Mongolia | Diluv Khutagt | Narobanchin Khiid

I recently met with Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the current incarnation of the Diluv Khutagt. The Previous Diluv Khutagt was the head of Narobanchin Monastery on the border of Gov-Altai and Zavkhan aimags in western Mongolia.

Diluv Khutagt (1884–1965)

The Diluv Khutagt, who transmigrated in the USA in 1965, wrote an autobiography about his years in Mongolia. The original manuscript, written in vertical Mongolian script, is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.

This is an excerpt from his Autobiography:

The Narobanchin Monastery in Outer Mongolia

In 1931 I left Outer Mongolia, my native land, as a religious and political exile. I had been one of those accused of counter-revolutionary plotting in a state trial, which was the beginning of the destruction of my religion in Outer Mongolia. The root of my religion, Mahayana Buddhism, is in Tibet. I am afraid that now that both the Dalai Lama and the Panchan Lama, the two greatest Incarnations of this religion in Tibet, are in the power of the Chinese Communists, my religion may be destroyed also in Tibet. What I shall now describe is the organization of my religion as it was in the past, in Outer Mongolia. Under the Manchu Dynasty, from 1644 to 1911, Outer Mongolia consisted of the four great Aimaks or tribal confederations of Khalkha and the northwestern region of Kobdo where most of the tribes are not Khalkhas but Western Mongols. Each Aimak was divided into Banners, and each Banner was under a hereditary ruling prince. Through the Banners and Aimaks Outer Mongolia managed its own internal affairs. The Manchu Emperor stationed only a few high officials in Outer Mongolia as supervisors.

Parallel to this secular structure of government there was the structure of religious organization, under what Westerners generally call Lama Buddhism.

Most Banners maintained a monastery supported by Banner funds and private contributions. In addition there were monasteries, such as my own monastery of Narobanchin, that had territory of their own, deeded to them in the past by a Banner or Banners. In such territory, the church was both a religious institution and a civil institution. The monastery conducted the administration and collected the taxes. Internally, therefore, the monastery had a monastic organization. Externally, it had a civil administrative organization. On the civil side its affairs, like those of a Banner, were coordinated at a higher level through the Aimak, and the Aimaks, in turn, were under the supervision though not the direct administration of the high Manchu officials.

The hierarchy of my religion consists of the Incarnations of saints who, because they have freed themselves of sin and material illusion. could have entered into Nirvana, but have elected to remain in the material world in order to help others who are struggling to free themselves of sin and material illusion. The human body of such an Incarnation is merely a temporary vehicle. When the vehicle is outworn the body dies. The Incarnation then reappears in a new vehicle.

The most revered Incarnations are those of the Dalai Lama and Panchan Lama of Tibet. The most revered Incarnation in Outer Mongolia was that of the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu of Urga.

This hierarchy must not be thought of as one that was dominated by commands and orders, or by religious decree. In Mongolia we thought of Tibet as the land of our religion, and we revered the Dalai Lama and Panchan Lama as greatest of Incarnations; but our offerings and pilgrimages to them were of own free will and they neither levied a tribute upon us nor issued religious decrees.. Similarly in Mongolia the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu was the most widely deeply revered; but he ruled only within his own domain; he did not regulate or control other monasteries, such as mine.

In 1911, however, when the Manchu dynasty fell, all men, both princes Incarnations, looked to the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu because he combined the greatest authority in the land, spiritual and secular, and he therefore became head of the government, as Bogda Khaghan, Holy Emperor, until his death 1924 when the new government, Communist-controlled and pro-Russian, did permit his Reincarnation to be discovered.

Until the fall of the Manchu dynasty, there were fourteen higher Incarnations in Outer Mongolia who, in their successive embodiments, after being recognized and installed by the Church, had to be confirmed in their incumbency by Manchu Emperor. Of these I am one.

My successive incarnations are as follows:

One of the companions and disciples of Gotama Buddha was Mangala.

One of his later Incarnations was Dilowa [Tilopa], who was so named because in his worldly occupation he was a pounder of sesamum seed to make oil. Tila is the Sanskrit of "sesamum." One of his later Incarnations, in Tibet, was Milarapa.


The first Incarnation of Milarapa to appear in Mongolia was Dambadorji. In the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia there are two groups of mountains, the Great and Little Arjai. In the caves in the Little Arjai, Dambadorji built his first monastery, in the period of the reign of the Ming dynasty in China (1368-1643). This monastery was destroyed by Legden Khan of the Chahar Mongols, in the time of trouble when the Ming dynasty of the Chinese was falling and the Ch 'ing dynasty of the Manchus being set up.

The next Incarnation of Dambadorji was Erhe Bogda Lama, who built the monastery of Banchin Jo, also in the Ordos. In the K'ang Hsi period of the Manchu dynasty (1662-1722) my incarnation was recognized, under the designation of Dilowa Hutukhtu, by the Manchu Emperors. My present Incarnation is the fifth under this designation, and the third to appear in Outer Mongolia.

While I was in the Ordos, under the designation of Erhe Bogda Lama, Narobanchin was my disciple. Later he was reincarnated in Outer Mongolia, and built the Narobanchin monastery.

When in a later reincarnation I myself appeared in the same region of Outer Mongolia, the Narobanchin Hutukhtu invited me to share his monastery with him, and thus it has been ever since, and that is why I am the Dilowa Hutukhtu of Narobanchin monastery.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid. The monastery was destroyed c. 1937

In my present incarnation, I was born at a place called Oigong Bag, on the south side of the mountain called Bayan Airak, in the Banner of Tushie Gung, in the Aimak of Jasaktu Khan, in the year of the Monkey, the ninth year of the Manchu Emperor Kuang Hsü (1884), on the eighth day of the tenth moon, in the hour of the Dragon, according to the twelve-hour division of the day, about sunrise.

The family into which I was born were poor sheep-herders, living in a round, felt-covered tent. They had already had a daughter of fourteen and a son aged ten. I remember that in the year after my birth, the family owned only twenty sheep, four cows, and two horses. As a child I played about my father's camp, until at the age of five I was recognized as the fifth Reincarnation of the Dilowa Hutukhtu.

I was recognized in my new Incarnation in the following manner. When my previous Incarnation expired, lama diviners determined the general direction in which the search for the new Incarnation was to be made, and monasteries in that area had prepared at that time a list of forty children born in circumstances that might be miraculous. I was included in this list because at the time of my birth people had seen strange emanations of light coming from my father's tent. I was recognized as the Reincarnation because in my childish play I had frequently made reference to places near the Narobanchin monastery—places which actually existed but to which neither my family nor any of their acquaintances had ever been; and because, when an emissary from the monastery visited me, I immediately recognized as my own a bowl which he carried—a bowl that had belonged to me in my previous Incarnation.

Shortly after I had been recognized, a delegation arrived to escort me to the monastery. My family went along with me, bringing with them all their animals and possessions. I was taken into the monastery immediately. My family took up residence near the monastery and visited me occasionally; but from the age of five I was cared for entirely by lamas and received my religious and administrative training from them. At the age of fifteen I began to take an active part in the administration of the monastery, and at the age of eighteen, according to the regulations of the Manchu code, I took over full powers.

The Narobanchin monastery is about one-hundred and fifty miles south of the city of Uliastai, in the Aimak of Sain Noyon Khan. It had been built during the Ch'ien Lung reign (1736-1796) for the Narobanchin Hutukhtu, and had been named after him and given official status by the Manchu Emperor. Later, land was donated by the Banner where the monastery was situated and by a neighboring Banner, and after a petition to the Emperor, the monastery and its lands were recognized as a separate territorial and civil jurisdiction, on the same level as the twenty-four Banners of Sain Noyon Khan Aimak. In this way, the Narobanchin became a civil as well as a religious figure and was required to make periodic vassalage trips to Peking like the Banner princes.

The territory was about fifty miles east and west, and twenty-five miles north and south. Its boundary was marked by stone cairns. It consisted of a series of low mountains in the northern portion which drained southward across flat open ground into the Zavkhan River, running along the southern border of the territory.

The people of this territory consisted of families attached to the Narobanchin Hutukhtu. Such families are termed "disciples." At the time that the Narobanchin territory was created, these families were resident on the lands granted to the temple and were allocated to the Narobanchin as his subjects. They were later joined by other families which were officially transferred from other Banners. All of these families owed to the Narobanchin Hutukhtu not only their former customary religious obligations, but also their newly acquired civil obligations. They had, in fact, severed all formal civil and family ties with the Banners from which they had come. In the years of my present Incarnation, the number of these families was about four hundred-a total population of about eighteen hundred persons. They were all Mongols, except for a few Chinese who had come into the area as small merchants or artisans and had married Mongol women and settled down to live the life of Mongol herdsmen. None of the subjects of the monastery were nobles.

These families lived almost entirely by herding sheep, cattle, horses, and camels. They lived in round felt-covered tents, in small camps which moved from place to place during the year, following the grass and water. A few camps engaged in rudimentary farming, but only as a sideline to herding. Camps were almost entirely self-sufficient, but exchanged labor with each other, and traded off their surplus wool, hides, and animals to Chinese and Russian merchants in return for tea, grain and a variety of manufactured items.

There were a few specialists among my people—carpenters, tanners, animal doctors, bone-setters, and midwives—but these people were herdsmen, too, and employed their other skills on the side. For highly-skilled work in stone, wood and metal we had to call on Chinese artisans.

Because the monastery was the center of a territorial jurisdiction, as well as being a religious center, it was required to maintain a separate civil administration. This civil administration was subject to a Manchu code which, like the code applying to Banners, regulated the territory's relation with the Aimak, but did not regulate the internal administration of the territory.

The civil and religious departments were kept separate in the normal course of affairs—the civil administration concerning itself with the territory and the people, and the religious administration concerning itself with the internal administration of the monastery and the lamas. The civil department had ultimate authority however. The officer in charge of the civil department was a lama, appointed to his civil office by the Aimak, who had the responsibility for the conduct of affairs both outside and inside the monastery. He had the authority to remove officials from high religious offices, to discipline lamas for civil offenses, and to control church finances.

The obligations of the people to the civil administration were annual taxes on livestock, which were paid almost entirely in kind, and the providing of obligatory feudal services such as animals and carts for the transport system. These obligations were codified, and were the same as those civil obligations required in the purely secular Banner administrations, except that in the monastic territory no one was subject to military conscription.

All families were listed on a central register, which showed the name of the family head, the number of his dependents, and the amount of the family's wealth in livestock. Since family groups owned their property as a joint fund, family property was the unit of taxation. Taxes were used to meet the demands of the Aimak and for repair of local civil buildings. Collections were generally disposed of as soon as possible, and the civil administration did not have its own treasury.

The civil administration was responsible for seeing that the taxable wealth of the community was not reduced through poor management, and would assign certain families to help other families which could not properly manage their own herds. Otherwise the civil administration did not regulate the technology or economies of the territory. It did not engage in conservation measures, or the assignment of pasturage rights, and did not attempt to regulate the trading activities of the population.

All families in the territory were assigned for administrative purposes to one or the other of two "halves"—the East and the West—which actually had nothing to do with territorial grouping, since the people of both halves were mixed together throughout the area. Each of these halves was under a leader (the daroga, "great chief"). The families in each of these major subdivisions were further grouped into twelve smaller units of about sixteen families each, and placed in the charge of twelve minor leaders. Both big and small leaders had very few routine duties. Their primary function was to report changes in family size and wealth status at the annual budget meeting, and they were held responsible if one of the families in their charge evaded taxes, or committed some other civil offense. This was the only kind of police force maintained in the territory. Cases of civil offense were tried and sentenced by the head of the civil administration personally.

Disputes between families or individuals over such things as property, inheritance, desertion, non-support, etc., were usually referred to the leaders, but the office of the head of the civil administration was the ultimate seat of authority. Ordinarily families handled all the arrangements of marriage, property, and family economics according to old Mongol custom, but there was no broad family organization or leadership which could settle disputes between individual families in such matters.

The religious obligations of the people consisted of contributions of goods and services to the monastery to provide for ceremonies, sacrifices, and the upkeep of the monastery buildings. These obligations were not codified but customary, and had grown up over a long period of time. Contributions were made by the people because they were devoted to the church and wished to acquire religious merit. The monastery treasury was the corporate property of the monastery. All regular contributions and all expenses for religious services and works were handled through this treasury.

In addition, many free-will contributions came into the monastery for such purposes as honoring a deceased relative or a particular lama. Some of these were made to the monastery treasury, some came to the Narobanchin or myself, and some went to other lama dignitaries. Contributions to the Narobanchin and myself went into our own private treasuries which however belonged to us not as ordinary individuals but as continuing Incarnations, and were therefore treated as institutional trust funds. Our wealth was used primarily to fulfill the social obligations of our status. We gave many animals to poor people, and in times of general hardship the wealth obligations of the people to the monastery would be assumed in part by the reserves of the monastery treasury and in part by the treasuries of the Narobanchin and myself. The treasury of the monastery, the treasuries of the Narobanchin and myself, and the wealth of our subjects were all mutually supporting, so that excessive demands were not made on anyone source. The treasury of the monastery and the treasuries of the Narobanchin and myself were managed and accounted for by a single lama official, appointed by a central committee of five high religious officials, and responsible not only to them but to the head of the civil administration.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid

Every family tried to send at least one son into the church to become a lama, and in the years of my present Incarnation there was a total of about three hundred lamas in the territory. No limit had ever been imposed on the number of lamas that the territory could contain, the original Manchu-assigned quota of forty lamas having designated only those lamas who would be exempt from military conscription.

Sons were usually sent to lama teachers in the monastery at the age of about six or seven, and had to remain in the monastery for a good part of their early youth studying if they were to become fully ordained lamas.

Lamas normally resided at the temple but, since their families often needed their help for herding, or for some emergency, they were permitted to return home for indefinite periods of time. It was more difficult for a lama to absent himself from the temple if he was holding an administrative post in the temple, or if a general assembly was in progress, but, if the family's need was sufficiently urgent, almost any lama could secure temporary release from temple obligations to return home. If a lama had duties which made it impossible for him to leave the temple, another lama was sent from the temple to the camp to replace him. Lamas from wealthy families tended to spend more time in the temple than lamas from poor families simply because the wealthier families usually had dependent helping families and could do without the services of one or two sons.

Provision was also made so that a lama could inherit family property and be listed officially as a family head; lamas could not marry, but a lama could be released honorably from the church in order to marry if his family affairs made it necessary.

While lamas were resident at the monastery they lived in fifteen courtyards arranged in rows on both sides of the main temple buildings. Here they slept in tents and ate food provided primarily by their own families, or by the families of their personal disciples, if they were famous lama teachers. They could own property, but any animals which they acquired were usually kept in the herds of their disciples' families.

The Narobanchin and I of course lived all year round at the monastery, and we had each our own private residence with winter and summer houses, storage buildings, guest-tents, and a household staff.

In the 1930's, as the Communist-controlled government in Outer Mongolia increased in power, this traditional organization of my religion was destroyed, chiefly by depriving monasteries of their territories and revenues. It has been many years since I have had direct news of my own monastery; but my personal property was expropriated before I left Mongolia in 1931, and I have heard that in Da Khüree, which Westerners call Urga, and which is now called Ulaan Bataar—a city which was once a city of monasteries—there is now only one monastery open for religious services.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid

Diluv Khutagt

Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the current Diluv Khutagt

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #10

I ended my earlier Exegesis of Chagatayid Influence in the Ili Basin with the Death of Tughluq Temür, who before he died had appointed the up-and-coming chieftain Temür as an adviser to his son. Temür would soon became known as Tamerlane.

Tamerlane (1336–1405), immortalized in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (written in 1587–88), was not a Mongol but a Turk, and his career as one of the world’s greatest conquerors lies for the most part outside the scope of my narrative. I have already noted, however, how he married the Chagatayid princess Saray Mulk-khanum, daughter of Qazan, the last ruler of Transoxiana, in an attempt to legitimize his rule. Indeed, he never took for himself the title of khan, but claimed instead to be an emir (commander, or general) acting in the name of the Chagatayids. During his reign the Chagatayids princes of Ulus Chagatay were reduced to the role of powerless figureheads and puppets. The eastern Chagatayids attempted to retain their independence, but in the late 1370s and 1380s Tamurlane made several successful forays into Moghulistan and finally Khizr Khodja, the only surviving son of Tughluq Temür, was forced to come to terms with him. In 1397 he offered up his sister Tukal-khanum as a bride to Tamerlane and accepted the title of khan of Moghulistan, subordinate to the Scourge of God himself. His western flank secure, Khizr Khan, turning his attention east, achieved a certain reputation for himself by declaring a Holy War on Uighuristan and imposing Islam on the hitherto staunchly Buddhist population of the Turpan Depression.

After Tamerlane’s death in 1405 the Chagatayids in Moghulistan enjoyed a brief resurgence. In addition to Uighurstan they added Kashgaria—the oasis cites of the western Tarim Basin—to their domains and appeared poised to once again dominate Inner Asia, or at least the westesrn half of it. Yet at the same time other peoples coming to the fore were challenging the Chagatayids for their territories. These included the Kazakhs, who asserted themselves in the western part of the Seven Rivers, the Kyrgyz in the Issuk Kul region, and the Oirats, who soon appeared in the Ili Basin. It is the Oirats, from whom Dambijantsan’s people the Kalmyks came, that interest us most.

During the reign of the Chagatayids in Moghulistan, the Oirats, whose Origins I Have Traced Earlier, had been nomadizing in the Zungarian Basin, the Tarbagatai Mountains to the north, and in the western reaches of current-day Mongolia. In the 1420s we find Esen, son of Toghan, founder of the first Oirat Empire, raiding the Ili Basin, where he took as prisoner the then-reigning Vais Khan. After Vais Khan offered up a sister to Esen as a bride he was released, but the Oirats kept a foothold in the region. By the 1450s the Ili River Valley had been incorporated into the Oirat Empire, which at it height was said to stretch from Lake Baikal in the east to Lake Balkash in the west, including much of the Seven Rivers region. After Esen’s assassination in 1455 the first Oirat Empire disintegrated. For the next hundred and fifty years the Ili Basin and adjacent regions would be fought over by various tribes of the Oirat, surviving Chagatayid princes, resurgence Timurids, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. (It was in this period, by the way, that we see perhaps the most brilliant florescence of the Chagatai lineage, although admittedly not in our immediate area of interest; Babur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal Dynasty in India and author of the Baburnama, was a descendant of both Tamurlane and Chagatai.



By the early 1600s we find the Khoshuut, one of the tribes of the old Oirat Empire, roaming in the steppes along the Irtysh River in the Zungarian Basin and what is now eastern Kazakhstan. Up until this time the Oirats had apparently adhered to the ancient animist and shamanic beliefs of their forefathers. In the early 1620s or thereabouts one of their chieftains, Baibagas, converted to the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism. In his zeal he in turn converted other Oirat chieftains: Khu Urluk of the Torgut; Dalai Taiji of the Dörböt; and Khara Khula of the Choros. The Oirats leaders very quickly became zealous Buddhists, and they soon began sending their sons to study in the great Gelug monasteries of Tibet. They also did not hesitate to project their beliefs into the political realm. Baibagas’s brother, Güüsh Khan, who had carved out a khanate around Khökh Nuur (Qinghai Lake) and the Tsaidam Depression, in current-day Qinghai Province, China, rode into Tibet in the late 1630s to defend the 5th Dalai Lama from the King of Tsang, the ruler of much of Tibet, who was persecuting the Gelug Sect. In 1642 he overthrow the king and proclaimed the Dalai Lama both the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet. Not until 1959, when the current Dalai Lama went into exile, was the theocratic system established with the help of Güüsh Khan interrupted.

Güüsh Khan is well-remembered in Tibet. Here is his portrait on a wall at Samye Monastery

Güüsh Khan (left) on wall of Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. The figure on the right may tbe he 5th Dalai Lama, although opinions vary.

The Oirats who migrated to the Caspian Steppes in the 1630s took their newly acquired beliefs with them, resulting in a conclave of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhists which would continue on in Europe down to the present day. The Golden Temple (Gaden Shedrup Choekhorling), opened on October 5, 1996 and consecrated by the 14th Dalai Lama on November 30, 2004, is reputedly the largest Buddhist temple in Europe, and noisy contingents of Kalmyk Buddhists have in recent years attended Kalachakra initiations given by the Dalai Lama in locations as far-flung as Graz in Austria, Toronto, Canada, and Amaravati in India. It was this Buddhist culture into which Dambijantsan was born in 1860.

Khara Khula of the Choros, as we have seen, was the father of Baatar Khongtaiji, founder of the Zungarian Confederation. Baatar Khongtaiji established his main capital on the Imil River near current-day Tacheng, on the Chinese-Kazakhstan border, but he spent much of his time camped in the Ili River Valley. We have also seen how Baatar-Khongtaiji’s son Galdan seized control of the Zungarian Khanate in 1676. In 1678 the 5th Dalai Lama, who apparently wanted to use him as a counterweight against the increasingly powerful Qing Dynasty, gave Galdan the title of Boshigt, “Khan by Divine Grace,” and thus legitimized his rule of the Zungarian Khanate. As an Oirat, and not a Chingisid, or descendant of Chingis Khan, he had no real right to take the title of khan for himself. (His name, Galdan, comes from the Tibetan dga’ldan, defined as the “Tushita Paradise of the Maitreya Buddha.” Between 1678 and 1680 he was apparently headquartered at Kulja, near the old Chagatayid capital of Almalik in the Ili Valley, during which time he annexed Kashgaria and Uighurstan, including the oasis cities of Kashgar and Khotan, Turpan, and Hami.

Galdan Boshigt (1644-1697)

When we last left Galdan Bolshigt in 1688 he had invaded Khalkh Mongolia and driven Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia and his followers southeast toward the Chinese borderlands. In 1690 news reached Beijing that Galdan Bolshigt and a force of some 30,000 men had reached the Khülün Nuur (Dalai Nuur) area in what is now Inner Mongolia and was proceeding southward along the Khalkh River. On July 26 they overran the first Qing outposts. At first it appeared to the emperor’s advisors in Beijing that the insolent Oirat actually intended to march on Beijing itself. Actually up to 20,000 of Galdan’s men deserted on the march south and the remainder were near starvation. But in early August the Kangxi emperor himself accompanied an army north pass the Great Wall Via the Gubeikou Pass seventy miles north of Beijing. Kanxi himself soon complained of illness and returned to Beijing, but General Fuquan, who held the title of Prince of Yu and was Kangxi’s half-brother, led the army north through the Mulan Hunting Grounds, the private hunting preserve of the Qing emperors.

Just south of the current-day town of Saihanba the forested ridges of northern Hebei end with dramatically abruptness and the terrain suddenly changes to rolling, treeless steppes. Not coincidentally, here is also the current-day border between Hebei Province and Inner Mongolia. About ten miles north of the border, on a broad flat expanse of steppe broken only by a conspicuous hill of reddish rock known as Ulaan Butong in Mongolian (Hong Shan in Chinese; “Red Mountain,” or in a more figurative rendering “Red Urn”) the two armies collided on September 3.

The Mountain of Ulaan Butong

The Qing had cannons, a relatively new innovation, and one which would seem to give them unquestioned superiority. At two o’clock in the afternoon the Qing army commenced firing artillery. Across a broad swamp the Mongols lined up their camels as barricades again the artillery and stood their ground, returning a heavy barrage of musket fire. A French Jesuit in the Qing court by the name of Jean F. Gerbillon had accompanied the Qing army from Beijing and later gave an eyewitness account of the battle. Toward evening commander Tong Gougang, uncle of Kangxi, was killed by Mongol musket fire, a devastating blow to the morale of the seemingly superior Qing army.

Another view of Ulaan Butong

At nightfall the fighting ended and each army returned to their camp. There had been no clear victor, but nevertheless “Generalissimo” Fuquan sent a dispatch to Beijing claiming the Mongols had been decisively defeated. In fact, further engagements over the next day or two again ended with no clear victor. The tenacious Mongols simply refused to give up. In order to break the stalemate Fuquan called in a high-ranking lama to begin negotiations with Galdan. An agreement was reached whereby Galdan could return to Mongolia after swearing an oath to his “war-god” (probably the Tibeto-Mongolian deity Mahakala) that he would never again invade Qing territory. Thus ended the Battle of Ulaan Butong.

Ovoo on the battlefield of Ulaan Butong

Large ovoo commemorating the Battle of Ulaan Butong

Fuquan was left with the unenviable task of informing the Kangxi emperor that Galdan had not been defeated and captured but had instead been allowed to return to Mongolia. Elated by the earlier dispatch in which Fuquan had claimed a victory, Kangxi and his advisors were infuriated when they found out what actually happened. The oath of a renegade like Galdan, they said, was worthless; he would simply regroup and attack again. Fuquan was ordered to stay put until scouts who were sent reported that Galdan had actually returned to Mongolia, and then he was ordered back to Beijing. He reached the capital on December 22 and was made to wait outside the city walls while his fate was decided. Finally he was court-martialed, dismissed from his military command, removed from the council of princes and advisors, and docked three years’ salary. Many of his officers were also fined and demoted. Stung by his rough handling by Kangxi, Fuquan was down but not out. He retired to his luxurious home in Beijing and became a literary patron, famous for entertaining writers and poets in his well-appointed garden.

In 1691, as we have seen, Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, met with Kangxi at Dolonnuur and forfeited Mongolian independence in exchange for the assistance of the Qing in expelling Galdan from the Khalkh domains. But not until 1696 would Kangxi once again confront Galdan. This time he was determined to stamp out the Zungarian upstart. Three separate armies totaling some 73,000 men, one accompanied by Kangxi himself, headed north into the heartland of the Khalkh in an attempt to corner Galdan. On June 12, 1696 the 14,000-man army led by General Fiyanggü confronted Galdan and 5,000 of his men at a place called, in Chinese sources, Jao Modo, near the Tuul River not far south of current-day Ulaan Baatar (Jao Modo is apparently a Chinese corruption of zuun mod, Mongolian for “100 Trees.” Whether this refers to the current town of Zuun Mod, capital of Töv Aimag, just south of Ulaan Baatar, is unclear.) This time the Mongols could not withstand the Manchu cannon fire. Galdan’s men were massacred, his own wife killed in the battle, and Galdan himself managed to escape with only forty or fifty of his own men.

Galdan fled west and finally holed up in what is now Gov-Altai Aimag. He had only 300 men with him and posed little threat to the Qing Dynasty, but the mere fact that he had twice escaped from Qing armies had infuriated Kangxi, who became even more determined to finally defeat and hopefully capture his nemesis. In the spring of 1697 two more Qing armies were dispatched to western Mongolia and once again Kangxi himself accompanied one of them. There are some indications that by now Kangxi considered tracking down Galdan as a kind of sport, like the hunting he had practiced at his immense Mulan Hunting Preserve, only with Galdan as the prey and not wild animals. He was denied the pleasure of finally bringing Galdan Bolshigt to bay. On April 4, 1697, Galdan suddenly died under circumstances which remained cloudy. Some said he committed suicide; others said his Buddhist teachings would have forbidden this (he had been recognized as the incarnation of an important lama as a youth, which would put an added onus on suicide). Still others, including Kangxi himself, believed he was poisoned by his close advisors after he refused their advice to surrender. In any case, Kangxi , still not satisfied, demanded the ashes of his body, which had reportedly been cremated by his followers. According to Chinese accounts, in the fall of 1698 Kangxi was finally mollified by seeing Galdan’s ashes scattered on a military parade ground in Beijing, where they were scattered to the four winds. Interestingly, to this day oral legends in Khovd Aimag discount this version of events, and some maintain that he was buried where he died, a place marked by an ovoo in current-day Gov-Altai Aimag.

Ovoo marking Galdan’s purported burial place in Gov-Altai Aimag

Still other legends claim that Galdan’s body or ashes were buried at an ovoo on the side of Tsambagarav Mountain, west of Khovd City.

Tsambagarav Mountain

Dambijantsan would later claim Galdan Boshigt as one of his role models, and just north of Tsambagarav Mountain he would attempt to create a miniature state which he may have dreamed would be the foundation of a new version of the Zungarian Khanate. And Dambijantsan’s death would became just as shrouded in controversy and legend as Galdan Bolshigt’s own end.

Newly erected Monument to Galdan Bolshigt in Khovd City, Khovd Aimag

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #8

Earlier I wrote about Dambijantsan’s Abrupt Departure from Drepung Monastery . . .

Later in life, when he was living in Mongolia, Dambijantsan regaled A. V. Burdukov with tales of his earlier travels, including sojourns in India. Maisky and Roerich also heard tell of these Indian travels. It is never quite clear when he went to India, but we might surmise that after killing his roommate he might have found it wise to remove himself to the Indian subcontinent and thereby escape severe punishment for the crime of murder from the monastic and perhaps civil authorities in Tibet. Dambijantsan, already deeply steeped in metaphysics and tantric teachings, would have found himself at home among the various yogis, fakirs, magicians, and itinerant savants of India, and would have ample opportunities for learning and expanding the wide variety of talents he would exhibit in later life. He would become legendary for his skills at hypnosis, clairvoyance, mind-reading, fortune telling and other arcane arts which were the stock and trade of India’s holy men. What talents he may have had in these areas would have been further honed during his stay on the subcontinent. By the early 1930s, almost a decade after his death, these Indian adventures had became an accepted part of his curriculum vitae. Henning Haslund at that time picked up the story circulating around the campfires of Mongolia that Dambijantsan “himself asserted that he acquired in India the supernatural qualities of the fakirs.” Beyond this we can add nothing about Dambijantsan’s alleged Indian interlude.

At some point in time in the early 1880s Dambijantsan may have gone back to Russia. In any event, he somehow managed to attach himself to the 1883–85 Inner Asian Expedition of Russian explorer and zoologist N. M. Przhevalsky (1839-1888). Przhevalsky’s earlier 1870–1873 expedition had been first serious Russian attempt to penetrate the maidenhead of virginal—at least from the Russian viewpoint—Tibet. On this first try he reached the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau and the vicinity of the headwaters of the Yangtze River before being forced to turn back. A later expedition in 1879-80, this one authorized by the Czar and backed up by a formidable detachment of armed-to-the-teeth Cossacks, got to within 150 miles of Lhasa before encountering a large contingent of the Tibetan army. In the ensuing stand-off Przhevalsky finally backed down. “Let someone else, a luckier traveler than me, proceed farther into Asia. I have done everything I could do and that was possible to do,” pouted the disheartened explorer. Russians, unlike the English a few decades later, were not yet ready to shoot their way into Lhasa.

Interestingly, upon his return to Russia Przhevalsky prepared a memorandum in which he proposed pushing the Russian border with Mongolia down to about the latitude of Örgöö, now Ulaan Baatar. Russian geographers, it seems, had opined that the mountains and mixed forest-steppe from the vicinity of Örgöö northward were really a continuation of Siberia, and thus based on landforms the border should run along the crest of Bogd Khan Uul (mountain) just south of Örgöö, beyond which lies the treeless steppe, desert steppe, and deserts of Mongolia proper. Thus Örgöö would then be in Russia. Przhevalsky had a religio-political motive for this proposal:

In future, should the English want to penetrate into Tibet from India, it is very likely that the Dalai Lama would move his residence to Urga, towards his most ardent believers there, the Mongols. Then, by, possessing Urga and patronizing the Dalai Lama, we would be able to influence the entire Buddhist world.

Przhevalsky was surprisingly prescient here. As already mentioned, in 1904 the English Younghusband Expedition did invade Tibet and the 13th Dalai Lama Did Flee to Örgöö. Of course Przhevalsky’s proposal to move the border south had not been taken serious and at the time Örgöö was still the capital of Mongolia and not a Russian city.

Przhevalsky’s 1883–1885 expedition started at Kyakhta, the entrepôt on the Russian-Mongolian border, proceeded south, presumably through Örgöö, to the Gobi Desert and then westward to the eastern spurs of the Tian Shan Mountains in Xinjiang. The expedition then veered off to the sources of Yangtze River and Qinghai Lake in modern-day Qinghai Province, China, continued on westwards to Khotan, on the southern edge of the Takhlimakan Desert, and finally northward to the huge lake of Issyk Kol in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Thus the three-year-long expedition traversed a huge swatch of Inner Asia but did not enter Tibet proper.

In 1998 I made a pilgrimage to Przhevalsky’s Memorial Complex and Grave at the east end of Lake Issyk Kol in Kyrgyzstan.

Monument to N. M. Przhevalsky at the eastern end of Lake Issyk Kol

The Grave of N. M. Przhevalsky (1839-1888)

Dambijantsan reportedly accompanied the expedition as one of its eighteen armed escorts. At this time he was traveling under the Russian alias Irinchinov. A photograph of the escorts showing Dambijantsan at the far left is, according to one researcher, “the first pictorial record of the charismatic adventurer that can be traced hitherto.” Dambijantsan was already familiar with Inner Mongolia from his stay at Dolonuur, and assuming that he joined the expedition at its beginning in Khyakhta he now would have had ample opportunities to spy out the land of the Khalkh, the current-day country of Mongolia. At this time, however, he was just a hired-hand traveling under an alias and had not yet assumed the role of Ja Lama, the descendant/incarnation of Amursana come to free the Mongols from the yoke of the Manchus. Yet we may assume that the ambitious adventurer had his eyes wide open, and was even at this point plotting his dramatic reappearance in Mongolia as the leader of a liberation movement.

There are unsubstaniated rumors that Dambijantsan had earlier accompanied the expedition of Russian explorer Grigory Nikolayaevich Potanin (1836–1920), who traveled through western Mongolia in the years 1876–77, with stays in the towns of Khovd and Uliastai (Potanin Glacier, which flows off Khuiten Uul, the highest peak in Mongolia, in Bayan-Ölgii Aimag, is named after the Russian explorer). This claim is part of Dambijantsan lore repeated to this day in Khovd Aimag, although there does not appear to be any written documentation to support it. In any case, Khovd City and Uliastai would later play important roles in the Dambijantsan saga, and it is quite possible that he visited them before he assumed the role of Ja Lama.

While it is easy to imagine a gun-toting Dambijantsan as part of an armed escort on expeditions to the remote fastnesses of Inner Asia, it is a bit more difficult to picture him as a lawyer with a briefcase stalking the halls of a courthouse. Yet while in Mongolia in 1927 painter, mystic, and Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich, father of already mentioned George Roerich, would hear that Dambijantsan, “no ordinary bandit,” was ”a graduate of law from Petrograd University.” For a moment a vision rises before us of Dambijantsan, a Kalmyk Mongol from the sun-drenched Caspian Steppes, striding the cobblestone streets of Peter the Great’s gray, gloomy city by the Gulf of Finland. Irina Lomakina, Dambijantsan’s indefatigable Russian biographer, took the time to track down even this flimsy lead and came away with a different picture:

I couldn’t believe it at all [that Dambijantsan had studied law in St. Petersburg], so I decided to consult the historical archives of St. Petersburg, where the records of the university is stored, in order to check on whether this information was true or not. Fortunately, there was the card index of all the students who studied at that university before the revolution. I searched very carefully for any of the names which the Ja Lama may have used but didn’t find any. Moreover, I looked through all the personal files of students, entrance application forms, graduation certificates of the gymnasium, college graduation diplomas, exam papers, course papers, application forms for the higher education courses, etc. . . .

She found nothing and by the end must have seriously regretted Roerich’s off-hand comment about Dambijantsan’s studies in St. Petersburg. Thus whatever else Dambijantsan was guilty of in his long and storied life he cannot be accused of being a lawyer.

Dambijantsan himself claimed that he “served as one of the Ta Lamas or Heads of Department in the Chang-skya Khutughtu [Jangjya Khutagt) yamen at Peking, a learned ecclesiastical institution entrusted with the fixing of the calendar and other astronomical and metaphysical questions.” The Jangjya Khutagts were as we have seen incarnate lamas connected with the Monasteries in Dolonnuur where Dambijantsan may have studied as a boy. The fourth Jangjya Khutagt, who would have been alive at the time in question, was very seldom in attendance at Dolonnuur and lived almost full-time in Beijing.

The Songzhu Monastery in the old Imperial city was his full time residence in the capital. This ancient Chinese monastery, which specialized in printing sutras during the Ming Dynasty, was converted into a Tibetan monastery in 1712 by the Kangxi emperor. In 1724 it was given to Rölpé Dorjé, the second Jangjya Khutagt, and served as the residence of the subsequent Jangjya Khutagts. It did not appear, however, to have been a “learned ecclesiastical institution” of the kind where Dambijantsan supposedly served. The Yonghe Gong was the main academic monastery of Beijing, with various colleges that dealt with astronomy and calendar making, medicine, and various esoteric studies, and this may be the institution of which Dambijantsan made mention. Whether he was actually one of the Ta (or Da) Lamas there is another question altogether. Since the position would have acquired considerable academic credentials he could have held the post only after his studies at Drepung. But after his stay at Drepung he was wanted for murder in Tibet, and this would seem to preclude him from holding a high position in a Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist institution in Beijing. Either officials in Beijing were unaware of his past, or he had just made up this episode about being a Da Lama in Beijing to further burnish his reputation after he began a famous man in Mongolia.

We have covered most everything known about the first three decades of Dambijantsan’s life. At the age of about thirty, Dambijantsan was, like Jesus at the same age, ready to begin his life in earnest. He was about to assume a new persona: the descendant of Amursana returning to the land of the Mongols in order to free them from their Qing oppressors. Up until now 1890 he had, in effect, been in training. Now he was ready to become the Ja Lama.

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #3

Using the accounts of the Diluv Khutagt, Maiskii, the Roerichs, and Others who either knew Dambijantsan or gathered information from those who did, the findings of later researchers who had access to Mongolian and Russian archives, and my own Preliminary Research on the Ground in Mongolia, I am finally ready to piece together a rough outline of his life.

Dambijantsan, the False Lama

Admittedly, some of the most basic biographical details remain elusive. Even his actual name is uncertain. “Dambijantsan” is a Mongolian name said to be based on the Tibetan words for “standard-bearer.” George Roerich gives his name as “Ten-pei Jal-tsen (bsTsan-pa’I rgyal-mtshan),” apparently a rendering of the original Tibetan. Yet other sources suggest that his given name in Mongolian was Davaasambuu. But while Dambijantsan was ethnically Mongolian, he was born in Russia and was nominally a Russian citizen. Thus he reportedly also had the Russian, or at least semi-Russian, name of Amur Sanaev. This name would appear to be nothing more than a Russianized form of “Amursanaa.” As we shall see, Amursana was the Oirat chieftain who had led the last great Mongol revolt against the Qing Dynasty in the 1750s. Dambijantsan would eventually claim to be a descendant of Amursana, and still later his reincarnation. That he was a actual lineal descendant of the Oirat chieftain seems highly unlikely, and a reincarnation a matter of speculation. If he was not related to Amursana, is it really possible, as one Russian researcher maintains, that he was born into a family named Sanaev and given the name “Amur”? The coincidence seems to great. Or was this just another alias chosen to further enhance his connection with the illustrious Amursana, who according to legend would return and once again lead the Mongols in revolt against the Qing oppressors? In any case, as late as 1914 Dambijantsan appeared to have Russian documents giving his name as Amur Sanaev. He also traveled under the Russian alias Ichinnorov amd the Tibetan alias of Dawa Shabrong. After arriving in Mongolia in the early 1890s he would acquire a whole host of Mongolian aliases and nicknames.

Dambijantsan’s age is also a matter of dispute. His contemporaries had no clear idea of how old he was. Like the notorious Count St. Germain of eighteenth century Europe Dambijantsan had the curious trait of appearing ageless. The Diluv Khutagt, who knew him for a period of over thirty years, says simply, ““No one knew his real age. No one knew the real truth about him.” A. M. Pozdneev, writing in 1892, noted that Dambijantsan “was about thirty or forty years old.” Yet A. V. Burdukov, who would become very well acquainted with Dambijantsan, stated that when he first met him, some twenty years later in 1912, “He looked a little over forty.” If we are believe these accounts it would appear that Dambijantsan aged very little between 1891 and 1912. These discrepancies in his appearance would cause some to speculate that there was more than one Dambijantsan, and that some witnesses had confused the various characters who had assumed his name. Indeed, as we shall see. several imposters did eventually appear in Mongolia, all claiming to be Dambijantsan.

After his death various researchers would claim that the Dambijantsan was born in 1860, although the actual source of this information is never quite clear. One Mongolian scholar, apparently using a comment of Dambijantsan’s on the astrological details of his birth, would claim he was born in 1862. Lacking any more concrete information we will use 1860 as the probable date of his birth. This would make him thirty years old when he first arrived in Mongolia in 1890, fifty-two when he took part in the Siege of Khovd in 1912, and sixty-three at the time of his assassination at Gongpochuan in 1923.

As we have seen Pozdneev as far back as 1892 was aware that Dambijantsan was a Kalmyk of the Little Dörböt tribe dwelling on the Caspian Steppe north of the Caspian Sea. But even this simple fact about Dambijantsan’s life would later be obscured behind a welter of myths. In 1926 Owen Lattimore was told by caravan men on the Winding Road caravan route that Dambijantsan was variously a “a true Mongol” (i.e., Khalkh or Eastern Mongol), a Russian, or a Buryat from Siberia. “The most substantial story of all,” opined Lattimore, “is that he a Chinese from Manchuria who had served in Mongolia as a herder of ponies for the princely firm of Ta Sheng K’uei.” He also relates that one of the things most remembered about Dambijantsan by those who had known or at least seen him was his habit of changing his dress every day or so from Russian to Mongolian to Chinese and back again. This constant changing of his clothes could only have added to the confusion about his origins. Dambijantsan himself told A. V. Burdukov he was a Khalkh Mongol born at a place called Ashikh Khurgan Chuluu in the old Tüsheet Khan Aimag. That Burdukov, who spoke Mongolian, apparently believed this story was strange, since several other people who knew Dambijantsan commented that he spoke the Khalkh dialect of the Mongolian language very poorly. Even to this day people in Gov-Altai aimag remember stories about Dambijantsan’s poor command of the Khalkh Dialect and his use of the words from the Kalmyk or Western Mongolian Form of the Mongolian language.

Later evidence, including letters written by Dambijantsan himself, confirm that he was indeed a Kalmyk. One source maintains that he was born near the town of Aidarkhan, somewhere on the west bank of the Volga—the name no longer appears on modern maps—but again the original source of this information is unclear. Pozdneev’s assertion that Dambijantsan belonged to the Dörböt tribe, a subdivision of the Kalmyks, would also seem to be correct.

The people known as Kalmyks had left the main body of Oirats, or Western Mongols, most of whom were then concentrated in what is now western Mongolia and the Chinese province of Xinjiang, in the early seventeenth century and had migrated en masse westward to the steppes on either side of the Volga River north of the Caspian Sea, an area then nominally controlled by Russia. There they became the only enclave of Mongolians who practiced the traditional nomadic lifestyle in Europe. Several different tribes, including the Torgut and the Dörböt, had made the migration. Each kept its name but they became known in general as Kalmyks. Thus Dambijantsan was a Kalmyk of the Dörböt tribe. Since by the time he was born Russia had asserted full control over the area he was a Russian citizen, a factor which was to play a crucial role in his life. Yet he always identified with Oirats, or Western Mongols, from which his tribe the Dörböt had originated, and would eventually assert that his real homeland was the traditional territories of the Oirats in western Mongolia and northwest China.

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.

Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Burkhan Buudai Uul

In 1998 I made a lengthy jeep tour of Gov-Altai Aimag out in southwest Mongolia. While driving through the Biger Depression about 60 miles southeast of Altai, the capital of Gov-Altai, my jeep driver, a man named Chültem, pointed out a mountain to the south known as Burkhan Buudai Uul. “This is the sacred mountain of central Gov-Altai Aimag,” he said. “It is possible to ride horses to the top. You should come back again to Gov-Altai sometime and go to the summit of this mountain.” Later in the trip we again saw Burkhan Buudai Uul from various distances and perspectives and I soon made up my mind to someday come back and ascend this mountain.

Eventually I did return to Gov-Altai. After a two hour flight we landed in Altai, at 7132 feet (2181 meters) the highest aimag capital Mongolia. The temperatures in Ulaan Baatar had been up in the eighties but a surprisingly chill wind greeted us as we walked from the plane to the small airport terminal. From out of the throng just outside the gates appeared two men who appeared to be in their sixties. The thin and wiry one introduced himself as Namsum (namsum = “bow and arrow”). Acquaintances in Ulaan Baatar had assured me that he was an expert in the history and local lore of Gov-Altai and in particular the Biger Depression and Burkhan Buudai Uul. He had been born in the Biger Depression and had worked there all his life as a schoolteacher, but he was now retired. He was nattily attired in dress shirt and slacks, khaki jacket, polished brown loafers, and a gray fedora. The man with him, he explained, was a schoolteacher chum of his from Altai town who out of curiosity had come along to the airport to meet the visitor to Gov-Altai. While waiting for our luggage Namsum mentioned that just the day before, June 25, it had snowed in Altai.

After a stop for staples at the Altai Market, a conglomeration of steel cargo containers with goods sold out of their back doors, we headed southeast on the unpaved road to the Biger Depression. A few miles out of town, on a hillside a half mile or so to the right of the road, could be seen several small stands of larch. “See those trees over there?” asked Namsum. I had taken note of them, since trees are so unusual in the Altai area. “Back in 1921,” he continued, ”a small band of White Russians under the command of the Buryat Vandanov rode down here from Narabanchin Monastery on the Zavkhan River and was going to loot the monastery known as Aryn Khüree, which was located just behind that hill. It was wintertime and the black trunks of the trees stood out against the snow. From several miles away Vandanov saw the trees and thought they were Mongolian fighters assembled to protect Aryn Khüree. He and the White Russians turned around and rode back to Narabanchin Monastery. There used to be a monument near the base of the hill with an inscription on it thanking the trees for saving Aryn Khüree, but it has since disappeared. And of course Aryn Khüree itself was later destroyed during by the communists in 1937.”

Ovoo at Dötiin Davaa

Soon we start the gradual descent toward Dötiin Davaa, a 9099-foot pass through the Shar Shorootyn Mountains. In a matter of minutes the skies cloud over completely and big wet snowflakes are falling. Namsum is impressed. Rain or snow at the beginning of a trip, especially a journey to a sacred mountain like Burkhan Buudai Uul, is a good sign, he insists. By the time we reach the pass, sixteen miles from Altai and almost 2000 feet higher, we are in the middle of an outright blizzard. It was June 26. At the top of the pass is a large ovoo surmounted by a length of tree trunk draped with hundreds of blue prayer scarves. Several cars and jeeps have stopped here and a dozen people are circumambulating the ovoo. One man has a bottle of vodka and is tossing capfuls of the alcohol onto the ovoo, while others splash the rocks with offerings of milk tea from plastic soda bottles. We get out of the jeep and circumambulate the ovoo three times on foot. Back in the jeep Namsum related that the large ovoo here at Dötiin Davaa was created by a famous local lama named Buural Lamkhai (c.1860-1910). As late as the nineteenth century, he says, the Gov-Altai region and especially the area around Dötiin Davaa had been well-known for its shamans. They were notorious for causing mischief of one kind or another and were especially skilled at inflicting curses on people. The local herdsmen were afraid of them and they were in constant conflict with the local Buddhist lamas.

Once Lama Buural Lamkhai and some of his disciples set out on a trip to Khövsgöl Aimag in northwest Mongolia. They had no sooner started out than two shamans, followers of the chief shaman in the area, stole their horses. Buural Lamkhai went into meditation and began chanting. This went on for several days. Soon the chief shaman fell ill; his arms and legs became numb and he was unable to move. Suspecting that Buural Lamkhai was the cause of his ailments he ordered his two followers to return the stolen horses and then beg the lama to come and heal him. This Buural Lamkhai did. The chief shaman recovered his health but his shamanic power was broken. To commemorate his victory over the shamans Buural Lamkhai built this ovoo here at Dötiin Davaa and established a temple nearby named Bureg Nomyn Khaan Khiid. “Ever since then, Gov-Altai has not been cursed by shamans,” noted Namsum. The temple has since been destroyed, but all travelers on the road still stop at the pass and make offerings to Buural Lamkhai’s ovoo. The lama had a camp near where Namsum was born, at Bayan Gol in the shadow of Burkhan Buudai Uul, and Namsum says we may get a chance to visit this place after we ascend the mountain. I ask Namsum if there are still practicing shamans in Gov-Altai. There are no traditional shamans still active that he is aware of, but he insists that there are still people who are quite capable of inflicting curses on their enemies.

From Dütiin Pass the road drops quickly drops down some 4900 feet into the Biger Depression. This huge natural sump, with no outlet to the sea, drains an area very roughly fifty miles from east to west and twenty miles from north to south. At its bottom is a salt lake, Biger Nuur, measuring several miles long, its size varying considerably according to the time of year and the amount of recent rainfall. The lake itself is at an altitude of about 4,100 feet. The Depression is bounded on the north by Shar Shorootyn Nuruu, with peaks of over 10,300 feet, and on the south by another range with several peaks of over 11,000 feet, including 11,092-foot Burkhan Buudai Uul.

Although much of the floor of the Depression is covered with barren gravel and salt flats, the foothills ramping up to the mountains on either side provide excellent grazing for sheep and goats and the mountains themselves support large herds of yaks (there is now a small distillery in the town of Biger which produces vodka made from yak milk). Small streams flowing out of the mountains were utilized for irrigation, allowing for small vegetable gardens. At one time even grapes were grown here; the area is currently famous for its enormous potatoes. These favorable conditions, along with its strategic location straddling an important caravan route from Uliastai to Shar Khuls Oasis in southern Gov-Altai Aimag and on to China, Tibet, and Xinjiang, made the Biger Depression a relatively prosperous place.

The Depression was also famous for its monastery, known as Biger Nomin Khanii Khiid, located sixteen kilometers west of the current town of Biger. Founded in 1830 by a Tibetan monk named Luvsangeleg who had come to Mongolia at the invitation of Zasagt Khan Gelegyampil, Biger Nomin Khanii Khiid eventually hosted up to 300 monks and was considered one of the wealthiest monasteries in Mongolia. The monastery was destroyed by the communists in 1937 but not before, according to local lore, statues containing 137 kilos of gold were spirited away by monks and buried in the nearby desert. Much remained, however, and when the communist iconoclasts did arrive they took 130 camel loads of paintings, scrolls, books, statues, and other religious implementia a few kilometers away and burnt them. In the 1960s, again according to local informants, a Soviet Russian geological expeditions which had come ostensibly to do research in the nearby mountains used metal detectors to locate the statues which had been buried and hauled them away. If they indeed contained 137 kilos of gold—which admittedly sounds like a bit much—that would be 4,832 ounces, worth over $4,830,000 at today’s prices.

Biger Nomin Khanii Khiid

The notorious monk-warrior-bandit Dambijantsan once visited this monastery and apparently tried to recruit disciples here. Namsum claims that his grandfather met him. Having heard that the famous Dambijantsan—then going by the name Ja Bagsh (bagsh = teacher) was in the area, Namsum’s grandfather decided to pay him a visit. Since he knew Ja Bagsh favored white camels he took along nine white camels which he intended to give him as a gift. Upon entering the ger where Ja Bagsh was staying the man was first struck by his appearance. He did not look like a Mongolian, he claimed, but more like a Kazakh or even a Russian. Also, he said that Ja Bagsh spoke the Khalkh dialect of Mongolian very poorly and that he could barely understand him. All in all, he formed a very bad impression of the famous Ja Bagsh and finally went away without giving him the camels.

At this time Dambijantsan was still upholding his image as a Buddhist practitioner, teacher, and freedom fighter. Namsum related that sometime later, perhaps when he needed funds to construct his stronghold in the Mazong Mountains in China, Dambijantsan came back to the Biger Depression and stole the gold-plated ganchirs, the ornaments found on the eaves of temple roofs, from the temples of Biger Nomin Khanii Khiid.

Burkhan Buudai Uul

We rode on to the base of Burkhan Buudai Uul, where Namsum’s son was waiting for us with horses we would ride to the summit. A man named Narantsatsralt, who lived in a ger nearby, insisted on going up the mountain with us as a guide, although of course Namsum knew the way perfectly well. Viewed from the bottom of the Biger Depression, the northern face of Burkhan Buudai is a formidable rampart several thousand feet high with sections of cliffs certainly not traversable by horse. The back side of the mountain, however, ramps up gradually, and the slopes are covered with grass almost the whole way to the summit, posing no problems at all for horses. From our starting point at Narantsatsralt’s ger it was a climb of a little over 3,000 feet to the 11,092-foot summit.

Namsum on the way up the mountain

Halfway up is a large bench several hundred yards wide and perhaps a half mile long. In the middle of the bench is the Shine (new) Ovoo. Narantsatsralt claims, on the basis of what evidence I do not know, that in pre-historic times people came here to make human sacrifices. The current ovoo was built here to counteract the baleful influence of these sacrifices. Nowadays people come here in summertime for picnics, wrestling matches, and even short horse races.

Giving the horses a rest part way up Burkhan Buudai Uul

As we continued on Narantsatsralt related the history of the mountain’s name. According to legend, a long time ago, no one is sure quite when, there was a large stone at the base of the mountain that was shaped like a grain of wheat. This stone was believed to be somehow responsible for the fertility of the Biger Depression and people worshipped it as a burkhan, or god. Then one day the stone was stolen by people from some other area, it was not clear where. From this time forth the fortunes of the people who lived near the base of the mountain declined. Finally these people went to look for the stone. It turned out that the people who had stolen the stone had buried it under an ovoo. The people from the Biger Depression were able to locate it and bring it back to the base of the mountain. The mountain then got the name Burkhan Buudai (buudai = wheat). Since then the Biger Depression and surrounding mountains have always been a very rich and productive area.

The summit of Burkhan Buudai Uul

On the summit Namsum made an offering of artz, incense made from a species of dwarf juniper, and Narantsatsralt splashed the small ovoo at the top with milk. From here there is a spectacular view of the entire Biger Depression to the north and the long range of snow-covered peaks to the south. It should be noted that several maps I have seen indicate that the highest peak in this range is Burkhan Buudai Uul. We can see several higher peaks in the range to the south, however. The highest of these, according to both Namsum and Narantsatsralt, is Bogd Tsakhir Uul. This is probably the 12,352-foot (3765 meters) mountain indicated on some maps as Burkhan Buddhai Uul. They both insist that the maps are wrong and that all local people consider the mountain we are on to be Burkhan Buudai Uul.

People who treated us to dinner

After descending the mountain and spending the night with Narantsatsralt, who insisted on killing a sheep for our dinner, we continued along the northern flanks of the mountains to the east. At one point we turned south and headed up the valley of a small creek which soon narrowed into a canyon. At one point the creek passed through a defile only about five feet wide with rock faces sixty or seventy feet high on each side. “This place is known as the Tag (lid),” said Namsum. “At one time there was a natural bridge across the top of this chasm. This was the Tag. The trail used to go across the bridge, but now you have to follow the river bottom.” We continue on a trail that snakes up the side of the canyon. At the top there are the remains of a stone wall. “Mongol nobles used to hide their valuables up here when the area was raided by Chinese bandits,” said Namsum. “This wall is part of the old fortifications. No Chinese bandits could get past this place.”

Farther on up the canyon bottom is covered with ice which Namsum says is fifty feet thick. The creek flows below the ice. On the hillside to the left, above the canyon, is a large stand of larch trees. Namsum says that a very famous lama named Gömög once lived in a cave at the head of this canyon. He spent almost his entire adult life there meditating. He came down here a couple times a month to get wood from the forest and also to meet with pilgrims who came to get his blessing. No one knows where his cave was. After he died hunters tried to find it but none ever did. We climb up a narrow trail to the small forest and stop for a tea break before returning back down the canyon to our camp.

Lama Gömög’s cave was somewhere at the head of this valley

The next day we continue on east along the flanks of the mountains. "See that mountain?” asks Namsum at one point. “That is the haunted mountain of Tolgoi Khairkhan. You must never pick plants or even move stones if you go up on that mountain. Bad things always happen to people who do. It is said that after one man picked some medicinal plants up there he was chased away by strange black horse-like beings. He got sick and died not long afterwards.” Then there was a man, a bachelor, who went up there and came across a meeting of snakes. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them. People believe these meetings of snakes are convened by the King of Snakes, who rules all other snakes in the area. You must never harm these snakes, but for some reason the man killed several of them. A couple weeks later he started going blind and not long afterwards died. It was the King of the Snake’s revenge for killing some of his followers.

Mountains behind Burkhan Buudai Uul

Soon we passed the ger site of Buural Lamkhai, the lama who established the ovoo and monastery near Dötiin Davaa. He was the most famous reincarnate lama of Biger Sum. He lived here in the autumn season, and every autumn people still come to camp at this place and make offerings at the small ovoo built nearby by him. His son was also a lama. He committed suicide in 1937, just before or during the communist purges. Buural Lamkhai’s great-grandson is a monk who now lives near Biger Sum.

This area, Namsum says, is also famous for alleged sightings of almas, the Mongolian version of the Abominable Snowman. Namsum says he personally does not believe in almas, but he allows that many strange, inexplicable things have happened near here. A relative of his, he says, was once staying at some gers not far from here. A noise woke him in the middle of the night and he looked outside to see what was happening. He was shocked to see a huge black creature trying to enter the ger next door. He grabbed a rifle and fired a shot over the creature’s head. Whatever it was it let out a marrow-chilling scream and then ran off and bounded up a cliff face with incredible speed. There are stories of mountain men, escaped convicts or misanthropes, living alone in these hills, but according to Namsum’s relative no human being could have bounded up the side of the mountain like this thing did. His relative, Namsum says, was a very sober-minded, highly respected man who never told lies or made up stories. He had already been suffering from high blood pressure and never quite got over the fright of seeing this creature, whatever it was, and especially its blood-curdling scream. He died not long afterwards. Namsum, a school teacher, pillar-of-the-community and model-of-propriety type, is not one to make wild speculations. He says he knows only what happened to his relative, and beyond that he does not care to draw any conclusions about almas.

Snow leopard skull we found near Buural Lamkhai’s ger

We continued on and met a jeep which took us back to Namsum’s home in Biger Sum. Our trip to Burkhan Buudai was over. There is much else of interest in the Biger Depression area, but that will have to wait until later.