Mongolia | Xinjiang | Khotan | Rawak Stupa

The Roerich Expedition arrived in Ulaanbaatar on September 12, 1926. 

House where the Roerichs stayed while in Ulaanbaatar, Nicholas Roerich on the right. (Click on photos for enlargements)

House where the Roerichs stayed while in Ulaanbaatar, before it was turned into a museum

While in Ulaanbaatar Nicholas Roerich heard tales about the celebrated Rawak Stupa near Khotan, a city on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin in what is now Xinjiang Province, China, which the expedition had visited earlier: “Many other similar wonders were related to us by educated Buriats and Mongols. They spoke about a mysterious light which shines above the Khotan stupa; about the coming re-appearance of the lost Chalice of Buddha . . . He adds, “ The celebrated Suburghan near Khotan must be the place of one of the manifestations of the New Era. Khotan is the path of Buddha,” and “Khotan remembers the Signs of Maitreya [the future Buddha] over the ancient Stupa.”

The Roerich Expedition had passed through Khotan earlier. It had left the city of Leh, in Ladakh, now administered by India, on September 9, 1925, and after crossing seven high-altitude passes through the Karakorum and Kun Lun Mountains—including18,379-foot Kardong Pass, 17,753-foot Sasser Pass, 18,176-foot Karakorum Pass, 17687-foot Suget Pass, and 17,598-foot Sanju Pass—finally reached the southern edge of the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert. Nicholas wrote:

Descending the mountains to the sands of Taklamakan, where you meet only Moslems, Sarts, and Chinese, and where you see the mosques and Chinese temples of Khotan, one would not expect to see anything about Shambhala. And yet, just there we again came upon valuable information. Not far from Khotan, are many ruins of old Buddhist temples and stupas. One of these stupas is identified with the legend, that in the time of Shambhala, a mysterious light will shine from it. It is said that this light has already been seen. 

They finally arrived in Khotan October 14. The  Chinese Taotai (senior official) of the city, a man named Ma Darin, and the Amban (representative of the Chinese government) Chang Fu were friendly at first and George was eager to begin explorations:

Having established our headquarters, we began to plan our scientific and artistic activities in Khotan and its vicinity. The ancient site of Khotan, where from time to time landslides revealed miscellaneous objects and remains of old structures had to be explored. We also planned for a brief expedition to . . . the site of the Rawak stupa where shifting sands had uncovered interesting new remains.

Relations between the expedition and local officials quickly soured. Suspicious of the paintings Nicholas was making and the photographs that members of the expedition were taking, the Taotai accused them all of being spies. Their firearms were seized and the expedition was put under what amounted to house arrest. Nicholas was allowed to continue painting, but only with the confines of the house where the expedition was being held. After interminable arguments with the Taotai and other officials, detailed at length in George’s Trails to Inmost Asia and Nicholas’s Altai-Himalaya, on 27 January 27, 1926. the expedition was allowed to leave Khotan and to proceed to Kashgar, at the western edge of the Tarim Basin. Although they been in Khotan over three months they apparently never got the chance to visit the Rawak Stupa as George had hoped. 

Naturally I wanted to see the celebrated Rawak Stupa for myself, so I flew from Ulaanbaatar 710 miles southeast to Beijing, caught a flight west 1,490 miles to Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, and from there took another flight 615 miles southwest to Khotan. It was a perfectly clear day and halfway across the Tarim Basin, at an altitude of 35,000 feet, I was treated to spectacular views of the Tian Shan, the mountain range to the north, with peaks of up to 24,406 feet, and the Kun Lun Mountains to the south, with peaks of up to 23,514 feet. The Kun Lun mountain range is one of the longest in Asia, stretching for almost 1,900 miles along the southern edge of the Tarim and areas to the east. Although the terrain extending from eastern end of the Tarim Basin is relatively low, from the perspective of 35,000 feet it looked like the two mountain ranges completely encircled the Tarim Basin. I could not help but think of Shambhala, which is said to be surrounded by a ring high snowy mountains. Indeed, the Tarim Basin has often been associated with Shambhala.

Shambhala in the Tarim Basin

Well into the twentieth century scholars were still trying to identify Shambhala with some  actual place now known by a different name. Notes one:

There is a very good chance that Shambhala lies hidden time rather than space—as an ancient kingdom that passed long ago into myth. A number of Western scholars agree with the Dalai Lama's opinion that the Kalacakra teachings must have had an actual place of origin: They think that the teachings probably did come to India in the tenth century from a country somewhere in Central Asia.

Writing the beginning of the twentieth, Sir Charles Eliot (1862–1931), author of Hinduism and Buddhism: An Historical Sketch, wrote:

Pending the publication of the Kâlacakra Tantra [it was not available in English at the time], it is not easy to make definite statements about this school which presumably marks the extreme point of development . . . in Buddhism, but a persistent tradition connects it with a country called Śambhala or Zhambhala, translated in Tibetan as bDe-ḥbyuṇ or source of happiness. This country is seen only through a haze of myth: it may have been in India or it may have been somewhere in Central Asia.

Helmet Hoffman, writing in the 1960s, refined this idea:

The land of Shambhala is undoubtedly somewhere outside India, and originally it was in all probability a real area, whereas as time went on it faded into the idea of a purely mythical kingdom . . . Some of the magically embellished descriptions of the way to this mysterious Shambhala rather suggest Tarim [Basin] in East Turkestan [Xinjiang Province, China] . . . Shambhala is described as being surrounded by snow-capped mountains . . . The connection of the Kâlacakra tradition with a strange Central-Asian land, from which . . . the teachings are said to have been introduced into India, is highly significant. There is also at least a probability that the Kâlacakra existed in areas outside India before it penetrated into the land of Buddha.

According to Ur-Shambhalist Edwin Bernbaum, writing in the early 1980s:

Of all the regions of Central Asia, the Tarim Basin . . . comes closest in size and shape to Tibetan descriptions of Shambhala. A huge oval-shaped area enclosed by the Kun Lun, Pamir, and Tian Shan ranges, it could be viewed as an enormous lotus blossom surrounded by a ring of snow mountains. The small kingdoms that have existed side by side in the numerous oases sprinkled around the fringes of the basin may well have provided the model for the ninety-six principalities of the outer region of Shambhala. These small kingdoms included Kashgar, Yarkand, Loulan, Karashahr, Kucha, the kingdom of Qocho, near Turpan, and Khotan. 

Bernbaum continues:

Until shortly before the Kalacakra reached India and Tibet, Buddhism had been flourishing in the Tarim Basin for nearly eight hundred years. During part of that time, caravans following the silk route to China had brought the outside influences of Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity to bear on the development of Buddhist art and thought in the area. Shambhala may have corresponded historically to the Tarim Basin as a whole or to one of the major oases such as Yarkand, Kashgar, or Khotan. Some scholars have singled out Khotan, the largest and most fertile oasis on the southern rim of the basin. Watered by melting snows of the Kunlun Mountains, it supported a thriving center of Buddhist learning, a people who loved music and culture, and a school of painting that impressed the Chinese and influence Tibetan art. 

Among the productions of this flourishing Buddhist culture was the Rawak Stupa.

Guidebooks to Khotan suggested visiting the Khotan Museum and I thought that this might be a good place to inquire about the stupa. But I could not find the museum. People in the street from whom I tried to get directions were either indifferent or surly. One Uighur woman shouted at me in English: “Go back to England!” I could take the abuse, but being mistaken for an Englishman was downright insulting. Then I was approached by a tall, thin Uighur man in his mid-twenties with shoulder-length black hair, thick mustache, and aviator sunglasses who spoke good English. “How can I help you?” he asked. At first I thought he might be a pimp, but decided to ask about the Rawak Stupa anyhow. He  knew about it and said it was in the desert about twenty miles north of Khotan. I told him I wanted to visit it. “Ah,” he said, “that is a problem. The Rawak Stupa is a Class A Historical Monument and no one is allowed to go there without a guide from the local museum to make sure they don’t damage or steal anything.” And where is the museum I wondered, explaining that I had been unable to find it. The museum, it turns out, had just moved to a brand-new building in a different part of town from the old museum, the one mentioned in my guidebook.  Anyhow, could he arrange a visit to the stupa? He called the museum, talked to the curator, who as it turned out also served as the guide to restricted sites, and found out that he was free at the moment and would be able to accompany me to Rawak Stupa that day. I would, of course, have to pay a fee to the museum. He could also arrange for a four-wheel drive vehicle to drive to the site.  He added that we would have to walk the final two miles or so to the stupa.

The curator is a Uighur man in his mid-thirties. He had studied for several years in Canada and spoke almost perfect English. As we drive northward from Khotan I discovered that he had read in English the accounts of many of the great Occidental explorers of the region, including Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin. He had not, however, read anything by the Roerichs. About ten miles north of the city center the Khotan oasis, lush fields of corn, wheat, rice, cotton, and melons divided by rows of poplar trees, abruptly ends. After a couple of miles of gravelly flats the sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert begin.

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

A mile or so into the desert is a checkpoint with a chain across the road to stop unauthorized access to the stupa site. The curator has a key to the lock. From here there is only a track in the sand.  After five or so more miles the track ends and we set off on foot around the sand dunes.

Proceeding to the Rawak Stupa on foot

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

Sand dunes of the Taklamakan Desert

After about two miles we come to the stupa. The curator says that it was built circa 150 A.D. (Aurel Stein dated the stupa to the late third to early fourth century). It was probably abandoned around the time of the the arrival of the Islamic Turks in the late tenth century. The Hungarian-born archeologist Aurel Stein rediscovered the stupa half buried in the drifting sands in 1901, as he describes in his Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan.

The Rawak Stupa

The Rawak Stupa

I had brought a copy of Nicholas Roerich’s Shambhala with me and I read a passage to the curator:

In Khotan, the sands cover the remains of Buddhism and yet, in this place, is the great ancient Suburgan, the hope of all Buddhists; because on this spot the Age of Maitreya shall be acclaimed by a mysterious light over the ancient Stupa. 

The curator was unaware of any legends about lights appearing over the stupa or any other unusual phenomenon connected with the site. I asked him what he knew about Shambhala. “You mean the song by Three Dog Night back in the 1970s?” he replied. It turned out he was a big collector of Occidental pop music. In 1973 Shambala had reached Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The lyrics read in part:

Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind

On the road to Shambala

Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind

On the road to Shambala . . . 

How does your light shine

In the halls of Shambala?

Were the Roerichs aware that Khotan had been singled out by historians as one of the possible sites of Shambhala? Probably. George was a world-class scholar and translator who had studied Asian history, religions, and languages, including Sanskrit and Tibetan, at London University, the Sorbonne in Paris, and Harvard in the USA and would have no doubt been cognizant of research done about the Kalachakra and Shambhala. Thus it was not surprising that Khotan turned up on the itinerary of the expedition. It was just one of the stops on their khora around Shambhala.

For more see In Search of Shambhala: The 1925-1928 Roerich Expedition in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Russia | Early Life of Nicholas Roerich

Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich was born in St Petersburg, Russia, on October 9, 1874. His father Konstantin was a notary serving the city’s courts, a fairly important position at the time. The family was well-to-do and lived in a comfortable apartment on the embankment of the Neva River, in close proximity to the homes of the Russian nobility. The Winter Palace of the Czar, on the other side of the Neva, was visible from the windows of the Roerich residence. Later in life Roerich would assert that his own family, the Roerichs, could trace their roots back to Vikings from Scandinavia. He also asserted, perhaps playing on the similarity of their names, that his family were descendants, or at least had some connection with, Rurik, the Scandinavian chieftain who in the year 862 was invited to Novgorod, in Russia, where he founded the Rurik Dynasty, which ruled what was known as Kievan Rus, centered first on what is now Ukraine and later Russia, until the beginning of the seventeenth century (the last member of the Rurik Dynasty  Vasiliy IV, ruled as Czar until 1612). 

Years later, after he had been admitted to the Russian Academy of Arts  and held the prestigious post of director of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Roerich was still harping on the Rurik connection. Prince Sergei Aleksandrovitch Stcherbatov, a painter and patron of the arts who came into contact with Roerich around this time, noted, “He was of northern—Norwegian type and he rather clearly alluded that his family name Roerich was connected with the name Rurik. It was not quite clear though in what way . . .”  One of Roerich’s hagiographers asserts, on the other hand, that Roerich means “rich in glory,” although no one else seems to agree with her. A Latvian researcher and linguist maintains, however, that the name Roerich is derived from either the German word das Röhricht (reed scrub) or the family name Roderich and has no connection whatsoever to the Scandinavian Rurik.

Roerich also liked to point to his family’s coat-of-arms, which included palm leaves, often an indication that members of the family had been involved in diplomacy, and a turban, a symbol often found on the coat-of-arms of Crusaders who had fought against Muslims in the Middle East. All this spoke to a long and distinguished family, a theme often repeated in the voluminous semi-hagiographical literature about the Roerichs. According to one such account:

Wealthy and politically influential, Nikolai’s father, Konstantin Fedorovitch Roerich, was a prominent notary and attorney born in Riga, Latvia. Throughout the centuries, many of the Roerich men had devoted their lives to service as political leaders, military figures, and members of secret societies like the Knights Templar and the Masons.

Most of this is not true. The first Roerich we know about is Nicholas’s great-grandfather, Johann Heinrich Röerich (1763–1820), who was born in Vetzieskate, a small town in the the Duchy of Courland, probably in what is now Latvia.  By profession he was a shoe-maker. Nicholas grandfather Friedrich (1806–1905) moved up a bit in the world and served as the steward on the estate of the Baron Johann von der Ropp and his wife Laura. Friedrich Roerich was an employee of aristocrats and not, of course, an aristocrat himself. Nicholas’s father Konstantin (1837–1900) was the illegitimate son of Eduard von der Ropp, scion of the von der Ropp family, and Charlotte Constantia Schuhschel, a house-maid attached to the family estate. Eduard von der Ropp was a captain in the Engineer Corps in St. Petersburg and he had apparently seduced the young maid while on vacation at his family’s estate. Nicholas Roerich’s later rhapsodizing about the illustrious Roerich family was completely beside the point. By blood he was not a Roerich at all. 

Nicholas’s father Konstantin was entered into the parish records under the family name of the house maid, but his baptismal records gave his name as  Konstantin Christoph Traugott Glaubert. It is not quite clear who Glaubert was. In any case, both names were an attempt by von der Ropp family to hide the child’s true paternity. Eduard von der Ropp did eventually take some interest on the child, however, and when Konstantin was twelve years old his father brought him to St. Petersburg and had him enrolled in the Technological Institute. There was a catch, however. On his admission papers the boy’s father’s name as listed Friedrich Roerich and his own name as Konstantin Roerich. A Latvian researcher has concluded that by this point Friedrich Roerich had adopted the boy and gave him the Roerich family name “‘to cover Edward’s [Eduard von der Ropp’s] sin.’” Friedrich Roerich may not have taken the boy under his wing solely out of the goodness of his heart. Anxious to be rid of the illegitimate child, a stain on the illustrious family’s honor, the von der Ropps apparently gave Friedrich Roerich a considerable sum of money to take the boy off their hands and make him a member of the Roerich family. 

Around this time, Friedrich Roerich, formerly a steward on the von der Ropp estate, rented two estates of his own, perhaps with the payoff money he had received from the von der Ropps. This branching out into the management of rental properties perhaps marks the beginning of the rise to social prominence of the Roerich family, hitherto a rather undistinguished group, and not at all the descendants of the Rurik Dynasty and other distinguished figures as Roerich was wont to claim. Ironically, Nicholas Roerich’s actual paternal line, the aristocratic von der Ropps, were illustrious. The lineage had been founded by in the thirteenth century by Theodoricus de Raupena, whose brother Albert founded the city of Riga, the current-day capital of Latvia in 1201, and in 1202 organized the Livonian Order of Warriors of Christ (Fratres militiae Christi Livoniae), a Christian crusading order dedicated to battling pagans in what is now Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. This was just the kind of prestigious background Nicholas would have liked to claim for himself, but of course he couldn’t. Indeed, he probably did not even know that his father had been an illegitimate child and a von der Ropp by blood. The whole matter had been kept very hush-hush.

For someone who began life as an an illegitimate child from the countryside Konstantin Roerich did quite well for himself in St. Petersburg. Eduard von der Ropp, although he had refused to give the boy his name, worked behind the scenes as his sponsor in the capital. Konstantin was employed first as an accountant in a military uniform factor and then in the Directorate of the Russian Railways. In 1867 he became a notary for the city courts. A 25,000 ruble security was required to take the post, 10,000 of which had to be paid up front.  His sponsors in St. Petersburg helped him come up with the money.  Serving as a notary in Russia at the time was a well-paying and prestigious job, and by 1872, two years before Nicholas was born, Konstantin was able to buy a 3,780 acre estate, complete with house, fifty miles southwest St. Petersburg (the house on the property is now a museum dedicated to the Roerichs). The country estate was known as Isvara. According to one account, the previous owner of the estate, the Russian diplomat Semyon Vorontsov, had given the estate its name after traveling through India, where he had apparently learned the Sanskrit word isvara. Later in life, when he came into contact with Indians from the sub-continent, Nicholas Roerich was told that Isvara was a corruption of the Sanskrit word Ishvara, the Lord. One of Roerich‘s hagiographers, on the other hand, maintains that Isvara means “sacred dwelling” or “ashram” in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit story is repeated in various Roerich biographies, for example:

During the winter holidays, or when mosquitoes and cholera began to cloud the stifling hot, long “white nights” of summer, the family happily moved to their country estate . . . Its name, given by the previous owner, was Isvara, Sanskrit for “Lord” or “sacred spirit.”

Russian linguists have claimed, however, that isvara is a word from the language of the indigenous people who originally lived in the area. It means simply “big hill” and refers to a conspicuous promontory in the area, and has nothing to do with the Sanskrit isvara. 

Nicholas spent considerable time at Isvara while growing up. Early on he took and interest in archeology and at the age of nine took undertook the excavation of burial mounds on the estate under the guidance of a professional archeologist. Another archeologist, A.A. Spitsyn, a member of the Imperial Archeological Committee, got Nicholas permission to conduct further archeological research on the property. Nicholas’s findings were the beginning of what would become a near-museum quality collection of artifacts. While at Isvara he also learned the finer points of horse-back riding and spent a considerable amount of his time hunting wildlife. Essays about his hunting adventures, accompanied by his own pencil drawings, may have been among his first literary productions. 

Nicholas Roerich as a young man

In 1893, at the age of nineteen, Nicholas graduated from an exclusive private secondary school ran by progressive educator Karl Ivanovich Mai, the motto of which was “First love, then teach”. The liberal atmosphere at the school, unusual for the  time and place, made it very popular with the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg. Attending the school at the same time as Roerich was Alexander Benois (1870–1960), the artist and set designer who, like Nicholas himself, would later collaborate with Sergei Diaghilev, the celebrated director of the dance troupe Ballets Russes. Benois would remember Nicholas as “. . . a pretty boy with pink cheeks, very affectionate, a little shy with his older schoolmates. By no means was he influenced by our group, as well as after graduation he remained an outsider for many years.”

After secondary school Nicholas’s father, hoping that one day his son would became pursue a career in law himself,  insisted that he enroll in the law department of St. Petersburg University. Nicholas agreed, but also somehow convinced his father to allow him to also audit classes at the Imperial Academy Arts at the same time. Roerich wanted to study under the realist painter Ilia Repin (1844–1930), the most highly regarded painter at the Academy, but his classes were already full and Nicholas was turned away. Instead he joined the landscape studio of Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi (1841–1910). It was a fateful decision. In a chapter entitled “Guru—The Master” in his book Shambhala the Resplendent Roerich would write:

I recall the most uplifting memories of my teacher, Professor Kuinjy [Kuindzhi], the famous Russian artist. His life story could fill the most inspiring pages of a biography for the young generation. He was a simple shepherd boy in the Crimea [actually he was born near Mariupol, in the Donetsk District to the northeast of Crimea in what is now Ukraine]. Only by incessant, ardent effort towards art, was he able to conquer all obstacles and finally become not only a highly esteemed artist and a man of great means, but also a real Guru for his pupils in the high Hindu conception.

Kuindzhi became Roerich’s guru, at least in the artistic field.  He certainly seemed to have focused Nicholas’s attention on painting and perhaps provided the inspiration he needed to pursue a career as an artist. (In March of 2022 the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol was destroyed by the Russian military during the invasion of Ukraine. His paintings in the museum may have been removed beforehand, but their fate remains unclear.) Nicholas’ final painting  submitted to the  Academy to fulfill his graduation requirements, “The Messenger: Tribe Has Risen against Tribe”, was heavily influenced by Kuindzhi’s style. The painting was immediately bought by Pavel Mikchailovich Tretyakov (1832–1898), one of the leading art collectors of the day. Overnight Nicholas was catapulted into the ranks of up-and-coming young artists in Russia. 

In 1898 Nicholas Roerich finished law school, having successfully defending his thesis “Legal Rights of Artists in Ancient Russ,” and also completed his courses at the Art Academy. By then it had become clear that he was not going to pursue a career in law. One of the leading art critics of the day, Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov (1824–1906), took the promising young artist Roerich under his wing and helped him obtain the position of assistant secretary for the prestigious Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. The Society enjoyed the patronage of Csar Nicholas II and his wife, and its honorary President was Princess Eugenia Maksimilianovna Oldenburgskaya, wife of Prince Alexandre Petrovich Oldenburgsky. Nicholas was soon hobnobbing with the very highest levels of Russian society. 

Nicholas also had other irons in the fire. He was still interested in archeology and in 1899 the Imperial Archaeological Society engaged him to investigate various sites in the provinces of Pskov, Tversk, and Novgorod. While traveling to the sites he stopped for the night at the house of one Prince Putyatin, a fellow archaeologist. It so happened that Prince Putyatin’s wife’s sister, Ekaterina Vassilievna Shaposhnikova, was also visiting the family at the time. The sister had a daughter, Elena Ivanovna, who was five years younger than Nicholas. Nicholas and Elena hit it off, and after a sometimes tempestuous courtship the couple would get married. She would accompany him on the 1925–28 khora through Inner Asia.