Russia | Kalmykia | Elista | Dambijantsan

The next morning I proceed to the temple, where I am supposed to meet someone who will take me to the Kalmykian Institute for Humanistic Studies. In the lobby is a small shop selling prayer scarves, incense, and other religious paraphernalia, along with a smattering of books. One of the books is a biography of the Zaya Pandita. On the cover is a portrait of the Zaya Pandita which I had first seen in the Khovd Aimag Museum in Mongolia.

Portrait of Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), The Oirat Zaya Pandita

I had assumed that the portrait there was the original, but having seen copies of this same portrait half a dozen times already here in Kalmykia I am beginning to wonder if the original is somewhere here in Kalmykia and that perhaps the one in Khovd is a copy. I buy a copy of the book, whose author is A. B. Sandjiev, and am standing off to the side perusing it when a young man in his twenties approaches and introduces himself as Chogdor. He will be my guide to the institute. “I see you are reading my father’s book about Zaya Panditia,” he says. It turns out he is Chogdor Sandjiev. “Really!” said I. “I am quite interesting in Zaya Pandita. I would like to meet your father.” Unfortunately his father was in Moscow for the month of May.

The institute is a fifteen minute drive from the temple. In the small library we are met by another man in his twenties with a long ponytail and a mala wrapped around his wrist. His name is Bem. He is a student at the institute and is very fluent in English. He in turn introduces me to a short, stocky woman who must at in her seventies. She is in charge of research in the library, and she says she will collect all the material the library has on Dambijantsan.

Bem, Chogdor, and I proceed upstairs to the office of B. A. Bicheev, a professor at the institute. An stern looking man in this forties, he abrupty asks, “Why are you interested in Dambijantsan?” and without waiting for an answer adds, “Are you with the CIA?” Fifteen years ago, when I first lived in Russia, it was de rigueur to ask every American if they were CIA agents but this has gotten a bit old hat by now. “No,” I reply, “and in any case, I don’t think the CIA is interested in Dambijantsan.”

“Well, I don’t think Dambijantsan was a Kalmyk anyhow,” he says. It is true that the I. Lomakina, author of the book The Head of the Ja Lama, had thoroughly searched local records and archives in Kalmykia and had come up with nothing about Dambijantsan’s family or birthplace, but there is a host of peripheral and anecdotal data indicating that he was a Kalmyk of the Dörböt tribe. Why do you think he was not a Kalmyk? I asked the professor.

“Well, it is well known that Dambijantsan lived in Astrakhan in 1917, after he was released from prison in Siberia. Astrakhan was a very difficult and dangerous place to live in at that time. If he had relatives in the countryside he would have gone and stayed with them. But he didn’t. So I don’t think he had any relative here, and therefore was not a Kalmyk.”

This argument does not sound entirely convincing to me.

“But you must know that Dambijantsan was killed by a Kalmyk, a man named Kanukov,” the professor continued. I was aware of Kanukov’s claims. The indefatigable Lomakina had investigated this story at length. Kanukov, a former monk turned rabid Bolshevik, was with a detachment of Red Kalmyk agitators who came to Mongolia in the early 1920s. Apparently he was appointed Bolshevik commissar of Uliastai, the former headquarter of the Manchu administration in Mongolia, now the capital of Zavkhan Aimag, and was there when Baldandorj, then head of the Bolshevik Internal Security Department in Mongolia, arrived to plot the assassination of Dambijantsan. The assassination itself was carried out a small group of men led by the Mongolians Nanzad and Dugar-Beise. The Diluv Khutagt himself, who knew both Nanzad and Dugar-Beise and was himself involved in the plot, gives a detailed account of the assassination in his Autobiography. Indeed, the Diluv was an official in Uliastai at this time and he never even bothers to mention Kanukov. In any case, as I point out to Professor Bicheev, the details of the assassination are well known in Mongolia and Kanukov was in no way directly involved in it.

“Not so! he assert. “His report describing his role in the assassination is the State Archives of Kalmykia.”

I asked if he himself had read this report. He had not. Lomakina, a determined archival researcher, did study this report and summarizes it her book. Even in his own report Kanukov says that Nanzad and Dugar Beise carried out the actual assassination. He attempts to place himself in the middle of plotting the assassination but in Lomakina’s opinion this claim too is dubious. Elsewhere Kanukov makes the incredible claim that he himself captured Baron Ungern-Sternberg, the Notorious Psychopath who for a brief time in the 1921 had reigned as the uncrowned king of Mongolia. In Mongolia there are numerous versions of the capture of Ungern but in none of them does Kanukov play a role. In short, the picture of Kanukov which eventually emerges from the various accounts is that of a blowhard intent in insinuating himself into historical events in order to burnish his then burgeoning reputation as a certified Bolshevik Hero.

Now seeing any point pursuing this matter any further with Professor Bicheev, I asked instead if he is aware of any town in Kalmykia known as Aidarkhan, the alleged birthplace of Dambijantsan. Aidarkhan, he says, and Chogdor and Bem concur, is just the Kalmyk name for Astrakhan, the ancient city near the mouth of the Volga River. None of them are aware of any town named Aidarkhan in the current territory of Kalmykia. I suspect that the sources which say Dambijantsan was born in Aidarkhan (Astrakhan) meant that he was born in the province of Astrakhan, in which the Malo-Dörböt district was located in the nineteenth century. When I mention that I might go to the city of Astrakhan from Elista the professor exclaims, “Why do you want to go to Astrakhan? Do you work for the CIA?”

Changing the subject I ask him if he knows anything about I. Lomikina’s current whereabouts. I had attempted to track down information about her on the internet but had been unable to find anything. He says she died two or three years ago. This was sad, but intriguing. How old was she, I wondered, and what did she die of? The professor did not know. I added that there was a legend in Mongolia that anyone who tried to write about the life of Dambijantsan either did not succeed or came to a bad end. “I know about this,” said the professor. “Lomakina herself wrote in an article that when she saw Dambijantsan’s head in St. Petersburg she prayed that she would be allowed to finish her book without anything bad happening to her.”

And now she was dead. Owen Lattimore, I might add, had announced in print that he intended to write a biography of Dambijantsan but it never materialized. You would think that when a scholar of Lattimore’s statue announced he was doing a project like this he would have at least gathered some research materials. If he did they are not in his archives at the Library of Congress in Washington, which I combed thoroughly. Also, Lomakina herself tells of a Russian who in the 1920s gathered masses of material about Dambijantsan in Mongolia in view of writing a biography only to be arrested and later perish in a GULAG. His research materials disappeared without a trace. Then there was the German guy who spent twenty years amassing material for a movie about Dambijantsan. In the end the movie was never made . . .

There seemed little point in pursuing the discussion with Professor Bicheev. We went back down to the library where we were greeted by the elderly woman in charge who had said she would gather all the materials they had about Dambijantsan. I had visions of a mass of unpublished manuscripts, records, and other virgin materials, and was somewhat deflated when I saw the pile of books she had gathered together. Most them were well known sources which I had already studied. There was Burdukov’s Old and New Mongolia, one of the best sources of material about Dambijantsan, but which I have in my own Scriptorium in English and Mongolian editions as well as the original Russian edition; Maisky’s 1919 Modern Mongolia, which I have in English translation; Pozdneev’s Mongolia and the Mongols, which I also have in English translation; and a few other items, most of which I had either seen or was aware of. One item I had not seen was Kanukov’s Memoirs, where he recounts his alleged involvement in the assassination of Dambijantsan. As mentioned, however, Lomakina had reprised his account in her own book, of which I do have a copy. The Russian edition of Pozdneev’s Mongolia and the Mongols is interesting to page through, though, since it contains the Pozdneev’s photographs which were left out of the later English language edition. Including are photos of Amarbayasgalant Monastery as it looked in 1892 when Pozdneev visited. Amarbayasgalant, which I have visited many times, was built to house the remains of Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia. It was here that Pozdneev first heard about Dambijantsan. Pozdneev’s book is very first written account of Dambijantsan.

It’s soon clear that there is nothing really new here. I thanked the kindly old woman—I could tell she was a fellow hard-core bibliophile—for digging out the materials and we made our exit.

Hard-core Bibliophile in Scriptorium

I went back to the Golden Temple and sat in the main hall listening to the chanting of the monks and soaking up the peaceful vibes while at the same time watching the people filing through in hopes of spotting the people who owe me the money. Even if they don’t have the cash I would like to say hello. After three hours I still had not seen them. I am beginning to wonder if they are still in Kalmykia. Or is it possible that they were not from Kalmykia at all and had simply made up the story they had told me in Graz? Had I been an unwitting victim of a con-job? Dambijantsan was a Notorious Con-Man. Had I stumbled upon his imitators in Graz?

Russia | Kalmykia | Elista | Telo Tulku Rinpoche

The next morning I have breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which is plush with carpets and still more blonde-wooded furniture. The house breakfast is frugal however; an small omelet, some paper-thin slices of cold cuts and cheese and bread, plus an expresso cup of instant coffee. At the table next to me are four Russian businessman in suits. They order a liter and a half bottle of vodka and consume it with their breakfast. Some things in Mother Russia never change.

The night before Andzha had given me a Russian SIMMs Card for my cell phone and now he calls me. Telo Rinpoche had been in India but he had just arrived yesterday with his teacher, the head of Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India. At noon there will be a greeting ceremony for the Drepung Tripa, the official title of the lama from India, at the big Altan Süm (Golden Temple), the Rinpoche’ headquarters here in Elista, and the Rinpoche will have a few minutes to speak to me in his office beforehand. Also the monastery’s guest apartment is now ready to be occupied and Andzha will take me there before we go to the Golden Temple.

The apartment is in Microrayon #2, about a mile from the Golden Temple. The building is a Khrushchev-era construction exactly like apartment buildings in Ulaan Baatar from the same era. The builders could have used the same blueprints. Even the doors are the same. I have lived in several of these kinds of apartment buildings in UB so I immediately feel right at home. There’s no furniture but there are a a couple of mattresses propped against one wall. I put one of these on the floor and cover it with a carpet, not a handmade silk carpet like the one I sleep on in Ulaan Baatar but a machine-made woolen carpet from Turkey, but, hey, one can’t have all the comforts of home while traveling. In a corner is a pile of blankets and pillows. The kitchen has a gas stove but there is no hot water.

From here we proceed directly to the Golden Temple. This imposing structure is the largest Buddhist temple in Europe. It was completed only in 2005.

Golden Temple

Andzha drives in the private entrance at the back of the monastery and after taking off our shoes in the first floor entry hall take an elevator to the fourth floor where the Telo Rinpoche has his residence and office. From the elevator we step into a large room which at first glance seems to contain an enormous Buddhist-oriented craps table. But no, it is in fact an immense conference table, seating twenty-four, with a mandala embedded in the middle of it.

Conference Table with Mandala in the middle

Closer view of Mandala. The bottom side of the Mandala is visible in the ceiling of the Main Hall of the Temple.

I have a sudden vision of the 25th King of Shambhala sitting here with his staff, including General Hanuman, the Final Incarnation of the Bogd Gegeen, directing the final battle against the barbarian unbelievers. Andzha adds that the main temple hall is directly below this room, and that the bottom side of the mandala, painted with the same design, can be seen in the ceiling of the hall. All the prayers offered in the main temple ascend through the mandala and concentrate themselves here in this conference room.

The Telo Tulku Rinpoche’s luxurious office, appointed like that of a now disgraced CEO of a Too-Big-to-Fail bank in the USA, is off to one side of this awe-inspiring conference room. The redolence odor of rancid butter, mutton fat, and juniper incense common to monasteries in Mongolia, some of which have not felt a broom since before the fall of the Qing Dynasty, is noticeably absent here.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche

The Telo Rinpoche, the latest in a line of incarnations going back to Mangala, one of the original disciples of the Buddha and including Tilopa, one the 84 Mahasiddis of India, and the last Diluv Khutagt of Mongolia, whose book I have mentioned, greets me warmly. He must meet the Drepung Tripa shortly but he says that afterward he will give me a guided tour of the temple. In the meantime what can he do for me? I tell him that I would like to talk to historians who might know something about Dambijantsan, who was born here in Kalmykia and whose life I am researching, and who like the Rinpoche himself is considered to be, in some circles at least, an incarnation of one the 84 Mahasiddis of India, in Dambijantsans case the mahasiddi known as Güwari. The Rinpoche summons his secretary and instructs her to call one of the local research instittutes and track down any scholars who can shed some light on the up until now shadowy existence of Dambijantsan here in Kalmykia.

Then we take the elevator down to the first floor of the temple and proceed out into the immense main hall. Telo Rinpoche goes out to front gate to meet the Drepung Tripa and I remain behind. A couple hundred people have assembled to greet Drepung Tripa, and many are buying khadags (prayer scarves) from a small shop out front to present to him. Finally a procession of monks lead by Telo Rinpoche proceeds from the front gate to the entrance of the main hall of the temple. The Drepung Tripa, who appears to be in his sixties, comes last, bestowing his blessings on all those who approach him.

Telo Tulku Rinpoche (left) leading the procession into the Temple

The Drepung Tripa blessing people outside the Temple

He is the head of Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India, which was founded by Tibetans who fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959 and named after Drepung Monastery in Tibet. Gomang was one of the several colleges at Drepung in Lhasa and the one at which most Mongolians monks who studied in Lhasa attended. Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, stayed at Gomang during his visits to Mongolia.

Ruins of Gomang College at Drepung in Lhasa

Many other famous Mongolian lamas studied here, including Agvan Dorzhiev, the Buryat who eventually became a tutor to the 13th Dalai and who Accompanied the Dalai Lama to Mongolia in 1904 when the latter fled Tibet after the invasion of the Younghusband Expedition.

Agvan Dorzhiev

Dambijantsan also reportedly attended Gomang College at Drepung in Lhasa. It was here that he allegedly killed his monastic roommate after a quarrel, an act which of course ended his monastic career and put him on the path which would eventually lead him to Mongolia. As George Roerich, in his book Trails to Inmost Asia, notes, “It seems the murder was the crucial point of his life for from then on begins his life as an errant warrior monk, full of wonderful adventures, messianic prophecies, and cruel deeds.”

The Drepung Tripa

The Drepung Tripa mounts the throne in the main hall of the temple and a chanting ceremony begins. After he is served a ceremonial offering of tea and rice people line up to again receive his blessing, after which everyone receives a small portion of rice (Drepung, I might add here, means “Rice Heap”). This greeting ceremony concluded the Drepung Tripa proceeds to the Telo Rinpoche’s office on the fourth floor. The Rinpoche asks me to come with along. At this office he is greeted by a camera crew from a Russian television station. It seems they want an interview with him. “I wanted to give you a tour of the temple,” he said, “But now I must talk to these people. But the monks are going to give the Drepung Tripa a complete tour of the temple, so just tag along with them and you will see everything.” The Drepung Tripa and his group go up to the fifth floor and I follow. The public is normally not allowed above the fourth floor, since the fifth floor contains a huge suite reserved solely for the Dalai Lama should he ever visit Kalmykia again. He has not visited since the temple has been built but there are high hopes he will soon.

At the entrance to the Dalai Lama’s suite on the fifth floor a guard stops me, the only person not in monks’ robes, and says, “Sorry, the public is not allowed up here.” Like a groupie who says, ”I’m with the band,” I said, “I am with the Drepung Tripa.” The guard said, “Oh, excuse me, I am so sorry!” Putting his hand together he bowed and said, “Please, please, go in!”

Sitting Room of the Dalai Lama’s Suite

The suite is immense, with magnificent carpets and sumptuous sofas and chairs. Should the Dalai Lama feel homesick, on one wall there is a painting of the Potala, his former home in Lhasa. I have toured the Dalai Lama’s living quarters in the Potala several times and oddly enough they are preserved just the way he left them, although apparently not in anticipation of his return.

Painting of the Potala in the Dalai Lama’s Suite

On the facing wall is a painting of the Golden Temple. To one side of the sitting room is the Dalai Lama’s bedroom, complete with double bed. Instead of a chocolate, there is a prayer scarf on the pillow.

Dalai Lama’s bed: there’s no chocolate on pillow but there is a prayer scarf

Just off the bedroom is a small study and meditation niche with a mat on the floor and low table. Off to the other side of the sitting room are conference rooms and rooms for the Dalai Lama’s attendants.

Dalai Lama’s Meditation and Study Niche

The sixth floor, which is actually a walkway around the cupola at the top of the temple is also normally closed to the public but of course we get to go up for a look. From here we get a good view at the very modest city of Elista, which ends abruptly less than half a mile away, beyond which treeless steppe stretches off to the horizon. It is windy even here, and even bit cool, but the Drepung Tripa lingers, seeming to enjoy the view from all four sides of the cupola.

View of Elista from the cupola of the Temple

Another view from the cupola

The Drepung Tripa enjoying the view from the cupola

From here we descend back down to the first floor for a tour of the monastery’s Scriptorium, which in additional to a large collection of regular books and Tibetan-language sutras has high speed internet free for the public. The Drepung Tripa asks to see several Tibetan language sutras and lingers over them for awhile.

Drepung Tripa perusing tome in the Scriptorium

I cannot help noticing a display case contaiing a collection of books about the Oirat Zaya Pandita (1599–1622), whose path I keep crossing in the most unexpected places.

Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), The Oirat Zaya Pandita

He is the inventor of the so-called Tod Bichig Script, a variation of the traditional vertical Mongolian script. While researching the dialects of western Mongolia he stayed at Tögrög Monastery in the small town of Mankhan, on the Dund Tsenger River in what is now Khovd Aimag. Dambijantsan’s camp, where in 1912 he assembled his troops for the assault on the Manchu Fortress in Khovd City, was located on the Dund Tsenger Gol not far from Mankhan. The Zaya Pandita also accompanying the little six-old prince Galdan to Lhasa in 1649 when the latter went there to become a monk. Galdan, who later renounced his vows as a monk and became the khan of the Zungarians, or Western Mongols, would launch a disastrous war against the Eastern Mongols, led by Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen. Seeking protection from Galdan, Zanabazar in 1691 accepted the suzerainzy of the Qing Dynasty in China, making Mongolia a province of China and leading to the subjugation of the Eastern Mongols by the Manchus for 220 years. To free Mongolia from China became the overriding goal of the first part of Dambijantsan’s life.

From the Scriptorium we moved on to the very finely appointed museum of the monastery. Among the plethora of displays here, too numerous to detail, was another exhibit about the Zaya Pandita and also one about Agvan Dorzhiev, the enigmatic Buryat, mentioned before, who did much to revitalize Buddhism in Kalmykia at the beginning of the twentieth century. As mentioned, Dorzhiev reportedly studied with Dambijantsan at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa. Next to the Museum we peek into the lusciously appointed Conference and Film Viewing Hall.

Conference Hall

The Drepung Tripa then retired to his quarters. Andzha and I went to the monastery’s canteen for a late lunch of hearty beef and barley soup (Andzha, despite his years as a monk in India, is not a vegetarian). While we were eating he got a call from Telo Rinpoche, who said that a meeting had been set up for me tomorrow at the Kalmykian Institute of Humanistic Research. Apparently the panditas there know something about Dambijantsan.

Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #18

After Dambijantsan was Deported from Mongolia in 1891, we hear nothing more about him, apart from a couple of unsubstantiated rumors, for the next twenty years. How does a man like Dambijantsan, who had electrified the populace of Mongolia during his sojourns there in 1890 and 1891, almost immediately becoming the stuff of legend, and whose charisma, will power, and apparent magical abilities had left an indelible impression on almost everyone who met him, simply disappear for twenty years? This is just one of the many mysteries of Dambijantsan’s life. I might note parenthetically that arguably the greatest magus of the nineteenth-century, Helena Blavatsky, also disappeared completely for twenty years, a lacuna which even her most assidious biographers have been unable to fill in, and that the likewise arguably greatest magus of the twentieth century, George Gurdjieff, also disappeared for twenty years, another lacuna which has left biographers scratching their heads in puzzlement and dismay. And need I add that Jesus of Nazareth also disappeared for twenty years, a period about which the Bible has absolutely nothing to say? It is intriguing that legend, if not historical documentation, places Blavatsky, Gurdieff, Dambijantsan, and Jesus in India and Tibet during at least part of their missing years, but this is a topic which I must put aside for the moment while I deal with Dambijantsan’s reappearance in 1910, when he suddenly materialized in the town of Karashahr, in what is now Xinjiang Province, China.

Here he sought out the Brothers Kryajev, Russian merchants who were operating in the area at the time. One of the brothers may have been P. I. Kryajev, who back in 1891 had been living in Uliastai and had been instrumental in gaining Dambijantsan’s release from the Qing authorities. Dambijantsan was traveling under an alias and had “somewhat changed exterior; his face was shaven now whereas formerly he wore a beard.” Karashahr, now known as Yanqi, just west of Bosten Lake, on the south side of the Tian Shan Range, was in an area inhabited by Torgut Mongols, many of them descendants of the Torguts who took part in the Great Migration of Kalmyk Mongols from the Caspian Steppes in Russia back to China in 1772. Today the area is in the Bayangol Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang and is still home to many Torgut Mongols.

As noted earlier, Dambijantsan probably visited this area during his 1890 Sojourn through Xinjiang. Dambijantsan, himself a Dörböt, like the Torguts one of the tribes which made up the Kalmyks, would have found himself at home here among the descendants of the migrants from the Caspian Steppes along the Volga River where he was born, and he ended up staying in the Karashahr area for over a year. He must have had his ear to the ground and his political senses no doubt told him that the decrepit Qing Dynasty, tottering on its last legs, was about to come to an ignominious end. Perhaps he was just biding his time among the Torgut Mongols near Karashahr, waiting for the proper moment to make a dramatic return to western Mongolia.

According to Diluv Khutagt he arrived back in the Khovd area in late 1911 in the company of “man got up like a lama, and they had two riding camels.” The man’s man was Jimbe, and at this point he was apparently Dambijantsan’s sole disciple. At first Dambijantsan did not give out his name, but he soon became known as Khoër Temeed Badarchin, the Wandering Monk with Two Camels, the same nickname he had gotten during his earlier stay in Mongolia Soon the rumor spread that he was either Amarsanaa himself, in accordance with the legend that Amarsanaa had in fact never died, but had learned the secret of immortality, or that he was a descendant or perhaps reincarnation of Amarsanaa, returning to avenge Amarsanaa and continue his quest to free the Mongols from the hated Manchus. The legend of Amarsanaa’s return to Mongolia in one form or another dated from the late eighteenth century, and people might well have remembered the Dambijantsan’s earlier appearance in 1890-91 when he was claiming to be Amarsanaa’s descendant or incarnation. The Russian trader Burdukov noted that upon returning to Mongolia each spring from Russia, people would “naively ask when Amarsanaa will come and save us.” Now it appeared their prayers were about to be answered.

The mysterious badarchin, according to the Diluv, “was a very powerful man and the saddlebags which his men couldn’t lift he could lift onto a camel . . . He was armed with a long old-style Mongol flintlock. Although he came from the Volga, he spoke the Khalkh dialect very well. He called himself a lama, but nobody knew if he really was one. Nobody knew his real age. Nobody knew the real truth about him.” Soon people did become aware of his real, or alleged, name, Dambijantsan, and as they repeated this name it got shortened to Dambija (the name by which many in Mongolia recognize him to this day), then finally to just Ja. Apparently from this time he first became known as Ja Lama. He also became known as Ja Bogd (bodg = holy) and Ja Bagsh (bagsh = teacher).

According to the Diluv Khutagt, Dambijantsan, ”visited the Torguud (Torgut) and Ööld banners one after another and everywhere caused everyone, great and small, to have faith in him, and spent several months in Zakhchin Da’s region.” At the time there were two Zakhchin Banners southeast of Khovd City, the Da Khoshuu and the Gün Khoshuu. Dambijantsan finally decided to set up headquarters among the Zakhchin Da Khoshuu. The word zakhchin itself means “borderer,” and the Zakhchin people were one of many ethnic groups who fell under the general rubric of Western, or Oirat Mongols. They inhabit the area to this day, centered around the now neat and tidy little sum center of Mankhan. In Dambijantsan’s day, the town was well-known as the site of a monastery known as Tögrögiin Khüree. The famous lama Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), who became better known as the Oirat Zaya Pandita, once lived here. At the at the age of nineteen Namkhaijantsan had gone to Tibet where he was ordained as a monk by the Dalai Lama himself. He staying in Tibet for eighteen years before coming back to western Mongolia. In 1649 he returned to Tibet as the chaperone and tutor of the five-year old Oirat prince Galdan (later Galdan Bolshigt) who himself entered the monkhood. (Dambijantsan, as we shall see, adopted Galdan Boshigt as one of his role models.)

Galdan Bolshigt (1644–1697)

A formidable polymathic scholar, the Zaya Pandita is famous for inventing the so-called “Clear Script” (Tod Bichig), a modification on the Uighuro-Mongolian vertical script already in use by the Mongols. It was while studying the various dialects of the Western Mongols that Namkhaijantsan stayed at the monastery in Mankhan. Over 2,000 manuscripts on religious subjects written in Clear Script still exist in the libraries of Ulaan Baatar, including forty-seven composed between 1652 and 1662 by Zaya Pandita himself. The script is still used by Torguts in Xinjiang.

Namkhaijantsan (1599–1662), The Oirat Zaya Pandita

In 1911, when Dambijantsan arrived in the area, the Zakhchin were ruled by the 12th Zakhchin Noyon (noyon = prince). The Noyon, whose given name was Sambuu, was born in 1864, the Year of the Mouse, at a place called Khuural Tsenkher, in what is now Mankhan Sum. He was the second son of a herdsman who, although very poor, was well known as a doctor practicing traditional Mongolian medicine. Sambuu’s talents were recognized early, and when he was ten years old the 10th Noyon of the Zakhchin, Dalantai, took him on as a disciple and student. Dalantai was a very learned man and highly respected as a Dalai, a man whose knowledge was as vast as on ocean (dalai = ocean, oceanic, etc.). Under the tutorage of the 10th Noyon, Sambuu learned old Mongolia Vertical Script, the Tod Script of the Oirat Zaya Pandita, the Manchu and Tibetan languages, and also studied medicine sutras and other Tibetan medical texts. He eventually became a maaramba, a practitioner of traditional medicine, and was much respected by the Zakhchin people as a doctor and a knowledgeable and talented person in general.

Sambuu, the 12th Zakhchin Noyon

Meanwhile the 10th Noyon died and was replaced by a man named Nyamdeleg, who became the 11th Noyon. Nyamdeleg soon fell ill and his health became so bad that he was unable to fulfill his duties and had to stand down. The office of Noyon was not hereditary; it could be awarded to anyone the populace, led by the lesser noblemen, felt could best perform the job. Sambuu, well known for his knowledge and pure mindedness, was soon proclaimed the 12th Zakhchin Noyon. Ever energetic, he embarked on a campaign to upgrade the Tögrögiin Khüree and other monasteries and temples and imported skilled craftsmen from China to do the work. His goal was to make these monasteries the center of Buddhism in western Mongolia.

He also had a more militant turn of mind and with the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in the Fall of 1911 he declared himself ready to fight for Mongolian independence. Therefore he apparently had no objections when Dambijantsan, voraciously expounding on the need to eject the Manchus from western Mongolia and unite the Mongolia people, suddenly showed up in his territory and announced his intention to establish a winter camp about 20 miles south of Mankhan, on the Tsenkher Gol, where the river emerges from a canyon through the Mongol-Altai Mountain. On his peregrinations around western Mongolia Dambijantsan had already attracted a small flock of disciples and followers and these people too moved to the Tsenkher Gol camp.

Apparently it was here at his winter camp on Tsenkher Gol that on December 29, 1911, Dambijantsan did what the Diluv Khutagt called a “strange, magical thing." According to the Diluv Khutagt:

The Bogd was declared Khan of Mongolia at the time of the Mongol Revolution in 1911. Long before the news of this event reached Western Mongolia, Ja Lama called the people around him, and said, “The time for rejoicing has arrived.’ He then touched the barrel of his gun to the top of each man’s head, in the way a lama gives a blessing with his prayer beads, and said, ‘Go to the east and pray.’ Later is was discovered that this was the exact day on which the Bogd had been declared Khaan.