The Mahabodhi Temple

My flight from Bangkok arrived in Gaya at 3:20 p.m. This airport is a new development since I was in Bodhgaya two years ago. Before, if you were arriving by plane, it was necessary to fly to Patna, the capital of the state of Bihar, 70 miles away, or to Varanasi, 145 miles to the west in Uttar Pradesh state. The roads connecting these two cities with Bodhgaya are horrifically potholed and often jammed bumper-to-bumper for miles with exhaust-belching lorries and other transport, and the buses are notoriously slow and cramped. For rail travelers, the mainline of the Delhi-Calcutta railroad passes through Gaya, just ten miles from Bodhgaya, but if if you arrive at night you have to stay in Gaya, since all visitors are emphatically warned not to travel between Gaya and Bodhgaya after dark, when this section of road is reputedly beleaguered by particularly rapacious bandits. The new airport, with international flights from Bangkok and Singapore, and domestic flights from Delhi and Calcutta, has now made Bodhgaya relatively accessible to foreign pilgrims and tourists unwilling or unable to brave the more cumbersome modes of Indian transport, assuming of course they have the money to fly,

The new airport has just one landing strip. The plane parks on the tarmac and passengers walk to the small one-story building which serves as a terminal. Inside the terminal I strike up a conversation with the only other American on the plane, a heavy-set guy in his thirties named Rob, who is from Seattle and works for Cisco Systems. It turns out he is also doing the 28-day retreat at Root Institute. We agree to share a cab to Root, where Rob was made reservations, but I intend to spend the night in the town itself. Twenty-eight days, I figure, will be enough time at Root, without going there before the retreat starts.

Outside we are immediately accosted by a man in his early twenties touting taxis. He wants fifteen dollars to drive to Root and then on to Bodhgaya, which sounds excessive, given it's at most ten miles, but we are both eager to get to town before it gets dark, so we agree. ?First time in India?? the guy asks Rob. It is. "You were here two years ago, right?" he says to me. Indeed I had been. I had of course met a number of the free-lance guides, touts, and small-times hustlers who make a living off pilgrims and tourists, but I don't remember this guy. "You are easy to remember. So tall!" he says. Indeed, a souvenir salesman right in front of the Mahabodhi Temple who over the years had watched hundreds of thousands of people pass by his shop said that I was the tallest person he had ever seen. The local people as a rule are not big. Our young guide stands 5'2" at most and 5'8"would be considered tall here.

Root Institute is located about a mile from downtown Bodhgaya. The walled compound, the size of three or four football fields, lies about a quarter of mile off the main road amidst perfectly flat fields of emerald green winter wheat already in head. We leave Rob off at the entrance gate - I tell him I will see him again in a couple of days - and continue on into Bodhgaya.

The town of Bodhgaya itself, although said to have a population of 25,000 (this figure apparently includes neighboring villages) is actually quite small, with most of the local businesses - those catering to the inhabitants and not to visitors - huddled on one main street running along the bank of Neranjara River. The rest of the town, running westward from the river for about half a mile, caters almost entirely to pilgrims and tourists. Many of the Buddhist lands of Asia, including Tibet, China, Burma, Thailand, Sikkim, Bhutan, Vietnam, Nepal, and Japan maintain monasteries, temples, and guest houses here, and there are numerous hotels, guesthouses, and restaurants, most catering to the frugal pilgrim and low-budget traveler, although a couple, mainly those serving organized tour groups, have pretensions to being up-scale.

I check first at the guesthouse of the Tibetan Monastery, right on the main square. The last time I was in Bodhgaya the Dalai Lama was in residence here and it was impossible to get a room, but now there's no problem. The rooms are 150 rupees a night ($3.50) a night. I try to pay when I check in but the monk in charge waves off my money. "Stay as long as you like. Pay when you leave," he says. My room on the third floor is small but fairly clean, with two single beds, a small table, two stool, and a bath with Indian-style squatter toilet. Apparently you are supposed to bring your own blanket, towel, and soap., There's no hot water either, but the cold water is lukewarm and not at all uncomfortable to shower in. The floor is marble, which might sound extravagant, but this is India where marble is more common than linoleum and often found in even the cheapest venues. It also has the advantage of staying relatively cool on even the hottest days. A wide balcony runs the length of the building and all the rooms open onto it. The doorways are covered with Tibetan-style door curtains and most people have their doors open. On one side of me are two Korean nuns who are hanging up their underwear on a wash line and on the other side two elderly Tibetan monks.


From my doorway I can see, a few hundred yards away, the raison d'etre of Bodhgaya, the Mahabodhi Temple which marks the stop where the Siddhartha Gautama achieved Enlightenment and became the Buddha. My new-found friend the taxi tout, who has been waiting outside the monastery gate, wants to give me a tour of the temple. I finally manage to shake him off, telling him I have been here before and don't need a guide, but not before he tells me that he is starting a school in his native village, on the outskirts of Bodhgaya, and that a new building and books are needed. Fifty dollars would be greatly appreciated and the people of his village would be eternally grateful. I can only laugh. This scam is so lame that the last time I was here there were zeroxed posters in all the internet caf?s warning people to beware of this very come-on. Sometimes the con is quite elaborate. Guys will actually take you to a village and show you a building under construction. Another guy who speaks English will conveniently appear with details about the school and samples of the textbooks that are needed. But it is all a hoax, designed mainly to prey on the guilty consciences of affluent Westerners, especially those in India for the first time and suffering culture shock from the all-to-obvious poverty. I tell my new friend that since it?s my first day in town I don't have time yet for philanthropic activities, but see me in a week or two. By then I will be in my retreat.

Just across the square from the Tibetan Guest House a wide pedestrians-only promenade leads to the entrance of the temple. The left side is lined with small shops and internet joints and on the right, behind iron and stone grillwork, can be seen the temple itself. I am surprised by how quiet things are. The last time I was here, when the Dalai Lama in residence and giving a Kalachakra initiation, this eight hundred foot-long avenue was jammed with thousands of pilgrims and every available space was covered with blankets on which street peddlers displayed their goods. To reach the temple you had to run a gauntlet of hard-core beggars: the blind, the leprous, horribly disfigured cripples, polio victims, the hopelessly insane, and stick-thin children in grimy rags. Now the setting is positively idyllic. A few hundred pilgrims are strolling about, many of them women in all-white outfits, and only a dozen or so child beggars tentatively hold out their hands. And the boulevard actually appears clean, as if it had recently been swept. I stop at a tea stall right in front of the entrance to the temple for this trip's first glass of India tea, or chai, made with milk, heavily sugared, and served in small glasses. A full glass is three rupees (seven cents) and a half glass is 2 rupees (4.5 cents). A lot of the clientele here, I notice, can only afford a half glass.

By the outer gate I am accosted by the usual run of peddlers selling leaves supposedly from the famed Bodhi Tree itself (but much more likely from another specimen of Ficus religiosa, the pipal tree), postcards, cheap brass Buddhas, silk-screened depictions of the Buddha?s feet (assuming his feet were three feet long), incense, lotus flowers, marigold garlands, and what not. I buy a marigold garland and proceed to the inner gate. There in front of me, looming out of a sunken courtyard, is the immense pile of the Mahabodhi Temple, surely one of the most imposing religious monuments in the world, and arguable the most sacred to Buddhists. Made almost entirely of brick, it consists of a base perhaps twenty feet high topped by a elongated pyramid rising 170 feet. At the top of each of the four corners of the base are smaller pyramids. At the moment the view of the temple is marred by scaffolding rising almost halfway up its height on two sides. The temple has been declared a World Heritage Monument by UNESCO - the official dedication ceremony had been just been held on a couple of weeks earlier, on 19 February - and an effort is underway to spruce up the its exterior and the courtyard surrounding the temple.


Entrance to the Temple

Taking off my shoes - there's a one hundred rupee fine for wearing shoes in the inner precincts of the temple grounds- I descend the stone staircase to the short avenue leading to the temple entrance. Almost everything here speaks of great antiquity. On the right are four large dome-shaped stupas, one of which, about eight feet high, is surmounted by three smaller stupas. On its surface carved in high relief, is a two-foot high Buddha. On either side are two smaller Buddhas. Just below these I am surprised to see two White Taras, one about a foot high and the other about eight inches high. The rest of the stupa is covered with plaques on which are carved hundreds, perhaps thousands of inch-high Buddhas. This stupa supposedly dates from the Pala period, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a.d., and assuming that the Taras date from the same period would seem to indicate that White Tara, which as I have mentioned was later depicted by Zanabazar in Mongolia, was venerated here from at least that period.


Pala Era Stupa

On the left is the small pink Buddhapada Temple, in front of which is a huge flat-topped stone, bigger than a bushel basket, on which depictions of the Buddha?s feet have been carved. These are the prototypes of the silk-screened feet being sold in the entranceway to the temple.


The Buddhapada Temple

An inscription on the side of the stone is dated to 1308, although the stone and carvings of the Buddha's feet are probably much older.


The Buddha's Feet carved into a stone

A few feet further on I pass through gateway constructed of two massive stone columns about ten feet apart and twenty feet high. The right column is a replacement, but the left column and the stone crosspiece joining the two columns are covered with intricate carvings which date the gateway to about the eighth century a.d.


Eighth-century Gateway

From the gateway I can see into the entrance of the temple, where at the end of a short corridor is the eight foot high Buddha which supposedly rests on the very spot where the Buddha achieved Enlightenment.


Entrance to the temple, with the Buddha visible through the corridor

Before entering, however, I step to the right, where on the side of the entranceway, mounted in a niche in the wall and facing north, is a three foot high Green Tara, depicted in exactly the same pose as the Zanabazar?s Green Tara in the Winter Palace in Ulaan Baatar. As usual devotees of Tara are lined up to pay homage. Some stand twenty-five feet away, make a wish, then walk forward with their eyes closed and one arm outstretched. If upon reaching the wall they can reach up and touch Tara's feet their wish will come true. Tara, it will be remembered, is the granter of all boons to those who simply believe in her. Others stand with their heads pressed against the cool black stone beneath the pedestal on which Tara is seated and repeat her mantra: Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha. Her body is covered with postage stamped-sized pieces of gold leaf pressed onto her by devotees and on a narrow ledge at her feet are bowls of marigolds, smoking bundles of incense, and lotus flowers. I step forward and drape my marigold garland over her neck. I too have reason to be thankful to Tara.


Green Tara


I was on a Camel Trip in the Gobi Desert. The day before we had left Amarbuyant Monastery in Bayankhongor province in western Mongolia, intent on retracing the route used by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1904 when he fled Tibet in the wake of the invasion of the Younghusband Expedition from British India. His camel caravan had crossed the Chinese-Mongolian border somewhere south of Shar Khuls Oasis in southern Bayankhongor, and proceeded north to Amarbuyant. We?three camel herders, the wife of one of the camel herders who was serving as cook, a translator, myself, and nine camels?were following his route in reverse to Shar Khuls, one hundred and five miles south of Amarbuyant. As there was only one well on the way we had to carry 200 liters of water. We expected to take six days to reach Shar Khuls and then another four to reach Estiyn Gol Oasis, where a jeep would meet us.

We had stopped for a lunch the second day when a man in his fifties rode up on a dirt bike. Showing his identification, he announced that he was the Ranger for the Great Gobi Protected Area, a natural reserve which we had just entered, and demanded to see our permits. I had inquired about permits in Ulaan Baatar and had been assured that I could get them from the rangers we met, providing we met any, which I had been told by knowledgeable sources was very unlikely. Through my translator I told the ranger this, but he quickly informed us that he had no authority whatsoever to give out permits and that they could only be issued by the government in Ulaan Baatar after submitting a detailed itinerary noting each night's camping spot and a written explanation of exactly why we needed to enter the preserve. The area we were in was open only to scientific researchers with permits issued by the government. For all he knew we might be poaching wildlife, doing illegal searches for mineral deposits, or might even be spies. The Chinese border, after all, was not far off. We could be fined and even imprisoned for entered this area without a permit. In short, we had to turn back immediately and return to Amarbuyant Monastery or he would arrest us.

My translator explained that we did not know we needed permits and that we were only trying to retrace the path of the 13th Dalai Lama to Shar Khuls. The ranger ignored this, repeating that that we had to return to Amarbuyant immediately. He was not leaving until we had reloaded our camels and started back. By then our lunch of mutton and noodles was ready and he did not scruple to turn down a bowl and a refill while waiting for us to pack up. I slowly worked my way through three bowls. It would be a bitter disappointment to turn back now after all the planning, time, and expense which had gone into this trip, but the ranger, my translator assured me, was one of those officious, stubborn types, who liked to flaunt his authority and was unlike to back down. "The stupid fucker is probably a communist," she noted, in what was for her an unusual display of profanity.

I finished my last bowl of noodles and took a cup of tea. So that was that. We had to return to Amarbuyant. Then I thought of Tara. The two previous nights I had sat up late under the stars doing visualizations of Tara and repeating her mantra. Could she help me now? Ignoring the ranger, I took out my mala and began reciting Tara?s mantra while visualizing her spreading benevolent white light over our benighted world. Halfway through the mala a noticed a whirlwind out on the desert several miles away. A few moments later a huge gust of wind swept over us. The ranger jumped up and helped my camel men threw saddle blankets over our gear to keep it from getting covered by sand. By the time I had finished 108 Tara mantras the wind had died down completely. The ranger sat down on a saddle blanket and lit a cigarette. He seemed to be deep in thought. "I am really not authorized to give out permits," he finally announced, "but I am a religious man and I feel I should not stop you if you are doing a pilgrimage on the path of the Dalai Lama. I will give you a special permit which will allow you to proceed and which you can show to any other rangers you meet. But remember, this is a strictly protected area and you must not come here again without a permit from Ulaan Baatar. If you do you will surely be fined or sent to jail." Then dropping his official role he helped the camel men reload our camels, casually chatting and sharing his cigarettes with them. As we were mounting our camels and getting ready to leave he said, "The only water between Amarbuyant and Shar Khuls is the well at my winter camp. You will reach it tomorrow night. I suggest you camp there. I think the Dalai Lama himself camped at this well on his third night from Khar Khuls. Have a good journey."

"My God! exclaimed my translator later as we rode side by side on our camels. "That was really strange! I never thought that he would change his mind." I did not say anything, but I silently thanked Tara.


Leaving the Green Tara I turned back to entrance way to the temple. I was surprising to see no line of people waiting to get into the inner sanctum. I last time I was here hundreds were lined up already at five o'clock in the morning when the doors opened and a all day long thousand more surged through the hallway and small room containing the temple?s main image of Buddha.


The main image of the Buddha in the Inner Sanctum

Inside the inner sanctum four Tibetan monks and three Western women were sitting on the floor in meditation postures. In front is a six-foot high Buddha seated on a high platform. This is the Inner Vajrasana, or Diamond Seat, believed to be built on the very spot where Sidhartta Gautama attained Enlightenment in 527 BC, and a slab of sandstone built into the platform on which the statue sits may be the actual seat he used, although of course there is debate about this. Few question, however, that this is the very axis mundi of Buddhism, the most holy and sacred place in the world, if not in the universe. Indeed, when this universe finally winds down and returns into the Void which it came, the Vajrasana, according to Buddhist legend, will be the very last thing to disappear, and when a new universe appears after the next Big Bang it will be the very first thing to materialize. Placing my head on the cool stone of the platform for a few moments, I have a sudden vision of the farm in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania where I was born. How did I get from there to here, I wondered? There was absolutely nothing in my upbringing or my early life which should have led to this particular place and moment in time, but here I am, in India, in Bodhgaya, in front of Vajrasana. Perhaps more importantly, where do I go from here? There are many options, before making any major moves I decide I better have another glass of tea. I ease my way out of the inner sanctum before I become engulfed in any other ruminations. The twenty-eight day retreat is looming and there will be time enough for that.


Another view of the Mahabodhi Temple

I have finally emerged from occultation. I am now in Bodhgaya, India. The season here is just about over, with the hot weather already here; up in the low nineties in the afternoon. Internet connections here are exceeding slow. I will try to post some photos of Bodhgaya when I find something better.

I will be in occultation from Feb. 5 to March 5. Please check back here after March 5 . . .

Flew from Beijing to Bangkok (bird flu and lots and lots of French tourists) and then on to Gaya, India. Now in Bodhgaya. Quiet here compared to other years. Wish I could upload some photos but the internet is very slow here . . . Hope to be back with more soon as I find a better connection . . .

Finally tracked down my friend Rahila, who I met several years ago while traveling in Xinjiang. She is now a secretary at an embassy of a South American country in Beijing . . .


Rahila


Rahila

Back in Bejing. During my last trip here I mentioned Shun-shih, the Qing emperor who invited the Fifth Dalai Lama to Beijing in 1651. To commemorate this event he had built the so-called White Pagoda, located in what is now Beihai Park. This is still one of the landmarks of the Beijing sky line.


The 121-foot high White Pagoda in Beihai Park


Closer View of the White Pagoda

Bodyo, Khatun Monkhtuya, and Urna

The other day I dropped in to see the good folks at Genghis Expeditions in their strategically located office just across the street from the main post office on the corner of Sukhebaatar Square. I first met Monkhtuya and Urna, two mainstays of this tour agency and outfitter six or seven years ago when they were working for another outfit. I met Bodyo later and did a trip to Kherman Tsav in the Gobi Desert with him. They have since gone out on their own and started Genghis Expeditions. I have hired a jeep and driver from them on numerous occasions. They charge the going rate for jeeps in Mongolia – 300 togrogs, or a little least than thirty cents, a kilometer, and they have of the added advantage of screening their drivers carefully and guaranteeing that their jeeps are in good shape. In addition, they provide good backup. Although I have never been in one of their jeeps when it suffered a serious breakdown I know of one case last summer when one did in Övörkhangai aimag. The driver phoned Ulaan Baatar and they immediately dispatched another jeep to Övörkhangai and the tourists were able to continue on their way with a minimum loss of time. If you hire a jeep and driver you just happen to met lurking about Sukhebaatar Square, on the other hand, you never know if he is a reliable person who knows his way around the countryside or if his vehicle is in good shape. I am constantly hearing stories about people who had to bail out of a jeep trip in some remote aimag because the driver got drunk, was plain incompetent, or his vehicle broke down and couldn’t be fixed. This won’t happen when you deal with an outfit like Genghis. They also have various package tours around Mongolia and maintain a ger camp near the town of Bayan Gov in Bayankhongor Aimag, where Bodyo was born. What Genghis really excels in however is arranging custom trips suited to individual interests and itineraries. They have contacts all over Mongolia and can arrange just about anything. Again, they offer the advantage of thoroughly screening guides, horse men, (or camel men) and translators, so you have little chance of ending up with people who are imcompetence or rip you off. Another partner in the company, Terbish, is a professor of biology at Mongolian State University and is one of the contributors to the Mongolian Red Book, a compendium of endangered species in Mongolia. As such he has a lot of contacts in the Mongolian scientific community who can provide information and assistance if you have scientific interests. Over his years of field work he has also built up an extensive network of acquaintances all over Mongolia who are very knowledgeable about local conditions.
Now Genghis is launching a program to aid herders who have been devastated by the disastrous zuds, or winter storms, which have killed millions of head of livestock in Mongolia over the last couple of years. Bayankhongor Aimag, where Bodyo is from, was especially bad hit. I myself was there last fall and talked to herdsmen who had lost more than half of their goats and sheep. Some families were reportedly wiped out completely, losing all of their livestock. Genghis Expeditions wants to do something to help these people. The plan is to buy goats from aimags to the north and give them herders to reseed their herds. Then the herders will give back part of the cashmere that the goats produce in the following years as payment. The cashmere will be sold and the proceeds used to buy additional goats for more families. Thus a self perpetrating fund will be set up to aid herders in distress. Of course, Genghis Expeditions would appreciate donations to help the seed money for this project. If you are interested or would like more information contact them from their Website.

See Zanabazar’s Art Works in Ulaan Baatar’s Choijin Lama Museum

Zanabazar's Ratnasambhava in the Choijin Lama Museum

The 8th Bogd Gegen

Although Zanabazar's reputation in the political arena may have been tarnished in the eyes of some by his collaboration with the Qing Dynasty his standing as an artist has never been challenged. "Perhaps unique among world cultures, Zanabazar, a celebrated monk and statesman, was also Mongolia' greatest artist," declares one noted art historian, adding, "During his lifetime he was the greatest Buddhist sculptor in Asia." Among his greatest works are his depictions of the goddess Tara. His Green Tara and other Taras are on display at the Bogd Gegen Winter Palace Museum in Ulaan Baatar, and it was to here that I retired on my first free day in the city. At four o'clock in the morning light snow could be seen drifting down outside my hotel window and as often happens when it snows the temperature had warmed up to a relatively balmy -2 F. Around sunrise (8:34 A.M.) the skies cleared, however, and by the time I left my hotel at ten o'clock the temperature had plunged to -18 F. and a twenty-to-thirty mile-an-hour wind was howling straight out of Siberia. My cheeks were frosted by the time I reached the Ulaan Baatar Hotel and I had to duck into Millie's Espresso off the main lobby to warm up and revivify myself with two double espressos chased by a latte grande. Continuing on down Chingis Khan Boulevard I stopped briefly on the Peace Bridge to admire the Four Sacred Mountains surrounding the city, their ridgelines now starkly outlined against the wind-scrubbed mazarine sky. Just beyond where the road turns east to the airport stands the large white Winter Palace of the 8th Bogd Gegen.

The 8th Bogd Gegen (1869-1924) was the continuation of a line of incarnations known as the Jebtsun Dambas that in Mongolia began with Zanabazar. The 8th was actually a Tibetan. He was identified as as an incarnation of Jebtsun Damba in 1871 and he and his family moved to Mongolia two years later. Although Zanabazar was first Bogd Gegen of Mongolia, having been given the title at Shireet Tsagaan Nuur, he was actually the sixteen incarnation of Jebtsun Damba, and thus the 8th Bogd Gegen was the twenty-third incarnation.

According to the traditional chronology, the first incarnation of Jebtsun Damba was Lodoi-shindu-namdak, who appeared in the Indian city of Magadha and served as one of Buddha?s original 500 disciples. The second was Bardi-dzoboo, the head of the 500 pundits who dwelt at Nalanda Monastery in India, during the time of the famous Indian sage Nagarjuna (probably in the first century A.D. The next two were born in India, but other than their birthplace biographical information is lacking. The fifth Jebtsun Damba, Runsum-choi-san, was the first to appear in Tibet, during the lifetime of the famous Indian-born sage Atisha (982-1054 AD) who moved to Tibet and died at the Tara Temple about 20 miles east of Lhasa. The next five incarnations were also born in Tibet, although little else is known about them. The eleventh was apparently Jamyang Choje Tashi Pelden ("Dashi-baldan" in Mongolian accounts), born in Tibet near Samye Monastery, and a close disciple of Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug sect. Jamyang Choje Tashi Pelden went on to establish Drepung Monastery in 1416 and more than one hundred other monasteries and retreat hermitages all over Tibet. He was followed by Choi-gii-nin-jid, born in Ceylon during the latter part of the life of the First Dalai Lama, Gendun Drubpa (1391-1474), and Gunga-doltsok, born in the Tibetan province of "Nari" (Ngari?) during the time of the Second Dalai Lama, Gendun Gyatso (1475-1542). The fourteenth incarnation of Jebtsun Damba appeared in India as the son of a Indian king. At the age of fourteen, while standing one day on the roof of his father's palace, a spirit, his so-called Dakini Mother, appeared in the sky and reclaimed him, i. e., he died. There followed the birth of Taranatha, Zanabazar?s immediate predecessor as Jebtsun Damba, in 1585.

Since there were only fifteen incarnations of Jebtsun Damba between the time of Buddha, generally recognized as about 2500 years ago, and the birth of Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegen, in 1635, and given the average life time of human beings, there would appear to be long periods of time when there was no living representative of the line, and that it was in effect dormant. This is not precisely the case however. As learned lamas explained to the Russian ethnographer A. M. Pozdneev in the 1890s, "During the rest of the time he [Jebtsun Damba] was reborn in diverse parts of the universe with the purpose of benefit not only to people but to beings of other worlds; these reincarnations of him are unknown to anyone beside the Gegeen himself, and that is why there are no legends about them whatsoever."


This was the spiritual lineage of the 8th Bogd Gegen who built the Winter Palace. The two-story wood-framed building was constructed in 1905 according to the designs of a Russian architect working under direct orders of the Russian Czar Nicholas II, who was apparently trying to curry favor with the Bogd Gegen at this time. The Qing emperor, nominal ruler of Mongolia, took exception to the palace being built on European lines, since Europeans were Christians not Buddhists, and to placate him lotus patterns were painted on the walls and Buddhist ornaments added to the roof. (These latter are now no longer present.) The Bogd Gegen spent his winters here until his death in 1924.


The Winter Palace

Before entering the palace, however, I go around to the front, the south side of the complex. Here can be seen the Yampai, or Spirit Shield. A standard feature of Buddhist temples in Mongolia, it consists of a high free-standing wall, in this case made of bricks, which is supposed to deter malignant influences from entering the temple grounds. Just behind this is Three Open Gates, three wooden gateways which remained permanently open in order to allow all good influences to enter the temple compound. The Bogd Gegen and his advisors always entered the compound via the central gate, nobles and foreign guests via the East Gate, and guards, musicians, and other lesser personages through the West Gate. Just behind the Three Open Gates are two long chii-gan, or flagposts. In the Bogd Khan's day the one on the west flew the blue state flag of Mongolia and the one on the east the yellow flag of Buddhism.


Front of the Winter Palace Complex

Behind the flag poles is the Andi Men, or Peace Gate. This elaborate wooden structure was built for the Bodg Gegen between 1912 and 1919 to commemorate his ascension to King of Mongolia following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the declaration of Mongolian independence. From then on the Bogd Gegen was also known as the Bogd Khan, the head of a theocracy such as existed in Tibet under the Dalai Lamas. The gate was designed by the famous Mongolian architect Baajar and built at a cost of over 385 pounds (280,000 lan) of silver donated by the Bogd Gegen's followers. The wooden structure does not contain a single nail but was instead constructed with 108 different kinds of interlocking wooden joints. Topped by a seven-tiered canopy, the gate was lavishly decorated with depictions of Buddhist legends and scenes from the life of Gesar Khan, but these have faded with time.

Now the gates are keep locked and I have to go around to the side to enter the Winter Palace compound. Although the Winter Palace is one of the standard stops on tours of the city in summertime in winter the place looks deserted. Inside three women bundled in heavy, lined deels (robes worn by both Mongolian men and women) and cradling bowls of milk tea in their hands seem slightly startled to see me. There's no heat in the museum and you can see your breath.

Although on this trip I am mainly interested in exhibits concerning the life of Zanabazar, I have to pause on the first floor and look at the incredible ger (the kind of circular tent used by Mongolia nomads, more commonly known as a yurt, which is actually a Turkish word) covered with the skins of 150 snow leopards. This was a gift from one Sangilig Dorj, a man from the old Setsen Aimag (roughly the area centered around the basin of the upper Kherlen River to the east of Ulaan Baatar), who presented it to the Bogd Gegen on the occasion of the latter's twenty-fifth birthday in 1893. Snow leopards are presently considered rare in Mongolia, although herdsman I have talked to say there are a lot more than commonly thought, especially now that hunting them is banned. They are certainly one of the world's most elusive animals and are very seldom seen. To accumulate 150 of their skins for a ger was a monumental accomplishment in itself, although one which modern environmentalist would hardly laud. There are currently several internationally funded programs in Mongolia to study and protect snow leopards, and several tourist agencies run "snow leopard tours" to their known habitat, although they cannot of course promise that anyone will actually see one of the legendarily secretive and guarded animals. Most visitors are satified with seeing a footprint.


The Snow Leopard Ger

In the middle room on the second floor is the first item connected with Zanabazar. This a huge wooden chair, glazed with what looks like black enamel and decorated with floridly painted panels and semi-precious stones, which was given to him by Kangxi, the Qing emperor with whom he stayed during his years in Beijing, as I detailed during my visit to the Forbidden City. The mere fact that this elaborately roccoco confection, which no doubt once hosted Zanabazar's posterior, had been conveyed all the way from Beijing, perhaps on the back of a camel, and then survived the wars, revolutions, and plunderings of the twentieth century is in itself remarkable.


Chair given to Zanabazar by the Qing Emperor Kangxi

The room at the northwest corner of the second floor is locked and I have to fetch one of the women downstairs to open it. Inside is an immense fur cloak made of eighty black fox furs. Its wide collar is decorated with sixty-one coral flowers and 800 pearls. Zanabazar was reportedly a big man physically, and he would have had to have been to fill out this tent-like garment. Like the chair, it was given to him by the Qing Emperor Kangxi.

The reader will recall that in my account of my visit to the Forbidden City I mentioned that according the book Rosary of White Lotuses Kangxi had given Zanabazar a sable cloak embroidered with pearls. There is a world of different between black fox fur and sable-the latter was then as now one of the world's most expensive and luxurious furs-but I cannot help but wonder if the author of the Rosary got his furs mixed up and that this is the very coat mentioned in the book. We are also told, however, that Kangxi's wife, in appreciation for a sermon given to her and her entourage, presented Zanabazar with a mantle, the type of fur unspecified, which also was embroidered with pearls. Maybe then this is the black fox cloak I am now looking, the fact that was it was Kangxi?s wife who gifted it to Zanabazar and not the emperor himself having been forgotten over the years. In any case, I spend a few meditative moments here, imaging Zanabazar draped in this stately garment.


Coat given to Zanabazar by the Qing Emperor Kangxi

I would liked to have lingered longer than I did over the elaborately decorated thrones of the Bogd Gegen and his consort in the room where he held audiences; the richly ornamented sleeping chambers where they spent their nights; the music box given to him by a Russian trade delegation in 1910 which played a variety of classical tunes; the silver vase and platter given to him as a token of their esteem by the newly founded Bolshevik government in Siberia (no doubt plundered from wealthy aristocrats); the bizarre collection of stuffed animals and fish, including aardvaks, anteaters, blowfish, tigers, monkeys and much else prepared for him in 1910 by taxidermists in Hamburg, Germany; the handsome trappings worn by the elephant he had imported to Mongolia for his amusement; and other ephemera connected with the life of the 8th Bogd Gegen, but I am anxious to get to the temples in the Summer Palace compound where Zanabazar's art works are kept.

Containing as they do art works of considerable-in the case of Zanabazar's, inestimable-value these temples are kept locked until a visitors arrives and then they are accompanied by an escort who opens the doors. The ladies in the front room are not eager to break up their tea chat to venture out into the cold, but finally one struggles into her fur coat (she's already wearing a thickly lined deel) and bids me to follow her.

The temples are in the old Summer Palace complex just west of the Winter Palace. The summer palace itself burned down, apparently during the lifetime of the Bogd Gegen, although details are vague. Seven temples remain in the compound. As with almost all temple complexes the first is in the form of an covered entryway containing the Four Guardians, each representing one of the four cardinal directions. Above the doorway is a blue, gold-framed sign in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchu, and Chinese scripts reading "Temple of Developing Wisdom." Inside are the four Makhranz, as the protective deities are called in Mongolian. Twice life-sized, they were made of paper mache in 1903, the same year the temple was built. I described the Chinese versions of these guardians in my description of Fu Hu Temple on Emei Shan. The Mongolian versions are somewhat different. They are thought to protect the continents which lie in the four cardinal directions from Mount Meru, the center of the universe. The guardian of the eastern continent is Yolkhosuren, who is white and carries a lute-like instrument whose music is said to inspire happiness. Red Jamiisan, connected with western continent, holds a snake and a stupa and protects again chthonic spirits. Pagjiibuu, blue in color, represents the southern continent and protects again war and physical enemies with the sword in his hand. Namsrai of the northern continent is yellow and holds in his hand a mouse spewing jewels; he is responsible for wealth and fortune.

When I pause for a moment my guide starts stamping her feet to keep warm and I suspect to hurry me on. We skip the intervening temples and head straight to the Lavrin Temple in the back of the compound. This is the biggest of the temples and in the last Bogd Gegen's time housed his personal collection of statues. In summertime it was used as a meditation and prayer hall. Now it hosts Zanabazar's art work. The woman has some difficult with the large, cumbersome padlock, which appears to have frozen shut, but finally she manages to open the door.

This security precautions are not uncalled for. In August of 1996 two of Zanabazar's works valued at $160,000 each were stolen from here. Later the thieves apparently had trouble fencing the statues or perhaps developed a guilty conscious; in any case, they got cold feet and threw the statues into the nearby Dund River, where they were eventually found by passersby and returned to the museum. There have also been cases of Zanabazar?s works stolen from Erdene Zuu Museum, although those too were eventually returned after the thieves were arrested. There is reportedly a large underground market in stolen Buddhist art in Mongolia, fueled by private collectors who aren't worried about a piece?s provenance. It is hard to say how much such people would pay for a Zanabazar. Very few of Zanabazar's works have ever appeared on the open market where their monetary value could be judged, but it?s not hyperbolical to say that some, like the Green Tara in this temple, are priceless.

The inside of the temple has the still, gelid air of a meat locker, but just to the right of the entrance, on a low shelf sits Zanabazar's incomparable Green Tara, somehow looking warm bathed as she is in the winter sunlight streamed in through the security barred windows. The statue including the base is just over thirty inches high. Rather than attempt to describe it myself I will yield the floor to Mongolian art historian N. Tsultem:

"The figure is seated, resting heavily on the left buttock, the upper part of the body inclined to the right in a twisting motion emphasized by the position of the right leg, which is stretched forward with the right arm resting alongside it; the left leg, bent at the knee, acts as a firm support. The full, firm, young breasts protrude; and the goddess sits in state with the upper part of her body learning slightly forward, twisting her slender, rounded waist, so that from the side, her shape resembles the soft curve of an S. Unlike other Taras, depicting deities far removed from this world, this one looks like a lovely, round-faced young Mongolian girl. Her features [show] us the face of a pretty young woman with a clear skin, a relatively flat-bridged nose, eyebrows just like a crescent moon, the eyes gazing out and encompassing the world, and round cheeks and chin. It is no wonder that there is a legend among Mongols that the stature once spoke."

I can only add that I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of statues, thangkas, and paintings of Tara in Mongolia, India, Nepal, Tibet, and China, and I don't think I have ever seen any others that that can compare to this Green Tara and Zanabazar's other masterwork, his White Tara.


Green Tara

In display cases on either side of Green Tara are Zanabazar's Twenty-One Taras, each about a foot high. These depict twenty-one of the innumerable forms in which Tara can manifest herself. These are described in a common Tibetan prayer called "Homage to Twenty-One Taras" which is often repeated by those who seek Tara's blessing.

The Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani has became the dominant figure now in Iraqi politics. Check out his Snazzy Website. Who's his website designer, I'm wondering. More from the Ayatollah: "What is Permissable and Forbidden is Clarified Here".

Mystery Building #1: Every time I take a walk around Ulaan Baatar I notice a new building that somehow mysteriously appeared almost overnight, like a mushroom after a spring rain. This building just materialized on Chingis Khan Avenue, just south of the Bayan Gol Hotel.

In early 1635, forty-eight years after Avtai Khan’s death, his grandson Gombodorj, now the ruler of the Tüsheet Khanate, was traveling by Yesön Zuul when he noticed a handsome lama sitting nearby the ovoo built by his grandfather. When asked what he was doing there the lama replied, “I am honoring this place with sacrifices.” Suddenly the lama disappeared and the sky was filled with rainbows. Shortly thereafter both Gombodorj and his wife Khandujamtso started having wonderful dreams filled with all kinds of good omens and portents. The couple did not limit their activities to dreaming and soon Khandujamtso found herself pregnant.

Gegen-Setsen Khan, who ruled the Setsen Khanate centered around the valley of the Kherlen River to the east of the Tüsheet Khanate, heard that Khandujamtso was with child and wrote a letter to her husband Gombodorj. “Since the thought continually comes to me that through the power of the former good prayers of the kings, princes and dignitaries of the Khalka there will be born to you a fine boy of the golden family of Chinggis Khan, who has the majesty of heaven, and that this boy will be our leader,” the letter said in part. He also suggested that he and his entourage visit Gombodorj and conduct seven days of games, probably the traditional Mongolian contests of horse racing, wrestling, and archery. It was a wonderful time that year in central Mongolia. Rainfall was plentiful and the grass and forests were green and luxurious; birds were everywhere and their melodious songs filled the air; there were was no plague or other sickness and people enjoyed fine health; all sorts of good omens and auguries appeared and the sky was filled with rainbows. (Indeed, the atmospheric conditions which prevail on the steppe between Erdene Zuu and Yesön Zuil are conducive to rainbows; I myself have seen as many as twelve in the sky at once in this area.) Now the dreams of Gombodorj and Khandujamtso were filled with images of Buddhas and the sound of Buddhist scriptures being read. Thus passed the summer of 1635.

Late that year Gombodorj was out riding near Yesön Zuil (Photos of Yeson Zuil) when he noticed place where a white dog had given birth to a litter of puppies. Sensing that this was an auspicious sign he had his winter camp set up here. According to legend, a white flower appeared out of the ground in the middle of the space where he had set up his ger and promptly bloomed, even though the nearby ground was covered with snow and the rivers already frozen.

On the morning of the twenty-five day of the ninth month of the year 1635 Khandujamtso felt birth pangs. At the same time milk started exuding from the breasts of a sixteen year-old serving girl who was attending Khandujamtso. The girl was deeply ashamed, but Khandujamtso explained to her that that when a woman of noble family gave birth it was common for her female servants to produce milk. Later that morning Khandujamtso gave birth to a boy. As Khandujamtso’s own breasts were dry, a council was held and it was decided to wash the servant girl’s breasts with holy water blessed by lamas and let her suckle the little nursling. The Gegen Setsen Khan, in anticipation of the birth, had sent the family a fine cradle decorated with jewels. The baby was placed in this cradle and servants watched over him day and night.

The little boy was given the name Zanabazar, a combination of the word zana, which is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning “knowledge” or “wisdom”, and the word bazar, meaning “thunderbolt”. Thus in English his name might be rendered “thunderbolt of wisdom”.


That spring Gegen Setsen Khan came to visit Gomdorj and his wife and new son. As he was dandling the little boy on his knee of vision of three acaryas—holy men from India—appeared in front of him. The tiny boy reached out his arms to these beings and started babbling as if trying to talk to them. The Gegen Setsen Khan, who could just barely manage to hold the animated little dandling on his knee, was utterly amazed by these events. Convinced that the little boy would someday became a great lama, Gegen Setsen Khan decided to give him his own honorary title—Gegen, (usually translated as “Supreme Holiness”—and henceforth go only by the name Setsen Khan.

Setsen Khan returned to his home in the valley of the Kherlen but could not get the boy out of his mind. He soon dispatched an “expert on portents” to examine the child further. This individual returned with the verdict that “‘the newborn son of Tüsheet Khan is in truth a darling child: the oblong quality of the corners of his eyes and the unusual regularity in the texture of the pupil and the white of his eyes attest to the fact that he is able to contemplate all the ten lands of the earth; as for his body, there are combined in it all the signs of the Buddha, and that is why one may consider beyond any doubt that he is a real Buddha.”

The boy began speaking at the age of three. According to legend his first words were the Buddhist invocation Ala-la-ma duy-sun-san-jiy-di choy-ji-kor-lo-bardu-la-na-med. Soon he was reading and reciting prayers for most of the day, without any instruction or coaxing. When he wasn’t praying or making offers he spent his time building small replicas of temples, fashioning small statues of Buddhas, and drawing portraits of great lamas. Although by tradition the son of a khan was supposed to be surrounded by playmates from other noble families the little boy chose to ignore them completely and instead focused all his energies to his devotional practices. Before the end of his third year, in early 1638, his father, by then convinced that the boy was destined for a religious life, arranged for a lama named Jambaling to give the him his first monastic vows. With these came a new monastic name, Jnanavajra.


Yesön Zuil, where Avtai met the mendicant who was thought, at least by some, to be the Third Lama Dalai in one form or another, and where Zanabazar was born, is located in what is now Övörkhangai Aimag, about twenty-seven miles south of a village of the same name. The geographical center of the current country of Mongolia is about thirty miles north of here, near the town of B ürd. At Yesön Zuil—Zanabazar’s birthplace, and not the village—were nine springs which never froze over in winter (according to locals these springs have since gone dry), and it is these which give the place its name yesön = nine; zuil = types, or kinds). Eventually a temple was built on the site where legend maintains that Avtai built the ovoo to commemorate his meeting with mendicant-lama he believed to be the Dalai Lama. Because it was surrounded by eight large stupas it became known as the Eight Stupas Temple. It was destroyed in the 1930s by the communists, who were particularly keen on erasing any memories of Zanabazar, the first of the Bogd Gegens, the figureheads of Buddhism in Mongolia. Local people and pilgrims later heaped up rubble from the ruins into a large ovoo which stood as a replacement for Avtai’s original monument and the Eight Stupa Temple. When I first visited here in 1997 the stone bases of two of the stupas were still visible.

Some locals claimed that Zanabazar was born on this spot, while others maintain he was born just behind a small pond about a mile and half to the northeast—there is no actual marker to show the place—and that his umbilical cord was buried here at the ovoo. Locals also say that about a mile to the southeast is a spot where Zanabazar’s baby clothes were burned, as was the tradition, after he no longer needed them. When I returned to Yesön Zuil in 2003 I discovered that the year before a small white temple had been built about a hundred yards away from the ovoo. This temple now commemorates the birthplace of Zanabazar.


New temple commemorating the birthplace of Zanabazar

A little over a mile away, on higher ground, Dashgungaa Dejid Monastery had also been established to honor Zanabazar. It too was destroyed during the anti-religious campaigns of the 1930s. In 1997 the ruined walls of some of the buildings of this monastery still stood, but by 2003 they had been torn down for building materials. In the early 1990s a small temple and a white stupa were constructed next to the ruins. In 1995 a painting and a near-life-sized statue of Zanabazar were placed in the otherwise sparsely appointed temple to commemorate the 380th anniversary of Zanabazar’s birth.

In 1997 an old monk who had witnessed the destruction of both the Eight-Stupas Temple and Dashgungaa Dejid Monastery still lived in a ger near the ruins, but he was ill and too weak to talk about those unfortunate times. It would appear that despite the deprecations of the past, however, once again Zanabazar is being remembered here.


It did not take long for stories of Gombodorj Khan’s remarkable little boy to spread throughout Khalkha Mongolia. Setsen’s Khan’s prophecy, allegedly made before the boy was born; the signs and portents surrounding his birth; the findings of soothsayer Setsen Khan had sent to examine the boy; the boy’s amazing utterances and extraordinary behavior; his taking of his first monastic vows at the age of three, all would have been commented on and elaborated upon at great length in a country where people thought nothing of traveling hundreds of miles by horse simply to visit acquaintances and hear some interesting tidbit of news. By the time he was four years old not only the Buddhist hierarchy of Mongolia but even the ruling khans and princes realized that he was destined to play a unique role in the history of their country. Thus in 1639 a great convocation was held to enthrone him as head of the Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism in all of Khalkha Mongolia and establish for him his own monastery.

From as far away as Buir Nuur to the east and the shores of huge salt lakes in the Great Depression in the west, and from the edge of the Siberian taiga in the north and the depths of the Gobi Desert in the south, the khans and their entourages of the khanates of Khalkha Mongolia converged on the territory of the Zanabazar’s father the Tüsheet Khan Gombodorj. They all met about forty-eight miles north of Yesön Zuil, at a small lake surrounded on three sides by hills covered with the sand dunes of the so-called Mongol Els—a belt of dunes up to five miles wide and trending north-south for over fifty miles. On the fourth side loomed, like a backdrop of the huge natural amphitheater, the 5477 foot-high massif of Ikh Mongol Uul. This spot, thought to be very near the geographic center of ancient Khalka Mongolia, and just eighteen miles northeast of the geographical center of the current country of Mongolia, was known as the khüis—“navel”—of the Mongol realm. It eventually became known as Shireet Tsagaan Nuur (White Throne Lake).


Details of the composition of the convocation at Shireet Tsagaan Nuur are lacking but since all representatives of all four khanates and their no-doubt sizable entourages were present it is possible that several thousand people were in attendance. Before this assembled throng Zanabazar was officially given the title of Gegen which has been informally bestowed upon him by Setsen Khan shortly after his birth. He also received ordination into the first monastic degree, known as Rabjun, from the presiding lama, a Sakya monk named Bürilegüü. Then he was given another title, Sumati-Sakya-Dodza—“one who holds the Sakya banner of the great mind”—and, according to traditional account, a new name, Lobsang Dambi Jantsen, (”religious flag of good omen”). Since it had been decided to make him the superior of his own monastery, Zanabazar was taught the Khamboin-jinan, or “the superior’s instructions and ordination”. At some point he also received a Malakala initiation..

On a high grass-covered knoll between the shore of the lake and base of Ikh Mongol Uul a ger, the traditional felt tent of the nomads, had been erected. Because the ger was draped outside with yellow cloth it became known as the Shar Bösiyn Ord, or “Yellow Sash Palace”. Lama Bürilegüü carried the little boy up the hill and placed on a throne in the ger, thus signifying that the boy was now the head of the Buddhist faith in Mongolia. The ger itself was sanctified as the first temple of what eventually became Zanabazar’s own monastery. The assembled Mongols then appeared before Zanabazar, offering obeisance and making offerings. He received several dozen gers from each of the Mongol khans, the basis of what became his shabinar, or personal estate. Then began the games, feasts, and celebrations


Shireet Tsagaan Nuur (Photos of Shireet Tsagaan Nuur) is located 148 miles west-southwest of Ulaan Baatar in what is now Övörkhangai Aimag. I first visited here in 1997, as described in my book Travels in Northern Mongolia. At that time it appeared to be visited by only a few die-hard Mongolian pilgrims. No one I talked to back in Ulaan Baatar could tell me its exact location, and even local people along the main highway from Ulaan Baatar to Kharkhorin, which passes ten miles north of Shireet Tsagaan Nuur, could give only the sketchiest directions. Even though we got more detailed instructions from herdsmen in the valley of the Jargalant River, just to the south of Shireet Tsagaan Nuur, we found the extremely faint jeep track which led across the sand dunes of the Mongol Els to the old lake depression only by accident.

I returned to Shireet Tsagaan Nuur in the summer of 2002. Since my first visit a tourist map of the area had been published which showed the location of Shireet Tsagaan Nuur and other local landmarks. Still, we stopped at a herdsman’s ger in the valley of the Jargalant to get precise directions to the jeep track across the sand dunes. The young herdsman, after plying us airag (fermented mare’s milk), agreed to come along for the ride and show us the way, although now this would not have been necessary, as the jeep track appeared to be much more heavily used than before and was not at all hard to find. The herdsman said that now many Mongolians come here on outings and in the last couple of years even a few foreign tourist groups have started to show up.

Zanabazar’s original ger temple was supposedly located on a high hill overlooking the old lake bed— the lake which existed here in Zanabazar’s day has almost completely dried up—of Shireet Tsagaan Nuur, with Ikh Mongol Uul looming up just behind.. The site is surrounding on the other three sides by sand-dune covered hills. The site of the ger temple—the Shar Bösiyn Ord (the Yellow Sash Palace)—is marked by a ten-foot high white stupa. It was here that the four-year old boy was named as the first of Mongolia’s eight Bogd Gegens.


Ovoo marking the spot of Zanbazar's ger when he attended the ceremony naming him the first Bogd Gegen. The mountain Ikh Mongol Uul, which encloses the site on the fourth side, can be seen in the background (Location: N47º09.327 / E103º54.575).

This ger temple was the original core of Zanabazar’s traveling monastery, which eventually became known as Örgöö, meaning “palace” or “camp of an important person.” Örgöö would continually change places and transform itself many times until it finally settled at the confluence of the Tuul and Selbi rivers, in the large basin surrounded by the four holy mountains of Chingeltei Uul, Bayanzurkh Uul, Songino Uul , and Bogd Khan Uul, and became the foundation of the city of Ulaan Baatar. Thus Shireet Tsagaan Nuur is recognized as the original site of what is now Mongolia’s capital.

Since my first visit here mayor ’s office of the city of Ulaan Baatar has erected an eight-foot high stone slab at the base of the hill, at the edge of the old lake, commemorating the 360th anniversary of the founding here of what has become Ulaan Baatar. On the front, facing the stupa is a carved Mongolian inscription in Cyrillic alphabet with the date the monument was dedicated—October 29, 1999—and on the back is a much longer inscription in Old Mongolian vertical script. Above this inscription is the famous Soyombo symbol, which as we shall see was invented by Zanabazar, and which is now also found on the Mongolian flag, on Mongolian paper money, and many, many other places. Thus the city of Ulaan Baatar has given its imprimatur to Shireet Tsagaan Nuur as the original location of its founding.

It is now generally accepted that the city of Ulaan Baatar was founded in 1639. In fact, I had been in Ulaan Baatar on November 6, 2002, when the 363rd anniversary of the city’s founding had been celebrated with considerable hoopla. This assertion about the city’s founding might led some to believe that a town or settlement had actually been established at the current site of Ulaan Baatar in 1639. This is not the case. In keeping with Mongolia’s nomad traditions the “town,” or perhaps more properly the nomadic encampment, originated elsewhere and for decades keep moving to various locations in Mongolia before finally settling at its current location at the confluence of the Selbi and Tuul rivers, just north of Bogd Khan Uul. I have never been able to determine why November 6 was chosen for the day of the anniversary—I suspect this date was chosen arbitrarily in recent times—but the significance of the year 1639 is clear. This is the year when little four-year Zanabazar, the son of the Tüsheet Khan Gombodorj, was given the title of Bogd Gegen at a place called Shireet Tsagaan Nuur, 148 miles west-southwest of Ulaan Baatar in what is now Övörkhangai Aimag, and thus became of the first of the eight Bogd Gegens who served until the line was ended by the communists in 1924.


Zanabazar was born at a place called Yesön Zuil, about thirty miles south-southwest of Shireet Tsagaan Nuur, in 1635. He was the great-grandson of Avtai, the Tüsheet Khan. At this time the domains of the Khalkh, or Eastern Mongols, were divided into three semi-autonomous regions: the khanate of the Tüsheet Khan, centered around the valley of the Tuul River, including the area now occupied by the capital of Ulaan Baatar; the khanate of the Setsen Khan, in the drainage of the Kherlen River, to the east of the Tuul; and the Khanate of the Zasagt Khan, in the western Khangai Mountains and the desert regions to the south. A fourth khanate, that of Sain Noyan, on the middle Selenge, upper Orkhon, and the Ongkin River, south of the Khangai Mountains, was until 1724 considered subordinate to the Tüsheet Khan.

Although the three khanates enjoyed quasi-independent status the Tüsheet Khanate was probably the strongest, and its leader Avtai regarded as the first among equals. “He was a man of great courage and wealth,” the Rosary of White Lotuses tells us. Indeed, he is well remembered in Mongolia to this day. The people of the upper Kherlen River, where the river debouches from the southern foothills of the Khentii Mountains, still tell of the time when Avtai and his entourage came here on a hunting expedition. Avtai was an avid hunter and succeeded in killing many elk. That night Avtai dreamed that a bear came into his ger and tried to maul him. The next morning he said, “I had a bad dream that a bear tried to kill me. The spirits of the mountains must be angry with me because I killed so many animals.” Hoping to appease the mountain spirits he had a statue of a horse made and gilded it with silver. This statue, supposedly life-sized, was placed on the summit of a 7328 foot’ mountain about fifteen miles west of the Kherlen River. This peak became known as Möngönmort (möngön=silver; mort=horse) and is so-identified on government-issued maps today. A nearby town in the valley of the Kherlen is also known as Möngönmort. Local people claim that the statue stood on the mountain until the end of the last century and that some old people in Möngönmort still have pieces of it.

At some point in the late 1570s word filtered back to Mongolia that Altan Khan had met with Sonam Gyatso near Khökh Nuur and that the Tümed Mongols had converted to Buddhism. Avtai decided that he himself must met this great religious figure from Tibet. Then he would decide for himself what he thought of the Dalai Lama and his teachings. “If he is acceptable we shall recognize each other. If not we shall fight,” declared Avtai. Thereupon Avtai set out on horseback from of his homelands on the upper Tuul to the court of the Dalai Lama.

Details of this trip are sparse, and it is difficult to say where Avtai finally met the Dalai Lama. Charles Bawden, in The Modern History of Mongolia, says that the two met in Khökh Khot, the city founded by Altan Khan (now known as Hohhot) in 1577, but Sonam Gyatso did not leave Tibet until late 1577 and then proceeded directly to Khökh Nuur, arriving there in May. There are no time for a lengthy detour to Khökh Khot far to the east, nor do the available accounts suggest such a trip. Other sources indicate that Avtai Khan, accompanied by his brother Prince Tushshireet, met the Dalai Lama in 1580 but do not say where. The Rosary of White Lotuses states simply that while Sonam Gyatso was somewhere in Sog—roughly speaking, current-day Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces—“Ochir Opatai”, as he calls Avtai, had an audience with him.


After the May 1578 meeting between Altan Khan and Sonam Gyatso Altan himself had gone to Khökh Khot and established a monastery there. Khökh Khot, according to Bawden the “first permanent Mongol city of modern times”—i.e., after the fall the Yüan Empire—had been founded sometime in the mid-sixteenth-century by Altan Khan and built with the help of Chinese laborers. In 1579 Altan Khan ordered the construction of the Dazhao Temple and around the same time the Xilituzhao Temple, not far away.

Both of these temples still exist in Hohhot, as Khökh Khot is now called, and in addition to serving the city’s diminishing population of Mongolian Buddhists both are marginally famous tourist attractions. I visited both of them during the Chinese New Year of 2003, when they were packed with mostly Chinese people making offerings of incense and New Year gift boxes of apples and oranges which were for sale on almost every street corner of the city.

Meanwhile, the Third Dalai Lama had not returned to Lhasa after his 1578 meeting with Altan Khan but instead was spending his time teaching and building monasteries in what is now northern China and eastern Tibet. It is possible that in 1580 he was in Khökh Khot, where Altan Khan was in the process of establishing monasteries, and that Avtai met him there, but it is difficult to say for sure.


As for the meeting itself, we are told simply that Avtai found Sonam Gyatso—now the Dalai Lama—to his liking. “Let a scarf be brought for me to make obeisance,” he ordered. A black prayer scarf (khadag in Mongolian) was produced and Avtai offered it to the Dalai Lama. This was on the evening of the last day of the month. The next day, the first day of the new month, he again made obeisance to the Dalai Lama, offering him a white scarf. The Dalai Lama chose to interpret this in his own way: “When you first made obeisance to me, you offered a black scarf at the end of the month and bowed late at night. Now you have offered a white scarf at the beginning of the month and have made obeisance early in the morning. These are signs that the ten black sins which you have formerly committed are annihilated, and that from now on the ten white virtues will flourish.” He gave Avtai a relic of Buddha and a statue which was supposedly impervious to fire and instructed him to built a temple to house these objects, adding, “There is in your territory an area with the name of Old and New Orqon [Orkhon]. You should select an auspicious site and build it [the temple] there.”

The Dalai Lama was referring to the Orkhon River in central Mongolia. The 697 mile-long Orkhon begins in the eastern Khangai Mountains and after wending its way through the foothills of the Khangai debouches onto a vast plain near the present-day town of Kharkhorin. This plain and the surrounding foothills valley have been continually inhabited from at least the late Paleolithic 20,000 years ago down to the present day, and many of the great empires of the steppe were headquartered or had capitals here, including the Hsiung-nu (Hunni) from about the second century B.C. to the first century A.D.: the T’u-chüeh (Turks) from 552 to 734; the Uighurs from 745 to 840; and the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The grave mounds of Hsiung-nu; the imposing stone stele of the T’u-chüeh, inscribed with some of the very earliest examples of Turkic writing; the ruins of ancient cities like Karabalgasun, the capital of old the Uighur kingdom where white-robed Manicheans once chanted their orisons; all are mute reminders of the people and civilizations who flourished here and then vanished.

Chingis Khan himself apparently decided in 1220 to built a capital for his empire where the Orkhon emerges from the foothills of the Khangai, although little seems to have been done at the site by the time he died in 1227. It was his son Ögedai who started construction of the capital and by 1235 had placed a wall around it, and it was here in 1235 the Ögedai held a great khural at which it was decided that the Mongols would attack the Sung Dynasty in southern China. By then the capital was known as Kharkhorum. It remained the capital of the Mongol Empire until the early 1270s, when Khubilai founded the Yüan Dynasty and shifted the headquarters of the empire to Beijing. Henceforth Kharkhorum became a provincial capital. After the fall of the Yüan Dynasty in 1368 Mongolia was invaded by armies of the new Ming Dynasty, and Kharkhorum was thoroughly trashed.


It was on the site of Kharkhorum that Avtai finally decided to built a temple to hold the relics which the Dalai Lama had given him. Buddhism had enjoyed a brief fluorescence in Mongolia during the reigns of the Great Khans in the thirteenth century and at least one Buddhist temple had been built in Kharkhorin. Later the temple was destroyed by the armies of the Ming and Buddhism had all but disappeared from Mongolia. Now Avtai decided to built new temples from the ruins of the old one. In 1585—the five-year delay is not explained—he sent to Khökh Khot for a lama to help him with the construction of the temples. This lama happened to belong to the Sakya sect and not the Gelug sect of the Dalai Lama. Sakya Pandita and Sakya Pakpa, two Tibetan lamas who had first introduced Buddhism to the Mongols during the reigns of Great Khans, were Sakyas, and perhaps members of the sect still felt an affinity with Mongolia. Through the offices of the Sakya lama invited by Avtai they now gained foothold in Khalkh Mongolia.

By the summer of 1586 at least one temple, the so-called Khökh (Blue), also known as Ovgon’s Temple (Grandfather’s Temple), and perhaps another temple had been completed and a “minor dedication” performed by the Sakya lama. This lama then said to Avtai, “He who is called my Dalai Lama, reincarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, and who has his seat in the land of Ü in Tibet, is a holy Vajradhara lama and most marvelous.” Of course, Avtai had already met the Dalai Lama when he had been given instructions to build the temple at Kharkhorum, but he apparently set out once again to have an audience with him.

This second meeting between Avtai and the Dalai Lama began less than auspiciously, according to the traditional accounts. Avtai rode ahead of his baggage train with forty-five armed escorts and as they passed by a place known as Black Tamarisk Head he and his men got into a battle with some local people. The leaders of these people went to the Dalai Lama and said, “The one called Abudai [Avtai] Qayan of the eastern Khalkha shot three times and inflicted wounds upon us. We have only just been able to come to you with our lives, O Lama.” The Dalai Lama replied, “This one called Abudai Qayan is a reincarnation of Vajrapani. Therefore do not harm him.” The Dalai Lama sent some men to met Avtai and his cohorts, but Avtai ignored them and rode straight away into his presence. “When I saw you being overwhelmed by the majesty of the Qayan [Avtai], even I was afraid,” the Dalai Lama exclaimed to the abashed leader of the Tibetan escorts, at least according to the Mongolian version of this event.

Avtai quickly redeemed the situation, making obeisance to the Dalai Lama and proclaiming, “I your servant am Qayan of the people called the Khalkha of the North.” He explained that he had built a temple in the land of the Khalkas, at Kharkhorum, and asked the Dalai Lama to come to Mongolia and perform a full inauguration of the new building. He presented the Dalai Lama with one hundred white prayer scarves with one hundred white gelded horses, another hundred white prayer scarves with a hundred bay gelded horses, one thousand assorted gelded horses, plus an assortment of jewels and fine cloths.

The Dalai Lama replied that he was not able come to Mongolia at that time—indeed he had very little time left to live—but that Avtai should return to Mongolia and fix a day for the inauguration of the new temple, and that he, the Dalai Lama, would inaugurate it from where he was at on that day.

It should be mentioned here that in 1586 the Dalai Lama is known to have been in Khökh Khot, where he gave a sermon before over 100,000 people. Intriguing, the Rosary of White Lotuses says that one “Dorje Gyalpo of Halha” was present at this event and presented the Dalai Lama with a number of precious gifts, including a tent made of sable skins. At another point, the Rosary refers to a “Halha Dorje Gyalpo” who built the Erdene Zuu Temple on the Orkhon. Was Dorje Gyalpo another name of Avtai, who elsewhere the Rosary calls Ochir Opatai? If so, then did in fact Avtai met the Dalai Lama at Khökh Khot in 1586?

In any event, Avtai had one more request of the Dalai Lama: “Moreover, I wish to invite a good lama, who will be of advantage to the faith which is revered forever, and to instal [sic] the most blessed shrines.” Could the Dalai Lama please recommend such a monk and send him to Mongolia? The Dalai Lama told him to interview various monks and then chose one himself. Here again the record is extremely vague. According to one account, Avtai then proceeded to Lhasa to look for a teacher of the Dharma who could come back with him to Mongolia. The Dalai Lama, it is clear, did not accompany him on this trip. While visiting a temple in Lhasa Avtai noticed a monk sitting all by himself at the end of a row of seats and for some reason felt drawn to him. Avtai eventually asked this lama to come Mongolia and teach. The man replied, “I am unable to go in this incarnation, but later I will meet you.”

This lama was supposedly Taranatha (1573?-1634), who later, in 1615, founded the Takten Phuntsok Ling Monastery in the Tsangpo Valley near Shigatse, and eventually achieved great renown as a teacher and historian (his famous History of Buddhism in India is still in print today) Admittedly, this story presents certain chronological problems. Taranatha was born in either 1573 or 1775, and thus would have had to have been very young indeed if and when Avtai met him in Tibet in mid-1580s. This is one of several inconsistencies in the account of Avtai’s second trip to Tibet, a journey which over the years may have acquired some accretions of a purely mythical nature

Taranatha, however, eventually did go to Mongolia, where he reportedly founded several monasteries. Little more is known about his years in Mongolia, except for the fact that he died there in 1634. It is related that while still in Tibet, Taranatha, known as a great humorist, made a joke about where he would be reborn. A Mongolian student studying under him cried out, “Oh, please come to Mongolia next time!” Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegen, who was believed to be Taranatha’s reincarnation, fulfilled this request.


During his second meeting with the Dalai Lama Avtai apparently again asked the Dalai Lama to visit Mongolia. He replied,: “Although I cannot go now, later I will meet you at your own place.” Avtai then returned to Mongolia and prepared for the full dedication of the new temples at Kharkhorum, making offerings and sacrificial cakes as the Dalai Lama had instructed him to do. According to tradition, “On that very day, when, offerings and cakes were there prepared, barley fell in showers, like scattered grain, from the direction of the west [where the Dalai Lama dwelled], and this is how the seeds of barley became widespread among the Khalka.” According to another tradition, a shower of flowers fell, signaling that the Dalai Lama had indeed performed the inauguration from afar, as he had promised. When the famous Russian ethnographer A. M. Pozdneev visited here in the 1890s he was shown dried flowers on a temple altar which the monks maintained were the very flowers which had fallen during the long-ago inauguration.

Avtai would eventually build several temples on the old site of Kharkhorum. The first, however, was known as the Khökh Temple. At the same time or shortly thereafter he built was is now the Central Zuu Temple, apparently right on the site of the previous Buddhist temple in the old capital of Kharkhorum. Over the next century and a Right Zuu and a Left Zuu temple were built on either side of the Central Zuu. These Three Zuus formed the core of what was to become the vast Erdene Zuu Monastery, which by 1792 the monastery had sixty-two temples and over 500 other buildings. The entire complex was severely damaged during the anti-Buddhist campaigns of the late 1930s and today only eighteen temples remain. Most of these temples, including the Three Zuus, are now part of the Erdene Zuu Museum, although the Tibetan-styled temple toward the rear of the compound has recently once again become active, home to small community of monks. The Khökh Temple, the first one built by Avtai, has also survived, but it is quite small, inconspicuously located, and un-signposted, and many visitors to Erdeni Zuu, now one of Mongolia’s premier tourist attractions, walk right by it unaware of its significance.


Not long after the temple inauguration Avtai was out hunting with his entourage on the steppes about 60 miles east of Kharkhorum. From the middle of a wide plain bounded on east by saw-toothed ridges Avtai saw a thin plume of a smoke rising from a fire of a lone camper. “Go and see what sort of man that is, whether a hunter or a mendicant,” Avtai ordered one of his men. The man came back and reported that the stranger had wore a blue gown but had a shaved head. Avtai noted that the color of the gown made no difference, but since the stranger has a shaved head he must be a lama. “When formerly I made obeisance to the Dalai Lama I took an oath that I would make obeisance to the lamas I saw, since priests of the clergy are rare in our land,” said Avtai. To the amazement of his entourage Avtai went up and bowed to the simply-dressed stranger. “What a fortunate qayan you are,” said the man, “to be the only one to make obeisance when today so many men have not done so.” He then offered some of his simple food that he had prepared to Avtai, who ate it with relish. He offered what was leftover in his own bowl to members of his entourage but they refused to eat it, shocked that their Khan should be consorting with such lowly man. Then the stranger said, “This place where we have met is possessed of great significance. Erect a monument here.” A monument was built and the place was given the name Yesön Zuil. The traditional account of this meeting concludes with: “The mendicant took a most blessed object from his load and offered it to the Qayan, and this is how the Dalai Lama Sonam Gyatso, in accordance with his having said at an earlier date, ‘I shall go later’, met with him [Avtai] in the guise of a mendicant.”

Of course it is highly improbable if not impossible that the Dalai Lama actually traveled to Mongolia in the guise of a mendicant, particularly in the last year or two of his life—he died in 1588. Some might dismiss this story as a simple legend, while others might suggest the possibility that an emanation of the Dalai Lama appeared before Avtai. The place Yesön Zuil exists by the same name today, however, and local people are quick to point out the exact spot where Avtai supposedly met the Third Dalai Lama, in whatever guise he may have appeared.

Avtai himself died shortly after this alleged meeting, in 1587, a year before the Dalai Lama. Avtai’s remains were eventually placed in stupa-like tomb in front of the three Zuu Temples at Erdene Zuu, which are enclosed in a compound of their own. This tomb was damaged in the iconoclastic upheavals of the 1930s and it is not clear if Avtai’s remains are still present, although the structure itself has been meticulously restored. Again, it is not sign-posted, and very few of the thousand of visitors who walk by give it a second glance. Such is the fate of Zanabazar’s great-grandfather Avtai, the khan who brought Buddhism to Mongolia.