Don Croner’s World Wide Wanders

In Dambijantsan’s day, just as now, the main access from the Ili Basin to the rest of Xinjiang is via the Xinertai Pass through the Borohogo Shan. From the basin bottom the rugged western ramparts of the Borohogo Shan rise precipitously some 4500 feet to the pass. It was this formidable barrier which separated the Ili Basin from the rest of Xinjang and oriented it toward Kazakhstan to the west. Nowadays the road which switchbacks down the side of this rampart is notorious for the many accidents which occur here, especially in wintertime when heavy snow and ice storms blanket the area (I myself was in an accident on this section of road). As of 2007 a mammoth construction project was underway to built a railway tunnel through the Borohogo Shan in the Xinertai Pass area, connecting by railroad the rest of Xinjiang with the Ili Valley and the country of Kazakhstan to the west via the border town of Khorgas and thus lessening the basin’s isolation from the rest of the province.

This is the way Dambijantsan came in the spring of 1890. Just beyond the crest of the mountains he passed by 177 square-mile Lake Sayram (sayram = “blessing” in Kazakh), at 6791 feet the highest alpine lake in Xinjiang.

Sayram Lake

Bordering the lake and ramping down to the Zungarian Basin is the Bortala (bor tal = “brown steppe”) region where Amarsanaa himself was headquartered. The Oirats who had nomadized in Bortala were largely decimated after the defeat of Amarsanaa, but many of the Kalmyks who fled Russia in 1771 settled in this area. We have no record of what Dambijanstan did here, but he no doubt would have found a warm welcome among the descendants of the people from Kalmykia, where he had been born. These descendants of the Kalymks still live here, residents of the current-day Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture.

From Bortala Dambijantsan traveled eastward along the southern rim of the Zungarian Basin to Urumqi, then as now the capital of Xinjiang Province. He would have found few like-minded cohorts here in this relatively new city inhabited largely by government officials colonists from elsewhere in China and he quickly moved on. He probably traveled south through the Tian Shan, either through the pass leading to the Turpan Basin or the 14,967-foot Shangli Pass to the northern edge of the Tarim Basin. More likely he took the latter, since it leads to the Bostum Lake area, where thousands of Torguts who had returned from Kalmykia to China in 1771 had been settled by Qing authorities (today the area is the Bayan Gol Mongol Autonomous Prefecture). Here among the Torguts nomads he would have found rapt listeners to his message of Mongolian independence, but unfortunately we have no record of his movements through the area. Dambijantsan probably moved east through the Turpan Basin and perhaps proceeded to the town Hami, on the border between current-day Xinjiang and Gansu provinces. Here he would have found many Oirats living in the Hami area and in the Tian Shan Mountains between Hami and Barköl to the north. But again we have no record of his passage.

The next reported sighting of the badarchin (wandering holy man) was in the Tsaidam Depression, south of Hami in current-day Qinghai Province. Here among the Khoshuut who had moved into the area with Güüsh Khan back in the early seventeenth century Dambijantsan repeated his message which by now had taken on the overtones of a messianic prophesy: he was the long-waited descendant of Amarsanaa come to free the Mongols from their oppressors.

The Kalymk party who as mentioned earlier had turned up in the Ili Basin proceeded on the Tibet. Noran Ulanov, head of the group, died of atttitude sickness en route to Lhasa and Dambin Ulianov, who in the Ili Basin had been mistaken for Dambijantsan, took over as head of the mission. By the time they arrived in Tibet the English Younghusband Expedition had already invaded the country, and on July 30, 1904 the Dalai Lama accompanied by his tutor the Buryat Agvan Dorjieff, who Damijantsan had allegedly met while they were students at Drepung, and others had fled north and would eventually turn up Mongolia. Although unable thwart the British, Ulianov did manage met with various high-ranking Tibetan officials, including the ruling Regent, Lozang Gyaltsen Lamochar, the Gandan Tri Rinpoche. He presented the Rinpoche with a document which argued that according to various ancient prophesies Buddhism would flourish in Russia and China and that therefore the Tibetans should align themselves with these two countries and not with the English, who it was claimed were basically hostile to the teachings of the Buddha. His message delivered, Ulianov and the Kalymk party started on the long journey back to Kalmykia. While passing through the Tsaidam Basin they heard from Khoshuut Mongols living there still more stories and legends about the mysterious Kalmyk who had turned up among them fourteen years earlier claiming to be a descendant of Amarsanaa and promising to liberate them from their Manchu-Chinese oppressors. Wherever Dambijantsn appeared he made an impression which would be remain years and even decades later.

From the Tsaidam east we get only faint glimpses of the badarchin. He supposedly passed through Beijing, where he claimed he had earlier studied at the college of the Jangjya Khutagt, and then quickly moved on northward to Örgöö [Ulaan Baatar], at the time the largest monastic settlement in Mongolia and home of the Eight Bogd Gegeen. But this was ground zero of Khalkh Mongolia, home of the Eastern Mongols who under Zanabazar had capitulated to the Qing back in 1691, and Dambijantsan was no doubt eager to move on westward to the lands still inhabited in part by his ancient ancestors, the Oirats. We next hear of Dambijantsan in what was then Zasagt Aimag in western Mongolia. Here he first met the boy who would be become known as the Diluv Khutagt. The budding Diluv Khutagt and his family were then probably living near Khairkhan Uul in what is now Zavkhan Aimag. In this area were born the “Nine Famous Khutagts” now honored with ovoos in Uliastai. Decades later, when he was living in the United States, the Diluv Khutagt would write:

When I was only six years old . . . Ja Lama made a trip through Outer Mongolia going from east to west, and he stayed one night at the tent of my father and mother. He was riding one horse and leadng two. He let his horses out to graze, and in the morning did not have to catch them, he just went to the top of a little hill and called, and they came to him.

The Diluv Khutagt claims this happened in 1889, but he was recalling from memory events which had happened some sixty years earlier and no doubt was mistaken about the date. All other sources maintain Dambijantsan first appeared in Mongolia in 1890.

In any case, here in western Mongolia he launched into his by-now practiced line that he was the descendant of Amarsanaa (most accounts say grandson, but as mentioned, it was more likely he claimed to be the great-great-grandson of the Khoit chieftain) who had returned to free the Mongols from the Qing yoke. The charismatic badarchin and his anti-Chinese propaganda very quickly caught the attention of officials in Uliastai, the Qing military headquarters in western Mongolia.

Labels: Amarsanaa, Amursana, China, Ili, Ja Lama, Mongolia, Sayram, Turpan, Urumqi, Xinjiang

Urumqi, in Xinjiang Province, China, has long been one of my favorite cities. Thus it is sad to read this news on the first day of Olympics in Beijing:

Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, appeared to be on high alert today. Security guards were checking bags at the entrances of hotels, department stores and discos in the busy city, where office towers and apartments buildings have been shooting up in recent years. Guards with red arm bands rode on most public buses, watchful for attackers. Small groups of police patrolled the sidewalks of the bustling Muslim quarter, where merchants cooked lamb kebabs and sliced up watermelons at fruit stands.