Mongolia | Gov-Altai Aimag | Amursana: Last Great Oirat Hero

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

Mongolia | Tov Aimag | Horse Trip #5

On the way back from Khagiin Khar Nuur we made a slight detour to the ruins of Saridgiin Khiid, the monastery founded in the 1654 by Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia. Zanabazar built this monastery with the idea that it would become the center of Buddhism in Mongolia. Several of his most famous art-works, including his Five Transcendental Buddhas, were meant to be displayed here. It was not to be; in 1688 the monastery was destroyed by Zanabazar’s arch-rival Galdan Bolshigt. I had visited the ruins twice before, as described in my Guide To Locales Connected with the Life of Zanabazar. Saraa and Günj said they wanted to see the site so I agreed to go again.

Ruins of the 108-Pillar Tsogchin Temple

Corner of the 108-Pillar Tsogchin Temple

Clay figurines, known as shuteen in Mongolian, which Zevgee claims date to the time of Zanabazar. Someone had dug them out of the ruins and placed them on stone altars.

Saraa at the altars

China | Beijing | Yonghegong

As I mentioned in a previous post there is supposed to be a Shambhala Thangka in the collection of the Yonghegong, or Lama Temple in Beijing. The last time I had been there it was not out on public display, but I decided to pop in again anyhow on the outside chance that it could now be seen.

Yonghegong is the biggest surviving Buddhist temple in Beijing. Completed in 1694, it originally served as the residence of Qing Emperor Kangxi’s son Yong Zheng. In 1725, shortly after Yong Zheng became emperor, he upgraded the complex and gave it the name Yonghegong, meaning “Harmony and Peace Palace.” It was Yong Zheng who some believe ordered the assassination of Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia in 1723. In any event, Zanabazar died that year in the Yellow Temple in Beijing. Whatever his role in Zanabazar’s death, Yong Zheng, following the instructions of his father Kangxi, built Amarbayasgalant Monastery in northern Mongolia to hold Zanabazar’s remains.

Stele in the front courtyard recounting the history of Yonghegong in Mongolian and Chinese

In 1744 Yong Zheng’s successor Qian Long turned the complex into a monastery, and along with the Yellow Temple it became an outpost of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism in Beijing. It survived the Cultural Revolution (1966-1977) more-or-less intact supposedly because of the direct intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai. The complex was reopened in 1981. Among the chief attractions now is the sixty-foot-tall Standing Maitreya in the Main Temple. Carved from the trunk of a white sandalwood tree, it is said to be the largest statue in the world made from a single piece of wood (duly certified in 1990 by the Guiness Book of World Records, a Chinese obsession). A whole posse of monks is on hand to prevent people from taking photographs of the wooden Maitreya, so no photos of that.

The Main Temple containing the 60-foot-high wooden Maitreya

Statute of Samantabhadra. One of the Four Buddhist Mountains of China, Emei Shan, is devoted to Samantabhadra.

I found no trace of the Shambhala thangka, which must still be in storage somewhere, so I mosied across the street to the many shops selling religious paraphernalia to stock up on Nanmu incense, made from the wood of the Nanmu tree. Supposedly Nanmu incense was introduced into China by the Panchen Lama of Tibet, who gave some as a gift to the Qing Emperor Qian Long on the occasion of the latter’s seventieth birthday. It quickly became Emperor’s favorite incense. It has the unusual quality of smelling much stronger on rainy days, and is said to clear the nose and sharpen one’s thoughts. It also drives away mosquitoes.

About a block down the street from the temple entrance is a small Tibetan shop ran by a young Tibetan man and woman. They have a nice selection of thangkas, but as one might expect at this venue a little over-priced. The young man was kind enough to restring my mala for me free-of-charge. Next time you are in Beijing and need your beads restrung this is definitely the place to go.

Mongolia | Zanabazar | Cult of Tara

The First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia Zanabazar came by his interest in Tara honestly. His previous incarnation, the Tibetan lama Taranatha, was deeply involved in the Cult of Tara. Taranatha was born in 1575 in Drong, Tibet, on the same birth-day as Padmasambhava, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet. Like Zanabazar, he was a childhood prodigy whose astounded everyone with his precociousness. “By the time he was only a year old,” one biographical account claims, “Taranatha could read and write, walk, and practice meditation without any imperfection. He also could name all the deities in any thangka, even those so worn and dirty that no one else alive could tell which deity was painted. He already could heal people from disease.”

Later Taranatha studied under numerous Tibetan gurus, including Jampa Lhundrup, Kunga Tashi, Je Draktopa, and Yeshe Wangpo. He also became a disciple of Buddhagupta, one of the very last prominent Buddhist monks in India, where Buddhism by that time had been largely supplanted by Islamic incursions and resurgent Hinduism. This peripatetic wanderer-monk had sojourned in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, Java, East Africa, Bodhgaya in India (where Buddha had achieved Enlightenment), Assam, Burma, and northern Thailand and would have been able to inculcate in Taranatha a thorough knowledge of Buddhism as practiced outside of Tibet., Taranatha probably learned much about the history of cult of Tara, which originated in India, from Buddhagupta.

Taranatha became a staggeringly prolific writer whose collected works amounted to sixteen hefty volumes. Perhaps his most famous work was the History of Buddhism in India, completed in 1608. An “amazing intellectual performance” according to its editor, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, the History is still in print in English translation today. He also wrote a volume of commentary on the Kalachakra Tantra, which according to tradition had been taught by Buddha to Suchandra, the first king of the legendary realm Shambhala. He also translated from Sanskrit a guidebook to the Kingdom of Shambhala entitled Kalapar Jugpa (“The Entrance to Kalapa”, Kalapa being the capital of Shambhala) This translation was later used as the basis of the most famous guidebook to Shambhala, Description of the Way to Shambhala, written by the Third Panchen Lama Palden Yeshe in 1775. Also, in his Autobiography, the first volume of his collected works, he relates that while in a dream state a small white boy led him to Shambhala. Alone among the many sojourners who claim to have visited this storied kingdom, either in their physical bodies, in dreams, or in meditative states, Taranatha found Shambhala inhabited almost entirely by women.

Taranatha was also a chief spokesman for the so-called Jonang School, a small but vigorous sect which held doctrinal tenets in some cases decidedly different from some other schools of thought in Tibet. The basic teachings of the school had appeared early as the eleventh century, but it is Dolpopa Sherab Gyelten (1292-1361) who is credited with fully developing the Jonang belief-system. The sect is best known for its philosophical doctrine of ultimate truth called shen-tong, or “other emptiness.” This is different from the rang-tang doctrine of “self-emptiness” expounded by Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, and other Indian teachers. Shen-tong asserts that “emptiness, in dispelling the illusive relative truths of the world, reveals an ineffable transcendental reality with positive attributes.” The rang-tang view “claimed that emptiness is merely the elimination of falsely imagined projections upon the relative truths of the world and does not imply anything else.” As Tibetologist Stephen Batchelor points out, “While such distinctions may strike us today as theological hairsplitting, in Tibet they became (and still are) crucial articles of faith.”

In addition to the shen-teng teachings, the Jonangpa had an special interest in the Kalachakra, the doctrine which supposedly first flourished in Shambhala. Numerous Jonang monks besides Taranatha wrote on the Kalachakra, and a unique line of Kalachakra teachings has been passed down to this day by the Karma Kargyu school.

In the thirteen century Kunpang Tukje Tsötru (1243-1313) founded the original Jonang Monastery, which became the seat of the Jonang Sect, about three miles up a small side valley of the Tsangpo River. Reportedly this monastery was modeled on the traditional layout of the kingdom of Shambhala as shown on Shambhala thangkas. In 1327 Dolpopa Sherab Gyelten built nearby an enormous seven-story stupa, the Jonang Kumbum, similar in appearance but older than the much more famous kumbum in the city of Gyantse.

In 1614 Taranatha established the Puntsokling Monastery three miles down the side valley from the Jonang Monastery, near the south bank of the Tsangpo. The main buildings of the monastery were built on a high knob overlooking the river and offering spectacular views up and down the valley. The Puntsokling Monastery eventually became famous for its printing workshop which among many other items published the sixteen-volume collected works of Taranatha himself. According to some accounts Taranatha went to Mongolia not long after founding Puntsokling and established several monasteries there. Almost nothing is known about his years in Mongolia and it is unclear what monasteries he may have founded in those pre-Zanabazar days. In any case, he died in Mongolia in 1634 and his body was returned to Tibet.

According to Italian Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci, Taranatha was buried at Dzingi, five miles northeast of Oka: “A large silver chorten is said to hold the mortal remains of Taranatha, a well-known Tibetan polymath . . . As tradition has it, Taranatha’s relics were thrown into the river and carried by the stream to Katrag, midway between Zangrikangmar and Oka, where they were collected and transported into the Dzingi temple.”

The Puntsokling Monastery and Jonang sect in general fell on hard times in the early 1640s. One of the most prominent opponents of the shen-teng view espoused by the Jonangpa was Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug sect, and the Gelug continued in later years to take exception to the Jonang teachings. But while it is easy to imagine Jonang and Gelug monks engaging in fierce courtyard debates over these teachings it is difficult to believe that philosophical differences alone were behind the forceful takeover of the Puntsokling Monastery in 1642 by the Dalai Lama-led Gelug sect and the subsequent suppression of the Jonang school. It would appear instead that the Jonang, along with the Karma Kargyu sect, had made the political miscalculation of siding with the King of Tsang against the Fifth Dalai Lama in the civil war which broke out in Tibet in the early 1640s

According to the monks there today, the monastery was heavily damaged in 1642 by forces loyal to the Dalai Lama. Many of the printing blocks at the printing establishment were destroyed, including those of Taranatha’s own books. The monastery thereafter became a Gelug establishment with the new name of Ganden Puntsokling, and presumably the monks were converted to the Gelug sect. While the Jonang sect itself was suppressed, it should be pointed out that many of Taranatha’s writing later became fully incorporated into the teaching of the Gelug sect.

Zanabazar made the first of his two trips to Tibet in 1649, when he was fourteen years old. In 1650, after meetings with the Panchen and Dalai lamas, he set out to visit places in Tibet connected with the lives of his Previous Incarnations. The monastery of Ganden Puntsokling was one of the stops on this pilgrimage. By then it was a Gelug establishment, and no doubt the damage from the turmoils of 1642 had been repaired. While at Ganden Puntsokling Zanabazar was given a very valuable book, identified in Mongolian sources as the Ja-Damba, which was printed in gold on leaves of sandalwood. This book he took back with him to Mongolia. He probably saw the enormous (forty feet in circumference) three-dimensional Kalachakra mandala fashioned from gold and copper which was one of the main attractions at Ganden Puntsokling. According to one source it remained here until 1680, when it was finally taken to the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa, where it remains to this day as the stunning centerpiece of the Kalachakra Temple. No doubt he walked up the side valley the original Jonang Monastery and visited all seven stories and dozens of temple niches within the Jonang Kumbum. And maybe he climbed the hillside east of the Kumbum and sat in the cave which Taranatha himself had used as a meditation retreat. At Ganden Puntsokling and other monasteries on his itinerary he also collected statues of Tara, Chenresig (the Tibetan name for Avalokiteshvara), and Maitreya. These statues were taken back to Mongolia and may have served as models for his own works.

Ganden Puntsokling is off the heavily-beaten tourist path in Tibet, but monks in residence say that a fair amount of foreign tourists and pilgrims find their way there in the summertime. There were no other visitors in the wintertime when I was there. There are no tourist facilities anywhere in the area, but the monks were kind enough to let us use a guestroom and give us tea and dinner.

The ruins of Taranatha's monastery

Most of the monastery was heavily damaged during the Cultural Revolution. The castle-like building on the high knob overlooking the valley is still in ruins, but two of the temples at the base of the knob have been restored. In one of them, the Shambhala Temple, is a wooden replica, just recently constructed, of the huge three-dimensional Kalachakra mandala which had been removed from here at some point and placed in the Potala in 1680. An hour’s walk up the side-valley leads to the Lingshar Nunnery where about a dozen nuns now live. They are in the charge of huge Jonang Kumbum and act as guides for visitors. The Kumbum was also heavily damaged by the Red Guards but the exterior of the structure and some of the temple niches on its seven floors have now been restored. The fourth-floor is dedicated to one of Taranatha’s preoccupations, the Kalachakra, and the temples on this floor contain statues of some of the twenty-five Kalkin Kings of Shambhala, although most are now unrecognizable. From the top of the Kumbum is a good view of the environs of the old Jonang Monastery, supposedly modeled on Shambhala, but the buildings themselves are now almost totally in ruins. On the hillside can still be seen the cave the nuns say Taranatha used as a meditation retreat. Unfortunately they have never heard of Zanabazar, and thus are unable to say for sure if he himself ever visited here.

See More photos of Jonang

The Golden Rosary Illuminating the Origins of the Tantra of Tara, Volume 12 of Taranatha’s Collected Works, is one of the famous works about the Tara mythologem. According to Taranatha’s account, Tara was first a sentient being named Jnanachandra, the Moon of Wisdom, who lived an unfathomable number of eons before our present day, perhaps in a universe that existed before the Big Bang that produced current universe in which we now live. For countless eons Jnanachandra made offerings to a Buddha named Tathagata Dundhbhishvara and prayed for enlightenment. At long last she was able to achieve what Taranatha calls the “Thought of Enlightenment,” or bodhicitta, the desire to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all other living beings. “At that time some monks said to her, ‘It is as a result of these, your roots of virtuous actions, that you have come into being in this female form. If you pray that your deeds accord with the Teaching, then surely you will change your form to that of a man, as is befitting.’”

Jnanachandra replied,

Here there is no man, there is no woman,
No self, no person, and no consciousness.
Labeling ‘male’ or ‘female’ has no essence
But deceives the evil-minded world . . .

She continued: “There are many who desire Enlightenment in a man‘s body, but none who work for the benefits of sentient beings in the body of a woman. Therefore, until samsara is empty, I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings in a woman’s body.”

For countless eons Jnanachandra practiced her devotions. “Behaving skillfully towards objects of the five sense,” Taranatha tells us, “she practiced concentration, and thereby attained the acceptance that all dharmas are unproduced . . . and realized the samadhi called ‘Saving all Sentient Beings.’ By the power of realization, every day in the morning she then freed a million million sentient beings from worldly thoughts, and would not eat until they were established in that acceptance. Every evening also she so established a similar number. The Tathagata Dundhbhishvara, observing her devotion and compassion toward all sentient being, declared, ‘As long as you manifest the unsurpassed Enlightenment, you will be known only be the name Goddess Tara.’” Ever since Moon of Wisdom-knowledge has been known as Tara.

Then for eon after eon Tara perfected her practices while continuing to aid countless sentient beings. In the eon of Vibudda she received the names Loving Mother, Swift One, and Heroine; in another she learned to protect sentient being from the Eight Fears, and finally in the of eon of Asanka she achieved the title, “Mother of all Buddhas.”

According to Taranatha, Tara made her appearance in our world, known in Buddhist texts as Jambudvipa, a few centuries after the birth of Buddha Sakyamuni. She was thought to be an emanation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Out of pity for human mired in samsara Avalokitesvara shed a tear which fell to earth and became a crystalline lake. According to legend, Tara was born out of a lotus flower that appeared on the surface of the lake. The Dalai Lamas of course are considered to be male emanations of Avalokitesvara.

In India a cult soon grew up around the idea of Tara the Protectress. Because of her compassion for sentient beings built up through countless eons she was thought to be ever ready to come to the aid of people in distress. She perhaps became most famous for protecting people from the Eight Fears, a talent she had learned, as noted earlier, in a far-distant eon before she appeared in our age. These eight objects of fear were: lions, elephants, fire, snakes, robbers, imprisonment, water, and man-eating demons. While most of these fears seem related to people of India and other southern Asian countries (fears of elephants and lions, for example), it should be pointed out that the Eight Fears also have an esoteric connotation. Each of them in order stand for pride, delusion, anger, envy, wrong views, avarice, attachment, and doubt. These are actually what Tara is supposed to protect us from.

Eventually a whole corpus of prayers, hymns, and praises evolved around Tara, Two of the most famous are called “Praise of Arya-Tara” and “The King of Praises Called the Fulfiller of All Aims, A Praise of the Arya Goddess Tara.” both attributed Matrceta, an Indian monk who allegedly lived in the second century, although considerable doubt has been raised about exactly when he lived and his authorship of the text. The first is nine verses long; a sample verse reads, the fourth, reads:

Your body, unmoved by defilements, is firm like a mountain.
Well-grown, since nourished by Your perfect virtues,
Full-breasted, since loving kindness moves your heart,
Venerable Tara—homage to You!

The second is forty-five verses long. Two verses read:

You have a body that’s green, for all activities.
On Your crown You’re adorned with Amitabha,
With the look of a universal ruler,
Tara, captain of beings, such is your body . . .

Your lovely locks are beautified with a crown,
Diadem, ribbons, crescent and double vajra.
Earrings, adornments of neck and shoulders, bracelets,
Girdle, anklets and lower-leg wrappings adorn you.

Zanabazar’s Green Tara, shown here, is a perfect objectification of the Tara described in these three verses. This Green Tara is now the Eighth Bogd Gegeen's Winter Palace in Ulaan Baatar.

In India by the sixth century images of Tara—statues, reliefs and perhaps paintings—began to appear, first shown together with Avalokitesvara and finally by herself, and eventually she was depicted in famous Buddhist cave-temples of Ellora. Thus began the long tradition of Tara portrayed in art works which lead to Zanabazar’s Taras.

In the seventh century the King of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo, acquired wives from the neighboring countries of Nepal and China. Both of were Buddhas and both became instrumental in the spread of the Dharma in Tibet. The Chinese wife was thought to be an incarnation of White Tara, the Tara of the Seven Eyes, while the Nepali wife was considered to be an incarnation of Green Tara. Both brought numerous Buddhist statues with them when they came to Tibet and it is possible that images of Tara were introduced into Tibet at this time. The Jowo Buddha statute brought by the Chinese wife, by the way, can still be seen in the Jokhang Temple in the old section of Lhasa, although the crush of people who rush the shrine when it is opened to the public can be daunting to those not accustomed to Tibetan crowd scenes.

Jokhang Temple in Lhasa

Buddhism suffered a hiatus in Tibet after the persecutions of the apostate king Langdarma (838-42), a supporter of the Bön religion who destroyed many Buddhist temples and persecuted monks and lay believers. Within the space of the few years the Dharma all but disappeared. Not until the eleventh century, with the appearance of Atisha and other Indian masters did it finally recover.

Atisha (982–1054) had been born Prince Candragarbha, the second son of King Kalyanasri, ruler of a small Indian kingdom in what is now Bangladesh. According to one account of his life, as a young man he had a vision of Tara in which she advised him to renounce his royal title and seek a guru in another country. After years of study in various part of India he sought out teachers in Sumatra, where he lived from 1013 to 1025. Upon his return to India he did stints at the monasteries of Nalanda, Odantapuri, Somapuri, and Vikramasila and soon became recognized as one of the greatest teachers of his age.

While at Vikramasila during the years 1036–1040 Atisha worked with a Tibetan named Nak-ts’o who had come to India to study the Dharma and translate Sanskrit Buddhist texts his own language. Atisha and Nak-ts’o worked together to translate into Tibetan “The Pearl Garland, A Praise of the Goddess Arya Tara”, a forty-three verse praise which had been was written by the Indian monk Candragomin in the seventh century. This later became one of the primary texts of the Tara cult in Tibet Verses four and six:

With magical body of space, unobstructed,
You cross with compassion samara’s great ocean,
And conduct migrators to the land
Of Liberation, great Captain—homage!

Subduing with mantras hostile gods,
Taking Your image upon one’s crown
Becomes a cause to achieve the four rites,
You of power unimpeded—homage!

In 1040 emissaries were sent from Tibet asking Atisha to come there and help re-establish Buddhism. At first Atisha hesitated, but in yet another vision Tara, his tutelary deity, advised him that although he would shorten his life by twenty years by doing so, going to Tibet would greatly aid the spread of the Dharma. He left Vikramashila later in 1040, the following year arrived in Nepal, and was in Tholing in Western Tibet by 1042. It is Atisha we are told, “who was to establish the Buddhist religion in Tibet once and for all . . .” Indeed, his fundamental lamrim text Lamp for the Way of Enlightenment is still in print and read today. The school which grew up around him, the Kadam sect, eventually developed into the so-called New Kadam, or Gelug sect, to which the Dalai Lamas and Zanabazar in his later life belonged. He was also instrumental in spreading the Tara cult in Tibet. Taraist Martin Willson points out, “. . . it would seem that her name was constantly on his lips and that She frequently helped him. There is hardly a significant event in this life that one or other of his biographers fails to connect with the Goddess. Thanks to his devotion, Tara became one of the two most popular deities of Tibet.”

Although not a prolific writer on Tara, Atisha did write at least one praise to Tara and three sadhanas (tantric rites devoted to a particular deity). The eleven verse praise read in part:

To those tired of circling long,
again and again, among the
Six Destinies, you grant the rest,
supremely pleasant, of Great Bliss

Goddess who works the weal of others!
Just to think of You dispels problems!
You, endowed with love and compassion,
liberate from samsara’s bonds . . .

Drolma Lhakhang (Tara Temple), where Atisha spent the last years of his life and where he died, is located about twenty miles from Lhasa on the main road to Shigatse Every visitor who arrives in Tibet via airplane passes by this temple on the way from the airport to Lhasa, but very few seem to stop, and it is not appear to be on the itinerary of guided tours. The first time I was there it was not even necessary to buy a ticket to visit the temple, a rarity in Tibet (two years a ticket was required.) It’s relative obscurity is puzzling, since it contains some of the oldest extant Buddhist statues in Tibet. Unlike almost all over temples in Tibet it was not damaged during the Cultural Revolution and most of its contents survived in tact. According to local monks the Bangladesh government made a direct please to the Communist authorities in Beijing to protect the temple of Atisha, who is considered a saint in his homeland, and as a result a unit of the PLO protected it against the rampages of the Red Guards. (I have never been able to confirm this story independently, but it’s clear the temple and its contents were not significantly damaged.) On the outside of the front wall, to the right of the entrance to the center temple, is a large painting of Tara, Atisha’s tutelary deity, and in the center temple itself is a large Tara surrounded by the other Twenty-One Taras.

White Tara on the front wall of Atisha’s Temple

These have a more than passing resemblance to the Twenty-One Taras made by Zanabazar and now on display in the Winter Palace. A statue of Tara which Atisha himself brought from India used to be here in this temple but it has since disappeared, no one knows how or where. The temple to the right, although not directly unconnected with Tara, contains huge statues of Amitayus, the past Buddhas Kashyapa and Dipamkara, and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, all dating back to the eleventh century and untouched by Mao’s Little Generals. Here you can get an inkling of what temples in Tibet must have looked like before the iconoclastic upheavals of the late 1960s. Incidentally, sometime during that turbulent decade Atisha’s ashes, which were kept in an urn in the central temple, were returned for safekeeping to Bangladesh, where presumably they remain today.

See Photos of Atisha’s Temple

The New Kadam, or Gelug sect, a continuation of the Kadam tradition initiated by Atisha, was founded by the great reformer Tsongkhapa (1357–1437) This is the sect to which Zanabazar would later belong. One of Tsongkhapa’s two main disciples was Gedün Drup (1391-1475), who was posthumously given the title of First Dalai Lama after the Tibetan lama Sonam Gyatso had been given the title of Dalai Lama by the Mongolian chieftain Altan Khan in 1578 (Sonam Gyatso became the Third Dalai Lama, the second, Gendun Gyatso, was also given the title posthumously.) Gendün Drup received extensive teachings on Tara from a number of celebrated gurus and went on to write a “A Praise of the Venerable Lady Khadiravani Tara Called the Crown Jewel of the Wise,” and various other Tara-related works. Also, Tara supposedly appeared before him while he was meditating. ”It is said he always consulted Her before undertaking anything,” avers Taraist Martin Willson.

Perhaps then Tara had a say when in 1447 Gendün Drup established Tashilhunpo Monastery in the city of Shigatse. This went on to become one of the largest and most influential monasteries in Tibet. In the mid-seventeenth century the head of Tashilhunpo was a lama named Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen (1570-1662). This distinguished lama had begun studying at Tashilhunpo when he was seventeen and became abbot of the monastery at the age of thirty-one. In 1604 he journeyed to Drepung Monastery in Lhasa and served as the tutor and ordinator of the 4th Dalai Lama Yönten Gyatso. After the 4th Dalai Lama passed away in 1616 Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen led the search for his reincarnation and was instrumental in choosing Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso as the 5th Dalai Lama. He gave the young Dalai Lama his novice ordination in 1625 and his full ordination in 1638, and became his principal teacher. Later, after the Fifth Dalai Lama had achieved both spiritual and temporal control of Tibet, he declared that Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen was a manifestation of the Buddha Amitabha. Since an abbot of Tashilhunpo was traditionally known as a Panchen (“great scholar”), the Dalai Lama gave Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso the official title of Panchen Lama and also recognized as Panchen Lamas a line of three previous incarnations leading back to Khedrup Je, one of Tsongkhapa’s two chief disciples. Thus Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso became the 4th Panchen Lama, according to some reckonings, but still considered the first by many.

When Zanabazar made his first trip to Tibet in 1649 at the age of fourteen he met with both the Panchen Lama Losang Chökyi Gyeltsen and Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, the Fifth Dalai Lama. He received numerous initiations and teachings from both, and although the record does not specifically say so we might assume that these included practices on Tara. As mentioned, he also traveled to the monastery of his previous incarnation Taranatha, author of The Golden Rosary Illuminating the Origins of the Tantra of Tara. Atisha’s Tara Temple is on the road from Lhasa to Shigatse and it’s tempting to think of Zanabazar stopping there to admire the Tara statute which Atisha had brought from India and the other Twenty-One Taras on display, but we have no proof that he did so. In any case, it might be averred that by the end of his first visit to Tibet he had acquired a thorough grounding in the whole Tara mythologem.

Just as important for Zanabazar’s immediate future, the Dalai Lama finally managed to convert him to his own Gelug sect and for the first time officially recognize him as an incarnation of Jebtsun Damba. For a fifteen year old to be told that he was the latest appearance in a spiritual lineage dating back to the time of Buddha must have been a heady experience. Indeed, Zanabazar was so deeply impressed by his experiences in Tibet that he wanted to stay in the country indefinitely. During one of his visits to Tashilhunpo he had told the Panchen Lama, “I wish to settle in Tibet and undergo instruction.” According to the Rosary of White Lotuses, the Panchen Lama finally had to tell him, “It will be much more beneficial to the Teachings and sentient beings if you go back to the Sog country [Mongolia] and set up new monasteries there, rather than stay and study here.” At some point he also intimated to the Dalai that he would like to stay in Tibet, but the Great Fifth gave him the same answer as the Panchen Lama: he could do the most good for sentient beings in Mongolia.

So Zanabazar tried to make the most of his limited time in Tibet. The construction of the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s great palace which to this day looms over Lhasa, was in progress while he was in Tibet, and there were many artists from Nepal and other countries in the Tibetan capital to assist in the construction of new building and to create new art work for its furnishing.

The Potala in Lhasa

Although the Mongolian accounts say nothing of this, it is possible that Zanabazar, who had shown marked artistic inclinations from early childhood, used this opportunity to acquaint himself with the techniques employed by these various artisans. In any case, art historians would later detect Nepalese influence in many of his most famous works. It’s also possible that at this time he became acquainted with the theoretical canons of art contained in the Tengyur, the vast collection of commentaries on the Buddha’s teachings.

While in Lhasa, Zanabazar stayed at Drepung Monastery, which as we have seen had been founded in 1416 by one of his previous incarnations, Jamyang Chöje Tashi. Pelden. The Gomang College at Drepung was traditionally where Mongolians monks who came Tibet to study stayed and it eventually became famous for its Mongolian scholars. Drepung continues to be an important pilgrimage site for Tibetans, as well as a standard stop on all tourist excursions in Lhasa. I have visited Drepung several times. Once I was there in the winter when the courtyards and hallways were jammed with Tibetan pilgrims from the countryside. On this occasion I had the benefit of a guide and translator, a Tibetan woman in her thirties who spoke excellent English. I explained to her that I would like to ask someone at Drepung whether they knew anything about Zanabazar, the famous Mongolian lama who had visited here in the mid-seventeenth century. I had intended that she ask someone in a position of authority about this, but instead she immediately turned to an old toothless monk who happened to be shuffling by and put the question to him. He was hard of hearing and my translator ended up shouting at him while he cupped his hands to his ears in order to hear. Immediately a crowd of pilgrims gathered around us to see what all the commotion was about. He finally understand her question and after ruminating at length, all the while twirling the half-dozen or so white hairs which constituted his beard, said “Oh,“ you must mean the famous Mongolian lama whose 9th reincarnation now lives in India.” Amazing, he was indeed referring to Zanabazar, whose current reincarnation is now headquartered at a monastery in Simla, India. I was startled to hear that he knew about Zanabazar, but even more so that he aware of Zanabazar’s present reincarnation. “Ask him how he knows about the reincarnation in India,” I told my translator. After another shouting match she replied, “He heard about this lama on BBC.”

“Come,” said the monk, “I’ll show you where Zanabazar lived.” He led us up some cobbled pathways to the back of the monastery and pointed to a mass of ruined walls and rubble covering the hillside. “Zanabazar lived in one of those buildings, but it were destroyed back during the troubles,” he said, referring to the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately the monk could tell us nothing more about Zanabazar’s stay in Lhasa during his first trip to Tibet, but it seems significant that even the humblest of the monastery’s current inhabitants remember his presence at Drepung.

Ruins of the building Zanabazar lived in at Drepung

More Photos of Lhasa

Interesting as his stay in Tibet must have been it was soon time to return to Mongolia. On the Dalai Lama’s advice he took with him numerous Tibetan monks and fifty Tangut monks from the Kingdom of Xi Xia (roughly the modern-day province of Ningxia, China).

Statue of Xi Xia Monk in the Ningxia Provincial Museum

All of them were members of the Gelug sect and were to assist Zanabazar in converting Mongolia to the Yellow Hat Faith, as the Gelug were also known.

Xi Xia Tantric Art in the Ningxia Provincial Museum

In addition to the monks were an assortment of artists, painters, and other craftsmen to help Zanabazar build and adorn new monasteries in Mongolia, including Sardgiin Khiid. In total over 600 people accompanied Zanabazar back in Mongolia, in addition to his own entourage. From the artists among them he may have acquired the skills needed to create his Taras and other works. They arrived sometime in 1651, exact date unknown. The seeds of Tara had no doubt been sown in his mind, and they would later flower as the Taras here in the Eighth Bogd Khan’s Winter Palace.

For more on Zanaabazar’s career in Mongolia see Guide to Locales in Mongolia Connected with Life of Zanabazar, First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia.