Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #16

Earlier I wrote about Dambijantsan’s First Stay in Mongolia and his interrogation by Qing officials in Uliastai.

Although Dambijantsan had managed to escape arrest in Uliastai it had been a close call, and he apparently decided the time had come “to move through space,” as he liked to say. At this point he simply vanished. So where did Dambijantsan go after he hot-footed it out of Mongolia? Possibly to Tibet, at least according to the story picked up by Maisky. By autumn of 1891 was back in Mongolia, passing through the “Dzindzik guard post,” exact location unknown but apparently on the southern border of Mongolia, “on his way from Tibet . . . leading two white camels.” We hear here for the first time of Dambijantsan’s predilection for traveling with two white camels. This custom eventually earned him the nickname Khoyor Tsagaan Temeet Lam, or “Two White Camels Lama.” From the border he traveled north to Uliastai. According to Pozdneev, who picked up the story a year later, “during Dambi Jantsan's journey over the post road, the people, with secret fear and hope, had greeted him everywhere, paid him the most heartfelt obeisance, and brought him rich offerings. Others told me that Dambi Jantsan himself had scattered gold among the poorer Mongols, and there was no end of entirely legendary tales.” He also “let it be known everywhere that he was going to free the Mongols from the rule of China and that he would soon return from the north with troops for this purpose.”

The story of Dambijantsan grandly dispensing gold to poor Mongols while riding one white camel and leading another certainly intrigues. He had supposedly been a monk starting at the age of seven and later claimed to be a badarchin, or wandering holy man, pursuits which generally do not lead to heaps of worldly treasure. He did not appear to practice any trade or craft, and apart from his early work as a handyman for various expeditions he never seemed to have any actual sustenance-providing occupation. So how did he support himself? As he proceeded through Mongolia people made offerings to him, but where did he get to money to finance his travels and buy white camels before this? And where did he get the gold he supposedly flung about?

After the murder of his roommate at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa he had become an outlaw and as such would have had few qualms about engaging in other criminal activities to support himself. Much later, he would achieve great notoriety as a bandit, caravan plunderer, extortionist, torturer, and murderer, but even in the early 1890s he may have been plying his trade as a conman. The Diluv Khutagt provides the details of one of his most elaborate swindles in Tibet. From the Diluv’s account it is difficult if not impossible to say when this episode occurred, but since Dambijantsan had apparently gone to Tibet in late 1890 and then returned to Mongolia flush with funds in late 1891 it might have happened then. In any case, I will relate the story here.

Dambijantsan apparently started out for Tibet—perhaps from Uliastai, after his near-arrest there—on foot, carrying a pack on his pack, which would seem to indicate that at this time he was not too well-heeled. He did, however, brag that he had a lot of gold coins with him. He apparently walked first to Kumbum Monastery (revered as the birthplace of Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug Sect) near Xining, in current-day Qinghai Province, China, and then continued on to the Khökh Nuur (Qinghai Lake) region inhabited by Khoshuut Mongols. (Remember that he had passed through here earlier after leaving the Ili Basin.) Here he somehow managed to organize a caravan with a few camels and camel men and then proceeded on to Lhasa, ostensibly on a pilgrimage. On the camels were several pack loads so heavy that one man, not even the legendarily strong Dambijantsan, could not lift them. At night he always made sure these loads were placed in his own tent and he always slept right beside them.

Upon arriving in Lhasa, he announced that his name was Dawa and that he was a “shabrong,” which the Diluv defines as “a minor classification of reincarnation.” At the time in Lhasa there was a office known as the Dewa Shiung where pilgrims could store trade goods, offerings, other and valuables they had brought with them. Possessions placed under bond here could then be used as collateral for loans. Dambijantsan desposited two of the heavy loads he had brought with him in this warehouse. Curiously, during the next few weeks still other caravans arrived carrying heavy boxes addressed to Dambijantsan and these too were placed in bonded storage. Occasionally Dambijantsan would show up at the warehouse and remove a few gold coins from the boxes for living expenses or a piece of fine silk as a gift for some government official. Soon Dambijantsan acquired a reputation as an important if somewhat mysterious lama and a very affluent pilgrim.

Finally he went to the Tibetan authorities and asked for permission to make pilgrimages to the sacred places of Tibet. He also asked for letters of credit which could be exchanged for cash in each of the Tibetan districts he would be passing through on his pilgrimage. As collateral for these letters of credit he used the pack loads he had stored at the Dewa Shiung. Dambijantsan proceeded to the pilgrim sites and cashed his letters of credit in each of the Tibetan districts he passed through. Traveling with him as a guide was a Mongolian man named Neiten who spoke fluent Tibetan. At one point he told Neiten that his services were no longer needed and that he should go back to Lhasa. He would continue the pilgrimage himself and return to Lhasa later. Neiten waited for Dambijantsan in Lhasa but he never showed up.

At the time there was a rule that goods could only be stored in the Dewa Shiung for one year. If they had been used for collateral and the loans against them had not been paid after one year the goods could be seized and sold to cover the debts. Dambijantsan had not returned within one year but he had left of the impression of being such an important, well-connected man that his boxes of goods, which by then may have numbered thirty or more, were not opened until after two years. Of course the boxes, so heavy they could not be lifted by one man, contained only rocks. The earlier charge of murder against Dambijantsan had apparently been forgotten, but now he was wanted in Tibet for embezzlement. No matter, by the fall of 1891 he was back in Mongolia, magnanimously tossing gold coins to beggars.

Given this extravagant, if not downright bizarre, behavior and the talk of raising armies against the Qing it is not surprising that Dambijantsan soon found himself detained once again by the Qing authorities in Uliastai. Under interrogation he refused to answer any questions but instead demanded, since he was a Russian citizen, to speak to someone in the Uliastai Russian community. The Russian merchant P. I. Kriazhev was summoned. Dambijantsan, who had been handcuffed, asked Kriazhev reach into the folds of his deel find a key concealed there. With the key Kriazhev opened the lock on an iron strongbox which Dambijantsan had with him. In the box Kriazhev found a pass allowing “Astrakan Kalmyk Dambi-Jiantsin” to travel through Mongolia. Apparently the Qing officials were unsure of Dambijantsan’s real identify and did not associate the man they had in custody with the instigator of the petition against the local amban a year earlier, and fortunately for Dambijantsan the officials did not further examine the contents of the iron box. Hidden inside were proclamations in Mongolian “urging the overthrow of the Chinese yoke.” Had the proclamations been found Dambijantsan might well have suffered the same fate as the two lamas who had been sentenced to death earlier. Dambijantsan’s audacity in the face of the Qing authorities and his narrow escape became part of the myth about his invincibility. Had the magician who according to legend could control men’s minds mesmerized his Qing interrogators? In any case, the Qing amban had him in his hands and then simply let him slip away.

From Uliastai Dambijantsan proceed to Khovd, where he stayed for a time with the Russian merchant Vasenov. Undaunted by his earlier experience in Uliastai, he eventually returned there. From Uliastai he traveled to Örgöö in the company of the Russian consul Shishmarev. It is not clear if he accompanied Shishmarev voluntarily. In any case, when he arrived in Örgöö he was arrested by the consul, if he had not already been arrested in Uliastai, and interrogated. Using his powers of extraterritoriality, the consul finally had Dambijantsan deported back to Russia through the northern border town of Khyakhta.

The Russian consul in Örgöö had exercized extraterritorial authority in Mongolia for several decades. Following the Opium War and the treaties which opened selected Chinese ports to the Western Powers, Russia decided it was time to elbow its way up to the trough. The so-called Convention of Beijing, engineered by the canny diplomat-priest Archimandrite Pallidius, head of the Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing, gained for Russia considerable trade concessions in China and unprecedented priviledges in Mongolia itself. According to Article V of the Convention, Russians traders who before had only been allowed to pass through Mongolia on their way to China but were not allowed to trade there were given the right to buy and sell goods in Örgöö and Kalgan (current-day Zhangjiakou, on the edge of the Mongolian Plateau north of Beijing). Russia was also granted the right to maintain a permanent consul in Örgöö, construct a consulate compound to house the consul, staff, and families, and install Russian troops to protect the compound and its inhabitants. By 1871 the so-called Green House—as the consulate was known—was guarded by a considerable detachment of Russian soldiers (the Green House still stands, just across from Hospital #2, near the new Wrestling Palace on the east side of town). More important to our story, Russia also gained extraterritorial authority in Mongolia, which meant that the Russian consul had legal powers over Russian citizens on Mongolian territory. It was this power which allowed the Consul to arrest Dambijantsan and deport him back to Russia.

Just what was Dambijantsan charged with, however? The details remain vague. Perhaps Shishmarev just decided that Dambijantsan an incorrigable trouble-maker and it was best just to be done with him. Dambijantsan seemed to have taken the hint that he was not welcome in Mongolia. He simply vanished for the next twenty years.

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