Mongolia | Khentii Mountains | New Book | Burkhan Khaldun Khora

The Khentii Mountain Range includes the headwaters of the Tuul, Onon, and Kherlen rivers—an area known as the Three Rivers Region.

In 1997 I did a ten-day horse trip to the Onon Hot Springs and the beginning of the Onon River in Khentii Aimag, northeast of Ulaanbaatar, as described in my book Wanders in Northern Mongolia. On the return leg of the trip I ascended 7,749-foot Burkhan Khaldun, also known as Khentii Khan Uul, arguably the most sacred mountain in Mongolia. The mountain is mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century account of the rise of the Mongols under Chingis Khan, and it was here, according to the Secret History, that Temüjin—the future Chingis Khan—hid from the Merkid tribesmen who had kidnapped his wife and wanted to capture him. According to legend, Chingis Khan also came here to pray before embarking on his military campaigns. Later the mountain would be inextricably bound up in the cult of Chingis Khan and also become a pilgrimage site for Buddhists. Still later some would claim that Chingis Khan was born near Burkhan Khaldun and was buried on its summit.

Not long after my trip two Mongolian historians, D. Bazargür and D. Enkhbayar, published a book entitled Chinggis Khaan Atlas. The Atlas contained thirty-seven maps (including insets) depicting in great detail the locations of many places and events mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols. After I had studied the Atlas in detail and interviewed Bazargür and Enkhbayar I decided that I would return to the Burkhan Khaldun area and visit some of the places shown on the maps. 

In the meantime I had made a pilgrimage to 21,778-foot Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain in Tibet worshipped by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Bönpos (followers of the Bön religion), shamans, and others, and by then also a favorite destination for adventure tourism. No one is allowed to climb to the summit of Mount Kailash, but thousands of people a year circumambulate the mountain via a thirty-two-mile-long path. A pilgrimage circuit of a sacred place like Kailash is known as a khora. Khoras are always done clockwise around the sacred place or object, unless you are a contrarian Bönpo, who do khoras counter-clockwise (I encountered several Bönpos walking counter-clockwise around Mount Kailash). The Kailash khora, the high point of which is the 18,200-foot Drölma Pass, is a strenuous endeavor. The week I was in the Kailash area at least ten people perished while circumambulating the mountain. Several, reportedly, were elderly Hindus from India who may have come here, consciously or unconsciously, to transmigrate at this sacred place. Some hardy Tibetans, however, do the khora in one day. Most people take two or three days (I made it in two and a half days).

Mount Kailash

After returning from Kailash I got the idea of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun, which without stretching the imagination too much could be considered Mongolia’s equivalent of Mount Kailash. I would of course not do the khora on foot but by horse, the traditional mode of travel in Mongolia. From what I could determine in Ulaanbaatar from talking to knowledgeable people, including several lamas familiar with sacred mountains, there was no tradition of doing a khora around Burkhan Khaldun. I was assured, however, that there was no law, custom, or tradition forbidding a khora of the mountain. Burkhan Khaldun was within the boundaries of the 4,740 square-mile Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, the Mongolian equivalent of a national park, and permits were needed to make extended trips in the area, but these could be easily obtained from the Strictly Protected Area offices in Ulaanbaatar . . . Continued.

Route of Burkhan Khaldun Khora

Approaching the summit of Burkhan Khaldun

Wanders in the Khentii Mountains
of Mongolia

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | Flora | Asters

See Asters over at Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail.

Azure Aster

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | Fifth Nine-Nine | Waxing Gibbous Moon | Tavisan Budaa Khöldökhgui

The Fifth of the Nine-Nines—nine periods of nine days each, each period marked by some description of winter weather—began on January 27. This is Tavisan Budaa Khöldökhgui, the time when “Cooked Rice Cannot Be Frozen.” I must admit I really don’t understand the definition of this period. Maybe someone can explain it to me? Anyhow, this morning, the fourth day of the fifth Nine-Nine, the temperature at 4:00 AM was  —20º F with a high this afternoon projected to be 7ºF. This is considerable warmer than the Fourth Nine-Nine, when temperatures got down to –44ºF, so maybe we are over the hump as far as cold weather is concerned. 

Today is also the 12th Moon Day. The Waxing Gibbous Moon is 87.5% illuminated.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

The Full Snow Moon will occur here on February 2 at 6:09 AM. 

Mongolia | Zaisan Tolgoi | First Quarter Moon

The First Quarter Moon, or Eighth Moon Day, 0ccurs in Zaisan Tolgoi today at 12:47 PM. At this time the Moon will be 231,152 miles from Earth. The Waxing Gibbous Moon begins tomorrow. The Full Snow Moon will be in seven days. 

First Quarter Moon

In most Buddhist and Hindu lunar traditions, the eighth moon day is regarded as “auspicious”, especially for practice, offerings, and ritual observance. Tibetan practice calendars list the 8th, 15th, and 30th days of each lunar month as “auspicious” days for Dharma practice. The 8th lunar day is specifically highlighted as a special day for Tara and often Medicine Buddha; many  monasteries schedule Tara puja on the 8th, and some resources call it a “supreme’’ activity day.

White Tara thangka made for me by Mongolian artiste Soyolma

In the early Buddhist context, the 8th lunar day is one of the traditional uposatha observance days (along with the 14th/15th and sometimes 23rd), when laypeople keep extra precepts and monastics perform formal observances.Texts describe devas’ ministers inspecting the world on the 8th day, which is treated as a time for humans to live righteously and renew commitment, again giving it a positive, practice‑oriented character.

On the Hindu side, Purāṇic sources describe the eighth lunar day (ashtamī) as a “highly auspicious” time for worship, fasting, pilgrimage, and special vows, promising purification and spiritual benefit when observed properly.

So across these major lunar‑based traditions, the 8th moon day is consistently framed as an auspicious day, particularly powerful for virtuous action, ritual, and meditation.

On the other hand, Witches describe the 8th lunar day as unfavorable for oaths and promises, so not a great time to swear binding commitments, start long projects, or marry. It is, however, a good day for preparing Herbal Tinctures.

Tibet | Russia | Agvan Dorzhiev | Russian Embassies

In 1898 Agvan Dorzhiev made the first of several embassies to Russia. He had first come to the attention of Russian Czar Nicholas II through the intrigues of a fellow Buryat, Pyotr Badmaev (c.1850–1920), who after moving to St. Petersburg had made a name for himself as a practitioner of Tibetan herbal medicine. His family name was probably a Russian corruption of padma, as in the name of Padmasambhava (“Lotus-born”), the legendary founder of Tibetan Buddhism. He married a wealthy Russian noblewoman and was soon circulating in the very highest levels of Russian society. According to one account:

In the 1890s, Peter Badmaev’s medical practice in Saint Petersburg gained considerable popularity . . . Many representatives of Russian political elite were personally acquainted with him, since, along with medical practice, Badmaev was actively engaged in social and political activities, trying to provide an assistance to expand Russian imperial influence in Asia, and, therefore, met many high-ranking public officials.

Pyotr Badmaev

Soon he was counseling the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Asian Bureau. Opining that the Qing Dynasty in China was on its last legs, in 1893 he proposed to high-ranking Russian officials, including the Russian Finance Minister, Count Sergei Witte, who was one of his patients (he was also a first cousin of Madame Helena Blavatsky), that Russia annex Mongolia, Tibet, and Manchuria once they were free from Qing domination. “Mongolia, Tibet and China represent the future of Russia. May we hold together in our hands Europe and Asia all the way from the shores of the Pacific ocean to the heights of the Himalaya,” he trumpeted, elaborating:

. . . Russia’s destiny was to rule over continental Asia because the Russian Emperor was in fact the White Tsar . . . [who] ought to be considered either as the reincarnation of the Buddhist goddess Dara-eke [Tara], who freed beings from suffering (in Mongol belief), or as the emanation of the king of the mystical kingdom of Shamballah, a reservoir of beneficial forces, a sort of heaven whose kings were divinities close to Vishnu (in Tibetan belief).

Witte, while not proposing that Russia annex Tibet, recognized its strategic significance. In a letter to Czar Nicholas ii he wrote:

 . . . the geographic position of Tibet is politically greatly important to Russia, especially in view of the British attempt to penetrate into that country and bring it under their political and economic influence. Russia, according to my conviction, should make every attempt to foil the British attempt to establish her influence in Tibet. 

Badmaev was instrumental in asserting Russian influence in Tibet. Using a loan of two million rubles from the Russian government, he established a trading house in the city of Chita, in Buryatia, ostensibly to buy medicinal herbs for his medical practice. The business also served as a cover for intelligence operations. In 1895 a group of Badmaev's agents operating out of Chita made its way to Lhasa disguised as pilgrims. One of the agents was a Buryat named  Ochir Jigjitov. According to one historian, “The Buryat's task was presumably to collect economic and political information on Tibet. Doijiev received his compatriot secretly and in order to conceal the true purpose of Ochir's visit he presented him to the Tibetan officials in the Potala as an ordinary Mongol pilgrim.”

Dorzhiev was also sending intelligence briefings to Badmaev, one of which was leaked to the St. Petersburg newspaper Novoye Vremya. British agents in St. Petersburg in turn sent a précis of the newspaper article back to London:

In this report, the customs of Lhasa and the intrigues surrounding the Dalai Lama are described. His Court consists of a number of Lamas divided into parties and quarrelling among each other. The party in power holds the seals and acts in the Dalai Lama's name. The latter is indifferent to party strife, and is concerned only that his authority should not be diminished, so that the people should continue to revere him. As a diminution of his authority is contrary to the interests of the parties, he remains outside their disputes.

Dorzhiev’s activities earned him the gratitude of Czar Nicholas II. In 1896 the Dalai Lama sent Dorzhiev back to Buryatia on a mission to strengthen the Dharma among the Buryats. While staying at Atsagat Datsan near Khara Shiber, his birthplace, Russian officials presented him with an inscribed gold watch, a gift from the Czar himself to show his appreciation for the assistance Dorzhiev had provided Badmaev’s agents in Lhasa.

Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomsky, yet another of Badmaev’s patients, arranged Dorzhiev’s first visit to Russia. Ukhtomsky who, like artist, mystic, spy, arch-intriguer, and hard-core Aghartian-Shambhalist Nicholas Roerich, traced his ancestors back to Rurik, the Scandinavian chieftain who in the year 862 was invited to Novgorod, in Russia, where he founded the first ruling dynasty of medieval Russia. Ukhtomsky’s lineage may have been genuine; Roerich’s Was Fabricated. (The family of Madame Helena Blavatsky, the Dolgorukovs—Blavatsky was her married name)—also claimed to be descended from Rurik.) 

Helena Blavatsky

A young Helena Blavatsky

In any case, Ukhtomsky was at home in the very highest levels of the Russian aristocracy. He was the principal companion and advisor to Crown Prince Nicholas Alexandrovich on the future Czar’s Grand Tour of the East, which lasted from October 1890 to May 1891 and made stops in Egypt, Yemen, India, Ceylon, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Japan. Ukhtomsky also traveled on his own to China, Mongolia, and Buryatia, where he made in-depth studies of Buddhism and amassed over 3000 Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese artifacts, said to be the largest collection of Asian art in Russia. By the mid-1890s, he was "the only member of the Russian elite to proclaim himself a Buddhist.” 

Prince Esper Esperovich Ukhtomsky

Ukhtomsky eventually became one of the chief spokesmen for Vostochichestvo, or Easternism, which proclaimed that Russia's true cultural and historical affinities lay with Asia rather than Europe. Ukhtomsky maintained that Russia was at heart an Asian civilization and possessed both a manifest destiny to lead the Asian world and a moral obligation to protect Asian peoples, particularly those of Buddhist cultural traditions, from Occidental colonialism. Specifically, Ukhtomsky wrote: “Trans-Baikalia [essentially Buryatia] is the key to the heart of Asia, the forward post of Russian civilization on the frontiers of the ‘Yellow Orient.’” Thus when he learned that a Buryat by the name of Agvan Dorzhiev, who was also a Russian citizen, was one of the Dalai Lama’s chief advisors and had already been of assistance to Badmaev’s spies in Lhasa it was only natural that he would invite him to Russia to discuss Russia’s role in keeping Tibet out of the clutches of British colonialism.

At Ukhtomsky’s invitation Dorzhiev proceeded to Russia. According to his own account he took a rather roundabout way. Instead of following the traditional caravan route north to Mongolia and on to Russia, he traveled south to Darjeeling in India and then to Calcutta. Here he apparently caught a steamship to Tientsin in China. He proceeded to Beijing and then took the traditional caravan route through Kalgan (modern-day Zhangjiakou) to Örgöö (Ulaanbaatar) and hence north to Russia. The Trans-Siberian Railroad had not yet reached Irkutsk, the Russian city on the Angara River, the outlet of Lake Baikal, 135 miles north of the Mongolian border, but at some point east of Irkutsk Dorzhiev and his traveling companion, the high-ranking Buryat official Taisan Tseten, boarded the train and continued on to St. Petersburg.  Ukhtomsky met them when they arrived in St. Petersburg and they were taken to the Peterhof, the immense palace built by Peter the Great. 

The Peterhof in St. Petersburg

Here Dorzhiev was introduced to Czar Nicholas ii. The Czar opened the discussion by suggesting that an official Russian representative be stationed in Lhasa. Dorzhiev was forced to point out that foreigners were still forbidden in Tibet and that for the time being at least an official Russian presence was impossible. Neither the Czar nor Ukhtomsky were pleased by this response. Then Dorzhiev relayed a verbal message from the Dalai Lama asking that Russia provide assistance of an unspecified nature to Tibet to help it ward off British aggression. The Czar, put off because the message had not been put in writing and unsure of Dorzhiev’s official role—he was not an accredited diplomat—reacted coolly to this suggestion and promised nothing. As one historian points out, “neither party derived much satisfaction from the meeting, but it was nevertheless important in opening up communications between Lhasa and St. Petersburg.”

Next, Dorzhiev met with officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry and presented them with a petition from the Dalai Lama requesting that a Buddhist meeting place or temple be established in St. Petersburg. A contingent of Buryat and Kalymk Buddhists lived in the capital, along with Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and other Buddhists attached to diplomatic staffs. Then there was an “elite coterie of European sophisticates and intellectuals, most of them from the upper echelons of society,” who “‘saw in the mystic cults of India and Tibet a kind of universal religion of the future.’” These devotees and enthusiasts had no place to congregate, as there was no Buddhist temple or meeting place in St. Petersburg. Nothing was done about a new temple at the time, but the seed was sown. During later trips to St. Petersburg Dorzhiev would oversee the construction of Datsan Gunzechoinei, as the new temple was called. It was officially consecrated on August 10, 1915. Shut down during the communist era, it is once again active.

Tibet | Shambhala | Japanese Pilgrim Ekai Kawaguchi

Much of what we know about Agvan Dorzhiev and his connection with the Shambhala Mythologem comes from the writings of Ekai Kawaguchi, a Japanese pilgrim who had traveled to Tibet in 1900. Disgusted by what he considered the worldliness and corruption of Buddhism as practiced in Japan he set out for India in June of 1897 in hopes of finding a truer, more authentic brand of the faith. By July of 1900 he had moved on to Tibet. He was reportedly the first Japanese to ever enter the country. He was traveling incognito, since foreigners were not allowed in the country at the time. That he arrived penniless and had to learn the Tibetan language on the fly and yet somehow managed to survive and even prosper in Tibet is a testament to his ingenuity and perseverance. 

Ekai Kawaguchi

His book about his travels, Three Years in Tibet, is full of picaresque details. If we are to believe his account, Tibetan women found him, a celibate Japanese monk, well-nigh irresistible, and he spent a good deal of his time fending off their amorous advances. He escaped marriage to one love-lorn lady only by the skin of his teeth. He also had a lot to say about the Mongols he encountered in Tibet:

How lazy and sluggish the average Tibetans are, it is almost beyond the power of Westerners to imagine. Not so with the Mongols: one never sees them enjoying themselves in such an indolent fashion. They study very hard and always take a very active part in the catechetical exercises, principally because they are alive to the purpose for which they have come so far from their home and country. Four hundred out of the five hundred Mongols are generally fine students; while the ratio has to be inverted in the case of Tibetans, four hundred and fifty out of five hundred of whom are but trash . . . Mongols are studious and progressive, but one common fault with them is that they are very quick-tempered, so that the slightest thing causes them to flare up in tremendous rage. Being always conscious of the fact that they are the most assiduous of the students, and that the largest number of the winners of the doctor’s degree always come from amongst them, they are very proud and uppish.

Kawaguchi continues:

There was a Mongolian tribe called the Buriats, which peopled a district far away to the north-east of Tibet towards Mongolia. The tribe was originally feudatory to China, but it passed some time ago under the control of Russia. The astute Muscovites have taken great pains to insinuate themselves into the grateful regard of this tribe . . . It was evident that this policy of Russia originated from the deep-laid plan of captivating the hearts of the priests, whose influence was, as it still is, immense over the people. From this tribe quite a large number of young priests are sent to Tibet to prosecute their studies at the principal seats of Lamaist learning [restrictions on Buryats studying in Lhasa had eased by this time] . . . There must be altogether two hundred such students at those seats of learning; several able priests have appeared from among them, one of whom, Dorje [Agvan Dorzhiev] by name, became a high tutor to the present Dalai Lama while he was a minor. This great priest obtained from the Hierarchical Government some twenty years ago the honorable title of “Tsan-ni Kenbo,” which means an “instructor in the Lamaist Catechism . . .”

Kawaguchi also relates a prophecy he heard while in Tibet:

It must be remembered that a work written in former times by some Lama of the New Sect contained a prophetic pronouncement—a pronouncement which was supported by some others—that some centuries hence a mighty prince would make his appearance somewhere to the north of Kashmīr, and would bring the whole world under his sway, and under the domination of the Buḍḍhist faith. . . This announcement alone was not sufficiently attractive to awake the interest of the Tibetans, and so the unborn prince was represented as a holy incarnation of the founder of the national religion of Tibet, Tsong-kha-pa . . . The prophet went into further details and gave the name of the future great country as “Chang Shambhala;” Chang denoting “northward”. . . With a precision worthy of Swift’s pen, the prophet located the new Buḍḍhist empire of the future at a distance some three thousand miles north-west of Buḍḍhagayā (Bodhgaya) in Hinḍūsṭān, and he even described at some length the route to be taken in reaching the imaginary country.”

Dorzhiev was well aware of this prophecy and soon decided to put it to his own uses. According to Kawaguchi:

He [Dorzhiev] wrote a pamphlet with the special object of demonstrating that “Chang Shambhala” means Russia, and that the Tsar is the incarnation of Je Tsong-kha-pa [Tsongkhapa (c.1357–1419), founder of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism]. The Tsar, this Russian emissary wrote, is a worthy reincarnation of that venerable founder, being benevolent to his people, courteous in his relations to neighboring countries, and above all endowed with a virtuous mind. This fact and the existence of several points of coincidence between Russia and the country indicated in the sacred prophecy indisputably proved that Russia must be that country, that anybody who doubted it was an enemy of Buddhism and of the august will of the Founder of the New Sect, and that in short all the faithful believers in Buddhism must pay respect to the Tsar as a Chang-chub Semba Semba Chenbo, which in Tibetan indicates one next to Buddha, or as a new embodiment of the Founder, and must obey him. Such is said to be the tenor of that particular writing of the Tsan-ni Kenbo. It seems to exist in three different versions, Tibetan, Mongolian and Russian.

As noted, the original prophecy supposedly stated that Chang Shambhala was three thousand miles northwest of Bodhgaya, in India. It was probably no coincidence that Moscow was just over 3000 miles northwest of Bodhgaya. Kawaguchi goes on to note:

Tsan-ni Kenbo’s [Dorzhiev’s] artful scheme has been crowned with great success, for today almost every Tibetan blindly believes in the ingenious story concocted by the Mongolian priest, and holds that the Tsar will sooner or later subdue the whole world and found a gigantic Buḍḍhist empire. So the Tibetans may be regarded as extreme Russophiles, thanks to the machination of the Tsan-ni Kenbo.

Kawaguchi admits that he never actually saw the pamphlet in question, but only heard second-hand accounts of it, and several commentators have pointed out that a copy of the pamphlet has never surfaced and some doubt that it ever existed. However, another pamphlet supposedly written by Dorzhiev in much the same vein did turn up in the archives of the East India Company. Apparently a Mongolian lama gave a copy of it to a British official in Darjeeling. Also written in Tibetan, Mongolian, and Russian, in it the author “‘explained to the Grand Lama [Dalai Lama] the many advantages which the Buddhist Church would gain by friendship with so great a monarch, and represented that if the Grand Lama visited the Russian capital he might convert the Tsar to the Buddhist faith.’” Although attributed to Dorzhiev, there is again no conclusive proof that Dorzhiev himself was the author of this document. However, a Kalmyk lama by the name of Dambo Ulyanov who visited Tibet in 1904–05 did reiterate much of what Dorzhiev had supposedly written in a document entitled “Predictions about the House of Romanov and a Brief Account of My Travel to Tibet”, published in St. Petersburg in 1913. Yet another pamphlet, a copy of which was said to be in St. Petersburg, “claims to trace the history of the Romanov Dynasty of Russia back to King Suchandra” [the first King of Shambhala], to whom the Buddha, according to tradition, taught the Kalachakra Tantra, the source of the Tibetan version of the Shambhala Mythologem. Thus when the Younghusband Mission appeared on the Tsangpo south of Lhasa Dorzhiev already had the Thirteenth Dalai Lama primed and loaded to flee north to Mongolia and then on to Russia, the new Chang Shambhala.

Suchandra, first King of Shambhala

Tibet | Mongolia | Shambhala | Agvan Dorzhiev

Avgan Dorzhiev’s ancestors lived in the valley of the Lena River northeast of Lake Baikal. In 1811 his grandfather moved to the valley of the Uda River, which flows into the Selenga River at Verkhneudinsk (current-day Ulaan Ude) in what is now the Republic of Buryatia, part of the Russian Federation. He was born near the village of Khara-Shibir, about thirty miles northeast of Verkhneudinsk in the Wood Tiger Year of the fourteenth sixty-year cycle of the Kalachakra calendar (1854 according to the Gregorian calendar). A precocious student with obvious linguistic talents, he soon learned Russian—his native language was Buryat, a dialect of Mongolian—and would eventually speak French. He showed an early interest in Buddhism and eventually added Sanskrit and Tibetan, the language of most Buddhist religious texts, to his resumé. At the age of thirteen he received an Amitayus Long-Life Empowerment from a local lama, who also advised him to go to Tibet for further studies. This lama may have been the Namnane Lama, a.k.a. Janchub Tsultim (1825-1897), the Buryat who according to some sources would play a leading role in Dorzhiev’s early life.

Tibet, however, was far off, and Dorzhiev’s means were limited. Örgöö [Ulaanbaatar], in Mongolia, was much closer,  just 280 miles to the south, and it was there that Dorzhiev went a year later, in 1868. Here he took the precepts of an upsaka, or religious layman, restraining himself from killing, stealing, lying, irresponsible sexual activity, and the use of intoxicants. Apparently at this point he was not totally convinced of his religious vocation and not yet ready to become a fully ordained monk. Instead he married a woman named Kholintsog and may have fathered a child—coitus in the married state not being considered irresponsible sexual activity. He quickly discovered that, in his own words, that “the household life, both in this and future births, is like sinking into a swamp of misery.’” According to his biography, it was the Namnane Lama who advised him to leave his wife. After consulting with another teacher, the revered Mongolian lama Chöpel Pelzangpo, he decided to advance a further step on the path of his religious vocation by taking the vows of a celibate layman, or ubashi. At this point wife and purported child disappear from his curriculum vitae, never to be heard from again.

For the really serious student of Buddhism there was only one ultimate destination—Lhasa, the lodestar of Inner Asian Buddhists. Dorzhiev was nothing if not ambitious, and he soon trained his sights on the Tibetan capital, where he hoped to eventually acquire the degree of geshé, the Buddhist equivalent of a doctorate. But here we get the first whiff of intrigue that was to hover like a miasma around Dorzhiev for the rest of his life. One historian has speculated that even at this early date Dorzhiev may have been working for Russian intelligence services. Documents he found in the archives of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society proposed “sending one or more Buryat Buddhists to Lhasa . . . with a Mongolian mission which was to bring back to Urga a new incarnation of the recently deceased Khutukhtu.” The Buryats were to concern themselves with “intelligence gathering.” The documents do not name the individual or individuals involved, but the same historian concludes that one of the Buryats in question must have been Dorzhiev.

 
Dorzhiev and his teacher, the Mongolian lama Chöpel Pelzangpo, left Mongolia for Lhasa in the winter of 1873, accompanying the caravan sent to bring back the little Tibetan boy, the son of an accountant at the court of the Twelfth Dalai Lama, who had been declared the Eighth Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia. At the time all Europeans and citizens of the Russian empire were still strictly barred from entering Tibet, and Dorzhiev, although a Buryat and a Buddhist, was still a citizen of Russia. Thus he went along on the caravan disguised as a Khalkh Mongol attendant to Chöpel Pelzangpo. At the time this was quite a dangerous undertaking for a Buryat. If exposed he would have been subjected to severe punishments, perhaps ending up in a Tibetan dungeon, or worse. 

In Lhasa Dorzhiev found temporary refuge at Gomang College in Drepung Monastery, where by tradition Mongolians in Tibet studied. Here he could blend in with Mongolian monks who would be unlikely to expose him even if they knew his true status. Word seems to have leaked about Dorzhiev’s true origins, however. His position precarious and running low on funds, he decided to forgo for the moment his dream of pursuing Buddhist studies in Lhasa and instead return to Örgöö. He and Chöpel Pelzangpo accompanied the caravan bringing the little four-year-old Eighth Bogd Gegeen to Mongolia. If we believe the assertion that Dorzhiev was a Russian intelligence agent, however, this may have been the plan all along.

Temple at Drepung Monastery

Ruins of Gomang College. It was heavily damaged during the Cultural Revolution

Luvsanchoijinimadanzinbanchug (1870–1924) was the twenty-third incarnation of Javsandamba and eighth in the line of Bogd Gegeens of Mongolia established by Zanabazar. He would witness the fall of the Qing Dynasty and oversee the rise of an independent state of Mongolia. In addition to his role as head of Buddhism in Mongolia he would eventually be crowned king of Mongolia, and he would live to see his power usurped by the Bolshevik communists who had seized control of the country in 1922. 

The Eighth Bogd Gegeen

By the time Dorzhiev returned to Örgöö he had decided on his religious vocation. At the age of twenty-one he was given full ordination by Chöpel Pelzangpo and began studies with several other venerable monks who initiated him into various tantric practices, including the sadhana of Vajrabhairava, which would become his lifelong practice. Vajrabhairava was also one of the main practices of his root guru, Namnane Lama. Namnane Lama may have also introduced Dorzheiv to the Kalachakra Tantra, according to legend taught to Sucandra (977–877 b.c.), the first King of Shambhala, by the Buddha himself. He also studied at monasteries at Wutai Shan in Shanxi Province, China, a mountain (actually a cluster of five peaks) dedicated to Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. He had not given up his dreams of continuing his studies in Lhasa, however. Informed by knowledgeable lamas at Wutai Shan that the obstacles he had previously faced could be overcome by generous offerings to monasteries and officials in Lhasa, he returned to Buryatia and managed to solicit a considerable amount of alms from his fellow countrymen, duly impressed as they were by the energetic and charismatic monk who already appeared destined for greater things. Part of this booty was given to Dzasak Rinpoche, a high-ranking lama at Wutai Shan. This worthy, who apparently had good connections in Tibet, smoothed the way for Dorzhiev’s trip back to Lhasa and even determined an auspicious time for him to leave on his journey. One account maintains that Dorzhiev returned to Lhasa in 1877 in the company of Namnane Lama, who made lavish donations to the Big Three monasteries of Sera, Ganden, and Drepung, and presented the Dalai Lama with a large silver mandala. These gifts supposedly eased Dorzhiev back into monastic life in the Tibetan capital. Another account maintains, however, that the twenty-six-year-old Dorzhiev arrived back in Lhasa in 1880. Upon his arrival he himself made generous offerings to the monasteries of Sera, Ganden, and Drepung, with an extra and especially munificent donation to Gomang College at Drepung. “By this means,” relates his biographer, “which may not exactly have been bribery, but something very much like it, the earnest and energetic young Buryat was able, in his own words, ‘to create favourable conditions for my studies.’” The matter of his Russian citizenship was for the time being forgotten.

Agvan Dorzhiev as a young man

Dorzhiev’s subsequent career at Lhasa was nothing short of meteoric. He studied with some of the most distinguished lamas in Tibet and in 1888, just eight years after his arrival in Lhasa, he was awarded the Buddhist equivalent of a doctorate, passing the exams with the highest honors. Normally it took fifteen or twenty years to earn such a degree. “It is . . . a little puzzling how he managed to complete the course so quickly,” observes his biographer, “for there is usually a waiting list and ample funds are necessary to pass the final hurdles. Everything points to Dorzhiev having an influential patron and sponsor. Perhaps money was reaching him from Russia—and perhaps from high places in Russia. Naturally he is reticent about anything of this kind.” He immediately began instructing Mongolian students in Buddhistic logic and metaphysics and soon became “a recognized member of the monastic elite.”

All this would pale in comparison to his next assignment. That same year, 1888, he was appointed as tutor of the thirteen-year-old Thirteenth Dalai Lama. According to his own account:

 . . . when the Dalai Lama reached the age of 13, seven persons from the monasteries of Briyveng, Ser and Gandan [Drepung, Sera, and Ganden], were being chosen as his tutors. One of these was Lharambo Doijiev [writing here in the third person] who was then promoted to the rank of Tsan Khambo, attached to the person of the Dalai Lama, and he remained in this capacity. capacity until he was 45, i.e. until 1898. Apart from the study of Choira [meditative and ritual practices], the Lama, under the direct guidance of Dorjiev, studied also the Tibetan and Sanscrit written languages and grammar.

 
He became, in his own words, the Dalai Lama’s ““inseparable attendant’” and his ”’true guardian and protector,'’ himself instructing the Dalai Lama on a near-daily basis and present when other lamas gave him initiations into the highest teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism. When the Dalai Lama was finally empowered as the ruler of Tibet at the age of nineteen he took on additional duties. According to Charles Bell, the British diplomat who knew the Thirteenth Dalai Lama personally and wrote a biography of him, Dorzhiev was appointed as “‘Work Washing Abbot,’ part of his duty being to sprinkle water, scented with saffron flowers, a little on the person of the Dalai Lama, but more on the walls of his room, on the altar, and on the books, as a symbol of cleansing. He was thus in a close relationship with the young god-king, now come into power.” According to another source, Dorzhiev also “held the exalted office of ‘Keeper of the Golden Teapot’”.

Dorzhiev also preached about Russia to the Dalai Lama. In an autobiographical essay he wrote:

Having thus become intimately related with Dalai Lama and acquainted with the highly placed persons from the Tibet clergy and government, Dorjiev [writing here in the third person] sought to bring home to them that there was a large number of Buddhists inhabiting the Russian State and that their creed was protected by the Russian laws of religious tolerance. Hence Tibet and its rulers began to distinguish between an Englishman and Russian, as formerly many people disliked equally the Russians and English, believing them to be one and the same nation. . . As a result, the Tibetans since that time have been getting more and more convinced in what Dorjiev told them about Russia.

Charles Bell elaborates:

Withal, Dorjieff was an ardent Russian. He appears to have told the Dalai Lama that, since their close contact with Mongolia, more and more Russians were adopting Buddhism in its Tibetan form, and even the Tsar himself was likely to embrace it. To have such a powerful Ruler united to him by the strong bond of a common religion, what more could the Dalai Lama desire? The professor of theology was clever and pushful, and the godking was cut off from contact with the outside world.

Dorzhiev had a lot more to say about Russia. Charles Bell noted that Dorzhiev:

 . . . appears to have spread the story that North Shambala was Russia and the Tsar was the king who would restore Buddhism. He is said even to have written a pamphlet to prove this. He urged on his master and on the leading men of Tibet the desirability of seeking the friendship of the great northern Power. The Dalai Lama and others were told that . . . more and more Russians were adopting the Tibetan religion and the Tsar himself was likely to embrace it. With a common religion—the one thing that really mattered—and with unlimited resources, Russia was, of all the Powers, the one most likely to aid Tibet.

Dorzhiev would eventually rank as one of the Dalai Lama’s closest political advisors. The fact that he was a Russian citizen had been forgiven but not forgotten. Some in the Dalai Lama’s entourage were appalled that a foreigner had become the religious leader’s right-hand man. At one point, his “ill-wishers,” as Dorzhiev  himself called them, “solicited repeatedly before the Tibetan king and ministers to have me removed from my post and sent back to my homeland.” But he had the support of the Regent and the Dalai Lama himself, and all their objections were in vain. The Buryat monk who had first slunk into Lhasa in disguise had become one of the most influential men in the country. It was he who put the Thirteenth Dalai Lama on the road to Shambhala.