Tibet | Mongolia | Thirteenth Dalai Lama | Shambhala

Those late revelers in the red-light district of Shol at the foot of the Potala who in the wee hours of the morning of July 30, 1904, craned their necks upward may have noticed some unusual activity in the immense edifice which served as the home of the Dalai Lamas.  Perhaps they saw lanterns not normally burning at this time of the night, and they may have seen some figures scurrying about on the ramparts. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama and his close associates were preparing to flee north to Mongolia in an attempt to escape from the so-called Younghusband Mission, led by Sir Frances Younghusband, which had invaded Tibet in July of 1903. The expeditionary force was described as a “mission”, because, in the words of one historian, “the British disliked the idea of their forces invading the largely defenceless Himalayan realm, known in popular mythology for its monks, monasteries, and spiritual mysteries.” But it was an invading army, and several thousand ill-equipped Tibetan defenders had been killed before the expedition reached the Tsangpo River, thirty-five miles southeast of Lhasa. 

The Potala

Entrance to the Potala

On the north bank of the Tsangpo the  British were met by Chikyab Khambo, the Lord Chamberlain of the Tibetan government. He proposed that the Mission stop at the Tsangpo River and begin negotiations without proceeding on to Lhasa and meeting with the Dalai Lama. The situation was complicated by the fact that in the early summer of 1903 the Dalai Lama had begun a three-year-long nyen-chen, or “great retreat” which normally could not be interrupted. Younghusband refused to negotiate and announced his intention of marching on the Tibetan capital. The Lord Chamberlain hurried back to Lhasa with the news that the British army expected to arrive in Lhasa in a few days. At some point the Nechung Oracle, the Dalai Lama’s personal soothsayer who lived at Nechung Monastery, near Drepung Monastery on the outskirts of Lhasa, was consulted, and he augured that the Dalai Lama should break his retreat and flee north.  It was unthinkable that the Dalai Lama would fall into the hands of the British or be forced to negotiate with them himself. 

The Dalai Lama and eight of his closest advisors left the Potala before daybreak on July 30. The group included the Lord Chamberlain Chikyab Khamboo; Soibon-Khambo, a close attendant and advisor of the Dalai Lama; Sobon-Khambo, an attendant in charge of food and tea; and the Buryat Mongol Agvan Dorzhiev, who was instrumental in the Dalai Lama’s decision to flee to Mongolia. Dorzhiev probably planned for the Dalai Lama to continue on to Russia, which the Buryat lama believed, or at least, insinuated, was the earthly manifestation of Chang [Northern] Shambhala. According to one Mongolian historian:

The Dalai Lama did not come to [Khalkh] Mongolia to find sanctuary there; he was in fact led by his Buryat-Mongolian monk confidante Agvan Dorzhiev on a passage to Russia, a new Buddhist land of Shambhala where the Russian Tsar was believed to be the incarnation of White Tara.

Alternative versions of the story suggested that the Czar was actually the reincarnation of Tsongkapa, the founder of the Gelug sect to which the Dalai Lama belonged, or of Sucandra, the first King of Shambhala (977–877 B.C.) to whom, according to tradition, the Buddha himself had taught the Kalachakra Tantra, the source of the Tibetan version of the Shambhala mythologem. In either case, Russia was the new Shambhala, and it was towards this variant of the legendary magical kingdom that the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was headed.