Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Vansemberuu Song

Here is the plant known as Vansemberuu with Otgon Tenger Mountain in the background.

Vansemberuu

Summit of Otgon Tenger

Enkhjargal, a.k.a. Yooton, the gazarchin who led me to the Vansemberuu plant, at the Otgon Tenger Ovoo

Hear the Vansemberuu Song.

Here is a transliteration and translation of the Vansemberuu song by widely acclaimed translator, meditation teacher, and  Man-About-Town Batbold.

Torgo shig zoolon delbeetei
Togos udmiin Vansemberuu tsetsegiig
Uchirch haraad monhron gesen
Uridiin ug unen bolovuuu

Tegvel bi ter saikhan Vansemberuu tsetsgiig
Tertee uuliin oroid baival eejiigee
Bi uureed
Enehen nasandaa ochih bailaa

Tegvel bi ter saikhan Vansemberuu tsetsgiig
Tertee uuliin oroid baival eejiigee
Bi uureed
Enehen nasandaa ochih bailaa

Tuulvul bie chatsuu
Toolbol nas chatsuu
Hosoor urgadag Vansemberuu
Uud hoimriin zaitai urgajee

Ilbiin yum shig hosgui saikhan
Iher botgo shig horvood hongor
Seruun khangai hos tsetseg
Setgel bahdam goyomsog urgajee

Uranhan ter turuund ni hureed uzvel
Unaganii uruul shig zoolhon bailaa
Hurenhen ter dund ni hureed uzvel
Huugiin mini zulai shig zoolhon bailaa

Ilbiin yum shig hosgui saikhan
Iher botgo shig horvood hongor
Seruun khangai hos tsetseg
Setgel bahdam goyomsog urgajee

Tegvel bi ter saikhan Vansemberuu tsetsgiig
Tertee uuliin oroid baival eejiigee
Bi uureed
Enehen nasandaa ochih bailaa

Rough English Translation:

With petals tender like a silk
Of peafowl lineage, Vansemberuu
If stumbled upon, it gives eternity
Are the ancient words true

If so, if this beautiful flower called Vansemberuu
Lives on the faraway mountain, I'd
Carry my old mother on my back to it
In this lifetime

If so, if this beautiful flower called Vansemberuu
Lives on the faraway mountain, I'd
Carry my old mother on my back to it
In this lifetime

If measured, equal heights
If counted, ages same
Grows paired, Vansemberuu
With a distance of a ger's length

Unparalleled beauty like magic
Endearing like twin camel babies
The pair of cool Khangai
Are enrapturingly grown

(Voice)
I touched the fine corolla
Felt soft like a foal's lip
I stroked the inner side
Felt soft like my son's forehead

Unparalleled beauty like magic
Endearing like twin camel babies
The pair of cool Khangai
Are enrapturingly grown

If so, if this beautiful flower called Vansemberuu
Lives on the faraway mountain, I'd
Carry my old mother on my back to it
In this my life time

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 | 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 | Diluv Khutagt | Narobanchin Khiid

I recently met with Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the current incarnation of the Diluv Khutagt. The Previous Diluv Khutagt was the head of Narobanchin Monastery on the border of Gov-Altai and Zavkhan aimags in western Mongolia.

Diluv Khutagt (1884–1965)

The Diluv Khutagt, who transmigrated in the USA in 1965, wrote an autobiography about his years in Mongolia. The original manuscript, written in vertical Mongolian script, is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.

This is an excerpt from his Autobiography:

The Narobanchin Monastery in Outer Mongolia

In 1931 I left Outer Mongolia, my native land, as a religious and political exile. I had been one of those accused of counter-revolutionary plotting in a state trial, which was the beginning of the destruction of my religion in Outer Mongolia. The root of my religion, Mahayana Buddhism, is in Tibet. I am afraid that now that both the Dalai Lama and the Panchan Lama, the two greatest Incarnations of this religion in Tibet, are in the power of the Chinese Communists, my religion may be destroyed also in Tibet. What I shall now describe is the organization of my religion as it was in the past, in Outer Mongolia. Under the Manchu Dynasty, from 1644 to 1911, Outer Mongolia consisted of the four great Aimaks or tribal confederations of Khalkha and the northwestern region of Kobdo where most of the tribes are not Khalkhas but Western Mongols. Each Aimak was divided into Banners, and each Banner was under a hereditary ruling prince. Through the Banners and Aimaks Outer Mongolia managed its own internal affairs. The Manchu Emperor stationed only a few high officials in Outer Mongolia as supervisors.

Parallel to this secular structure of government there was the structure of religious organization, under what Westerners generally call Lama Buddhism.

Most Banners maintained a monastery supported by Banner funds and private contributions. In addition there were monasteries, such as my own monastery of Narobanchin, that had territory of their own, deeded to them in the past by a Banner or Banners. In such territory, the church was both a religious institution and a civil institution. The monastery conducted the administration and collected the taxes. Internally, therefore, the monastery had a monastic organization. Externally, it had a civil administrative organization. On the civil side its affairs, like those of a Banner, were coordinated at a higher level through the Aimak, and the Aimaks, in turn, were under the supervision though not the direct administration of the high Manchu officials.

The hierarchy of my religion consists of the Incarnations of saints who, because they have freed themselves of sin and material illusion. could have entered into Nirvana, but have elected to remain in the material world in order to help others who are struggling to free themselves of sin and material illusion. The human body of such an Incarnation is merely a temporary vehicle. When the vehicle is outworn the body dies. The Incarnation then reappears in a new vehicle.

The most revered Incarnations are those of the Dalai Lama and Panchan Lama of Tibet. The most revered Incarnation in Outer Mongolia was that of the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu of Urga.

This hierarchy must not be thought of as one that was dominated by commands and orders, or by religious decree. In Mongolia we thought of Tibet as the land of our religion, and we revered the Dalai Lama and Panchan Lama as greatest of Incarnations; but our offerings and pilgrimages to them were of own free will and they neither levied a tribute upon us nor issued religious decrees.. Similarly in Mongolia the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu was the most widely deeply revered; but he ruled only within his own domain; he did not regulate or control other monasteries, such as mine.

In 1911, however, when the Manchu dynasty fell, all men, both princes Incarnations, looked to the Jebtsundamba Hutukhtu because he combined the greatest authority in the land, spiritual and secular, and he therefore became head of the government, as Bogda Khaghan, Holy Emperor, until his death 1924 when the new government, Communist-controlled and pro-Russian, did permit his Reincarnation to be discovered.

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 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 [Tilopa], 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 Dilowa Hutukhtu, 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 Hutukhtu invited me to share his monastery with him, and thus it has been ever since, and that is why I am the Dilowa Hutukhtu of Narobanchin monastery.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid. The monastery was destroyed c. 1937

In my present incarnation, I was born at a place called Oigong Bag, on the south side of the mountain called Bayan Airak, in the Banner of Tushie Gung, in the Aimak of Jasaktu Khan, in the year of the Monkey, the ninth year of the Manchu Emperor Kuang Hsü (1884), on the eighth day of the tenth moon, in the hour of the Dragon, according to the twelve-hour division of the day, about sunrise.

The family into which I was born were poor sheep-herders, living in a round, felt-covered tent. They had already had a daughter of fourteen and a son aged ten. I remember that in the year after my birth, the family owned only twenty sheep, four cows, and two horses. As a child I played about my father's camp, until at the age of five I was recognized as the fifth Reincarnation of the Dilowa Hutukhtu.

I was recognized in my new Incarnation in the following manner. When my previous Incarnation expired, lama diviners determined the general direction in which the search for the new Incarnation was to be made, and monasteries in that area had prepared at that time a list of forty children born in circumstances that might be miraculous. I was included in this list because at the time of my birth people had seen strange emanations of light coming from my father's tent. I was recognized as the Reincarnation because in my childish play I had frequently made reference to places near the Narobanchin monastery—places which actually existed but to which neither my family nor any of their acquaintances had ever been; and because, when an emissary from the monastery visited me, I immediately recognized as my own a bowl which he carried—a bowl that had belonged to me in my previous Incarnation.

Shortly after I had been recognized, a delegation arrived to escort me to the monastery. My family went along with me, bringing with them all their animals and possessions. I was taken into the monastery immediately. My family took up residence near the monastery and visited me occasionally; but from the age of five I was cared for entirely by lamas and received my religious and administrative training from them. At the age of fifteen I began to take an active part in the administration of the monastery, and at the age of eighteen, according to the regulations of the Manchu code, I took over full powers.

The Narobanchin monastery is about one-hundred and fifty miles south of the city of Uliastai, in the Aimak of Sain Noyon Khan. It had been built during the Ch'ien Lung reign (1736-1796) for the Narobanchin Hutukhtu, and had been named after him and given official status by the Manchu Emperor. Later, land was donated by the Banner where the monastery was situated and by a neighboring Banner, and after a petition to the Emperor, the monastery and its lands were recognized as a separate territorial and civil jurisdiction, on the same level as the twenty-four Banners of Sain Noyon Khan Aimak. In this way, the Narobanchin became a civil as well as a religious figure and was required to make periodic vassalage trips to Peking like the Banner princes.

The territory was about fifty miles east and west, and twenty-five miles north and south. Its boundary was marked by stone cairns. It consisted of a series of low mountains in the northern portion which drained southward across flat open ground into the Zavkhan River, running along the southern border of the territory.

The people of this territory consisted of families attached to the Narobanchin Hutukhtu. Such families are termed "disciples." At the time that the Narobanchin territory was created, these families were resident on the lands granted to the temple and were allocated to the Narobanchin as his subjects. They were later joined by other families which were officially transferred from other Banners. All of these families owed to the Narobanchin Hutukhtu not only their former customary religious obligations, but also their newly acquired civil obligations. They had, in fact, severed all formal civil and family ties with the Banners from which they had come. In the years of my present Incarnation, the number of these families was about four hundred-a total population of about eighteen hundred persons. They were all Mongols, except for a few Chinese who had come into the area as small merchants or artisans and had married Mongol women and settled down to live the life of Mongol herdsmen. None of the subjects of the monastery were nobles.

These families lived almost entirely by herding sheep, cattle, horses, and camels. They lived in round felt-covered tents, in small camps which moved from place to place during the year, following the grass and water. A few camps engaged in rudimentary farming, but only as a sideline to herding. Camps were almost entirely self-sufficient, but exchanged labor with each other, and traded off their surplus wool, hides, and animals to Chinese and Russian merchants in return for tea, grain and a variety of manufactured items.

There were a few specialists among my people—carpenters, tanners, animal doctors, bone-setters, and midwives—but these people were herdsmen, too, and employed their other skills on the side. For highly-skilled work in stone, wood and metal we had to call on Chinese artisans.

Because the monastery was the center of a territorial jurisdiction, as well as being a religious center, it was required to maintain a separate civil administration. This civil administration was subject to a Manchu code which, like the code applying to Banners, regulated the territory's relation with the Aimak, but did not regulate the internal administration of the territory.

The civil and religious departments were kept separate in the normal course of affairs—the civil administration concerning itself with the territory and the people, and the religious administration concerning itself with the internal administration of the monastery and the lamas. The civil department had ultimate authority however. The officer in charge of the civil department was a lama, appointed to his civil office by the Aimak, who had the responsibility for the conduct of affairs both outside and inside the monastery. He had the authority to remove officials from high religious offices, to discipline lamas for civil offenses, and to control church finances.

The obligations of the people to the civil administration were annual taxes on livestock, which were paid almost entirely in kind, and the providing of obligatory feudal services such as animals and carts for the transport system. These obligations were codified, and were the same as those civil obligations required in the purely secular Banner administrations, except that in the monastic territory no one was subject to military conscription.

All families were listed on a central register, which showed the name of the family head, the number of his dependents, and the amount of the family's wealth in livestock. Since family groups owned their property as a joint fund, family property was the unit of taxation. Taxes were used to meet the demands of the Aimak and for repair of local civil buildings. Collections were generally disposed of as soon as possible, and the civil administration did not have its own treasury.

The civil administration was responsible for seeing that the taxable wealth of the community was not reduced through poor management, and would assign certain families to help other families which could not properly manage their own herds. Otherwise the civil administration did not regulate the technology or economies of the territory. It did not engage in conservation measures, or the assignment of pasturage rights, and did not attempt to regulate the trading activities of the population.

All families in the territory were assigned for administrative purposes to one or the other of two "halves"—the East and the West—which actually had nothing to do with territorial grouping, since the people of both halves were mixed together throughout the area. Each of these halves was under a leader (the daroga, "great chief"). The families in each of these major subdivisions were further grouped into twelve smaller units of about sixteen families each, and placed in the charge of twelve minor leaders. Both big and small leaders had very few routine duties. Their primary function was to report changes in family size and wealth status at the annual budget meeting, and they were held responsible if one of the families in their charge evaded taxes, or committed some other civil offense. This was the only kind of police force maintained in the territory. Cases of civil offense were tried and sentenced by the head of the civil administration personally.

Disputes between families or individuals over such things as property, inheritance, desertion, non-support, etc., were usually referred to the leaders, but the office of the head of the civil administration was the ultimate seat of authority. Ordinarily families handled all the arrangements of marriage, property, and family economics according to old Mongol custom, but there was no broad family organization or leadership which could settle disputes between individual families in such matters.

The religious obligations of the people consisted of contributions of goods and services to the monastery to provide for ceremonies, sacrifices, and the upkeep of the monastery buildings. These obligations were not codified but customary, and had grown up over a long period of time. Contributions were made by the people because they were devoted to the church and wished to acquire religious merit. The monastery treasury was the corporate property of the monastery. All regular contributions and all expenses for religious services and works were handled through this treasury.

In addition, many free-will contributions came into the monastery for such purposes as honoring a deceased relative or a particular lama. Some of these were made to the monastery treasury, some came to the Narobanchin or myself, and some went to other lama dignitaries. Contributions to the Narobanchin and myself went into our own private treasuries which however belonged to us not as ordinary individuals but as continuing Incarnations, and were therefore treated as institutional trust funds. Our wealth was used primarily to fulfill the social obligations of our status. We gave many animals to poor people, and in times of general hardship the wealth obligations of the people to the monastery would be assumed in part by the reserves of the monastery treasury and in part by the treasuries of the Narobanchin and myself. The treasury of the monastery, the treasuries of the Narobanchin and myself, and the wealth of our subjects were all mutually supporting, so that excessive demands were not made on anyone source. The treasury of the monastery and the treasuries of the Narobanchin and myself were managed and accounted for by a single lama official, appointed by a central committee of five high religious officials, and responsible not only to them but to the head of the civil administration.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid

Every family tried to send at least one son into the church to become a lama, and in the years of my present Incarnation there was a total of about three hundred lamas in the territory. No limit had ever been imposed on the number of lamas that the territory could contain, the original Manchu-assigned quota of forty lamas having designated only those lamas who would be exempt from military conscription.

Sons were usually sent to lama teachers in the monastery at the age of about six or seven, and had to remain in the monastery for a good part of their early youth studying if they were to become fully ordained lamas.

Lamas normally resided at the temple but, since their families often needed their help for herding, or for some emergency, they were permitted to return home for indefinite periods of time. It was more difficult for a lama to absent himself from the temple if he was holding an administrative post in the temple, or if a general assembly was in progress, but, if the family's need was sufficiently urgent, almost any lama could secure temporary release from temple obligations to return home. If a lama had duties which made it impossible for him to leave the temple, another lama was sent from the temple to the camp to replace him. Lamas from wealthy families tended to spend more time in the temple than lamas from poor families simply because the wealthier families usually had dependent helping families and could do without the services of one or two sons.

Provision was also made so that a lama could inherit family property and be listed officially as a family head; lamas could not marry, but a lama could be released honorably from the church in order to marry if his family affairs made it necessary.

While lamas were resident at the monastery they lived in fifteen courtyards arranged in rows on both sides of the main temple buildings. Here they slept in tents and ate food provided primarily by their own families, or by the families of their personal disciples, if they were famous lama teachers. They could own property, but any animals which they acquired were usually kept in the herds of their disciples' families.

The Narobanchin and I of course lived all year round at the monastery, and we had each our own private residence with winter and summer houses, storage buildings, guest-tents, and a household staff.

In the 1930's, as the Communist-controlled government in Outer Mongolia increased in power, this traditional organization of my religion was destroyed, chiefly by depriving monasteries of their territories and revenues. It has been many years since I have had direct news of my own monastery; but my personal property was expropriated before I left Mongolia in 1931, and I have heard that in Da Khüree, which Westerners call Urga, and which is now called Ulaan Bataar—a city which was once a city of monasteries—there is now only one monastery open for religious services.

Ruins of Narobanchin Khiid

Diluv Khutagt

Telo Tulku Rinpoche, the current Diluv Khutagt

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mongolia | Life and Death of the False Lama #6

Earlier I wrote about the Exodus of the Kalmyks and how Dambijantsan’s tribe, the Dörböts, had been left behind in Kalmykia . . .

At the time Dambijantsan was born, at the beginning of the 1860s, Tibetan Buddhism, despite the continued pressure to convert the Kalmyks to Russian Orthodoxy, was still prevalent in Kalmykia, the land of the Kalmyks. In all likelihood Dambijantsan was born into a family which adhered to Buddhism to one degree or another. The first news we hear of him is that at the age of seven he was supposedly enrolled as a novice in a Buddhist monastery in Dolonnuur, in what is now the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. Maisky heard this story while in western Mongolia in 1919, when Dambijantsan was still alive. Dolonnuur was firmly in the orbit of the Eastern Mongols, the Chahar of Inner Mongolia and Khalkh of what was then considered Outer Mongolia, and at first glance it appears strange that a young Dörböt from the Volga River in Russia would have gravitated there. Kalmyks wishing to enter a monastery outside of Kalmykia, we would think, would have been more drawn to western China, including the modern-day provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Gansu, the traditional strongholds of the Torguts, Dörbots, and other Oirats, both those who not migrated westward in the early seventeenth century and those who had returned in the great exodus of 1771. Fred Adelman, in his introduction to Pozdneev’s Mongolia and Mongols makes precisely this objection, and John Gaunt in his doctoral thesis on Dambijantsan repeats it: “it would be unlikely to find a Volga Kalmuk at Doloon Nuur, as they were not oriented toward Inner Mongolia’s monastic net.”

The French scholar Isabelle Charleux, an expert on Inner Mongolian monasteries, offers a different interpretation: “There were many monks and students [at Dolonnuur] from all of the Mongol world, given the reputation of the Dolonnuur monasteries and their high reincarnated masters that attracted people from very far away . . . The Dolonnuur monasteries were not only connected with the Khalkh Mongols; but also with the Inner Mongolians of Alashan and Kholun Buir . . . Also the migrant population of the Chahar banners included many Oirat Mongols. If Dambijantsan’s parents were especially fond of the Dolonnuur monasteries—because they knew a lama there, because of the reputation of the monasteries, etc.—they would have sent their child there.”

A Russian researcher adds that Dambijantsan’s parents moved to Inner Mongolia “for all the usual reasons”—presumably they were traders—when he was a very small boy, which would explain how the seven-year old boy also ended up there. Therefore it is entirely possible that this entry into Dambijantsan’s curriculum vitae was not simply a later invention meant to burnish this reputation among the Khaklh Mongols but that he actually was enrolled as a monk at Dolonnuur at an early age. In any case, this is the last we hear of his parents.

Dolonnuur (doloon = seven, nuur = lake; Seven Lakes) is located in the grasslands (now suffering from increasing desertification) 210 miles north of Beijing, about fifty-two miles beyond the first major pass leading to the Mongolian Plateau.

Ovoo at the first pass on the Mongolian Plateau

Statue of Khubilai Khan at the first pass on the Mongolian Plateau

The area is much hallowed in Mongolian history. Fourteen miles from the current town of Dolonnuur is the site of Shangdu, originally established in 1256 as the headquarters of Chingis Khan’s grandson Khubilai. After Khubilai founded the Yüan Dynasty he made what is now Bejing the primary capital of his empire, but he retained Shangdu as his summer capital, where he and his court retired each year to escape the enervating heat of the North China Plain. Shangdu was destroyed in the so-called “Red Scarf Rebellion” of 1358, a precursor to the upheavals which led to the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 and the rise of the Ming Dynasty. Later the city became known to some as the Xiancheng, or Apparition City, since people claimed that at certain times the old city as it was in the days of Khubilai appeared suddenly before their eyes and then disappeared just as quickly, leaving only the ruins as we see them today. Shangdu is also remembered as the subject of Coleridge’s much celebrated poem "Xanadu”:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea . . .

Ruins of Khubilai’s Palace at Shangdu

The ruins are now a popular tourist attraction and the area still serves as a summer getaway, only now not for Mongol potentates but for Beijing’s middle classes. More important to our story, however, it was at nearby Dolonnuur that in 1691 a fateful meeting took place between the Kangxi emperor of China and Zanabazar, the First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia and the nominal head of the Khalkh Mongols.

Tourist Camp near Shangdu

When we last left Khara Khula he was organizing the four tribes of the Oirat into the Oirat Confederation. He died in 1634 and his son Baatar-Hongtaiji assumed the throne. In 1635 the Dalai Lama officially recognized Baatar-Hongtaiji as the leader of the Oirats and gave him the title of Yerdyen. By 1640 Baatar-Hongtaiji’s realm become known as the Zungarian Khanate. The name derives from the Mongol zuun gar, “left hand“, or “eastern side;”; although the Oirats dwelt in the western end of the lands inhabited by Mongol peoples, the Choros tribe to which Khara Khula and Baatar-Hongtaiji belonged was the easternmost of the Oirat confederation and thus on the “left hand“ looking southward, as the Mongols always oriented themselves.

Following a long internecine struggle between Baatar-Hongtaiji’s offspring, replete with fratricide and rivers of blood, Galdan, probably the youngest of his eleven or so sons, seized the reins of the Zungarian Khanate. Under Galdan the Zungarian Khanate eventually encompassed a huge swath of Inner Asia, including the western edge of current-day Mongolia, the current-day Chinese province of Xinjiang, including the Silk Road cities of Hami, Turpan, and Kashgar, the legendary cities of Bukhara of Samarkand in what is now Uzbekistan, and the eastern part of current-day Kazakhstan. Although little remembered today, during Galdan’s reign the Zungarian Khanate was a formidable adversary of both Czarist Russia and Qing-Dynasty China.

Galdan would become one of the role models of Dambijantsan, and we will return for a more detailed examination of his career in good time. Suffice it to say here that in 1688 Galdan, hoping to add the territory of the Khalkh Mongols to the Zungarian Empire, invaded what is now the country of Mongolia. Meeting little opposition from the disorganized Khalkh, his army first trashed the great monastery of Erdene Zuu, built on site of the old Mongol capital of Kharkhorum, and the Monastery at Khögno Khan Uul (now known as Khögnö Taryn Khiid), just to the east. Advancing farther eastward, Galdan’s men then demolished Saridgiin Khiid, located in the Khentii Mountains north of Ulaan Baatar, the monastery which had been established by Zanabazar himself and intended to be the center of Buddhism in Mongolia. Zanabazar, his brother Chakhuundorj the Tüsheet khan, the leaders of the other Khalkh khanates, and, according to one source, at least 30,000 of their followers fled southeastward before the advance of Galdan’s troops, eventually reaching the edge of the Mongolian Plateau near Dolonnuur, land of the Chahar Mongols, who had already accepted the authority of the Qing Dynasty. Here the Khalkh Mongols, by now almost destitute, threw themselves at mercy of the Qing emperor Kangxi.

Dolonnuur was at that time already an important monastic center, with no less then twelve incarnate lamas in residence. The town, strategically located at the edge of the Mongolian plateau, was also a busy Chinese-Mongolian entrepôt. Because of deposits of copper ore nearby it became a center of mining and smelting, and its factories were well-known for their weapons, and later its workshops became better known for the bronze Buddhist Artwork of the Dolonnuur School.

Dolonnuur School White Tara in the Bogd Khan Winter Palace Museum

The Kangxi emperor, apprized of the arrival of the Khalkh Mongols in his domains, decided to meet with their leaders and if possible bring them into the fold of the Qing Dynasty. He left Beijing on May 9, 1691 and made his leisurely way north, stopping to do a spot of hunting on the way. From May 29 to June 3 Kangxi finally meet with Zanabazar and the other Khalkh leaders in Dolonnuur. A great banquet was followed by a display of Qing might in the form of cannons, newly acquired from Jesuits in Bejing, the firing of which caused the Mongols “to tremble with fear and admiration,” at least according to Qing sources. The upshot of all this was that in exchange for protection from the forces of Galdan Bolshigt and a promise from Kangxi to restore to the Khalkh their lost lands in Mongolia, Zanabazar accepted the suzerainty of the Qing Dynasty, in effect making Mongolia a province of China. The country which Chingis Khan and his sons had conquered and his grandson Khubilai had once ruled as the first emperor of the Mongol Yüan Dynasty now dominated Mongolia. Mongolia would remain under Chinese control until 1911, when the Qing Dynasty fell. Those 220 years of subjugation by the Qing Empire are seen by some as a direct consequence of Zanabazar’s capitulation to Kangxi, and as a result many Mongolians resent him to this day. Dambijantsan himself would devote the greater part of his life to undoing what Zanabazar had done and restoring the independence of Mongolia.

But that was all in the future. In 1691, In honor of his meeting with Zanabazar and the capitulation of the Mongols, Kangxi ordered the construction of what would become the Khökh Süm, or Blue Temple. (One prominent Mongolian incarnation, the Kanjurwa Khutagt [1914–1980], maintains that on the contrary Mongol nobles built the temple in honor of Kangxi, a telling interpretation of events from a Mongol viewpoint)

Front of the Khökh Süm, which is currently being restored

The Khökh Süm was completed around 1700 and it eventually began the center of a sizable monastery. About a half mile away, the Shar Süm, or Yellow Temple, was built between 1729 and 1731 and it too became the foundation of a monastery.

Ruins of the Shar Süm

Ruins of the Shar Süm

Both monasteries were overseen by a line of incarnate lamas known as the Jangjya Khutagts. Sedendonub, the first Jangjya Khutagt, was instructed by Kangxi himself to “spend the chilly wintertime in Peking and in the summertime heat govern here and the direct the local clergy.” The Jangjya Khutagts maintained residences at both the Blue Temple and and the Yellow Temple.

The Jangjya Khutagt’s residence at the Khökh Süm

Side buildings at the Jangjya Khutagt’s residence at the Khökh Süm

The second Jangjya Khutagt, Rölpé Dorjé, was described by one scholar as “an intimate of the Qianlong emperor and thus perhaps the most powerful Tibetan hierarch in the Qing Empire.” Dolonnuur’s importance as a monastic center was underlined by the fact that the Third Panchen Lama visited here during his trip to China in 1780. The Panchen Lamas along with the Dalai Lamas were the highest ranking incarnate lamas in Tibet. The Panchen Lama arrived in Dolonnuur on the 20th day of the 6th month, and according to hagiographic Tibetan accounts was greeted by one million people, although this is almost certainly an exaggeration. In any case, while in Dolonnuur the Panchen Lama reportedly “performed a purification ritual that pacified the restless demons of Mongolia.” He also gave a Yamantaka initiation to the Jangjya Khutagt and read prayers dedicated to the sacred land of Shambhala, a realm about which he had already written a guidebook entitled Shambhala Lamyig.

From Dolonnuur the Panchen Lama proceeded to the Qing Summer Resort at Jehol where he was amazed to discover not only a Huge Replica of the Potala in Lhasa, already alluded to, but also a replica of his own Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse. This complex of temples and facades, known as the Xumifoushou Miao (Happiness and Longevity Temple of Mt. Sumeru) was hurriedly constructed in 1779 and early 1780 by order of the Qianlong emperor. In front of it he had placed yet another stele declaring that the complex had been built to provide the Panchen Lama with “a restful place for meditation.” The Xumifoushou Miao too is now a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately, the Panchen Lama never returned to Tibet from this trip. From Jehol he proceeded Beijing to where he contracted small pox and died in late November of 1780.

The Russian ethnographer A. M. Podzneev visited Dolonuur in 1893. By then the monastic center seems to have lost some of its luster. The Yellow Temple had some 400 monks and the Khökh Temple some 500, not a lot compared to monasteries in Lhasa in Tibet and Örgöö (now Ulaan Baatar] in Mongolia. The fourth Jangjya Khutagt, who died in 1891, spent most of his life in Beijing and had not visited Dolonnuur in fifty years. Pozdneev was by that time a very seasoned traveler in Mongolia and China but even he was shocked by conditions in Dolonnuur: “It would be hard to imagine anything dirtier and in greater disarray than Doloon Nuur’s street and alleys. The street in all Chinese cities are normally narrow and dirty, but here they are even narrower and dirtier . . . In the rainy season these ditches used as thoroughfares are so full of water and mud that some of the streets become iiterally impassable.”

Presumably this is more-or-less the same Dolonnuur Dambijantsan would have experienced in the late 1860s when he arrived there at the age of seven and became a novice monk.

The streets of Dolonnuur are in better shape today

Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Otgon Tenger Khora #3

The skies had cleared while we were at Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur, but the moment we left it clouded over and the wind picked up. Soon we were deluged with mixed rain and sleet. The wind blew into our faces, pummeling us with sleet, and finally we could not even make the horses walk into the wind. We ducked behind the Otgon Tenger Ovoo for half an hour to get out of the wind and after it subsided continued on to our campsite on the Övör Bogdyn Gol. There was no chance of getting a fire started so we just retired to our tents with no hot dinner or tea. We rose the next morning to a drizzle and quickly packed up and left, again with no hot meal or tea. We hoped to reach some firewood by noon.

We reached the head of Övör Bogdyn Gol and crossed 9302-foot Turgenii Davaa amidst yet another downpour. On the other side we followed Turgenii Gol downstream to the first two gers we saw and popped into one, where an old man and his wife agreed to let us use their stove to cook lunch and make tea.

For the first twenty minutes the old couple had nothing whatsoever to say. The woman busied herself helping the horsemen cut up mutton and potatoes and the old man sat quietly puffing on his long-stemmed pipe. Then I asked the old man if he had ever heard of the Diluv Khutagt. He kept silent, but his wife piped up that her grandfather was related somehow to the family of the Diluv Khutagt. She know all about his sojourn in America and repeated what we had already heard about the current Diluv’s incarnation and his visit to Otgon Tenger. She maintained he was a Kalmyk, born into the Kalmyk community in New Jersey. I have not been able to confirm this. She also related a lot of other lore which I will deal with in a separate post. Before we left she gave me some artz which she said came from Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur.

From this place, known as Khalteriin Ekh, we crossed 8907-foot Khökh Khamar Davaa (Blue Nose Pass). The rest of the afternoon we crossed a number of low passes separating the drainages of small, unnamed creeks before arriving in early evening at the Khökh Nuur, the bigger of the two lakes on the west side of Otgon Tenger. We had ridden 21.3 miles (34.3 km for you decimal heads) for the day, our longest ride of the trip, and I was exhausted. I had just gotten over a bad bout of pneumonia before coming on this trip, and I was still taking four different plant medicines I had gotten from Ganbaatar, a doctor of traditional Mongolian medicine at Manba Datsan. He had mentioned that they might make me weak, and this certainly seemed to be the case. We stopped at the ger of some friends of our horsemen and after eating a meal cooked on their stove I collapsed in my tent. (I will admit that I did manage to sneak in a few pages of Gurdieff: Making a New World before falling asleep.)

Gers at Khökh Nuur where we spent the night

The next morning—the beginning of our last day on the Khora—the sky was a perfect dome of cobalt blue from horizon to horizon—the first morning without rain we had had on the trip. We had a leisurely breakfast and finally packed up and headed over the ridge to the west of Khökh Nuur. Climbing through a larch forest—the first real forest we had encountered on the trip, we finally arrived at Khoid Dayan Ovoo. From here there are spectacular views of Khökh Nuur and the whole Otgon Tenger massif. Batbayar says this is one of the most sacred spots in Zavkhan Aimag and that many people come here to make offerings. He claims it was used by shamans even before the advent of Buddhism.

Khökh Nuur from Khoid Dayan Ovoo

Khoid Dayan Ovoo

Batbayar prostrating at the Khoid Dayan Ovoo

Otgon Tenger from the Khoid Dayan Ovoo

From the Khoid Dayan Ovoo we continued on to Tsagaan Nuur, where Batbayar lives. We stopped at his ger for lunch and then continued on over a series of glacial moraines to the Children's Camp, where we had started.

Tsagaan Nuur

The total distance of the Khora was 70.9 miles (114.1 km for you unrepentant decimal-heads) measured between twenty-five checkpoints, which we did in five days. We had prostrated to the mountain at the appropriate places, offering khadags (prayer scarves) and burned artz at the main ovoo, and I had repeated the Om Mani Padmi Hum mantra over 10,000 times while we were riding. Hopefully we had paid sufficient respect to the mountain. Whether our actions will have any beneficial effect on this and subsequent incarnations remains to be seen.

Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Otgon Tenger Khora #2

From the Ochirvani site we moved up the Övör Bogdyn Gol and stopped for lunch near a small bridge across the river which according to Batbayar had been built so that the president of Mongolia could go to the Otgon Tenger Ovoo by vehicle. As I understand it, the president is required to come to Otgon Tenger—as with the other two sacred mountains of Burkhan Khaldun and Bogd Khan Uul—at least once every four years and make an offering. According to our horsemen President Enkhbayar had made an appearance just the year before.

This far up the Övör Bogdyn Gol there are not even any willows, and we had to make a fire from the stalks of a plant known as camel tail and the twigs of a plant known in English as silverberry. Unfortunately the horsemen did not know its Mongolian name. This same plant, as with many others in the Otgon Tenger region, is very common in Alaska. Mongolia, Siberia, and Alaska share many of the same plants, since during the last Ice Age Alaska was connected to Asia by the Bering Land Bridge. At the same time Alaska was separated from the rest of North America by immense ice sheets covering much of Canada and the northern United States. Thus during the last ice age, ending about 10,000 years ago, Alaska was essentially a part of Asia.

It took over an hour to gather enough stalks and twigs to build a fire. There was a lot of dried dung in the area, but it was too wet from recent rains to use. After lunch of boiled sheep ribs, mutton soup, and a pot of Yunnan Gold black tea we crossed the bridge and rode 1.8 miles up up to the Otgon Tenger Ovoo.

Otgon Tenger from near the Övör Bogdyn Gol

This ovoo is where the president comes to make offerings to the mountain. According to locals this ovoo was in use before the communist era and the site was probably used by shamans even before the advent of Buddhism in Mongolia. Before the communist era monks came here frequently to chant and perform various ceremonies. According to tradition—so say local people—only monks who were born and lived in the Otgon Tenger region were allowed to camp near the ovoo, although others on pilgrimages were allowed to make short visits. Even the local monks were not allowed to urinate in the area. They had to urinate in big pots which when they were full were taken some distance away down the Övör Bogdyn and emptied.

The famous lama Diluv Khutagt (1883–1965), one of the heads of Narobanchin Khiid, was born in what is now Zavkhan Aimag, near Oigon Nuur. It is not clear if he was considered a “local” monk, but he relates in his autobiography that he did visit Otgon Tenger on several occassions, most likely coming to this very ovoo. The Diluv Khutagt:

In that year [1914] I went back to my native banner to make a sacrifice, as is customary with high lamas. This was the sacrifice to “earth and mountains” and not lamaistic [Buddhist]. I visited the snow-crested mountain of Otgon Tenger. “Otgon” means “youngest son”. This mountain is in Sain Noyon Aimag [in the pre-communist era]. At that time it was sacrificed to by the Manchu Janjin [governor] on behalf of the Manchu Emperor . . . I was there when these sacrifices were being made. There were special prayers in Mongolia which were also not lamaistic.

The Diluv Khutagt died in the USA and was reportedly reincarnated there. According to locals the current incarnation visited Otgon Tenger sometime in the 1990s, but they were unable to provide any details about this visit.

Otgon Tenger Ovoo

Otgon Tenger Ovoo

Otgon Tenger Ovoo

It is possible to drive to the ovoo by four-wheel drive vehicle. From here a horse trail continues on another 1.5 miles to Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur, a glacial lake nestled in a cirque just below the south face of Otgon Tenger. According to several eyewitnesses, President Enkhbayar, a career politician more at home in the corridors of power than in the saddle, fell off his horse while riding to the lake.

Otgon Tenger on the way to Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur

Batbayar prostrating to Otgon Tenger

While at the lake President Enkhbayar, as part of his offering to the mountain, threw a gold bowl into the lake. I was unable to determine from locals whether this was a traditional practice or one initiated by him. In any case, numerous high-rollers, according to locals, have since come here to emulate the president by throwing gold bowls in the lake.

Övör Badarkhundaga Nuur and Otgon Tenger.

A particularly strong scented variety of artz (wild juniper) grows on the cliffs behind the lake. Incense made from this artz is thought to be particularly propitious. Even in Ulaan Baatar vendors at the Naraan Tuul Market tout their artz as coming from Otgon Tenger, although of course it is by no means certain that this is the case.

13,192-foot Otgon Tenger.

It is now prohibited to climb to the summit of this sacred mountain.

Mongolia | Zavkhan Aimag | Otgon Tenger Khora #1

Winged out 534 miles to Uliastai, capital of Zavkhan Aimag, and then took a van 20 miles east ATCF to the well-known children’s camp located to the west of the Otgon Tenger Massif. Here we hired horses and two horsemen for a circumnavigation of 13,192-foot Otgon Tenger Mountain, one of the three sacred mountains of Mongolia officially recognized by the Mongolian government. I had already done an eighty mile circumnavigation, or khora, of Burkhan Khaldun and climbed to the summit of Bogd Khan Uul, the other two officially recognized sacred mountains.

Otgon Tenger from the Children's Camp

From the Children's Camp we crossed the Bodgyn Gol, which begins on the western flanks of Otgon Tenger, and headed northeast up the Rashaan Gol. Locals say they had been experiencing a drought and that there had been no significant rains for several weeks, but only a few hours into our trip we experienced a torrential downpour. We popped into a ger for tea and waited for this to pass and then continued on to the hotspring complex of Otgon Amralt Rashaan, where we camped for the night. This complex can be reached by road and is quite popular with locals. Probably a hundred people were in residence. We camped by ourself near a small stream flowing out of the mountains.

Western edge of the Otgon Tenger Massif from the Rashaan Valley

Camp at Otgon Rashaan

The next day we continued up the Rashaan Gol. Batbayar, one of our horsemen, pointed out that to our left was a pass leading to the headwaters of the Ider River, the beginning of which is the ultimate source of the Yenisei River System, the fifth longest river system in the world. In 1997 I had located the source of the Ider, as described in my Travels in Northern Mongolia. Then we turned eastward on the Ard Chuluutiyn Gol and soon passed by 11,952-foot Baga Bogd Uul, also known to locals as Baga (Little) Otgon Tenger.

11,952-foot Baga Bogd Uul

We followed the Ard Chuluutiyn Gol to its source and camped for the night just below the pass leading to the Övör Chuluutiyn Gol. It started raining heavily and we were just able to get a fire started using wood from the waist-high willows along the creek. It rained hard all night and was still raining next morning. We decided to wait until the rain stopped before crossing the pass, but it keep raining for most of the day and we ended up spending another night at this camp. I really did not care, because I spent most the day in my tent engrossed in Gurdieff: Making a New World by J. G Bennett. The deluge continued on through the night, but at dawn the next morning a window appeared in the clouds and soon patches of azure sky were visible. I rousted the horsemen and soon we were climbing to 10,070-foot Chuluutiyn Davaa. Here we got our first look at majestic Otgon Tenger off to our right.

Ovoo at 10,070-foot Chuluutiyn Davaa

Glacier-capped Otgon Tenger from Chuluutiyn Davaa

From the pass we dropped down to the Övör Chuluutiyn Gol and after passing by several small lakes finally arrived at the Övör Bodgyn Gol. On a bluff above the river is a statue of Ochirvani (Vajrapani), the Protector Deity of the mountain. Chingis Khan and several Kings of Shambhala are believed to be emanations of Ochirvani.

Ochirvani with Otgon Tenger in the distance.

Ochirvani with Otgon Tenger in the distance.