobody knew if he really was one. Nobody knew his real age. Nobody knew the real truth about him.” Soon people did become aware of his real, or alleged, name, Dambijantsan, and as they repeated this name it got shortened to Dambija (the name by which many in Mongolia recognize him to this day), then finally to just Ja. Apparently from this time he first became known as Ja Lama. He also became known as Ja Bogd (bodg = holy) and Ja Bagsh (bagsh = teacher).

According to the Diluv Khutagt, Dambijantsan, ”visited the Torguud (Torgut) and Ööld banners one after another and everywhere caused everyone, great and small, to have faith in him, and spent several months in Zakhchin Da’s region.” At the time there were two Zakhchin Banners southeast of Khovd City, the Da Khoshuu and the Gün Khoshuu. Dambijantsan finally decided to set up headquarters among the Zakhchin Da Khoshuu. The word zakhchin itself means “borderer,” and the Zakhchin people were one of many ethnic groups who fell under the general rubric of Western, or Oirat Mongols. They inhabit the area to this day, centered around the now neat and tidy little sum center of Mankhan. In Dambijantsan’s day, the town was well-known as the site of a monastery known as Tögrögiin Khüree. The famous lama Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), who became better known as the Oirat Zaya Pandita, once lived here. At the at the age of nineteen Namkhaijantsan had gone to Tibet where he was ordained as a monk by the Dalai Lama himself. He staying in Tibet for eighteen years before coming back to western Mongolia. In 1649 he returned to Tibet as the chaperone and tutor of the five-year old Oirat prince Galdan (later Galdan Bolshigt) who himself entered the monkhood. (Dambijantsan, as we shall see, adopted Galdan Boshigt as one of his role models.)

Galdan Bolshigt (1644–1697)

A formidable polymathic scholar, the Zaya Pandita is famous for inventing the so-called “Clear Script” (Tod Bichig), a modification on the Uighuro-Mongolian vertical script already in use by the Mongols. It was while studying the various dialects of the Western Mongols that Namkhaijantsan stayed at the monastery in Mankhan. Over 2,000 manuscripts on religious subjects written in Clear Script still exist in the libraries of Ulaan Baatar, including forty-seven composed between 1652 and 1662 by Zaya Pandita himself. The script is still used by Torguts in Xinjiang.

Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), The Oirat Zaya Pandita

In 1911, when Dambijantsan arrived in the area, the Zakhchin were ruled by the 12th Zakhchin Noyon (noyon = prince). The Noyon, whose given name was Sambuu, was born in 1864, the Year of the Mouse, at a place called Khuural Tsenkher, in what is now Mankhan Sum. He was the second son of a herdsman who, although very poor, was well known as a doctor practicing traditional Mongolian medicine. Sambuu’s talents were recognized early, and when he was ten years old the 10th Noyon of the Zakhchin, Dalantai, took him on as a disciple and student. Dalantai was a very learned man and highly respected as a Dalai, a man whose knowledge was as vast as on ocean (dalai = ocean, oceanic, etc.). Under the tutorage of the 10th Noyon, Sambuu learned old Mongolia Vertical Script, the Tod Script of the Oirat Zaya Pandita, the Manchu and Tibetan languages, and also studied medicine sutras and other Tibetan medical texts. He eventually became a maaramba, a practitioner of traditional medicine, and was much respected by the Zakhchin people as a doctor and a knowledgeable and talented person in general.

Sambuu, the 12th Zakhchin Noyon

Meanwhile the 10th Noyon died and was replaced by a man named Nyamdeleg, who became the 11th Noyon. Nyamdeleg soon fell ill and his health became so bad that he was unable to fulfill his duties and had to stand down. The office of Noyon was not hereditary; it could be awarded to anyone the populace, led by the lesser noblemen, felt could best perform the job. Sambuu, well known for his knowledge and pure mindedness, was soon proclaimed the 12th Zakhchin Noyon. Ever energetic, he embarked on a campaign to upgrade the Tögrögiin Khüree and other monasteries and temples and imported skilled craftsmen from China to do the work. His goal was to make these monasteries the center of Buddhism in western Mongolia.

He also had a more militant turn of mind and with the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in the Fall of 1911 he declared himself ready to fight for Mongolian independence. Therefore he apparently had no objections when Dambijantsan, voraciously expounding on the need to eject the Manchus from western Mongolia and unite the Mongolia people, suddenly showed up in his territory and announced his intention to establish a winter camp about 20 miles south of Mankhan, on the Tsenkher Gol, where the river emerges from a canyon through the Mongol-Altai Mountain. On his peregrinations around western Mongolia Dambijantsan had already attracted a small flock of disciples and followers and these people too moved to the Tsenkher Gol camp.

Apparently it was here at his winter camp on Tsenkher Gol that on December 29, 1911, Dambijantsan did what the Diluv Khutagt called a “strange, magical thing." According to the Diluv Khutagt:

The Bogd was declared Khan of Mongolia at the time of the Mongol Revolution in 1911. Long before the news of this event reached Western Mongolia, Ja Lama called the people around him, and said, “The time for rejoicing has arrived.’ He then touched the barrel of his gun to the top of each man’s head, in the way a lama gives a blessing with his prayer beads, and said, ‘Go to the east and pray.’ Later is was discovered that this was the exact day on which the Bogd had been declared Khaan.

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.