Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Vansemberuu

During a trip to Otgon Tenger Uul in Zavkhan Aimag I encountered the legendary plant known as Vansemberuu. The lore about this plant seems almost endless, and I am still in the process of collecting information.

Vansemberuu

Vansemberuu

Mongolia | 3rd of the Nine Nines | Gurvan Ükhrii Ever Khöldönö | Earthquake

The Third of The Nine-Nines began on January 9. Gurvan Ükhrii Ever Khöldönö is the nine-day period of Winter when the horns of three year-old cows freeze. This period is supposed to be colder than the First of the Nine Nines and the Second of the Nine Nines. So far this has not been the case. A couple days ago it was Minus 20ºF / –28ºC at 7:00 a.m. and this morning  Minus 31°F / -35 °C at 7:00 a.m. On January 3rd, during the Second of the Nine Nines, temperatures fell to a marrow-chilling Minus 44ºF / –42ºC. But there is a New Moon in two days, on the 15th, so we can expect colder weather.

On the First Day of the 3rd of the Nine-Nines, January 9, there was  also an earthquake in Mongolia. In Dundgov Aimag the quake measured 5.6 on the Richter Scale. In Ulaan Baatar it measured 3.5. Most people I talked to in Ulaan Baatar itself claimed not to have felt it. In Zaisan Tolgoi I definitely felt it while sitting in my Scriptorium. It was not a sharp jolt-type quake but rather the shaking bowl-full-of-jello variety, lasting six or seven seconds. I was just about to bolt for the door when it finally stopped. A book or two may have wobbled on the shelves.

Earthquakes are not common in Mongolia—at least compared to places like Alaska, for instance, where bars serve a free round after every trembler—but when they do occur they tend to be monsters. The Gobi-Altai Quake, also known as the Ikh Bogd Uul Quake, of December 4, 1957,  was  “one of the world's largest recorded intracontinental earthquakes,”  according to the USGS.

When I visited Ikh Bogd Uul in 1998 I was told by local herdsmen that a day or two prior to the quake marmots which should have been soundly hibernating at that time of the year suddenly emerged from their holes and starting running around in a panic. Then the quake hit.

Ikh Bogd Uul (mountain) in Bayankhongor Aimag. An immense landslide caused by the quake can be seen just right of center. The sheared-off side of the mountain can be seen above the landslide.

Scarp just west of Ikh Bogd Uul created by the 1957 Quake

Mongolia | Khovd Aimag | Dambijantsan’s Winter Camp

I have already written about the arrival of Dambijantsan in Western Mongolia in 1911 and how he established a Winter Camp on the Dund Tsenkher Gol near Mankhan, in Khovd Aimag.

In 1999 and again in 2007 I visited Dambijantsan’s camp on the Dund Tsenkher Gol, both times accompanied by Professor Baasankhüü of the Khovd branch of the National University of Mongolia. In 1972 the Professor had come to the Dund Tsenkher Gol with an eighty-two year old man named Jigmid who had been a follower of Dambijantsan and who had camped with him here. From Jigmid the Professor was able to get a fairly detailed account of events here on the Dund Tsenkher. Jigmid related to the professor that Dambijantsan liked to stay apart from his followers and soldiers. His own ger was on a high bank to the left of the Dund Tsenkher Gol, facing downstream, close to the mouth of a canyon from which the swift-flowing river emerges.

Dund Tsenkher Gol looking towards the Gov-Altai Mountains

Dund Tsenkher Gol looking downstream towards Mankhan

The campgrounds of his followers was about a mile farther on downstream, on the same side of the river. Jigmid said that Dambijantsan always liked to have a mountain or steep hillside behind his ger or tent, which would make it hard for enemies to approach from the rear, and an clear, unobstructed view in front, making it difficult for anyone to approach undetected from that direction. These conditions were met here; the ramparts of the Mongol-Altai rise directly behind his ger site and in front a bare plain stretches for ten miles or more.

Dambijantsan’s ger site on the left bank of the Dund Tsenkher

For further protection, Dambijantsan had a stone wall constructed around his ger, the remnants of which can still be seen today.

Closer look at Dambijantsan’s ger site

Oddly enough, right next to his ger site are several well-preserved Bronze Age tombs. I asked the Professor if it was customary to set up a ger so near to ancient tombs like this, and he said it wasn’t, but that Dambijantsan apparently did not concern himself about such matters.

Bronze Age tombs near Dambijantsan’s ger site

Jigmid had also said that on the steep hillside behind the ger site Dambijantsan had constructed stone watchtowers. Several heaps of rock of the hillsides may be the remains of these watchtowers.

The campgrounds of his followers was on level ground, directly on front of his ger and about a mile away. Dambijantsan was a stickler for neatness and order and the camp was always spotlessly clean. He did not even like loose rocks lying around where people might stumble over them, and when his followers weren’t doing anything else he had them gather up these rocks and put them in piles. These piles of rock can still be seen there today.

Campground of Dambijantsan’s followers

Piles of rocks gathered by Dambijantsan’s followers

A German traveler in the region at the time, Herman Consten, also visited to the site and gave a description in his book Weideplätze der Mongolen: “The Mongolian camp makes a surprisingly good impression . . . the tents and gers are pitched in a double circular line around the centre of the camp. . . The path which leads to the ger of the Ja Lama is astonishingly clean like the camp.” He added that the “the ger of Ja Lama, (the Two Camel Lama) stands out from from the other gers by the white of its costly felt and its large size.”

Dambijantsan may have intended to establish a permanent base here, or even found a town. In the spring of 1912 he had his followers plant crops in newly-established fields watered by irrigation ditches from the nearby Tsenkher Gol. The traces of these fields and irrigation ditches can still be seen there today. As it turned out, his early attempts to establish some kind of community here was only a dry run for his later settlements and strongholds.

Irrigation ditch allegedly built by Dambijantsan’s followers

Ovoo marking the location of Dambijantsan’s Winter Camp

An ever larger contingent of disciples and followers who had fallen under Dambijantsan’s charismatic spell soon gravitated at this camp. Not all were there voluntarily. In his ger Dambijantsan kept a thirteen year old boy as a servant. Treated as a virtual slave and repeatedly beaten for minor offenses, the boy wanted desperately to escape, but he lived in mortal fear of Dambijantsan. Soon he devised a plan to kill his master. Every morning Dambijantsan would go out and inspect his soldiers and then come back and sit on a stool behind the stove and drink tea. The boy decided that when Dambijantsan sat down he would hand him a cup of tea with one hand and with the other grab the axe that was kept in the woodbox beside the stove and break open his skull with it. Dambijantsan came in and sat down, then grabbed the axe himself and hit the boy along the side of the head with the flat side, knocking him down. “Did you really think you could kill me with an axe?” he asked the boy. The boy was sure he was about to die, but instead Dambijantsan handed him a Buddhist scripture wrapped in a yellow cloth and said, “Our paths in life are quite different. You must go your way and I will go mine. Take this book and go to Khovd and became a monk. But never let me see you again or I will kill you.” The boy did as he was told and joined a monastery. He eventually became famous for blessing new Russian jeeps. Before he died in the late 1980s he told people in Khovd that Dambijantsan had known his intentions because he had been able to read his mind. This one just one of the many stories of Dambijantsan’s mind-reading skills which continue to be told down to the present day.


Around this time Dambijantsan became famous for a whole host of magical abilities. According to the Diluv Khutagt:

Ja Lama claimed to be able to cure sickness with gun magic. This is a very old form of magic. The sickness is reported to the magician. The magician thinks about the disease. Then he fires a gun in the direction of the sick man. The sick man may be hundreds of miles away, but he hears the report, and at that moment he is cured.

Diluv Khutagt again:

Ja Lama also did other kinds of gun magic. Each of Ja Lama’s bullets had a Tibetan letter on it—I don’t know which letter. It was reported that a camp was raided by a wolf. Half of the sheep stampeded into the night. The shepherds ran and told Ja Lama. “I’ll fix that,” he said, and he lifted his gun and fired from the door of his tent. “Go and look in that direction tomorrow morning,” he said. The next morning they went and looked and saw the sheep all grazing peacefully, and the wolf lying dead beside them. They cut open the wolf ’s body and found one of Ja Lama’s bullets in it. After that everyone feared and respected Ja Lama.

To this day variations of this story are told by old people in Khovd Aimag who claim they themselves heard about it from eyewitnesses who had actually met Dambijantan. Usually, however, they have Dambijantan shooting his gun several times through the toono, or round hole, in the roof of a ger and not out the door, and no mention is made of a Tibetan letter on the bullets. Old people near Bayan Tooroi, in Gov-Altai Aimag, told me the same story, claiming that Dambijantsan had performed this same trick while passing through the area in 1918.

Professor Baasankhüü

Mongolia | Bogd Khan and Mongolian Independence

Whatever his Personal Peccadilloes, for almost a decade the Bogd Gegeen had persistently pursued the cause of Mongolian independence. As early as 1894 the Bogd Gegeen had sent a secret letter to St. Petersburg via one of his chief disciples, a man named Badamdorj, asking whether the Russian government would provide arms and other material aid in the event Mongolia staged an uprising against Manchu rule and established an independence state. He also queried whether Russia would send troops to assist in such an endeavor in the event they were needed. The Bogd Gegeen had his sights set high at the time, envisioned a new Pan-Mongolian state encompassing much of the old original Mongolian homeland. If the uprising succeeded, he wondered in his letter, “May we be allowed to rule the whole of the ancient Mongol territory, making the White Wall [Great Wall] stand as the frontier of Mongol territory?“ The Russians took the letter under advisement, agreeing to the Bogd’s proposals in theory but suggesting that the time was not yet right for an armed uprising. Better to wait until an obvious pretext or opportunity arose before taking any overt action, officials in St. Petersburg cautioned.

The pretext appeared to present itself in late 1908. On Nov. 8 the ineffectual thirty-seven year-old Qing emperor Guangxu died. He had suffered from a nervous condition so severe that loud noises made him ejaculate, and since 1898 he had been under house arrest by order of the Empress Dowager Cixi, his mother by adoption, who ruled in his stead. On the very next day the Dragon Lady Cixi, who had overseen the Qing Dynasty either as regent or power-behind-the-throne for forty-seven years, also transmigrated. The most lurid rumors surrounded the deaths. According to one Cixi had Guangxu strangled by her chief eunuch because she had a presentiment of her own death and did not want him to outlive her. Thus over the years she been accused of killing her first husband, her own son, her co-regent the Empress Cian, assorted by-standers, and now Guangxu, her adopted son. According to yet another rumor Cixi herself had been gruesomely dispatched by a bullet in the vagina by warlord Yuan Shikai. Most of these rumors have been dismissed by modern historians, but the very fact that that were so widely believed at the time demonstrates the Grand Guignol atmosphere which surrounded the the final days of the Qing Dynasty. The twelfth emperor of the Qing, little two-year old Pu Yi, was duly installed on the Dragon Throne on December 2, 1908, but by then hardly anyone believed the dynasty could survive.

In 1909 the Bogd Gegeen, sensing which way the wind was blowing in Qing China, issued the following decree to the Mongolian princes:

Now is the time to make firm our Mongol faith and church, to protect our territory and homeland; and to decide a policy for dwelling in long-lasting peace and happiness. Merely to sit still and let slip this opportunity would mean, far from dwelling in peace and happiness, that we should look upon all kinds of suffering and become unable to rule over our own land and territory . . . Let all of you lamas, princes, and officials consider well your own devices and promptly let me hear what each of you has thought and considered. It will not do for you to sit indifferent, obstructing the important affairs of all the pitiful Mongols who honor and respect your every word and humbly look up to you.

As he probably expected, his noble advisors threw the matter back into his lap. “What do we know? Whatever the Bogd thinks right and clearly instructs from on high and vouchsafes to us, that we shall duly carry out as a command to the best of our endeavor,” was their reply. The Bogd Gegeen promised them that at the following year’s Danshug (ceremonial festival) in Örgöö he would announce his plan of action for Mongolian independence. In the summer of 1910 all the great princes of the four aimags again assembled in Örgöö and asked for the Bogd’s decision. “The secrets of Heaven may not be revealed in advance,” he informed them, “but if all of you could confirm without fail that you would duly obey and fulfill whatever I say, I can make a policy.” This they did, presenting the Bogd with a document with all of their seals on it promising to take whatever course of action he suggested.

In July of 1911 the Mongolian aristocracy again assembled in Örgöö to make their annual offerings to the Bogd Gegeen. These out-of-town visitors usually camped just south of the Bogd’s palaces on the Tuul RIver, near the base of a hill which for this reason became known as Zaisan Tolgoi (Nobleman’s Hill). The issue of Mongolian independence was now at the fore. In a meeting with the Bogd Gegeen they asked, “Supposing the Ch’ing [Manchus] come with a punitive expedition,there are in Mongolia no arms and we have no military training or equipment.What shall we do?” The Bogd replied “If you have the will to set up a state and give our Mongolia peace and security, I will be responsible for making the Manchu troops go back.”

Zaisan Tolgoi, where the Mongol noblemen made offerings

Thus assured, they decided to at last declare the independence of Mongolia and make the Bogd Gegeen both the temporal and spiritual ruler of the new sovereign state. The Bogd also agreed to dispatch a three-man delegation to St. Peterburg to inform the Russians of their decision and to seek aid in the form of cash and weapons. When the Qing amban in Örgöö, a man named Sandoo, learned that the delegation had already left the city he sent twenty soldiers north to the border with Russia to intercept and arrest the delegates before the left Mongolia. They arrived too late, however, and the delegation managed to slip across the border. According to one report, Sandoo, “was almost out of his mind with anger” when he was eventually informed that the delegation had managed to reach St. Petersburg. The delegation arrived back in Örgöö with the news that the Russians were again advising caution, but had tentatively agreed to provide 15,000 rifles and 7.5 million rounds of ammunition in the event armed conflict broke out with the Manchus. Sandoo then sent a missive to the Bogd Gegeen threatening the death penalty for anyone seeking aid against the Qing from foreign powers. The Bogd Gegeen, no doubt aware that Sandoo did not have the wherewithal to carry out these threats, simply ignored the Qing amban.

Then came the October 10 Wushang Uprising in the Chinese city of Wuhan, after which dissident army officers proposed a new provisional government to be headed by Sun-Yat-sen. The Qing Dynasty, although not yet ruled dead, was in its death throes. Mongolia independence had already been declared and now the time had come to assert it. On the evening of November 18, 1911, the Bogd Gegeen sent a four man delegation to the office of Sandoo with a decree which read, “Sandoo amban and his officials and troops are ordered to leave the confines of Mongolia within three days. In the case of failure, troops will be utilized to drive them out . . .”A Russian living in Örgöö at the time reported that “when they read to the amban the decree of the gegeen, the amban was startled and fell back onto a chair and could not say anything for a long time.” It was no doubt hard for him to believe that 220 years of Qing rule in Mongolia was over.

Sandoo (1876–192?), the last Qing Amban in Öröö, was in fact part Mongolian, although he had been born, brought up, and educated in China. He had arrived in Örgöö to serve as amban on February or March of 1910. He was not an uncultured individual. He eventually wrote at least seven volumes of poetry and took a deep interest in the archeology and history of Mongolia. While in Mongolia he visited the stele of the Khökh Turk ruler Kultegin (685–731) in what is now Arkhangai Aimag. He apparently erected some kind of temple to commemorate the stele and etched a short inscription on its back side. He also visited the stele of Kultegin’s advisor Tonyukuk near the current day town of Nailakh, east of Ulaan Baatar, and made copies of the inscriptions, which he sent back to Beijing for the benefit of interested scholars.

His literary and scholarly interests could not, however, protect him from the rising anti-Manchu sentiments in Örgöô. Not long after his arrival in the city he attempted to intercede when a mob of Mongolian lamas attacked and looted the premises of the Chinese trading company Da I-Yu. The lamas pelted him with stones and he barely escaped with his life.

After receiving the Bogd Gegeen’s November 18 decree Sandoo dithered for twelve days, unwilling to abandon his post but bereft of support from Beijing. On November 30 a still more sternly worded ultimatum was handed to him. Scared out of his wits, Sandoo and attendant officials sought protection in the Russian Consulate. Most of the soldiers in the one hundred-man Qing garrison remaining in the city deserted. On December 4 Sandoo and his entourage, protected by an escort of Russian Cossacks, traveled north to Khyakhta and crossed the border into Russia. In Verkhneudinsk (now Ulaan-Ude) they caught a train back to Beijing.

Local bards were never slow in commenting on current affairs in Mongolia, and one immediately composed a song about the Amban’s expulsion which was then bawled out with glee in the city’s marketplaces and streets:

The stinky lanterns that twinkled every evening
Are burnt out
Where is gone the notorious amban
Who commanded the masses?

The lanterns refer to the street lights that Sandoo had introduced into Örgöö. Apparently they burned a smelly oil. Like the Örgöö amban himself they soon disappeared.

Mongolia | Örgöo | Eighth Bogd Gegeen

The last Bogd Gegeen to reign in Mongolia was the twenty-third incarnation of Javzandamba, the first of whom had been a disciple of the Buddha himself, and eighth in the line of the Bogd Gegeens of Mongolia established by Zanabazar. After the Mongolian uprising against the Qing in the mid-1750s, in which the Second Bogd Gegeen, the son of Zanabazar’s nephew, had played a role, the Qianlong Emperor had declared that henceforth all incarnations of Javsandamba must be found not in Mongolia but in Tibet, lest a Mongolian Bogd Gegeen become a rallying point for future Mongolian rebels. Thus the next six Bogd Gegeens, including the Eight, were Tibetan. The Eight was born in Lhasa in late 1869 or early 1870, the son of a wealthy official in the court of the 13th Dalai Lama. A caravan sent from Örgöö to Tibet to fetch him arrived back in the city with the little boy in tow on the morning of September 30, 1874.

In 1911, when he became the Bogd Khan, the ruler of newly independent Mongolia, he was forty-one years old. Even before his ascension to the throne of Mongolia his immense popularity had made him the de-facto leader of Mongolia. The Diluv Khutagt, who knew him personally, observed:

The reason why this Eighth Bogd had become notably more powerful and strong than previous Incarnations was, in addition to the fact that the Mongols universally, generation by generation, had believed in, honored, had faith in and reverenced each Incarnation of the Bogd as a true divinity, this Eighth Gegeen ever since childhood had been especially sharp and intelligent. Whenever in Khalkh, or in one of its districts there was any such fear or suffering as fire or flood, sickness or disaster, he knew it in advance and let it be known to give warning. In religious matters or ordinary affairs his directives were unfailingly clear and in accordance with the evidence, and when this had repeatedly become known he became famous for it and everyone had deep faith in him.

The Eighth Bogd Gegeen

Even as a young man he was regarded with awe by the Mongolian populace. The Diluv Khutagt: “At the age of eighteen, as the result of a serious illness, he lay dead . . . for three days and nights, and at the moment he stirred again there was no mark of the sickness and he was cured, and for such marvels as this the Mongols had complete faith and trust in him.” The Russian ethnologist A. M. Pozdneev, in Örgöö four years later, in 1892, observed: “Crowds of worshippers stretch toward the Khutukhu from all sides, and not only Khalkhas, but also southern Mongols as well . . . He was perhaps the only Mongolian personality known to all the generally illiterate and often apathetic Mongols throughout the land . . .”

There is no doubt he was a shrewd political operator. About the time of Pozdneev’s visit a certain Jün Van (nobleman) named Dorjpalam, from Setsen Khan Aimag to the east of Örgöö, filed several complaints again the Bogd Gegeen which were forwarded to the Manchu emperor in Beijing. The Bogd immediately answered in a missive to the Manchu representative in Örgöö:

Though I have done nothing that is damaging to the faith or the church, or that is wrong or harmful to all living beings, it has come to the point where on the word of one single man I am wrongly accused, and this because of my stupid incompetence has led to discrediting the reputation of previous generations of my incarnation. Therefore my petition is that first I should be removed as Javzandamba Khutagt, and then, if I am indicted and investigated, the faith of the Buddha in the land of Mongolia will not be belittled. It is not difficult to obtain the precise truth of this matter. All Khalkh Mongolia knows everything about all my affairs, and so if you ask the Heads of the Chuulgan [Leagues] and all the princes, they will freely explain. If the complete truth is not found in this matter, my regret will be infinite.

The Manchu emperor, faced with this ultimatum, issued a memorandum stating, “Assuage your regret and dwell in peace of mind. I have profound faith in the Khutagt.” To smooth his ruffled feathers the emperor also gifted the Bogd Gegeen “a nine-dragon canopy”—apparently a great honor—and had Dorjpalam stripped of his title. Dorjpalam eventually apologized to the Bogd, acknowledging his guilt in the matter, whereupon the Bogd successfully petitioned the emperor to have his title returned to him. According to the Diluv Khutagt:

After this the princes were overawed and afraid, and submitted in due form to any proclamation [from the Bogd]. Though here and there among the great princes and learned lamas there were one or two of doubtful faith, they were repressed by the prestige of the Bogd and since moreover all the Mongols detested such men, the result was that they could not come out into the open.

Thus the Bogd Gegeen gained the almost unqualified support of the common people, the nobles, and the lower and middle ranking monks. Only among the higher ranking monks did some objections remain, for example on the part of the Khamba Lama of Ikh Khüree, who in the heat of an argument the Bogd Gegeen had punched in the chest and whose assistant he had grabbed by the scruff of his neck and tossed out of the meeting room. Yet such men learned to keep quiet, since opponents of the Bogd Gegeen had an uncanny propensity for falling ill and dying for one reason or another.

The Eighth Bogd Gegeen's Winter Palace

There was a decidedly negative side of the Bogd Gegeen which would eventually become more and more manifest. As early as 1890, the Russian Consul in Örgöö was filing confidential dispatches to his superiors back in St. Petersburg about the Bogd Gegeen’s attempts “to free himself from the conventional restrictions prescribed for lamas and lead an independent life.” He also noted that the Bogd appeared in public while drunk and openly flirted with women, but added that most people had a very forgiving attitude toward such discretions. Pozdneev had intimations of trouble as far back as 1892. The Bogd’s face, noted the Russian traveler, was “unpleasant by virtue of some sort of childish willfulness and capricious stubbornness which is always present in it, and also from the lips, which are extraordinarily sensuous in their development.”

Other aspects of the Bogd Gegeen’s life did not appear to be in accord with his role as the Buddhist leader of Mongolia. He kept a wife, the famous beauty Dondovdulam, apparently in violation of his vows of celibacy as a Gelug monk, and when she died he took on yet another wife. He was also rumored to be involved in various homosexual liaisons, an inclination which had led to the downfall of his predecessor, the Seventh Bogd Gegeen. Pozdneev pointed out his predilection for young lamas “distinguished only their inclination and ability to carouse.” One of his male consorts had died in mysterious circumstances, according to Bazaar gossip poisoned on orders from the Bogd Gegeen himself. And there seems little doubt that he was a hard-core alcoholic. Even the Diluv Khutagt, who held the Bogd in great respect, felt compelled to comment on this:

The Bogd was very hard to do business with because he was such a fearful drinker. He would sometimes sit cross-legged for a week drinking steadily night and day. The officials attending him would be changed frequently, but he would go on drinking, never lying down to sleep and never moving except to go out to the toilet. At times he would seem to be completely unconscious, with his head lying on his chest; he would seem not to understand anything that was said to him; then he would raise his head and demand another drink, and the new drink would seem to sober him up so that he could conduct business. Even after a bout like this he would not sleep except in naps of two or three hours at a time. Yet he was a very able politician and kept control of things within the limits of his rapidly vanishing power. By 1920 he had become practically blind.

As Pozdneev noted however, “. . . the Gegen’s carousing did not in any way lessen his charm as far as the people were concerned; [they] looked upon his every eccentricity as something mysterious and tried to explain his every exploit in his favor on the basis of their sacred books . . .” (to be continued . . .)

Entrance to the Winter Palace Complex

Mongolia | Life and Death of Ja Lama | Chapter 2

Read an updated version of Chapter 2 of Ja Lama: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan.

Ja Lama (1860–1922)

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | New Moon

The New Moon will occur in Ulaan Baatar on Sunday, the 18th, at 1:33 PM. Set your internal clocks according. Also see Moon Rising and Setting. Just to remind you, the Hunter’s Moon is coming up on November 3rd. Don’t miss this one!

The Hunter’s Moon, also known as the Blood Moon, often appears to be the largest moon of the year

Mongolia | Baljinnyam and Dashnyam | Oyu Tolgoi Copper Mine

In my earlier post about an Ovoo Offering I mentioned that October 6, the 17th day of month according to the Lunar calendar, was an extremely auspicious day in Mongolia, although I myself could not say why. An explanation is now forthcoming. It has to do with, as you probably guessed, the Mongolian deities Baljinnyam and Dashnyam:

In Mongolian Buddhism several deities are worshipped and regarded as divine beings. Each one is in charge of specific issues relevant to human beings. According to the Mongolian Buddhist mythology, two of these deities, the god of "wealth and prosperity" (Baljinnyam), and his partner the god of "cheerfulness and energy" (Dashnyam), meet twelve times a year on specific dates. Each meeting has its agenda of subjects which they will discuss.

Their discussion topics are wide-ranging, related to all aspects of life. Some of these issues are good for mankind and some are bad. The agendas are usually a mixture of good and bad issues. This means that the days when Baljinnaym and Dashnyam meet together are not necessarily good days.

Only one specific meeting date once a year, has an agenda which is completely favorable to humanity. The subjects they will discuss on this date are happiness, prosperity, good health and the wealth of humanity. This year the lucky date is the 17th day of the middle month of Autumn according to the Mongolian Buddhist calendar (October 6, 2009) and it is therefore a very special day for Mongolian Buddhism and for the Mongolian people.

Not by coincidence the Mongolian Government choose October 6 to sign its long-awaited agreement to open the Huge Oyu Tolgoi Copper Mine in the South Gobi. Presumably the government hopes Baljinnaym and Dashnyam will give their blessings to This Endeavor.

This wasn’t just a Buddhist thing. Shamans were also called in:

On that same day [Oct. 6] at the time of the ceremony a group of old Shamans climbed the Bogd Mountain south of Ulaanbaatar, performing a Shaman ritual asking the mountains to bless the agreement. [This quote is apparently incorrect; see comments section. Actually, I thought it inappropriate that shamans would be blessing a mining venture.]

Mongolia | Polar Star Books | Diluv Khutagt

Polar Star Books has another new release: The Diluv Khutagt of Mongolia: Political Memoirs and Autobiography of a Buddhist Reincarnation. It is available at outlets in Ulaan Baatar, including the Ikh Nomiin Delgüür (Big Book Store), just north of the Ulaan Baatar Hotel.

Here is the Foreword to the book, written by Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the sixth and current incarnation of the Diluv Khutagt:

I hope that people will enjoy the story not only of the life of the great spiritual master Diluv Khutagt but also the story of the Mongolian way of life and the tragedy that Mongolia went through in the past century.

I was born in 1972 in a family of Kalmyk immigrants in Philadelphia, usa. Kalmyk (historically known as Oirats) people are of Mongolian origin but have been part of the Russian Empire for the last 400 years since the Oirats left Mongolia to establish a separate kingdom. Karma plays funny games with all of us and the outcome is always interesting when we look at it more closely and analyze the law of cause and effect.

I was recognized by H. H. the 14th Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the great Diluv Khutagt in 1980 after years of begging and harassing my parents that I wanted to become a monk. No one could understand why this child from the hood of Philadelphia would want to become a monk when every other child wants to become a policeman, a fireman, or a doctor when they grow up. As for me, I always wanted to become a monk. It was not that I was exposed to many monasteries and hordes of monks in the hood of Philadelphia like it was in the old days in Mongolia when Diluv lived.

From the age of seven I grew up in a Tibetan monastery named Drepung Gomang which has been relocated to South India, a monastery where all the Mongol nationalities have been studying for centuries. Later on, when I, a Kalmyk monk born in the usa, was recognized as a new of Diluv Khutagt, I started to question myself: “Why me?” It was hard to understand as a teenager but nevertheless you question yourself and search for answers. I won’t say that I solved the puzzle or found all the answers but I feel that as I get older and hopefully wiser, I am starting to be able to put the pieces together. Who would have known that the Soviet Union would collapse in the early 90s? Who would have even thought that there would be a day when the Kalmyks people would have a chance to revive Buddhism after the years of Communist rule? Who would have ever known that the Kalmyk people would need a spiritual leader to help them in the revival of Buddhism? So many questions and so many answers to look for. But when I look back at past events, things kind of fall into place.

The previous Diluv spent the last days of his life among Kalmyk immigrants in Howell, New Jersey, after he himself immigrated to the usa. He was one of the spiritual lamas of the Kalmyk community. He knew of the situation in Russia and the hardships they went through. Pretty much the same as the Mongols went through during the Cultural Revolution. Diluv ’s main caregiver of his last days in the usa was Jampel Dorj who stills lives in Howell and is 101 years old. He asked Diluv before he died to give him specific instructions on how to search for his reincarnation. Diluv replied “No need to search, I will appear when it is needed.” That was said back in 1954. Years later I was born. I am not saying or making a big deal that I am the reincarnation of this person. Even I question it sometimes whether I am the true reincarnation or not. But it definitely carries a big responsibility to be a reincarnation of Diluv and to carry on the legend as to why the great Indian master Tilopa came back to this world to benefit sentient beings. This life is a new chapter and it is too early to speak of my current life as I am only 36 years old as I write this. The story of the previous Diluv needs to be exposed not because of him personally but because of what Mongolia went through in the 20th century. We are now in the 21st century and the past century was a century of violence not just between countries but within our own people. We must strive to make the 21st century a century of peace and compassion.

I want to thank Polar Star Books for coming up with this idea to reprint the biography of Diluv, and I hope that this book will help many scholars, researchers, and just readers to get a better understanding of the rich history and the life of the Mongolian people and compare the situation of the past and the present. Whatever happens in the future, it all depends on our present life or moment.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche, who I recently had the pleasure of visiting in Kalmykia.

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Roerich Museum | Telo Tulku Rinpoche

Wandered by the Roerich-Shambhala Museum for the reception and talk by Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the Shadjin Lama of Kalymkia. As usual for Roerich Museum events Tout UB was in attendance.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche with Museum panjandrums Bira and Ishdorj

I had the honor of presenting to the Telo Rinpoche, the sixth Diluv Khutagt, a copy, fresh from the presses, of The Diluv Khutagt of Mongolia, the memoirs and autobiography of his previous incarnation, the Fifth Diluv Khutagt.

Diluv Khutagt’s Political Memoirs and Autobiography

I had first read the Diluv Khutagt’s book in the august environs of the Reading Room of the Library of Congress circa 1985. I had xeroxed a copy and carried it with me through all my Travels in Mongolia. I have always thought this book should be better known, and now, over two decades later, I finally had the pleasure of introducing a new edition. The Wheel of Time grinds slowly, but fine. It is now available at various outlets, including the Ikh Nomiin Delgüür, (Big Book Store) just north of the Ulaan Baatar Hotel, and the commercial scriptorium in the State Department Store.

Although the Telo Rinpoche is the sixth Diluv Khutagt his lineage goes back much further. The Fifth Diluv Khutagt comments on this in his Autobiography:

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 the 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, 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 Diluv Khutagt, 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 Khutagt invited me to share his monastery with him, and thus it has been ever since, and that is why I am the Diluv Khutagt of Narobanchin Monastery.

I was also able to present to the Rinpoche Four Books by the Roerichs which we have recently published. Saraa, Co-Publisher of The Diluv Khutagt of Mongolia and the Roerich books, shown here with the Rinpoche.

Saraa and Anzha, the Rinpoche’s factotum, who also acted as my guide when I was in Kalmykia, framing the Shambhala Thangka now on display in the museum.

All-in-all quite a lively and informative gathering. The only thing missing, as far as I was concerned, was a cameo appearance by Lady GaGa.

Mongolia | Ulaan Baatar | Kalachakra Temple | Mandala

Wandered by Gandan Monastery and visited the Kalachakra Temple, where monks are creating a Kalachakra Mandala in preparation for the Kalachakra Ceremony beginning on May 7 and continuing through May 29. The mandala itself, made from sand of various colors, takes six days or so to create. It is based on the three dimensional Kalachakra Mandala found in Kalapa, the capital of the Kingdom of Shambhala, which is itself based on the Dhanyakataka Stupa, where according to tradition the Buddha taught the Kalachakra Tantra to Suchandra, the first of the 32 Kings of Shambhala. There is much else of interest in the temple, increasing representations of the 722 Kalachakara Deities.

Monks fashioning the Kalachakra Mandala

Monk working on the Kalachakra Mandala

Monk working on the Kalachakra Mandala

Colored sand used to fashion the Mandala

Monk working on the Kalachakra Mandala

Monk working on the Kalachakra Mandala

Detail of the Kalachakra Mandala

A painted version of a finished Kalachakra Mandala

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Birthday Bacchanalia

To celebrate my Birthday I recently held a Bacchanalia at my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi. Present were Uyanga, Jaga, Tuul, Yooton, and Saraa.

Gorgeous Uyanga with an equally mouth-wateringly delectable Chicken

Tuul, Jaga, Yooton (a.k.a. Enkha) and Uyanga reveling at my Bacchanalia

Tuul

Yotoon, a.k.a. Enkha

Jaga (left) and Saraa, showing off her truly formidable biceps. In her senior year in High School she won First Prize in the Girls’ Arm Wrestling Competition.

Mongolia | Autobiography of the Diluv Khutagt | Part 2

Stupas of the “Nine Famous Khutagts”—including Diluv Khutagt—in Uliastai, Zavkhan Aimag. Diluv Khutagt was born in what is now Zavkhan Aimag.

What follows is the Autobiography of the Diluv Khutagt:

Part 2

This is the story of how I became a human being as well as of how I became a lama; and so I shall first tell about the circumstances of my birth and about the poor family into which I was born, and then relate how is was that I became the Diluv Khutagt, the fifth of my incarnation since it first came to Mongolia in the reign of the Emperor K’ang Hsi [r. 1662–1723].

My grandfather’s name I do not know, but I do know that the name of my clan was Onhit and that my father was born when my grandfather was 86 years old. For this reason he was always called “Pa-shi Liu”—Chinese for “Eighty-Six.” The foreign language was used to avert bad luck. I was born when my father was 67.

I was born in western Outer Mongolia at a place called Oigon Bag, after Lake Oigon, on the south side of the mountain called Bayan Aimag, in the Banner of the Tüshee Gün in Zasagt Khan Aimag. The name of the ruling prince was Tsogtsambar. (Outer Mongolia was then divided into four aimags, or provinces). I was born in the cyclical year of the Monkey, the ninth year of the Emperor Kuang Hsü (1884) on the eighth day of the tenth moon, in the hour of the Dragon, according to the 24 divisions of the day, about sunrise. I had an elder sister and an elder brother, who were 14 and 10 years old respectively at the time of my birth. My mother was then 48.

The family into which I was born were poor sheep-herders, living in a round felt-covered tent. In the year after I was born we had only 20 sheep, four cows and two horses. Camels were very rare in that district and we had none, but we also had no yaks, which were common. The year in which I was born was a difficult one for everybody. There had been a jud (an ice frost, sheathing the grass) that winter, and the cattle had died in large numbers. We had more cattle before this bad winter. My father did all the herding. He died when he was 85. In that winter it was said that many people saw emanations of light coming out of the tent in which I was born. People thought that something mysterious must be going on, in that winter, with strange emanations of light and with a baby born to such an old man, and so I was called “The Lord of the Ice-Plague,” but my given name was Jamsranjav.

The place where I was born was about 300 miles from the large monastery of Narvanchin. In this monastery there were two Khutagt [or “Living Buddhas”]—one the Narvanchin Khutagt, the other the Diluv Khutagt. The one with the longer seniority in the monastery was the Narvanchin Gegeen, but the one with religious seniority was the Diluv. They both died the year I was born. When the emanations of light began, people began to think that the Narvanchin Gegeen had been born. The people of the monastery began to say, “Where shall we seek the Narvanchin Gegeen? And where is the Diluv Gegeen to be found?”

The Diluv Gegeen (my predecessor) died at the age of 28, in the first month of summer. He had been on a pilgrimage to the caves in the mountains called Tsogt. Some of the branches of these caves have never been entirely explored. On the way back he stopped at the town of Uliastai, where, because he was fond of liquor, he spent several nights. It happened that there was at Uliastai at the same time another important lama, known as Gün Bandid, who came from the Banner in which I was born. (A Banner was the traditional territory of a tribe. Each of the four eastern aimags contained about 20 Banners). Although this Bandid Lama had some reputation as a healer, he was also known as a drinker.

Mongols do not like to drink alone. Like Chinese and Tibetans they like to drink competitively, urging on their companions and proud if they can drink them under the table. Getting drunk is sometimes psychological. My predecessor used to drink with a high official from Zasagt Khan Aimag. Once when this official was visiting him in Uliastai they both had a long bout of drinking, and the visitor was not only not drunk but it looked as if the supply of liquor was going to give out. If the visitor had drunk his host dry and was still on his feet, my predecessor, a great drinker himself, would never have heard the last of it. He was saved by a quick thinking steward who got hold of several of the huge wicker jars lined with oiled paper in which Chinese merchants used to bring fiery grain liquor by caravan to Mongolia, and had them filled with water. They were so heavy that it took two men to carry one of them. He had several carried to a storage shed next to the room where the men were drinking. Then the visitor was invited out to look at them. They still smelled strongly of the liquor with which they had been saturated on the long caravan journey. Then the visitor was slapped on the back and jovially urged to return to the drinking bout. “Come on,” was the cry; “There’s a lot to be drunk up yet.” The psychological effect on the champion drinker was that what he had already drunk rushed to his head and from being apparently sober and on the edge of a great triumph he became so drunk that he could not go on and the Diluv Gegeen’s reputation was saved.

The Diluv and the Bandid Lama sat up drinking for three nights. Then the Bandid Lama called in the Diluv’s followers and retainers, and said, “Your master is about to depart. You must beg him not to depart.”

This caused the Diluv’s people to be very worried, and they went to him and cautioned him because they took the Bandid Lama’s words to mean that their master was near death; but the Diluv was not worried. “We will go back to Narvanchin,” he said, “and I am going to live to be 40.”

Not long after the Diluv got back to Narvanchin, he fell sick and died. It was discovered that he survived, according to his prophecy, not by 40 years, but by 40 days.

The Bandid Lama, who had gone home in the meantime, lived near the place where I was born, 300 miles, or three day’s ride on fast horses, from the Narvanchin monastery; but the morning the Diluv died he got up and said to his attendants, “The Diluv has arrived,” and went into his prayer-tent to welcome him. Word was sent to Narvanchin immediately that the Diluv’s spirit had come into the district of the Bandid Lama. This was just before I was born.

Messengers were sent to all the other Living Buddhas to ask help in finding the new Diluv. Some recommended the best direction in which to search by the casting of dice, some by a system of divination based on the rosary of 108 prayer beads and some by contemplation and inspiration. Sorcerers called “Choijin” were also consulted, who speak when inspired, and after recovery do not remember what they have said. In this way the direction of search was determined, and with it a list of about 40 children born shortly after the Diluv’s death in circumstances thought to be miraculous. The list came from the monasteries of the region. Sometimes an investigator is sent out to corroborate such a list, sometimes it is merely accepted and left unquestioned.

The people of Narvanchin monastery considered the list over a period of about three years, during which it was narrowed down by a process of elimination by the drawing and casting of lots; but according to the regulations of the time the naming of the new Living Buddha had finally to be done by the Manchu Emperor at Peking, to whom a final list was submitted.

At this time I was between two and three years old. I liked to play by sitting astride the fence of the corral and pretending to ride horse-back. Then I would say, “I am going back to Zavkhan Tsagaan Tokhoi.” My parents asked their neighbors, who asked other people, but no one had ever heard of such a place. There is such a place, however. It is a big hollow near the Zavkhan River and near the caravan road from China to Uliastai. Many people used to camp here in the autumn. The hollow is about five miles across and holds pasturage for 5,000 horses and 10,000 sheep.

At this time there was a man called Gonchig, who was the stepfather of the incarnation of the Diluv who had just died. As there was some talk that I might be the new incarnation, Gonchig came to visit my family and to enquire. On the day he came, but before he had arrived, I was heard to say, “A man is coming today from my home.”

I personally can remember Gonchig’s arrival, and that he was a thin man with a thin wispy mustache, wearing a fur-lined vest over his gown. He had two attendants with him, one his familiar servant, the other an official guide. Seeing this man, I thought of him as someone I knew very well. I approached Gonchig and he took me on his lap, as he sat cross-legged in the tent. My mother started to pour tea for the three visitors and Gonchig took from the breast of his gown a small silver-lined bowl from which to drink. “Why, that’s my bowl!” I said. Gonchig wept. Picking me up, he placed me on a small stool on the carpet before the family altar at the back of the tent, where I liked to sit. It was only a common little wooden stool with all the paint worn off, but I have always kept it. Gonchig prostrated himself before me and bowed three times. He gave me a khadag and the little silver-lined bowl, filled with raisins from Sinkiang. I had this bowl up until the time I left Outer Mongolia, when I left it at the monastery. It had belonged to my predecessor.

The word quickly got round that I had recognized my predecessor’s step-father and his drinking-bowl, and with it the rumor spread that I was the new Diluv. I do not remember the things that happened between Gonchig’s visit and the time I went to the Monastery, but it was in this time that I was confirmed by the Emperor at Peking.

The monastery took me when I was five years old. It was in the third month of spring (about April), when the ground was still lightly covered with snow. When the monastery envoys arrived, they made their camp next to my father’s, and I remember that my mother was very busy preparing their welcome. During the daytime I would play about the camp of the envoys, but at night I would cry and ask to return to my mother’s tent. Sometimes I wanted to go with them. sometimes I didn’t.

I do not remember exactly what happened in the ceremonies of invitation that preceded my departure, except that part of it was the placing of an amulet around my neck and that one of the local officials got very drunk. When I left the whole family came along, bringing all their cattle and possessions with them, even the family dogs. Later they settled near the monastery. I made my trip in a camel cart.

It was the first month of summer when we reached the monastery, and I was greeted outside its precincts with such ceremonies as are made for high lamas. Omens were consulted to determine the best day for my entry. I know now what these ceremonies consist of, of course; but I do not remember the actual event.

Shortly after my arrival came the ceremony called Mandal, which in the Narvanchin monastery was held on the fifteenth day of the sixth lunar month, very close to the time of the big Summer Festival. (Elsewhere Mandal occurs at different times; at Khüree [Urga] it comes in the autumn.) I remember the horse races and the great excitement of the occasion.

When I was first taken to the monastery and my family was camped near by, naturally I wanted to return to my family. The monks gently restrained me and soon I became used to seeing my parents less and less and accustomed to being in the monastery. The family stayed rather close to the monastery in summer and moved somewhat farther away to winter quarters.

I began to learn Tibetan immediately and at the age of five I could recognize the Tibetan letters. At six, with no feeling of hard work, I had committed to memory 3,000 sholog of text, (a sholog is about 36 words so this would be roughly 108,000 words), and at seven I could translate most of this into Mongol. From the time I was six years old I began to attend religious ceremonies, to memorize the proper forms of prayer, and to have religious instruction, and by the time I was 12 I could translate scriptures from Tibetan into Mongol and from Mongol into Tibetan, although I had no speaking knowledge of Tibetan, which was only a written language to me. Of course knowledge of the meaning of religion came to me only gradually, partly through having texts explained to me by a tutor . . . to be continued . . .

Mongolia | Chingis Khan Portraits

Paris-based scholar Isabelle Charleux, author of Temples et monastères de Mongolie-intérieure, has posted a Collection of Chingis Khan Portraits. Check them out. See more on Chingis Portraits.

One of some 200 portraits of Chingis Khan from the Collection

Mongolia | Autobiography of the Diluv Khutagt | Part 1

Diluv Khutagt (1884–1965)

Been reading the Autobiography of the Diluv Khutagt. Here is the Foreword to his autobiography:

Reincarnation = the Vehicle and the Passenger

Religion is not limited to knowledge of the scriptures. A man may be immensely learned, and still lacking in buyan (punya), or religious merit. Conversely, an ignorant and humble man may be deeply religious. It is here that time, circumstance, and transmigration interact. A man in unfavorable circumstances may still be carried forward on the religious path by the merit of his previous incarnations in various forms, just as a man in apparently favorable circumstances may be held back by lack of merit in previous lives.

Moreover there is an interaction between the individual, the community, and indeed the whole universe of living, sentient beings. This helps us to understand the changes and differences between saintly incarnations, whom you Westerners call Living Buddhas. When the Chinese began to use the expression Huo Fo, literally Living Buddha, they must have been trying to make a crude distinction between an image or statue of Buddha and a human reincarnation. Our Mongol term is khuvilgaan, from a root meaning “to change, to transform”, and so to be reincarnated; but this, of course, is also a translation that does not carry over the full inner meanings of the original Tibetan and Sanskrit terms.

Putting it very roughly to give a general idea to people who have not studied Buddhism, there are two classes of khuvilgaan or reincarnation. Those of the higher class, to which I belong, are reincarnations of Buddha. This does not mean that Buddha is divided up, with one part of Buddha manifest in one reincarnation, and one in another. Buddha is indivisible and pervasive. The fact of several reincarnations of Buddha does not diminish the unity or totality of Buddha.

Bodhisatvas are Souls that, by accumulation of buyan or merit could become Buddha, but elect to remain in the material world, contributing to the acquisition of buyan by all Souls until all souls become Buddha.

Now we come to the process of reincarnation. Here I think it will help laymen to understand if I say that on one hand there is the Soul, and on the other the body, which is like a vehicle in which a man travels. This helps to explain many mysteries. The body is material, and is bound up with the material world. That is why a reincarnation can act very differently in the different bodies in which it is reincarnated. It is as if a man should say, “this time I will take an express train, going straight to Washington and stopping nowhere;” but on the next journey he may say “I will take a slow train that stops at many places, or I may take a side trip.”

As an example, the body of my last incarnation was a worldly person who drank, but the body of my incarnation before that was a learned and pious lama who was everywhere revered and invited far and wide to visit monasteries and Banners and Aimags, because of the religious benefit of his presence. In the lives of human generations we must always remember the interaction between the individual and the totality of the community. We may also live in times that appear on the surface to be good and happy, but materialism, ignorance, and error are accumulating below the surface and will break out later. It may be that in my incarnation of two generations ago, when religious merit was accumulating elsewhere, partly because of the visits and prayers of my incarnation of that time, ignorance and error were accumulating in the monastery territory itself, and there, as far as our mortal eyes can see, the vehicle of my next incarnation was inferior to the one that had gone just before.

We must remember that illusion, the distortion of our understanding by material things, is always about us. To speak of “good” and “bad” incarnations is a very gross way of speaking. There are manifestations within manifestations. Take another example. In the time of my learned and pious incarnation of two generations ago, the body of the Diluv Khutagt was much senior in years to that of his parallel incarnation, the Narvanchin Khutagt. From the time he was about 16, this Narvanchin showed no inclination for the clerical life. (Eventually he lived like a layman, taking a wife and having children. He was even very fond of hunting, which means the taking of life, which is a breaking of one of the fundamental vows of a lama. There was much concern about his manner of life, not only among the clergy but among the laity.) The Diluv Khutagt counselled that, in order to bring the Narvanchin Khutagt back to the religious life, he should be sent to study in one of the great monasteries in Amdo [the part of Tibet included in the Kokonor territory, now the province of Chinghai], such as Kumbum. As the Diluv stood to the Narvanchin in the relation of teacher to disciple, this advice was authoritative. The Diluv began a religious ceremony of several days of prayer to confirm the decision; but immediately there broke out a deadly epidemic of stomach sickness. The Narvanchin had left the monastery territory and was living in Sain Noyon Khan Aimag, but when he heard of the epidemic he returned to the monastery. All that he did was to slaughter oxen and invite everybody to feast on beef—hardly a religious approach to the exorcising of sickness; yet everybody who ate of the beef was cured and the epidemic was at an end.

Moreover, the Sain Noyon Khan, the senior prince of Sain Noyon Khan Aimag1 in secular matters, had approved of the decision to send the Narvanchin to Amdo. He was in Uliastai at the time. When the epidemic (perhaps it was cholera) had ceased in the monastery territory, the Narvanchin announced that he would go to Uliastai. No sooner had he reached the town than both the Sain Noyon Khan and his princess were stricken by the dreaded sickness. The Narvanchin announced that he would hold the religious ceremony called Sor, in which there is a burnt offering of food: a sort of pyramid, moulded out of flour with water or butter, and sometimes with small pieces of raw meat stuck into it, is placed on the fire. The Sain Noyon Khan was unable to attend, because of his sickness. “That’s all right,” said the Narvanchin. “We’ll have you lifted up, so you can see it from afar.” So they lifted him up.

But then there was another strange thing. The priest who carried out the Sor ritual should carefully prepare himself, trying to purify himself of all material desires and lusts. But the Narvanchin said to the Sain Noyon Khan, “I can’t carry out this ceremony unless I get good and drunk.” The Sain Noyon Khan was sick, and could not but consent. So the Narvanchin, after drinking heavily, carried out the ceremony—and immediately the Sain Noyon Khan and his princess recovered.

Indeed, the Narvanchin of that incarnation, for all his worldly life, had the healing touch and worked wonders. He could use gun-magic, a kind of magic that I will mention later, and he could cure madness. He once cured a woman who was violently and uncontrollably mad. It took a number of men to drag her before him, but when he spoke to her, firmly but kindly, the madness was exorcised.

So we are made aware that there are mysterious things. In that generation the Diluv Khutagt was incarnated in a body that was of pious learning and pure life, and the Narvanchin in a body that led a profligate life; yet it was the Narvanchin who worked the wonders, and it was the Narvanchin’s decision not to go to Amdo that prevailed over the Diluv’s counsel that he ought to go to Amdo; and the fact that the epidemic broke out when the Diluv prayed, and was stilled by the Narvanchin, left no doubt about the matter.

Of myself in this incarnation I will say only this: I am not a man of great learning. On this journey through life my course has been in the main one of religion manifested in action, rather than in learning; and moreover the time in which this journey has been made has been one of great wars and much violence and evil.

Mongolia | Roerich | Realm of Light

Get a free sample chapter of Realm of Light by Nicholas Roerich!

Nicholas Roerich

Mongolia | Current Diluv Khutagt #2

For more on the current Diluv Khutagt, a.k.a. Telo Tulku Rinpoche, see Trials of Telo Rinpoche:

Telo Rinpoche, a.k.a. Eddie Ombadykow, is a 21-year-old [in 1994] American whose favourite band is The Smashing Pumpkins. He is also a Buddhist monk who was brought up in a Tibetan monastery in India and recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a high reincarnate lama. Now, he finds himself in his ancestral homeland, Kalmykia, a remote Buddhist republic in southern Russia, where he is revered by the people as their spiritual leader and charged with the responsibility of reviving Buddhism. The Trials of Telo Rinpoche is the poignant story of his efforts to come to terms with his own unusual destiny while struggling to fulfill the expectations thrust upon him by his family and by the people of Kalmykia who see him as their Messiah.

Current Diluv Khutagt with 14th Dalai Lama

Current Diluv Khutagt with some Rockers in Kalmykia

Mongolia | The Current Diluv Khutagt

Popped by the Puma Imperial Hotel just off Sükhebaatar Square to see the current incarnation of the Diluv Khutagt. He and his entourage eventually appeared and we retired to a private dining room of the Delhi Darbar Indian Restaurant in the first floor of the hotel to have lunch and chew the fat.

Previous Diluv Khutagt (1884–1965)

The previous incarnation of the Diluv Khutagt was the head of Narobanchin Monastery on the border between Zavkhan and Gov-Altai Aimags.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid

He certainly had a distinguished pedigree. According to 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 previous Diluv Khutagt was the third incarnation to be born in Mongolia 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 adviser to the Dalai Lama he emigrated to the United States, where in ended up in New Jersey, of all places. In collaboration with Mongolist Owen Lattimore he then wrote his “Political Memoirs” and “Autobiography,” both of which were combined in one volume entitled The Diluv Khutagt: Memoirs and Autobiography of a Mongol Buddhist Reincarnation in Religion and Revolution. Back in the 1980s I had made a zerox of the copy of this book in the Library of Congress in Washington (the Diluv’s original handwritten manucript of the book is also in the Archives of the Library of Congress).

Both sections of the book contain information about the Avenger Lama Dambijantsan, but the “Autobiography” has an entire chapter devoted to him—the only individual to merit such attention. The Diluv 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. For more information see Ferdinand Ossendowski Meets the Tushegoun Lama.

This is one of the rarest of all English-language books about Mongolia. It was the only one of Lattimore’s books which could not be located for the Recent Lattimore Conference here in the Big Buuz. Bizarrely, Professor Bira, who was one of the prime movers of the conference, had a copy in his personal library but being temporarily in his absent-minded professor mode had forgotten all about it. Later he remembered and told Glenn Mullin and through the latter’s good offices I was able to borrow the copy. So when Glenn and I finally met up with the current Diluv Khutagt we were able to show him an original copy of the book about his previous incarnation and provide him with a zerox copy. He had of course heard of the book and had apparently glanced through a copy in a library somewhere but never had an opportunity to read the whole thing.

Current Diluv Khutagt

The current Diluv was born in Philadephia, PA in 1972. He was the child of Kalmyk Immigrants who had settled in the United States after World War II. He is a Dörböt, a sub-division of the Kalmyks, and incidentally the same tribe to which Dambijantsan belonged. As a boy he became a monk and studied in a monastery in South India from the age of seven to twenty-one. Eventually he was recognized as the reincarnation of the Diluv Khutagt by the 14th Dalai Lama himself. As I understand it he then decided that he could accomplish more outside of a monastic environment and is now no longer an ordained monk. He himself referred to the years he spent in a monastery as “the years of confusion.” He is now the head of Buddhism in Kalmykia, where he lives full-time, although he remains an American citizen. He is currently becoming more and more involved in promoting Buddhism in Mongolia and the main reason for his visit now is to discuss upcoming projects.

One idea which has been moted is the restoration of the Diluv Khutagt’s former monastery, Narobanchin Khiid. The current Diluv stated rather forcefully that if the plan was simply to restore and open another monastery in Mongolia then he was not in favor. In his opinion there are already enough monasteries and temples in Mongolia. Instead he favors restoring perhaps one temple and then building facilities for orphans and the elderly who have no other place to live.

As for more immediate projects, he wants to bring some Tsam Dancers from a monastery in India for a tour of Mongolia; organize for this summer a music festival featuring Buddhist-oriented performers, promote the study of traditional Mongolian medicine and especially how it can be integrated with modern medical practices; and organize a conference, hopefully to be held this year, in the theme of Buddhism and its relationship to modern scientific theory. This latter subject is of course a Hot Topic in the United States and other Western countries and the Diluv would like to attract some of the leading lights in the field here to Mongolia. Glenn Mullin, who knows many of the main players in this scene, graciously offered his assistance in luring them to Mongolia.

Sitting to my right at the lunch was Khongor Badmaevich, the Vice-Chairman of the People’s Parliament of the Republic of Kalmykia. He is a Torgut, one of the other ethnic groups which make up the Kalmyk people. Somewhat to my surprize he seemed quite familiar with the life of Dambijantsan. He claims that several scholars have recently done work on the life of the Ja Lama. He even asked if I was a disciple of the Ja Lama! I said no, I am approaching his life strictly from an historical point-of-view.

Finally S. Tsendendamba, the Religious Policy Advisor to the President of Mongolia, made a cameo appearance, offered the Diluv Khutagt a khadak, promised all possible asssistance, etc. The Diluv Khutagt said to him, “As you know, I was recognized by the Dalai Lama as the current incarnation of the Diluv Khutagt. With this position comes a lot of responsibility. If I do not fulfill my duty to further Buddhism in Mongolia then I will gladly cut off my head and offer it to you!” Hopefully this will not be necessary.

Out in the lobby Glenn Mullin and I were cornered by a journalist from Kalmykia who was accompanying the Diluv’s party. He quickly zeroed in on the subject of Dambijantsan and questioned me quite closely on the subject for half an hour or so. It never ceases to amaze me how interested people are in the Ja Lama. The source of this fascination is the real mystery about Dambijantsan.