As we have seen from Pozdneev’s account, Dambijantsan styled himself first as the grandson of Amursana, who lead the last great Mongol uprising against the Qing Dynasty, and later as Amursana’s incarnation. This was clearly a ploy to place himself in the ranks of the great fighters for Mongolian independence and enhance his standing among the Mongols in general and the Western Mongols in particular.
Amursana was a son of a Khoit nobleman. The Khoit were a minor tribe subordinate to the Dörböts (the tribe to which Dambijantsan belonged), themselves subordinate to the Zungars, who under Khara Khula had claimed control over the Oirats as a whole. The rise of the Zungars to prominence in the Oirat confederation is one reason that some Dörböts choose to emigrate to the Caspian Steppes, where they became part of the larger grouping known as Kalmyks. Thus by claiming to be an incarnation of Amursana Dambijantsan was realigning himself with the Oirats who had remained behind in Inner Asia.
Amursana mother was Boitalak, the daughter of Tsewang Araptan,
taishi (chieftain) of the Zungars after the death of his uncle
Galdan Bolshigt. Boitalak had earlier, in 1714, married Danjung, the eldest son of Latsang Khan. Danjung was killed around 1717. Boitalak eventually married a
taishi from the Khoit tribe and Amursana, born in 1723, was the fruit of this coupling. The Qing emperor Qianlong would later maliciously suggest that Amursana was conceived before Boitalak’s second marriage and thus being illegitimate could not himself claim to be
taishi of the Khoits. Qianlong was certainly not an unbiased observer, and most historians have dismissed this slur.
Amursana would have been twenty-two when Galdan Tseren, the ruler of the Zungar khanate, transmigrated in the early fall of 1745. In his last years Galdan Tseren— please don’t confuse him with Galdan Bolshigt—laid claim to over 200,000 families, and the Zungarian khanate was still a force to be reckoned with in the politics of Inner Asia, posing a constant threat to the borderlands of both China and Russia. In his will Galdan Tseren passed over his oldest son, nineteen year-old Lama Darja—who was considered illegitimate by some—and named his second son, fourteen year-old Tsewang Dorje Namjar as his successor. The boy soon revealed himself to be a notorious n’er-do-well. Damchø Gyatsho Dharmatāla, in his Rosary of White Lotus, Being a Clear Account of How the Precious Teachings of Buddha Appeared in the Great Hor Country, a monumental nineteenth-century history of Buddhism in Mongolia, states that Tsewang Dorje Namjar’s “favorite ways were to roam around in the villages, drinking chang [barley beer], seducing girls and indulging in carnal pleasures.” Even the staid, sober-minded author of Tsewang Dorje Namjar’s entry in the encyclopedic Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period points out that he was “more interested in killing dogs than attending to affairs of state.” Finally fed up by his antics, in 1750 a group of noblemen led by his older brother Lama Darja seized him, put out his eyes, and sent him to Aksu, on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang, where he was held captive and eventually executed.
Lama Darja became the new Zungar taishi. His new position was precarious; the Oirats nobles despised him because of his low birth—his mother had apparently been a commoner with whom Galdan Tseren had coupled with only briefly. Soon a plot was spawned to depose him and place his remaining younger brother Tzyevyen Dashi, perhaps nine years old at the time, on the throne. Davatsi, the leader of the conspirators was the grandson of the famous—in Tibet notorious—Cheren Dondub, a general who under the command of Tsewang Araptan invaded Tibet in 1717 and trashed numerous Red Hat (Nyingma) monasteries, including
Dorje Drak and Mindroling. When I visited Dorje Drak, on the north side of the Tsangpo River, between Chitishö and Dranang, in 2003, the monks there were still grousing about this Oirat incursion, even though the monastery which had been rebuilt after its destruction by Cheren Dondub was in turn destroyed by the Red Guards in the late 1960s. The current monastery was rebuilt yet again after that.
The plots was soon revealed and Lama Darja and Davatsi came to blows. Davatsi was quickly defeated and with only about a dozen followers—among them Amursana—fled westward to the Kazakh steppes, where they found refuge among the Kazakh Middle Horde led by Sultan Ablai. The Sultan, perceiving that a civil war between the two Zungar factions would inevitably weaken the khanate, and thus be to the advantage of the Kazakhs, encouraged the two rebels, even giving Amursana one of his daughters as a wife. The emboldened Amursana soon sneaked back to the Tarbagatai Mountain region north of Ili where his tribe the Khoit were living and managed to round up an army of a thousand men. This force, along with some Kazakh troops sent along by the Sultan to aid the rebellion, marched on Ili, where Lama Darja was holed up, caught him by surprise, and on January 13, 1752, dispatched him to the Heavenly Fields. The little boy Tzyevyen Dashi, in whose name the banner of revolt had been raised, was now bypassed, and Davatsi himself—who was after all a direct descendant of great Baatar, founder of the Zungar Khanate—assumed the title of taishi of the Zungars.
Davatsi, however, proved to “a drunken and incompetent ruler,” as one commentator has described him, and he and Amursana soon fell out. There were rumors that Amursana demanded that he and Davatsi divide the rule of the Zungars between them, a proposal which Davatsi flatly rejected. Davatsi was the descendant of the great Baatar; Amursana the son of a minor Khoit nobleman. There was no question of them sharing power as equals. Very quickly the two became deadly enemies. In 1754 Amursana, along with a following of some five thousand soldiers and 20,000 women and children, broke away from the Zungarians under Davatsi and fled to Khalkh Mongolia, since 1691 ruled by the Qing Dynasty. Here he himself, like Zanabazar in 1691, swore allegiance to the Qing emperor, in this case Qianlong. Forgotten, as least for the time being, was the traditional enmity between the Zungars and the Qing. It was the Qing under emperor Kangxi who of course had hounded to his death the greatest Zungarian Khan of all, Galdan Bolshigt. In light of later events, it would appear that Amursana was just biding his time, using the Qing for protection against Davatsi, until he could himself return to Zungaria and seize control of the khanate. For the moment however Amursana appeared to be a devoted Qing subject. With the ostensibly loyal Amursana now in his pocket Qianlong saw at long last a way of finally ridding himself of the Zungars and extending the Qing empire westward into what is now the province of Xinjiang. He, the loyal grandson, would complete the task began by Kangxi and finally subdue the Zungars, the last large group of nomads on China’s borders still maintaining their independence. Ironically, a Oirat, Amursana, was the key to his plans.
To further solidify Amursana’s new-found loyalty to the Qing the emperor Qianlong granted him and his followers land along the Orkhon River, in current day Övörkhangai Aimag, then invited him down to Beijing, where he was declared a prince of the first degree. Then in 1755 Qianlong appointed him as assistant commander of the so-called Northern Route Army, under the overall command of Bandi, an Eastern Mongol of Chingis Khan’s own Borjid clan who had held numerous important posts in the Qing administration. The army, which numbered about 100,000, was made up in large part of Khalkh Mongolians, and the Khalkh had to furnish most of the horses, food, and other supplies for the force. This was the army which would be sent to subdue the Zungarians. Thus Qianlong was using the Eastern Mongols to rid himself of the Western Mongols.
The Northern Route Army left Uliastai, then one of the Qing headquarters in Mongolia (capital of current-day Zavkhan Aimag), in March of 1755 and by early summer had linked up with the Western Route Army, also numbering about 100,000 and under the command of General Yung-ch’ang. The Qing army with its contingents of Mongols then marched on Ili, the headquarters of Davatsi. ”They met little or no resistance and took Ili without fighting. Most Sungars [sic] simply surrendered,” notes one historian. Davatsi and a band of followers finally confronted the Qing army south of Ili on June 20 but were quickly defeated. Davatsi himself escaped over the Tian Shan Mountains and hid out for awhile in Kashgar, on the western edge of the Tarim Basin. The Moslem beg of Kashgar, divining which way the wind was blowing and not wishing to alienate the Qing, seized Davatsi and turned him over to Amursana in July of 1757.
That should have been the end of the Zungar taishi. Qianlong, however, realizing that he had a valuable pawn on his hands, had Davatsi brought to Beijing where he was ceremoniously paraded as a captive. Then Qianlong granted him a princedom of the first degree and a mansion in Kalgan, on the edge Mongolian Plateau north of Beijing, to reside in. Despite his title and comfortable accommodations he was now of course totally powerless. Free to devote himself to his favorite pastime, drinking, he died four years later, in 1759, but his descendants were honored with the rank of hereditary prince of the fourth degree.
Painting of Amursana in Khovd Aimag Museum, Khovd City
Meanwhile, Amursana was not playing the role Qianlong had designed for him. Qianlong had insinuated that after Davatsi had been defeated each of the Oirat tribes would be allowing to live on their traditional lands under a ruler appointed by the Qing emperor. Amursana, in reward for his part in defeating Davatsi, was appointed ruler of the Khoits, answerable of course to the Qing emperor. But now suddenly Amursana revealed his much greater ambitions. Why should he now be satisfied with ruling only the Khoits, a minor tribe in the Oirat confederation? He had helped the Qing defeat the Zungars, who had previously been the dominant power among the Oirats, so why shouldn’t he be the new ruler of the all of the Oirat tribes, including the Zungars? Making no secret of his ambitions he told Bandi, the commander of the Northern Route, to inform Qianlong in Beijing that he demanded to be made overall ruler of the Oirats. Informed of Amursana’s presumptuous demands, Qianlong ordered that he be seized and brought to Beijing. Apparently Bandi did take Amursana into custody, but on September 24, 1755, he escaped to the Kazakh steppe and sought refuge with his father-in-law Sultan Ablai.
Believing that the Zungars and been conquered, and that Amursana himself, in exile in the Kazakh steppe, no longer posed a threat, Qianlong ordered most of the 200,000-man Qing army, which was costing a fortune to maintain in Zungaria, back to China, leaving only a small detachment with General Bandi. But Qianlong had seriously under-estimated Amursana’s resilience. From his bolt hole in the Kazakh steppe he sneaked back into Zungaria, rallied the Oirat princes to his side, and incited a general rebellion. The small Qing detachment left behind in Zungaria proved to be no match for the newly reunited Oirats under Amursana. On October 4, 1755, acknowledging his hopeless position, Bandi, commander of the Qing troops, committed suicide. Amursana took control of Ili and laid claim to all of Zungaria. Very quickly he had realized his dream of being the independent ruler of the Oirats. On February 17, 1756 his followers named him the new Zungarian Khan.
Qianlong could not allow this assault to the dignity of the Qing Dynasty to stand. A new Qing army was dispatched to Zungaria and once again Qianlong promised the rulers of Oirat tribes who submitted him that they would be allowing to retain their positions if they recognized Qing suzerainty. Ili fell to the formidable new Qing army in late March of 1756, but Amursana yet again managed to flee to Kazakhstan. Despite the entreaties of Qianlong, the Kazakh ruler Ablai refused to seize Amursana and hand him over. Infuriated that Amursana had been allowed to escape, Qianlong dismissed the generals of the army and had most of the troops brought back to China. Apparently believing that the Oirats had now, once and for all, been crushed, Qianlong withdrew his army, leaving, as before, only a small detachment in Ili.
Like some irrepressible jack-in-the-box Amursana popped up yet in again in Zungaria, yet again rallied the Oirat princes, and in late 1757 yet again took retook Ili. Qianlong must have been beside himself; three times he thought the Oirats had been defeated; and each time they had managed to regroup and defy Qing authority. And now not only was Zungaria in revolt, but Mongolians in Mongolia itself, Qing territory since 1691, were opening opposing the Qing.
The situation in Khalkh Mongolia had been deteriorating for several years. The country had been stripped of the able-bodied men who had been sent to fight in Zungaria and impoverished by the huge amounts of horses, meat, butter and other supplies that had been requisitioned for the Qing armies. Then in the winter of 1755–56 disastrous zuds, winter ice and snow storms which prevent livestock from grazing, had hit, impoverishing many herdsmen, and on top of this a small-pox epidemic had broken out. Morale was at an all-time low when word came that in Zungaria Amursana had raised the banner of revolt against the Qing Dynasty. Disaffected elements among the Khalkh Mongols soon followed his example.
Amursana had apparently laid the groundwork for this uprising while in Mongolia helping to organize the Northern Route Army, further evidence that he had planned in advance to defect from his Qing overlords once Davatsi had been defeated. He had met with Khan Chingünjav and a nobleman named Rinchindorj and attempted to coordinate uprisings against the Qing in both Zungaria and Khalkh Mongolia. The Khalkh side of the plot was soon exposed and orders were issued for the arrest of the conspirators. Chingunjav escaped but several others were seized. The rebels were taken to Beijing where they were tortured and then publicly executed. To further drive his point home, Qianlong had both the Second Bogd Gegeen and the Tüsheet Khan brought to Beijing to witness the executions. The Second Bogd Gegeen (1724–1757), son of Dondovdorj, Zanabazar’s nephew, was forced to watch his own brother die at the hand of Qing executioners.
Qianlong had meant to impress upon the Mongolians the price to be paid for rebellion against the Qing and thus ensure their good behavior, but his actions had an entirely opposite effect. Word of the executions soon reached Mongolia, along with the rumor that the Qing intended to imprison the Bogd Gegeen in China, and in response still more insurrections broke out. Qianlong had to dispatch the Bogd Gegeen and the Tüsheet Khan back to Mongolia with orders that they to quell the disturbances, but already events had overtaken them.
In the summer of 1756 Chingünjav sent a letter to Qianlong formally renouncing his allegiance to the Qing Dynasty. With a initial army of about 2,000 men he set up headquarters near Lake Khövsgöl, near the Russian border in what is now Khövsgöl Aimag, and from there appealed to other Mongols khans to join his revolt. He also sought aid the Russians, apparently promising to switch allegiance from the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Czar in exchange for help in ousting the Qing from Mongolia. Initially there were uprisings all over Mongolia and numerous Qing outposts and post stations were overrun. Flush with early successes Chingünjav attempted to organize a convocation of Mongol noblemen in Örgöö where Mongolian independence would be declared. But soon the reality of what they were doing began to sink in, and many noblemen got cold feet. The Qianlong emperor was still capable of sending enormous armies, now equipped with muskets and cannon, to Mongolia to put down the insurrectionists, and many nobleman had become quite comfortable with the perks they were receiving from the Qing government. Most crucially, the Second Bogd Gegeen refused to support the insurrection. To isolate even further the Bogd Gegeen from the rebels a detachment of Qing troops put him under virtual house arrest. As Russian diplomat who was negotiating with the rebels at the time put it, “Where the Jebsundamba Khutukhtu is, there is Mongolia, and where Mongolia is, there, too, is the Jebsundamba Khutukhtu.” Without the support of the Bogd Gegeen the revolt was doomed.
Malcontent Mongols at the time may have muttered, “Of course the Bogd Gegeen supports the Qing; his mother was a Manchu.” The Manchus were of course the founders of the Qing Dynasty, and the grumblers would have been referring to Khichenguy Amarlinguy, a.k.a. The Peaceful Princess, who according to some accounts was the Manchu Emperor Kangxi’s own daughter (he had a lot and it was not doubt hard to keep track) and thus Qianglong’s great-aunt, or according to other versions a daughter of a first degree Qing prince. It can be said for sure that she was Qing nobility. The dates are muddled, but apparently Kangxi gave Khichenguy Amarlinguy in marriage to Zanabazar’s nephew Dondovdorj in 1697.
Dondovdorj became the Tüsheet Khan upon the death of his father Chakhuundorj, Zanabazar’s brother. He was a gay-blade who liked women and booze and even wrote poetry, perhaps a suitable occupation for a scribbling hanger-on in an khan’s entourage but hardly suitable for a khan himself. After various indiscretions involving the wives of other Mongolian noblemen—there is no word of scraps with other poets—he was finally forced to step down as Tüsheet Khan, yielding the throne to a relative. But he was not without his martial qualities and he went on to distinguish himself on the battlefield against the Zungarian Mongols lead by Galdan Bolshigt’s nephew Tsevan Ravdan. When Kangxi died in 1772 Zanabazar traveled from Mongolia to Beijing to pay his respects. In his entourage was Dondovdorj, his earlier indiscretions forgiven or forgotten.
While in Beijing,
Zanabazar, divining which way the wind was blowing in post-Kangxi China and sensing his own mortality, issued some instructions on how to find his reincarnation. Dondovdorj should take as a wife, Zanabazar hinted, a Mongolian woman born in the year of the monkey or chicken and have a son by her. The boy would be the
17th incarnation of Javzandamba, just as Zanabazar was the 16th.
Dondovdorj rushed straight back to Mongolia, apparently with Khichenguy Amarlinguy in tow (and perhaps with another Manchu wife he had picked up on this trip) and married a Mongolian woman named Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu who had been born in the year of the monkey. Zanabazar died under cloudy circumstances in Beijing in 1723. In 1724, “at daybreak on the first day of the middle of the spring moon in the Wood Dragon Year” a son was born to Dondovdorj. This boy, Luvsundandidomne, became the Second Bogd Gegeen.
Most sources say Dondovdorj’s Mongolian wife Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu was the mother of the Second Bogd Gegeen. Yet there are legends which persist down to this day that the boy’s mother was in fact Khichenguy Amarlinguy. There are any number of variants to this tale, but one maintains that both Khichenguy Amarlinguy and Tsagaan-Dara-Bayartu had a baby around this time and that the babies were switched in their cradles so that the Manchu princess’s baby could be recognized as Bogd Gegeen. A thangka now in the Zanabazar Art Museum in Ulaan Baatar shows a woman who some monks identify as Khichenguy Amarlinguy holding the baby Bogd. This thangka, they now claim, was produced to memorialize the true story of the Bogd Gegeen’s antecedents.
In any case, Khichenguy Amarlinguy came to love her adopted country. She considered herself a Mongolian and stated that he want to be buried in Mongolia: “It is not necessary to take my corpse back to China. I became a Mongol person because of being the wife of a Mongol. It is thus necessary to bury me in Mongolia.” Her wishes were honored and after she died a temple to house her remains was built near the headwaters of a tributary of the Terelj River about thirty-six miles north of Ulaan Baatar. In the mid-nineteen thirties her tomb was dug up by thieves looking for gold statues and other valuables believed to be buried with her. Her body was burned and the exposed ashes eventually blew away. The temple, known as
Günjin Süm, or the Temple of the Peaceful Princess, was heavily damaged, but the ruins have became a popular pilgrim and tourist destination.
With support among the Mongol nobility having faded away, and the Bogd Gegeen uncooperative, Chingunjav’s revolt failed and he himself attempted to escape to Russia. North of Lake Khövsgöl he and his party stopped to camp, believing they were safely across the Russian border. A detachment of Qing troops caught up with the party early in January of 1757 and claiming that they was still on Mongolian territory seized Chingunjav and his sons. They were taken to Beijing and subjected to torture. According to legends now retold in Mongolia, large coins with a square hole in the middle were heated until they were red-hot and then placed on Chingunjav’s back. When his seared flesh rose up through the holes in the coins it was slashed off with a razor. After these excruciating tortures he was executed in March 2, 1757.
Painting of Chingunjav in Khovd Aimag Museum, Khovd City
Chingunjav remains a hero to this day among many Mongolians for his for his ultimately quixotic stand against the Qing. At least he had stood up to the oppressors, unlike other Mongolian noblemen who were more interested in saving their Qing-granted titles and perquisites. When I was researching my book on Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, I was told by numerous informants that Galdan Bolshigt, the Oirat, and Chingunjav, the Khalkh, were true warriors who had fought for Mongolia while others, for instance Zanabazar himself and his relative the Second Bogd Gegeen, were wimps who had only caved in to the Qing.
A monument north of Lake Khövsgöl now marks the spot where Chingunjav was arrested. The monument is now on Mongolian territory, but local people still claim that back then it was Russian territory and thus Chingunjav had been illegally seized. There is also now a street in Ulaan Baatar named after Chingunjav. But while Galdan Bolshigt has had a brand of vodka named after him—the ultimate accolade in modern-day Mongolia—to my knowledge Chingunjav has not yet been accorded this honor.
As for the Second Bogd Gegeen, he died in late 1757 at the age of thirty-three, apparently while still under house arrest. Although in the final showdown he had sided with the Qing, or at the very least simply refused to encourage the insurrectionists, he may still have incurred the displeasure of Qianlong. There are persistence rumors that he was assassinated by Qianlong’s order. Maybe Qianlong got the idea from his father Yongzheng, who according to legend had Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen, assassinated at the Yellow Temple in Beijing in 1723.
While he was putting down the rebels in Mongolia Qianlong had by no means ignored the situation in Zungaria. By November of 1757 he had amassed an immense army of some 400,000 men and sent it west to finally, at long last, once and for all, deal with the incurably rebellious Amursana and the Zungars. He had also found an unlikely ally in his battle against the Zungars—Kelsang Gyatso, the Seventh Dalai Lama of Tibet. According to one historian, “[Qianlong] asked him to use his religious influence among the Oirats to rouse them to the Chinese cause and to forsake Amursana. This the Dalai Lama willingly did. He asked the Oirats to stay loyal to the Chinese as part of their religious duties.” This was quite a turnaround from the days of the 5th Dalai Lama, who had been put on the throne of Tibet by the Oirat chieftain Güüsh Khan, and who had whole-heartedly backed his one-time disciple Galdan Bolshigt, ruler of the Zungarian Empire (it was the Great 5th, it will be remembered who gave Galdan his title of Bolshigt, or Khan by Divine Grace). First the Second Bogd Gegeen had refused to back the Khalkh rebels against the Qing, and now the Dalai Lama was throwing his support to the Qing against the Zungars. Those who were reading the tea leaves of Inner Asian destiny must have divined that the days of independent Mongol khanates were very quickly coming to an end.
The huge Qing army had no trouble seizing Ili and had soon subduing most of the Oirats, except of course for Amursana. With a mere 2500 soldiers he left made a last-ditch stand against a detachment of the Qing soldiers, holding them at bay for seventeen days. Then around the end of June the ever-elusive Amursana simply disappeared. Not until November 1st of 1757 did the Qing authorities find out that he had absconded to Russia.
It turned out that after disappearing from Zungaria Amursana had fled west with about of 4000 followers, many of them woman and children. His father-in-law and erstwhile protector Sultan Ablai of the Kazakh Middle Horde had himself just recognized the authority of the Qing Dynasty and was under strict orders not to aide Amursana. He could expect to find no quarter there. Instead he fled to Russia, where he sought asylum from the authorities at the fortress of Semipalatsinsk. He was then taken to Tobolsk, in western Siberia, where he fell ill to small pox. The great warrior transmigrated on September 21, 1757, finally laid low not by the might of the Qing Empire but by a virus. He was only thirty-five at the time, but no one could say that his short life had been uneventful. He had stood up time and time again to the greatest power in East Asia and in the end had eluded capture. He would never be paraded as a prisoner before the jeering throngs in Beijing like Davatsi, or tortured to death like Chingunjav. He would became a fitting exemplar for Dambijantsan, the Dörböt from the Caspian Steppe who had his own grudge against the Qing.
Not convinced that Amursana had used up his nine lives Qianlong demanded that the Russian officials return his body to China so that he could make sure the surly insurgent was truly dead. The Russians refused to hand other the body. Instead they offered to take it to Selenginsk, in Siberia, just north of the Russian-Mongolian border, and allow Qing officials to examine it there. Qianlong became virtually unhinged by his failure to get his hands on Amursana alive or dead. Throwing a furious fit, he halted all trade between China and Russia through Mongolia and even threatened to send an army north into Siberia to smote the insolent Russians. This threat was taken quite seriously. A fortress wall was built on the exposed side of Irkutsk, then the capital of Eastern Siberia, located at the confluence of the Irkutsk and Angara rivers below Lake Baikal, in anticipation of a Qing attack. The wall is long gone, but its former path is now taken by one of Irkutsk’s main streets. By March of 1758 Qianlong had cooled down. The more diplomatic-minded members of his court finally arranged for a delegation of Manchus, Chinese, and Mongols to go to Selenginsk and examine the body. They determined that is was indeed the earthly coil of Amursana. The question of Amursana was settled, but the Oirats of Zungaria who had revolted time and time again against the Qing were just beginning to receive their chastisement.
Qianlong’s retaliation against the Oirats was an early precursor to what is now called ethnic cleansing. For two years Qing soldiers tracked down every Oirat man, woman, and child they could find and killed them. They also burned all yurts they found and killed all Oirat livestock. Figures vary, but according to some sources from 500,00 to 600,000 people died in this holocaust. Some may have succumbed to illnesses like small pox which swept through the decimated population. Others managed to escape to Russia, where they were granted asylum. Again figures vary, but in the end maybe ten percent of the original Oirat population survived the onslaught. One historian puts it succinctly, “As a political entity the Zunghar khanate went out of existence forever.”
Huge swaths of Inner Asia steppe had been depopulated by the extinction of the Zungar khanate. Some areas were given to faithful Qing subjects from Mongolia and Manchuria. Ironically, many the Kalmyks who took part in the Great Exodus of 1771 from the Caspian Steppe back to China also ended up on the lands vacated by the extermination of their relatives, the Oirats.
Although Amursana may have lived on in the minds of many of the surviving Oirats as a hero he was eventually portrayed as an arch-villain even among Eastern Mongols, some of whom had for a brief moment in time joined up with him in revolt against the Qing. Dharmatala, the Mongolian author of the above-mentioned
Rosary of White Lotuses, first published in 1889—coincidently the year Dambijantsan first arrived in Mongolia— refers to Amursana a “man of evil.”. Although a Mongolian, Dharmatala was loyal to the Qing Dynasty—or at least was not going to say anything bad about the Qing in print—which then ruled Mongolia, and could be expected to take the Qing line regarding the Oirats. Thus he was just echoing Qianlong on Amursana. According to Dharmatala, in his Rosary of White Lotuses, the emperor had proclaimed:
There will be no more disturbances in this land {Zungaria], and all its nobles and commoners are to remember to keep the path of peace. The deeds of that evil man [Amursana] destroyed the kingdom and made it desolate. If even his bare name be mentioned—him who caused so much harm to so many—it will bring no good, and therefore his name is not to be uttered ever again.
Not content with just degrading Amursana, Dharmatala assigns mystical powers to Qianlong:
In the old days there were no rains in Hothon [roughly the old territory of Zungarians, especially the Zungarian depression], but after the Emperor [Qianlong] entered the country he issued the following order to the Nāgas:
“‘From now on, all the rains, storms, thunders etc. [in Zungaria] must follow the patterns of my own country!’ Thus the land became indistingable from China; the whole Hothon resounded in fear and wonder!”
Nāgas, it should be pointed out, are serpent-like being who in Buddhist mythology rule the underworld and watery realms, thus influencing the weather. Thus Qianlong had come to rule not only the territory of Hothon—Zungaria—but also the realms of mythical beings! And twenty-first century travelers to China’s western-most province of Xinjiang, part of which is made up of Dharmatala’s “Hothon,” might well agree that it is now largely indistinguishable from the rest of China.
So ends of the tale of Amursana, leader of the last great Mongol uprising against the Qing Dynasty. Curiously, in all the now-available accounts of Amursana’s life we find no mention of any son named Temüsanu, who Dambijantsan would later claim as his father, as far-fetched chronologically as this may be. Even the relentless researcher Podzneev, who no doubt dug information aplenty on the Oirats, says that Amursana, “supposedly had a son, Temüsanu by name,” as if he himself doubted his existence. We known Amursana married the daughter of Sultan Ablai and he presumably had other wives and various liaisons, but except for an infant son who escaped with him to Russia and reportedly died in a Russian prison in 1804 the record is mum on children. Little matter; Dambijantsan would in any case soon drop the story that he was the grandson of Amursana—that was a little too far-fetched even for credulous Mongolian nomads—and claim instead that he was an incarnation of Amursana. It is very easy to claim you are an incarnation of someone, and very difficult for others to prove conclusively that you are not, making such claims very attractive to someone like Dambijantsan, intent on creating an elaborate mythology about himself.
Statue of Amursana in Khovd City, Khovd Aimag
Eej Khairkhan Uul
Strange rock formations at Eej Khairkhan Uul
More strange rock formations
Still more strange rock formations
One of the Pots
The Pots
The Pots
Ravdan’s Retreat
Ravdan’s Retreat
Interior of Ravdan’s Retreat
Uyanga could not contain her exuberance at Ravdan’s Retreat
Mojik cogitating at Ravdan’s Retreat
