Stolen Mongolian Crown Found After 20 years

Stolen Mongolian crown found at police station after 20 years

Published: 3 Jul 09 12:27 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/20444/20090703/

A decorative Mongolian silver crown stolen in 1984 from a Stockholm museum has been found on the premises of the Swedish Police Service, where it has spent more than twenty years in accidental storage.

"We would like to thank the national police service for housing the silver Mongolian crown for such a long time," said museum chief Anders Björklund in a statement.

The crown, part of a woman's costume from Mongolia, was one of the Museum of Ethnography's most prized possessions when it first went on display in 1980.

But in 1984 the bejewelled piece of headgear mysteriously disappeared from the museum during a power cut.

A report was filed with Interpol to hinder the resale of the crown beyond Sweden's borders, but for 25 years staff at the museum were left scratching their heads.

Recently however the riddle was solved when the police service's main Stockholm offices underwent renovations and a long forgotten bag was found in storage.

Confiscated from a burglar more than twenty years ago, the bag was found to contain an unusual silver crown, along with silver cutlery and a selection of trophies.

When police called the Museum of Ethnography to see if it could shed some light on the find, the museum's Asia expert Håkan Wahlqvist was dispatched to the station and immediately recognized the stolen treasure.

Paul O'Mahony (paul.omahony@thelocal.se/08 656 6513)

“The Impact of the Mongol invasions on Iran, Iraq and Central Asia; A Revaluation” by Professor Charles P. Melville, Cambridge University, U.K.

Seige Underway by Mongol Forces - from a 14th century manuscript.


“The Impact of the Mongol invasions on Iran, Iraq and Central Asia; A Revaluation” by Professor Charles P. Melville, Cambridge University, U.K.

Please note that this lecture paper is a work-in-progress and is not to be copied, quoted or excerpted from without expressed written permission from Professor Charles P. Melville, Cambridge University, United Kingdom.


“The Impact of the Mongol invasions on Iran, Iraq and Central Asia; A Revaluation” by Professor Charles P. Melville, Cambridge University, U.K.

The Indo-Mongolian Society Lecture at New York University,
March 12th, 1997.


This lecture paper titled “The Impact of the Mongol invasions on Iran, Iraq and Central Asia; A Revaluation”, was transcribed from a verbal presentation by Professor Charles P. Melville on March 12th, 1997 at New York University for the Indo-Mongolian Society of New York. Professor Melville addresses one of the most important issues in Mongolian history in this lecture, which is the consistent distortion and large-scale exaggeration by many Persian, Arab and Central Asian historians about the scale of destruction wrought by the Mongol campaigns and the Mongol rule over these dominions.

The oft-repeated view of massive destruction carried out by Chinggis Khan and his armies in several campaigns has helped form the standard view of Chinggis Khan marauding murderous hordes perpetuated through literature in most parts of the world. This extraordinary re-examination of the primary historical sources and period accounts about the Mongol military campaigns provides scholars and the lay public the opportunity to have a more balanced view of Chinggis Khan, the Mongols and this critically important aspect of world history.

Professor Melville’s methodical reexamination of historical sources from the Mongol Ilkhanid period and those prior to the Mongol conquests illuminates the closer-to-actual population densities of the Ilkhanid regions for a more precise examination of statistical assessments of regional population figures of areas in the path of the Mongol invasions.

Since most of the historical accounts about Chinggis Khan and the Mongol conquests were written by historians whose countries had been conquered by the Mongols, there has been a natural tendency for historical distortion and statistical exaggeration in their writings about the Mongol empire and its military campaigns. Professor Melville’s comparative analysis of the reports of local historians, travelers accounts, and contemporary sources helps provide much needed scrutiny of questionable statements in the writings of native historians who suddenly found themselves to be subjects of Mongol rule.



“The Impact of the Mongol invasions on Iran, Iraq and Central Asia; A Revaluation” by Professor Charles P. Melville, Cambridge University, U.K.



“I’ d like to dedicate this lecture to the memory of the great French scholar the late Jean Aubin, who died recently. Apart from the general debt that everyone working in this field owes to his amazing research over a period of forty years, in this particular presentation, I am building on arguments that I first heard him articulate at a conference in France in 1992 and which I believe remain unfortunately unpublished. Any residual traces of sarcasm and wit that may be detectable in this talk will readably be recognized as the hallmark of Aubin’s refreshingly sardonic style. Views have differed dramatically over the impact of the Mongol invasions on the Islamic world, the debate has ebbed and flowed like all historical arguments depending on the particular time and circumstances of the historians concerned.

As for E.G. Browne writing in Cambridge in the early years of this century, and as Bernard Lewis implies, maybe rather jealously, in a haven of shelter of civilization, “the Mongol assault was a catastrophe, which changed the face of the world and inflicted more suffering on the human race than any event in world history.”

Things didn’t seem quite so bad to Barthold, the first scholar to make an objective analysis of the invasions in his extraordinary doctoral thesis defended in 1900 and still by far the best work on the subject, that is “ Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion”, and particularly so after the First World War.

The work of revisionism was taken a stage further by the post-Second World War and post-Holocaust historian Bernard Lewis, who remarks that “ The immediate blows of the Mongols though thought no doubt trivial by modern standards were terrible and overwhelming, yet they were limited in extent and duration.” For Lewis, only in Iraq did the Mongol conquest leave permanent injuries, the decline of the elaborate irrigation works on which the prosperity, even the life of the country depended. But whereas in Persia there was partial recovery once the regime was firmly in control, in Iraq there was hardly any.

Even further down this path, when the interesting thesis of Pai-nan Rashid Wu in a dissertation that was published or done at the University of Utah in 1974 - unlikely to become another Barthold - whose work on the fall of Baghdad and the Mongol rule in Al-Iraq concluded that “Most or all the accusations against the Mongols are rendered dubious or without foundation. The Mongol invasion of Baghdad and the elimination of the Abbasid Caliphate created no more than ripples in a pool which soon returned to normal.” No respecter of persons, he interestingly concentrates particularly on the question of irrigation as we shall see. More mature in his judgment in the fin-de-siecle gloom of Thatcherite Britain when it was all too easy to imagine the horrors of the past. David Morgan concluded that Iraq became a neglected frontier province and for Persia the Mongol period was a disaster on a grand and unparalleled scale. While at the same time bringing a welcome breath of common sense into the analysis of the forces that the Mongols actually brought to bear. His views are largely shared by Professor Lambton in her recent book touching on the subject.

It may seem unlikely that there is anything more to be said about the Mongol invasions though excellent articles continue to be written on the subject, notably recently by Jirgen Paul. Certainly it is a vast subject which cannot be tackled in great detail this evening, despite the optimistic impression given by the title of my talk. To bring the topic down to size we shall not be concerned with the effects of Mongol rule as such, though some before and after comparisons will be useful. But more with the short term impact of the conquests themselves, as you know these occurred in two main waves, the first in Transoxania and Khurasan in the years 1219 to 1223, and the second through Iran and Iraq in 1256 and 1258 that’s thirty years later.

I should emphasize for the only time that much of southern Iran was not affected directly by the Mongol invasions, though this must be part of the argument in any overall assessment. The situation in the south is more a matter of Mongol rule, which is not itself claimed to have destroyed cities or decimated populations. Nor can we be concerned with the longer term impact of the Mongols on Persian history although this is of course an interesting subject. As you are all aware, Persian culture reached extraordinary heights under the Ilkhans and later Mongol rulers, but that is a different subject. As David Morgan with his customary wit put it, “We may justly have our doubts, over how impressed the Persian peasants - as they did their best to avoid the Mongol tax collectors - would have been by developments in miniature paintings.”

Finally the Mongols motives for the invasion and for their destructiveness also only feature very briefly in my argument. So to assess the short-term impact and the immediate casualties and destruction of the invasions we need some perspective that will allow us to compare the situation before and afterwards. If over a million people were killed in Herat for example, we need to be sure that there were a million people there beforehand. One of the main problems as this suggests is the question of numbers and how we can get around them.

Our sources are no more immune from the often unconscious influence of their own milieu then are modern historians, but unlike most of us unfortunately, they also made some effort to write literature consistent with their education. Also they were writing under some important constraints, nevertheless they speak with an impressively unanimous voice of a great trauma. Its not my intention or desire to minimize or belittle this trauma, nor to play down the terror that the Mongols created, its not an amusing story. Nevertheless, we are in the business of explanations and not emotions, and it is useful to attempt some more objective measure of our subject. Furthermore the 14th century Persian satirist Ubajdi Zakani managed to extract considerable humor from the situation, and I hope that only traces of levity in my own presentation will be seen as an attempt not to spoil your evening with too many mountains of corpses.

I realize so far this has been all talk and no action unlike the Mongols themselves. To keep within bounds I propose to examine some individual episodes rather than the whole course of the invasions to bring out the salient points of my approach. I will then try to draw some conclusions together from these and other cases. The slides are purely illustrative rather then crucial to the argument, though once or twice they do provide some compelling visual proofs. I regret that I have not yet managed to produce a satisfactory map as you’ll see from my first slide. (Slide shown) The idea of the map is just to show in the most general sense a sketch of Genghis Khan’s and other Mongol invasions. Transoxania, Iran, especially northern Iran, and Baghdad is here somewhere (pointing) There’s also a map that I’ve handed out. This shows Alexander the Great plucking up the people of Gog and Magog behind the mountains for the protection of the civilized world. In Christian and Islamic mythology their emergence is promised at the end of the world. This explains the Muslim rationalization I think of the origins and nature of the Mongol attack. The Mongols point of view also of course have an idea of breaking out from the mountains valleys from which they were encased to form a nation. These are just some pictures of Mongol warriors breaking out, looking somewhat fierce. This shows the main routes of the invasions progressing from Samarkand and Bukhara down to Herat, and Nishapur. As you know Genghis Khan’s invasion was launched against the territories of the Khwarizm Shah, the ruler of the area before their arrival, in retaliation for the murder of the Mongol Muslim trade mission at Utrar followed by the execution of his ambassadors who were sent to protest. In fact I am not going to refer very much to the conquest of Transoxania largely because very few figures are given and its the figures particularly that I’m interested in. Leaving his son Chaghatay to prosecute the siege of Utrar that was the scene of the massacre, Genghis Khan himself moved to Bukhara in February to March of 1220. Various figures are given for the size of the garrison, 12,000 in one source, 20,000 in another, and 30,000 in another. As it happened however most of the army decided to abandon the city and they fought their way out, an operation from which very few survived. The city then very sensibly surrendered and the population left the town which was plundered only the last defenders of the citadel were massacred, we are now told that they are only 400 of them. The city was not leveled to the ground, nor was there a general massacre. Though some fires broke out and caused damage. The mosques were pillaged however and the Mongols horses are said to have use of Koran stands for fodder troughs. An equally famous and similarly symbolic story is told of Genghis Khan’s addressing the inhabitants of Bukhara from the minbar and informing them that he was sent as a scourge from God. This of course is the only rational explanation available. Now we have a picture of him demanding that the place be dug up so he can find the treasure I think. (Showing slide) There doesn’t look like there has been much carnage. The important thing to notice for the moment is the discrepancy in the sources over the numbers. This becomes more acute at Genghis Khan’s next port of call Samarkand. Here the garrison is given as 110,000 by Juvaini, 60,000 by Juzjani, 50,000 by Ibn al-Athir, 40,000 by Nasavi. In one sortie in their first flush of their enthusiasm, the besieged lose either 70,000 men according to Juvaini or 50,000 by Juzjani, this is just in one attack. As in Bukhara the inhabitants themselves decided to surrender, and the Qadis with 50,000 people under their protection were spared being plundered. The rest of the inhabitants were driven out of the town, which was sacked. But the garrison in the citadel, 1000 Qatlugs perished in the mosque in the fire, and 30,000 were massacred when the citadel falls. However the city was not razed to the ground and again there was no general massacre. Although 30,000 artisans were given to the sons of Genghis Khan. However the city does seem to have been subject to further tribulations on later occasions and when the Chinese monk Chang Chung stayed there in December 1221 he reckoned the population had dropped to a quarter of its previous level which he puts at a fantastic figure of 100,000 families, so that’s presumably round about 500,000 people. Nevertheless life went on, he noticed there was much merchandise in the bazaars; this is December 1221 about a year and a half after the sack of the place and a flourishing and productive gardens stretched to an estimated 30 miles around the city with which not even Chinese gardens could compare.

Massacres did take place at some of the other cities of Transoxania, notably Utrar the scene of the original massacres of Mongols, Termiz and Organj or Gorganj where the besieging army was said to be over 100,000 strong, even before Juchi’s forces arrived. Despite a prolonged and bloody siege, 100,000 artisans were carried away to the East, and women and children were being enslaved and the rest were massacred. Each Mongol soldier, of whom there is now said to be only 50,000, that is half as many as are said to be taking part in the first place were given 24 men each to butcher. Which gives a total figure of 1.2 million dead. Juvaini had heard an even higher figure but for some extraordinary reason he couldn’t bring himself to quote it. Nevertheless the situation in Transoxania region in Khwarizm seems to have stabilized rather quickly and since the whole area came under direct undisputed Mongol rule, the work of reconstruction could begin immediately. The result was that the cities of the region recovered far more rapidly than those in Khurasan and Iraq as everybody agrees. (Showing slide map of Merv, Ray Nishapur and Herat) This of course is the main route along which Genghis Khans’s generals persued the fleeing Khwarazim Shah. Passing quickly into Khurasan and on to Balkh the situation there is confused. The city seems originally to have surrendered voluntarily and to have escaped a massacre, but then to have rebelled and suffered the fate of other cities in Khurassan. This slide shows the walls of Balkh as they remain today. The next one shows, there is nothing inside them except gardens, in other words this is an abandoned site. The Taoist monk I’ve already referred to Chang Chung passing about in September of 1222 noted that “there was a very large city which had recently revolted, the inhabitants had fled and we heard the barking of dogs in the city.”

It was still in ruins in the time of the famous Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta in the 1330’s and I suppose recovered some time after that, but not in the immediate sight. The survival of the empty shell of the walls is a strong visual witness to the abandonment of the city. Here we have no details of the figures. Its really with the effects in the other major cities of Khurasan that I’m mainly concerned. Genghis’s son Tolui was sent to subdue the province with the following reported results, in Merv between 700,000 and 1.3 million casualties, Nishapur an estimated 1.7 million casualties, excluding women and children. Here it took twelve days to count the dead. In Herat the first siege left 12,000 of the Sultan’s forces killed here. The townspeople were spared. After a revolt however after in a second siege the city was sacked. In June of 1222, with an estimated 2.4 million people butchered in one day. 200,000 survived, another figure suggests that with 1.6 million, 40 survived. So these are the reported facts.

We should first note the literary methods of the Persian bureaucrats to denounce the Mongol carnage. Where there were 100,000 people there remained 100 says Juvaini. An approximate survey of the provinces shows that only one in ten were prosperous and the rest were in ruins says Rashid ud Din. The use of such rhetorical figures was typical of the literary divanians, that is the men of the divan, who are used to bandying around large numbers, but who also fail to comment on the enormous accounting errors that cost so many of them their necks.

Well, the reports of events in these three cities are instructive. All three, but let us focus on one and notice in particular the fantastic figures. In Merv, each trooper was given 300 to 400 people to kill, some sources say 200. The process of killing them took five days. A Sayyid who went around counting the dead found more than 1.3 million. This was just the people who were laying out in the open not the ones who were in ditches and everything. As it took thirteen days, he must have counted a 100,000 people a day. Its much slower than it took to kill them in other words. Ibn al-Athir however who was unaware of the Sayyid’s efforts says that only 700,000 perished, thats’ half as many. 400 artisans were spared, you may note here the regular use of multiples of four and seven, 400 troops were left behind to complete the executions in Nishapur, where again 400 artisans were spared, 70,000 people were killed in Sabzivar the same number in Nisa.

If 1.3 million bodies, or before they were bodies were divided up into lots of between two or four hundred, this suggest that the army was only either three and a half or six and a half thousand strong. And in fact, by some astonishing coincidence, the figure given for the army at the siege of Merv is 7,000. Barthold makes a rare slip here and says it was 70,000. The figures for the Mongol forces suddenly become quite small, even realistic. The buildings and defenses are supposed to have been razed too. Yet in Merv in November 1221 following the massacre of Balkh, the population rose in revolt but it didn’t dare leave the city which was therefore presumably still standing, its new rulers repaired the fortifications and the walls, as well as agriculture, irrigation works, and so on. The people gathered there from all around attracted by the abundance of its wealth, when 5,000 Mongols arrived in the summer to crush the uprising, a further 100,000 people are left dead according to some reports with only 4 survivors. A few months later however the town was repopulated by those who had hidden in the desert or remained in their villages, and the walls were rebuilt. A local commander came and took charge and rallied a force of 10,000 men, a Mongol general returned with 100,000 men. This is the third visit by the Mongols, and carried out widespread torture for forty days, only 100 souls survived this. At the end of it all there are only 10 or a dozen Indians left residing in the city, I don’t know how they managed to get away with it.

These obviously contrary and fantastic figures which deserve no credit whatsoever, though they have often been regarded with suspicion, they have never been dismissed out of hand. Is there any way to achieve a more exact measurement? Demographic data of course are totally lacking for both the period before and after the invasions and unfortunately they are not available either for Mongke’s census, which was carried out in the 1250’s. In favor of the figures quoted above, as orders of magnitude, there is the demographic question mark that hangs over Yuan China, where incidentally we also get a sense of the tiny Mongol population compared with the native Chinese. One million Mongols for seventy million Chinese according to the census of the 1290’s carried out in China. This also reveals a drop in the population from the previous Chin and Sung periods where the population is a 100 million. This decline continued throughout the Mongol period; the census of 1293 showing a population of 60 million. Its difficult to account for such drops purely on account of plagues, disease, etc., whatever the underlying uncertainty in the figures themselves. What I mean here is that there is an unaccounted and dramatic drop in population in China as well, so that would obviously support the general view that there was also a similar drop in population in Persia. I might just mention something about the size of the army here quickly. I haven’t read out all the figures as they go along of the size of the forces involved but you will have noticed that quite often that they are supposed to be a 100,000 in a troop even with people going back to crack what should have been a tiny nut in Merv was a troop of a 100,000. Barthold estimates the total Mongol forces at between 150,000 and 200,000. The army at the time of Genghis Khan’s death was 129,000, reasonably well set out what it consisted of. And certainly there were a few additions added on since then, and of course as we all know a lot of people were scooped up on the way. Turkish tribes particularly or forcibly joined the Mongol forces on their way through. Nevertheless Barthold’s estimate of the upper end of 200,000 is not unreasonable. For the second invasion, thats the one under Hulegu against Baghdad, an army of around 170,000 is proposed out of a total Mongol population according to John Masson Smith of about 850,000. A higher figure nearly double that much, 300,000, technically at Hulegu’s disposal, whether it includes the Turco-Mongols or the whole army including all the extra various units were certainly never mobilized in a single campaign. The point about a lot of these other figures are too, it is very unusual for the whole army to be in action at the same place at the same time.

As we know Genghis Khan was with part of the army himself going down towards the Indian border at the same time other sons were knocking out Organj and then someone else was chasing the Khwarizmshah across Iran. So the units involved were probably fairly small, even if in sum they were quite big by the standards of today; I mean 200,000 is a pretty significant army. Well, what about some methods to try to quantify the populations involved. I may say that I approach this with extreme hesitation, and I noticed unfortunately although I shouldn’t say so that Jean Aubin had got himself in a complete muddle when he tried to do this so my figures are probably a little better than his, but they just show how dodgy it is to bandy figures around at all.

Nevertheless, this is just to try to establish an order of magnitude really. Are we talking about millions, hundred of thousands, tens of thousands or what? No one is ever going to pretend we can know an exact figure, but it certainly would be useful to have a rough order of magnitude. At the moment the only way it seems possible to do this is through using models of urban population density in areas within the walls in the rural areas. There is of course a complete lack of archives, but we may note for sake of comparison the Ottoman census of the rich merchant cities of Aleppo and Damascus which were provincial capitols in large oases each had 10,000 taxable hearths which may lead to a population of somewhere around 50,000 just multiplying five by hearths. As I say this is very imprecise, but it gives you a method of comparison. Yet Herat on the eve of the Mongol invasions is supposed to have 444,000 hearths. That’s 40 times as many, and implies using the same multiple roughly a population of 2,000,000. Petrushevsky the famous Russian scholar noticed that the population of 2,000,000 would more or less allow the massacre of 1.6 million in the siege, so he thought that this was a credible figure because it was entirely consistent with the other evidence available. But having worked out to his own satisfaction that the sums did add up, he then said that it didn’t seem really quite realistic, so he arbitrarily slashed the number in half and he said there was a population of 1,000,000. And of the Aqquuyunlu - who as you know are a late 15th century dynasty - Shiraz had a population of around about 20,000 people or 3,500 hearths in about 1515. Sticking with Shiraz at the end of the Qajar period, the census of people within the medieval walls was 6,200 houses inhabited by around 53,000 people. That’s the end of the 19th century. If you like to look at your handouts, medieval Damghan, in which the walls are still standing, encloses an area of approximately 470 hectares. Sheradil estimated with a population at its peak should have been round about 25,000 people. Not on a very scientific basis I admit but its roughly on the basis that in 1930 when that picture was drawn the size of the population was concentrated in roughly a fifth of the area available within the medieval walls and therefore as a maximum multiplied by five might have been 25,000 at its peak. This yields a figure of roughly 53 inhabitants per hectare which is quite low. In Nishapur where the medieval site was abandoned rather like Balkh. I’ve walked over the site at Nishapur - its rather dramatic. Its clear to see the old city walls with abandoned ruined fields with pottery shards all over them which have been excavated rather imperfectly unfortunately, but a lot of the material is in the Metropolitan Museum, it was very nice to see it there. Nishapur, from the extent of the ruined fields has been estimated by Bulliet at 1,680 hectares. He suggests a multiplier of between 100 to 200 people per hectare as embracing the highest and the lowest generally agreed figures from studies in other parts of the Islamic world as sort of population density. He applies this to two-thirds of the whole area which therefore allows for public spaces, gardens, mosques, all the rest of it, so its not absolutely cram packed the whole area.

Taking a range then of the minimum from Damghan of maybe 55 people per hectare and a maximum at the top end of the range round about 200 people for two thirds of a hectare. We can apply this range to the sizes of the circuits of the medieval cities. Unfortunately for the ones that we haven’t investigated thoroughly yet we have to rely on the figures given by Mustaufi, a contemporary geographer and historian of the circuits of the walls. This process itself is not itself without objections because there seems to be some argument over the length of the pace. But if we take it as being roughly a meter, which seems to be in the middle of the various options, then it also makes it much easier to do the sums. I am going to come up with some extremely approximate approximations of a range from the smallest one on the density population of 55 people per hectare up to 200 people for a reduced area two-thirds of a hectare. Nishapur, these are using the size of the cities as they were contemporaraly within their walls, has a population by these calculations of between 75,000 and 180,000. Ray, between 48,000 and 120,000. Tabriz, at the time between 12,000 and 30,000. Sarakhs between 8,000 and 21,000. Qum between 35,000 to 89,000. Qazvin 35,000 to 88,000. Shiraz 52,000 to 130,000. In other words most of these places are somewhere in the region of 30,000 population, and at the most in the case of Nishapur, 180,000. Even Nishapur, therefore the biggest of these cities can hardly have boasted a population of more than 200,000 people at its peak, 200,000. Its a place where 1.7 million are said to have been killed. For comparison, just to show these figures aren’t totally ludicrous, the new city of Nishapur which is built on the ruined fields to the west of the old site which has an area within its walls - which were still standing when these figures were taken of 105 hectares is very small - had a population who were still living within the medieval walls in 1910, of between 10,000 and 15,000. That’s about a fifth the size of Nisahpur roughly on the eve of the Mongol invasions at the smallest or a tenth of it at the biggest.

In the first census of 1956 by which time the population had spread outside the 14th century walls it had a population of 25,000. Now we know that on the eve of the Mongol conquest the city of Nishapur was greatly reduced from its former splendour thanks to the devastation of two earthquakes, devastating raids by the Turkish Ghuzz tribes about 60 years before the Mongol invasions followed by violent internecine strife within the city between the Shafi’i and Hanafi factions. Despite Yakut’s reports of the flourishing state of the city we know that the bulk of the inhabitants had moved to the suburb of Shadjiakh to the southwest of the city an area which contained only roughly only 165 hectares, the walls are still there - I have a photograph of them at home - suggesting a population of between 16,000 and 40,000 people, so that would be a perhaps more accurate estimate of the population of Nishapur at the moment of the Mongol invasions rather than at its peak of prosperity which had long been past.

In Ray, we may notice, talking of internecine strife, that before the Mongols arrived a city of 30,000 mosques was there in which 100,000 people had been killed in one incident of fighting between the Hanafi and Shafi factions, or according to another source 600,000 people. And in fact by the time Yakut visited it shortly before the invasions only one quarter of the city was left. It was basically a fight between the Hanafis, the Shafiis and the Shiites. The Shiites were the largest group. They were eliminated by the Shafis and the Hanafis, the Shafii and the Hanafis then fought it out amongst themselves. The Shafii who were actually the smallest group and whose quarter of the city was the smallest, won, and so when the Mongols got there it was actually only the Shafii quarter that was still there. Yakut specifically says that the city was deserted and an empty shell. The Shafiis submitted to the Mongols but their quarter was sacked anyway due to the presence in the locality of Khwarazmian forces. Its interesting concerning Ray that Ghazan Khan the later Mongol tried to revive the city but actually failed to do so, and the population and prosperity, as it were, moved to a neighboring town of Veramin. Also in Isfahan in the period between the original invasion and the second invasion there’s also a report of factional fighting between the Shafis and the Hanafis, which having run its course and caused a lot of damage eventually led to the Mongols capturing the city because one of them let them in. The result was that they all were killed. So these were an example of the sort of problems that were affecting some of these large cities before the Mongol even arrived.

Current excavation at Samarkand and at Merv should help provide similar opportunities long term. Going back to my number crunching wandering around to evaluate the size of the built up areas of these major cities to evaluate at different periods and ideally before the Mongol invasions. I’ve really just used Nishapur, which at the moment is the only one that has been excavated as an example.

So as in the previous situation as I mentioned we should not seek the economic causes for the collapse of Iran too casually in the destruction of the great cities of Merv and Nishapur, the most brilliant period of their civilization was already over. The Mongols invasions were preceded by long decades of disorganization and local difficulties. The Mongols themselves cannot be held responsible for the decline. This had already started.

You may notice Fars had already been said to have been ruined by the 11th century by the invading Shabansiqariar tribesmen, and in the 12th century Khuraasan and Kirman were ruined by the Ghuzz. Ruined; what does that mean? Anyway, not in the peak of their condition. Following this we have the ravages of the Khwarazimshahs and various Turks and Turkmen tribes and groups following their own warlords ever since the collapse of the Seljuqs.

So the figures I quoted above and the list of places are probably maximal. I think it is rather unlikely that they are underestimates. Elsewhere in northern Iran outside these large cities which I suppose are the most eye catching where resistance was offered, for instance in Ardabil, Nakhjawan and Marazbeh, there was trouble of course, but otherwise there was some pillage and some deaths but no wholesale sacking. Its interesting to compare perhaps some of it a selective way some of the other evidence given by Yakut who traveled through the area both on his way east and then on his way west fleeing from the Mongols shortly before their arrival. By comparing his evidence with that provided by later authorities. First of all in Azerbiajan, Yakut noticed that discord was endemic there almost all the town are falling into ruins and the villages are deserted. Ardabil, which I mentioned where the Mongols sacked it, despite two Mongol assaults, he says it now, maybe more flourishing than it was before the invasion. At Urjan Yakut noticed a walled town with a market, but mainly in ruins. Mustowfi writing in the Mongol period noticed that Ghazan rebuilt it with mortared stone walls and dedicated all the income from its agricultural harvest to charitable trusts.

Qarghazkunan, a place not all that far away, Yakut calls small with a nice bazaar but half-ruined. Mustowfi also says it was ruined in the invasions, I suppose there is a difference between ruined and half-ruined and it became a nomadic settlement.
Mar and also in Azerbijan - obviously I am focusing on Azerbijan because thats where the Mongols went - there is not much point in telling you what was happening in Kirman at the time. Yakut said that though it had been an important town and that it was now half-ruined and almost deserted due to a tax by local Kurds. Mutowfi echoes this, “It was once a large town with walls of 8000 paces but it was now only half-standing”. Here we have a problem with Mutowfi, but quite often you are not quite sure that he is recording contemporary information but actually just repeating the evidence of his sources who of course are writing at a different period.

As for Urmiye, Yakut says that despite its advantages it was not flourishing thanks to the negligence of its ruler. Mostoufi on the other hand writing in the Mongol period calls it a great city with walls of 10,000 paces and large gardens and prosperous environs. Barda on the way to the Caucausus, Yakut noticed that its former splendour had gone and that it was now just a village amidst the ruins. Delakhan, despite the Mongol sack though had survived, returned, and the town quickly took on it former appearance. Hovaar, that’s near Ray in 613, about 6 years before the Mongol invasions he said that it was almost ruined. Salmaas, Yakut found Salmaas partly ruined. Mutowfi noticed that its walls which had fallen into ruin had been restored by the vizier Taj al-Din Ali Shah.

The point of this great cataloguing - and I could go on - that there was quite a lot wrong with the situation before the Mongols arrived and indeed in some cases, although some areas of course remained ruined, in fact they were restored under the Mongols to a better situation than they had been beforehand. Of course one can give equally several examples of places ruined by the Mongols had not been repaired or that formerly flourishing places were now in ruins. I am not trying to say as I did in the beginning that the Mongol invasions didn’t happen. I am just trying to balance this out with some sense of what the situation was like on the eve of their invasion. So as I say this is not the whole story but it shows that in the regions through which the first Mongol invasions passed the notion of a prosperous and populous society needs at best a qualified acceptance.

This also the case with Iraq. This is a picture of Varamin (showing slide) This is the only mosque I believe that was actually started and completed within the Ilkhanid period of Veramin outside Ray and became a flourishing center. The old city of Ray never really recovered.

The breakdown of the caliphate has been thoroughly examined by many writers who note that its collapse was of largely symbolic importance. (slide shown) That fellow down there is the last Abbasid caliph in a very small palace. (slide shown) This is the siege of Baghdad. As we all know Baghdad succumbed rather quickly to Hulegu’s army in 1258. Leaving aside the symbolic significance of the collapse of Baghdad, which needn’t concern us here, there is again the problem of the numbers, of troops, armies and the dead. The figures for those killed are given as between 800,000 and, 2000,000 in various Arab sources. I have already said enough I think about figures such as these, but its worth noticing that none of them are contemporary observers. The only contemporary account of the siege of Baghdad is by Nasiruddin Tusi who has an interesting little sentence which isn’t normally given much emphasis. Which is that, after the city was pillaged for a week the people were given quarter and allowed to return to it. Which suggests that they weren’t all killed. Of course he had his own reasons for playing down the fall of Baghdad, because he had played a fairly large part in getting the Mongols into it in the first place. Nevertheless its interesting that he says what he does. We should also notice that Hulegu orders the viziers and the sahibdivan, that’s like another sort of vizier I suppose, to rebuild Baghdad and reopen the bazaars. Reopen them not rebuild them, as he left the city. In the thesis I mentioned earlier by Woo, there is an interesting coloration between the collapse of Abbasid rule and the frequency of floods in late Abaqa Baghdad which indicates a collapse of the irrigation and canal systems. He shows that repeated flooding culminated in major floods in 1255 and 1256 on the eve of the Mongol conquest which caused heavy damage. The Mongols themselves were compelled to take measures to repair the breaches to prevent further inundations. Subsequently considerable work was done in the reign of Juvaini and others. Woo points out that there were no further floods until 1277 and then again in 1284 and 1286, at a time when Juvaini was fighting and losing the struggle for political survival.

The only serious flood in the whole Ilkhanid period apparently occurred in 1324 from which Woo concludes that the Mongols maintained the canal system in Iraq in good operative condition. I don’t think there is time to go into the obvious objections with this argument here nor to the other elements of the situation in Iraq. Suffice it to say that more work remains to be done on this problem. Before concluding, I would like to mention briefly the historiographical problem that underlies in part this debate as I mentioned earlier. There is a pervasive tendency to exaggerate the ills of the early Mongol period. Early historiography stopped with Juvaini who wrote his book in 1260. His own relations with the conquerors are of themselves of considerable interest. There is nothing till the work of Rashid al-Din who paints a black picture to throw Ghazan’s and his own reforms into greater relief. Forgetting the earlier services of the Juvainis, Nasir al-Din Tusi and others, Rashid al-Din consistently accentuates the horrors of the pre-Islamic phase of Mongol rule which of course was initiated with Ghazan. However both Abaqa and Arghun were well aware of the need to preserve agriculture and to protect traditional society. In fact Rashid refers mainly to the crisis of the 1280’s and 1290’s immediately before Ghazan came to the throne. But even here there were competent administrators such as Sayed ud-Dulah and Sadr ud-Din who took measures against abuses Rashid later claims as his own.

Mustaufi’s geography, some of which I have quoted to you, does not give a picture of a starving and depopulated country, there were many large and flourishing regions among them particularly, Isfahan, was conspicuously prosperous, despite the fact as I mentioned that after the eventual sack following the dispute between the Hanafis and Shafis, Isfahan was reduced to a mound of ashes apparently. Earlier generations didn’t wait for Rashid’s reforms before investing in agriculture. Juvaini in Iraq and Yazd, the Iftiqar family in Qazvin enormously enriched themselves by serving the ruler and obviously enriched themselves through developing the land. Saveh, though devastated by the Mongols, quickly doubled in size when a local malik or ruler found a new town outside the walls which was served by a dam built by Juvaini. This became a residence of many leading people of the bureaucracy. Constructions of khanaqas supported by waqfs were also common for instance at Simnan and elsewhere by the sufi sheikh ‘ala al-Daulet Simnani, a childhood companion of Arghun turned sufi who invested his largesse in real estate as did the viziers as well. So that’s one point that the later sources on the whole play up a very stark contrast between the earlier Mongol rule and then the glorious light and joy that happened in the later period once Ghazan had become a Muslim.

Another element of the historigraphical problem is the question of perception. The historians don’t have a clue about the numbers involved. There was no accurate way of measuring them anyway. The towns and cities destroyed obviously represented large concentrations of people but they were probably a very small proportion of the total population, which in Iran as in most pre-industrial societies was predominantly rural. This was certainly the case in Iran right through till well into the twentieth century. To say the figures who perished in the sieges are swelled by refugees flocking

to the towns from the villages outside is entirely implausible; the towns were death traps. All the evidence is to the contrary, in other words it was much safer in the countryside, and that on the whole the countryside was not molested.

If one were to talk about perception I mean the whole focus of the sources is on the cities. The towns and the cities were the showcases of Islamic civilization and learning, hence the outrage at the trampling of Korans under the Mongol horses hooves in the mosque of Bukhara and the destruction of Merv’s famous libraries. In fact however it is consistently mentioned that the ulema class of the religious scholars and their hangers on largely survived. They were given immunities one way or another. The artisans who you might think were the other sort of worthwhile group of urban society were consistently carried off to carry on their work elsewhere. It is not clear when you have removed these two groups exactly how much there was left. The worst of the situation was being overrun by savages. (Slide of dancing shamans shown)

As the cities fell, so soon they rose again and the most conspicuous signs of destruction were relatively easily repaired. The effects of the Mongol conquests -rather than their subsequent rule - on agriculture is less easy to assess. The only seemingly objective measure is the question of revenue. Mustaufi, the geographer I’ve already mentioned gives a very famous passage about the revenues arriving at the Ilkhanate center at the end of the Ilkhanid period and comparing it with the situation in the Seljuq period and these show an enormous decline of course. But these figures are not particularly instructive and there are great problems of comparability. According to his figures to take just one example the Shabankara’i district of Fars apparently declined 85% since the Seljuq period. However between the reigns of Abaqa and Abu Said, that’s virtually the whole of the Ilkhanid period, more than a dozen Mongol amirs received this district to tax for their own account with their officials. Meanwhile a local dynasty remained in place until the 1340’s and many of its rulers are supposed to have bought prosperity to the region. Is this just relative? or is there a real comparability with earlier times? It seems certain anyway in this case that figures for what is reaching the central divan are hardly relevant to the local state of the countryside.

I think for the contemporary sources as indeed for later generations, part of the question of perception is one that you are seeing an end of a golden age with the Abbasids and this colors all the attitude to what followed it.

We may note finally that revenues from agriculture in the regions around Tabriz and Kashan were later still only a quarter of the product of urban taxes. Though this seems to confirm the decline of agriculture, it also shows the extent of urban regeneration among the Mongols who are anxious to pursue the trade which had bought them West in the first place.


(Please note that this lecture paper is a work-in-progress and is not to be copied, quoted or excerpted from without expressed written permission from Professor Charles P. Melville.)

Book review - “The Role of Women in the Altaic World”

“The Role of Women in the Altaic World" - Edited by Veronica Veit
Published by Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007.

The publishing house of Harrassowitz Verlag has released a very important volume of great scholarly value for researchers interested in the role of women in Altaic-nomadic societies from the earliest periods. Titled, “The Role of Women in the Altaic World” this work presents a copious series of well documented essays edited by Veronica Veit. These articles collectively survey a broad range of Altaic nomadic states including Mongol, Turkic, Manchus and the position they historically accorded women – which is refreshingly far more empowered in many instances than those of their sedentary counterparts.

Secenmonke’s article, “The Role of Women in Traditional Mongolian Society” illuminates the mythical monsters in ‘Gesar’s Tale’ which are tamed by the wise sisters of Gesar and provide him “with sense and wisdom in order to appease warfare on earth.” Secenmonke cites passages from the ‘Secret History of the Mongols’ and other historical sources to demonstrate the high status of women in traditional Mongolian society and introduces legendary Mongolian queen-regents Mandukhai Secen and Juggen Khatun who rose to power during periods of crises.

In the article titled, “Compared With the Women the…Menfolk have little Business of their own.” – Gender Division of Labour in the History of the Mongols” by Barbara Frey Naf, we learn about the relatively equal sharing of work duties among Mongol nomads. Naf‘s contemporary observations made during visits to Mongolia from 1980 to 2001 are counter-balanced by her citations from 13th century sources which bear out the importance Mongols placed on women and men having the ability to cooperatively address tasks that range from felt-making, assembling and disassembling gers, herding, butchering animals and calving. The author establishes the central role that Mongol women have historically held which provides them with “ a high degree of self-reliance and to their having a very strong influence on decision-making processes at family level.”

“Manchu Women of the Early Stage: Fantasy and Reality” by Alessandra Pozzi takes us into the world of the Manchu court intrigues and customs from the time of the dynastic founder Nurhaci to Yongzheng. We learn about the Manchu requirement that Manchu royalty had to marry within their own community which also required that after their husband’s death the widows had to “follow in-death” and take their own lives. This custom was finally abolished by the enlightened rule of Emperor Kangxi in 1688 who also put in place several other reforms that were iconoclastic and farsighted. The powerful role of Manchu women was probably best epitomized by the Empress Dowager Cixi who dominated the Manchu court till 1908.

Mark I. Gol’man’s article “The Mongolian Women in the Russian Archives of the XVIIth Century” unveils a treasure trove of historical gems that document the prominent involvement of Mongolian noblewomen in Mongol-Russian diplomatic interplay. These documents are being published by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in four volumes and cover the period from 1667 to 1756.

Beginning with Secin Khatun (Nomakhu Holaci), the mother of Altan Khan the Mongol sovereign who ruled till 1657, Gol’man depicts the elaborate reception she provided to all Russian envoys traveling to the Mongol rulers’ court. In one instance when a Russian envoy named Drushina Ogarkov showed her disrespect she had the Czar punish Ogarkov by having him publicly whipped and the imprisoned in Tobolsk. The Secin Khatun was not only present at important political negotiations with the Russian delegations but she also advised Altan Khan during these proceedings and apparently influenced his stance that Mongolia remain independent in the face of Russian pressure.

Gol’man brings home the critically important role that Mongol queen-regents played in political history including Altan Khan’s wife Akhai Khatun who negotiated directly with the Russian envoys after Altan Khan’s death. She declined a Russian proposal to make the Mongol court a subject of the Moscow Czar, “declaring proudly that the Mongol rulers and Mongol people had never been anyone’s subordinates.”

“The Role of Women in the Altaic World” is heartily recommended for its depth of spirited scholarship on this important subject which provides essential perspective and understanding of the tumultuous and vibrant dynamics of Altaic societies gender relations.

'History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East' - Studies in Honor of John E. Woods - J. Pfeiffer, S.A. Quinn, E. Tucker

'History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East' - Studies in Honor of John E. Woods - Edited by Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh A. Quinn in Collaboration with Earnst Tucker
Published by Harrassowitz Verlag - Wiesbaden, 2006.

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_3101.ahtml

This excellent volume dedicated to Professor John E. Woods contains articles that span a range of historical periods and reigns from the Mongols to the Mamluks, the Mughals, the Aqquyunlu and the Safavids.

Some of the articles of particular interest to students of Mongol History are:

"World-Conquest and Local Accommodation: Threat and Blandishment in Mongol Diplomacy" by Peter Jackson, Keele University, United Kingdom.

This illuminating article by Dr. Jackson provides compelling evidence for the Mongol belief in their divine mandate for world conquest and argues convincingly that previous postulations by some scholars of Mongol history about Mongol ambitions to the contrary were mistaken. The author presents letters from Mongol rulers to European, Chinese and Central Asian monarchs that bear witness to the powerful claims and ambitions of the Mongol court for supremacy over all dominions from early on in the formative period of the Mongol Empire.


" A Closer Definition of Geographical Names in the Secret History of the Mongols" by D. Bazargur and D. Enkhbayar from the Institute of Geography, the Mongolian Academy of Sciences.

The near mythical names and places mentioned in the 'Secret History of the Mongols' have been researched by the authors in this important study which establishes the areas of continuous human movement, ancient nomadic migration routes, spring and summer camps in Mongolia dating from the ancient period to the 20th century. Included in their survey of ancient Mongol historical sites are Chingghis Khan's birthplace and place-name changes after the spread of Buddhism in Mongolia.


Other scholar's articles of interest to Mongolists are Devin Deweese's examination of religious interpretations of the Mongol conquests, R.D. McChesney's article on Timur's biographer's life and work, Isenbike Togan's delineation of the Qongrat tribe and their role as the consort tribe of Chinggis Khan and his descendants, Charles Melville on 'The Early Persian Historiography of Anatolia', Judith Pfeiffer's article on Mongol-Mamluk relations in Eurasia, Beatrice Forbes Manz's overview of Timurid rule and Persian rebellions as well as Eiji Mano article on Babur's lesser-known writings.

Mongolian History in Brief

Temujin Proclaimed Chinggis Khan with Sons Ogedei and Jochi on His Right


Mongolian History in Brief



In the 13th century epic chronicle of Mongolian history titled ‘The Secret History of the Mongols’ the story of the Mongol people’s origins begins thus:

“The origins of Chinggis Khan,
There was a blue-grey wolf which was born having his destiny from Heaven above.
His spouse was a fallow doe.
They came, crossing over the Tenggis Sea.
Batachiqan was born to them while they were camped at the source of the Onan River,
At Mount Burkhan Khaldun.”

That is how the creation story of the Mongol people begins in the opening lines of the “Secret History of the Mongols’, the earliest known and most important primary source on Mongolian history. The deep relationship that Mongolians have with Nature and their homeland is clearly conveyed in this historical narrative.

Mongolia today is an independent nation that was unified and created by the will and vision of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan), the founder of the Mongol nation. Chinggis Khan was born into Mongol tribal nobility in approximately 1162; his given name was Temujin. When Temujin was nine years old his father Yesugei Khan, was poisoned to death by his tribal enemies, the Tartars. Temujin then went on to survive abandonment by his clansmen, near starvation, capture by enemies, war wounds, betrayals and the kidnapping of his wife Borte. Temujin was able to rescue Borte and later attracted a band of followers from many different tribes who saw in him signs of a visionary leader destined for greatness.

Temujin fought and overcame the Dorbets, Tartars, Seljuits, Tonkaits, Merkits, Keraits, Naimans, and other Turkic and Mongol tribes in Mongolia as his power grew. After these successful campaigns he was formally recognized as the supreme leader of the tribes of Mongolia in 1206, and given the title of Chinggis Khan, which means ‘Universal Ruler’ and this was the basis for the formation of the nation of Mongolia.

Chinggis Khan then proceeded to conquer the Central Asian kingdom of the Khwarazmshah in 1220, defeated all the tribes of northern China by 1226 and laid the foundation for the birth of the massive Mongol Empire. Before Chinggis Khan died in 1227 he chose his son Ogodei as successor and advised his sons to expand the empire, recognize Ogodei in writing, and to serve each other for the sake of unified strength.

Today Chinggis Khan is recognized by many as a military and political genius without parallel whose empire endured for generations while in comparison Alexander the Great’s empire crumbled as he died.

One of the enduring legacies of the Mongol Empire was its facilitation of vigorous cultural exchange, knowledge, personnel and technology between the East and West over several centuries. Chinggis Khan’s court tolerated all religions as did the courts of his descendents within their domains of the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Khans helped promote the development of many art forms including Chinese schools of art during the Yuan Dynasty and miniature Persian illustrated royal histories called ‘Shahnameh’. The patronage and artistic vision of the Mongol rulers of Persia refined the miniature illustration technique and this art form became one of Persia’s greatest claims to fame. The Mongol Empire bred remarkable hybrids and innovations in many fields of endeavor including architecture, military science, diplomacy, communications, commerce, and political administration. The Mongol Empire’s great legacy developed through the Mongol peoples energetic exploration, natural curiosity and promotion of artistic, technological and philosophical cross-pollination.

The Mongol Empire at its greatest extent spanned most of Asia with its dominions reaching from Korea to Hungary and down to the Indus. The Mongol Empire Khans and their generals defeated the armies that controlled the territories of the nations we know of today as China, North and South Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, northern India, Hungary, Transylvania, Bulgaria, eastern Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and others.

The lands that make up modern day Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan were conquered and ruled by the Mongol Empire’s Golden Horde Dynasty from 1237 until 1382. One of the greatest military battles of all time unfolded in 1223 when the armies of Russian nobility engaged the Mongols at the Battle of Kalka River. The Mongols outfought and destroyed the armies of the overly confident Russian princes and sent a collective shockwave that reverberated throughout Europe for centuries. The Golden Horde’s rule endured in Kazan and Astrakhan till 1554 and lasted in Crimea until 1783. Some historians5 have reasoned that the Mongol Golden Horde Dynasty helped unite the Russian princely states and aided Muscovy’s development as a regional power, which ultimately led to the creation of czarist Russia and its consolidation of Central Asia.

Mongol armies had conquered and occupied all of northern China by defeating the Chin Dynasty in 1234, which gave rise to Mongolian rule of China. The greatest Mongol ruler of China was Khubilai Khan who came to the throne as predicted by his grandfather Chinggis Khan. Khubilai Khan’s reign over China, from 1261 till 1294, brought about a period of great innovation and enlightened development throughout China. Khubilai Khan allowed China, a closed-off nation, to be opened up to foreign trade, and promoted the export of Chinese goods and culture. In 1264 Khubilai Khan established his capital at Peking (Beijing) the city Chinggis Khan had conquered in 1215. By defeating the Southern Sung in 1279 the Mongol Yuan Dynasty unified China for the first time since 970 B.C. and ruled the reunified state of China till 1368. The sudden outbreak of the plague caused China to lose between one-half to two thirds of its population by 13517 and this situation also contributed to the weakening of the Yuan Dynasty of the Mongols. A Han Chinese peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang led a peasant rebellion and forced the weakened Mongol Yuan court to leave China and he became the first Ming Dynasty ruler in 1368.

Warfare between the western Oirod Mongols and the eastern Khalkh Mongols from 1400 to 1454 led to an extended and tumultuous division between the Mongols. Esen Khan the Oirod Mongol chief reunited the Mongol tribes and captured the Chinese Ming ruler Yingzong in 1449. In 1552 the Mongol prince Altan Khan defeated the Oirod and reunited Mongolia. Mongolians largely adopted Tibetan Buddhism during Altan Khan’s reign, 1543-1583. The Ming Dynasty itself was gradually weakened by its long wars with the Mongols, internal political conflicts, feuding Chinese court eunuchs, corruption, and other regional campaigns.

In 1644 the last Ming ruler Ch’ung-Chen was toppled by yet another Chinese peasant uprising. At that very moment a nomadic tribe called the Jurchen, later known as the Manchu swept into northern China, seized the imperial throne and claimed the Mongol’s ‘Mandate of Heaven’ as their divine right to rule all China. The Manchu adopted many of the sovereign traditions of the Mongols8 and tried to present themselves as being related to the Mongols through several means including marrying into Mongol royalty as an effort to gain legitimacy and prestige.

During the Manchu tribe’s Qing Dynasty in China (1644 – 1911) Mongolia was split into Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia and was administered by Manchu rulers. Outer Mongolia declared independence in 1911 after the Manchu government in China finally collapsed and the Manchu themselves were rooted out and scattered.

With Russian assistance Mongolia was able to expel Chinese troops trying to reassert Chinese rule in Mongolia in 1921. From 1924 till 1990 Mongolia was known as the Mongolian Peoples Republic and was governed by a Communist single-party system under the influence of the U.S.S.R. During the Soviet-style Communist period Mongolia was largely inaccessible to visitors from the West. Until the 1990’s Buddhist monasteries were mostly closed, industrial development was limited, private land ownership was not allowed and there was no official recognition of Chinggis Khan. In 1990 Mongolia had a peaceful transition to a democratic multiparty system of government with democratic elections successfully held in July of 1990.

Mongolian Princes in Urga, 1922

Mongolian Princes in Urga, 1922 - R.C. Andrews, AMNH

Transmission and Source of Prophecy in Contemporary Mongolia by Bumochir Dulam and Oyuntungalag Ayushiin

Mongolian Shaman Ceremony


The Transmission and Source of Prophecy in Contemporary Mongolia

by Bumochir Dulam and Oyuntungalag Ayushiin

Article from: "In Time, Causality and Prophecy in the Mongolian Cultural Region", Edited by Rebecca Empson.
Inner Asia Series, Cambridge : Globe Oriental (in English, 2006).

Introduction

In the Mongolian cultural region prophecies have spread among the public in various ways. They have been passed on in written form, like the prophecies (lünden) of the Bogd Khan (see chapter one, this volume), or they have persisted as a form of social memory in oral form (see chapters five and six, this volume). In this chapter, we explore the sources through which prophets currently receive prophecies. We will also examine the processes involved in transmitting prophecy to the public at large. This includes a discussion of written prophecies distributed in books and newspapers, followed by a focus on three different types of divine inspiration that lead to prophecy. Finally, we present a discussion concerning Mongolian ideas about belief and knowledge. Before we explore some of the sources of prophetic inspiration, we present a brief introduction concerning the transmission of prophecies in Mongolia.

Prior to the emergence of democracy in Mongolia in the 1990s, prophecies were not available in Mongolian newspapers and other published media. However, written prophecies such as the ‘lünden’ discussed in chapter one, did circulate privately among people. These prophecies instructed people to copy and distribute their content. Some elders in Mongolia mentioned that, during the communist period, people continued to reproduce and pass on hand-written copies of these prophecies privately. The Mongolian astrologer Mönx-Ochir (1996) has noted that in the Sheep Year of 1979 many people copied one of the 8th Bogd Khan’s lünden. This was due to the fact that the prophecy stated that it would be worshiped greatly in the Yellow Sheep Year.

In present day Mongolia, many people are moving away from the strong scientific rationality of the communist period toward the older teachings of Mongolian religious and spiritual specialists. In light of this transition, predictions concerning the future are becoming increasingly popular. Mongolian newspapers frequently re-issue old prophecies and written prophetic texts. Many newspapers also publish information concerning the current predictions of seers, diviners, and shamans. For example, the Mongolian newspaper Dal (founded in 1996) frequently publishes thoughts about the future. Essays concerning the Bogd Khan’s biography and his ‘lünden’ were printed on the 130th anniversary of his birth. In addition, between 1993 and 1995 a newspaper called ‘Bogd Min Örshöö’ (Bless Me, Bogd [Khan]) published prophecies of the Bogd Khan. Another newspaper called ‘Bilgiin Melmii’ (Eyes of Wisdom), published by Gandan Monastery,2 also features articles about prophecy. Before the Mongolian Lunar New Year (Tsagaan Sar) numerous newspapers also publish the prophecies of various people (lamas, astrologers, shamans, seers, diviners and so on) that concern the coming year. These prophecies predict what the weather will be like and what kinds of things will happen to people in the year ahead. They predict things for politicians and people in high positions, as well as for ordinary people. However, our main concern in this chapter is not with the prophecies that circulate in newspapers or other publications. Instead, we explore what happens to a prophecy once it has been uttered, before it appears in written form. Therefore, the question we address is: what is the source behind the information that can be found published in newspapers?

There are certain steps in the transmission of prophecy, starting with their origin and ending with their public dissemination. Newspapers are probably one of the last stages of this transmission. In other words, newspapers are just one of several ways to transmit a prophetic prediction. We will suggest that certain categories of religious specialists, who use trance to issue prophecy, are another medium for the transmission of prophecy. Unlike newspapers, which they precede, they are the oral channels of divine inspiration concerning prophecy. Prophetic experts, such as shamans (böö), gürten and choijin, can be viewed as similar to a radio set. They broadcast breaking news before it has been published in print. Obviously, these ways of issuing prophecy do not allow for the prophecy to reach as wide an audience as those published in newspapers. For example, when shamans transmit information from the spirits, this information may only reach a family or a local audience. Spirit mediators, such as shamans (böö), gürten, and choijin, enter trance so that spirits and gods can speak to people through them. According to these spirit mediators, the sources of their prophecies are spirits (ongod), gods (burxan), the heavens (tengers), or guardian spirits (saxius). For example, the prophecies in the Secret History of the Mongols originate from Eternal Heaven (Mönx Tenger).

There are certain social and political conditions that give rise to the revelation of spiritual information and prophecy. Historically, there have been many politically influential prophecies issued by religious practitioners, usually of high political rank. For example, shamans’ prophecies existed during Chinggis Khan’s Empire and during the Manchu State (Humphrey 1996). Written prophecies (lünden) were issued by the Bogd Khan (see chapter one, this volume), and the prophecies of Dashtseren, the seer to the President of Mongolia Mr. P. Ochirbat, were issued in the early 1990s (see chapter three, this volume). All of these prophecies were issued by someone who held a high-ranking position in relation to the state. To a certain extent, many of these people had a duty to prophesy about the state, nation and society. In light of these examples, we must assume that prophecy has been highly valued in the Mongolian cultural region. We suggest that this is because these ‘prophets’ were to be found in a central social position, maybe not in the state centre itself, but at least in one of the big temples. For example, the seer Dashtseren, mentioned in chapter three, revealed prophecies from a position of central authority. When a ‘prophet’ is in a central position, the transmission of their prophecy is fast and it is held to be practically relevant, in that it relates to political events as they unfold.

In contemporary Mongolia we do not find prophets currently occupying a central position of power.3 Instead, many prophets are located on the periphery of political arenas. In other words, no one is obliged to prophesy for the state and society. Instead, different spiritual and religious practitioners usually divine the future for individual clients. There is no officially recognized position for someone who should issue large-scale prophecies. This does not mean that prophets have ceased to issue big prophecies, or have become incapable of issuing prophecy. Because prophets are currently located on the periphery, even when they do prophesy for the whole society and state, their prophecies go through a more complex route before they reach the public. The following examples show that when prophets are positioned on the periphery, their prophecies travels a long way, starting with a spirit, passing through a shaman or gürten, then to their families, then through local people to researchers and journalists, before, perhaps, finally being published in an academic journal or a newspaper and taken up by the wider public.

One of the reasons that prophets in Mongolia currently occupy a peripheral position is because the religious centre is not particularly clear or stable. In such a way, we cannot define an exact centre or periphery. There are many different beliefs and religions flourishing in the country. Obviously, in terms of the geographical location, the centre is the capital, Ulaan Baatar, and the government building (zasgiin ordon) is at the centre of the city. Nevertheless, in terms of popular religious belief, it is difficult to locate an exact centre. This is because there is a diversity of different beliefs. Some people think that Buddhism is the central religion. It is true that it is the biggest religion in Mongolia, but we suppose that it is not powerful enough to be considered a central religious power. There are also many atheists, shamanists, Muslims, and Christians. In turn, political leaders and their parties’ change every four years and the Mongolian public are unsure where, exactly, their alliances lie.

Shamanic prophecy

Shamans can be considered to be different from some of the ‘prophets’ discussed in this book, such as Dashtseren (see chapter three) and Molon Bagsh (see chapter five). Nevertheless, their predictions are sometimes similar. As we know, shamanism is very complex, and consists of various elements of artistic and religious practice, and even of everyday performance. In this sense, the shaman is a singer, dancer, diviner, healer, bonesetter, magician, and so on. In addition to these varied talents, we suggest that shamans can also be ‘prophets’. We do not mean to suggest that shamans are always ‘prophets’ in the very literal sense. Instead, shamans do have the ability or potential to issue prophecy. As Humphrey discussed in chapter two, many historical materials show that shamans often made prophecies when they were in a central role in state affairs (cf. Humphrey 1996). Compared to the Mongol Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, shamanism in contemporary Mongolia is not a practice that has been institutionalised by a sanctified centre. Humphrey, in chapter two of this volume, illustrates some of the historical materials from the 13th century, about prophecies made by the shamans Teb Tenger and Qurchi for Chinggis Khan. Unlike contemporary shamans in Mongolia, shamans in the Mongol Empire, such as Teb Tenger, held high positions and had a duty to supply the leader with information about state and social affairs, which they received from the spirits (or more precisely from Eternal Heaven as described in the Secret History of the Mongols). In such a situation, shamans are more likely to be viewed as prophets. In contrast, when shamans are peripheral in relation to the state, they are not obliged to issue prophecies, unless they (and their spirits) are directly questioned about the future of the nation when in trance. This is also evident from the lack of a fixed term for prophecy among shamans. In this sense, it is only partially correct to understand that shamans in contemporary Mongolia are not involved in prophecy. Nevertheless, just because they are not institutionalised does not mean that shamans do not issue prophecies at all. On the contrary, they do, and we will introduce some examples of shamanic prophecy from present day Mongolia.

In Mongol shamanism there is a phenomena referred to as ‘spirit information’ (ongodyn medee). This can include information concerning prophecies for the future. According to shamans, spirits send information to the shamans’ minds and sometimes, as Pürev (2003) has argued, oblige them to deliver their messages. Pürev (2003) writes about spirit information in the following way:

From the time spirits choose someone, turn him into a shaman and establish communication, spirits always communicate with the shaman and supply him with all sorts of information. In other words, there is a microcosm consisting of several spirits that make the shaman their centre. Spirits do not just supply information during rituals they also do so in everyday situations too. Therefore, a really good shaman gives answers and solutions without any divination (Pürev 2003: 138, trans. Bumochir Dulam).

Extending the idea of ‘spirit information’, Pürev (2002) has analysed a prophecy issued by the shaman Teb Tenger concerning the rule of Chinggis Khan’s brother, Qasar. The shaman told Chinggis to strike Qasar by surprise. As it says in the Secret History of the Mongols (see chapter two, this volume), at first Chinggis Khan believed Teb Tenger’s prophecy that he should strike his brother Qasar and Chinggis accused his brother. After this, Chinggis Khan realised that it was Teb Tenger’s intention to break the brothers’ relationship, and put him to death. But Teb Tenger claimed that the prophecy was the will of Eternal Heaven (Mönx Tenger). According to Pürev (2002: 177), Teb Tenger’s prophecy should not be viewed as slander. Instead, the prophecy was information received from the spirits that Teb Tenger was obliged to disclose. As Pürev (2002) argues, Teb Tenger already knew that he would be put to death; unfortunately it was the shaman’s duty to reveal the information, even though it endangered his life. Along with the discussion concerning Teb Tenger, Pürev (2002) presents a similar case concerning information where a shaman was recently killed because of his prophetic ‘spirit information’.

‘Around 1939, when the victimisation of religious practitioners such as shamans and monks was very strong, a female shaman named Tümenbayar, of Xutug-Öndör sum (district), Bulgan aimag (province), asked the shaman Renchingiin Pürevjav, of Saixan sum of the same aimag, about the present and future situation of the country. He answered: “Japan is a very powerful country we cannot defeat them alone [referring to the military aid from Russia]…red Russians will take and exhaust all of our herds…The Revolutionary Party’s attempt to cultivate vegetables is a lie. It is a way to finish off our herds and make us vegetarians. Russian medicine will not suit Mongolians.” What he said spread as a rumour and the shaman Pürevjav was executed in August 1941’ (Pürev 2002: 177, trans. Bumochir Dulam).


Pürev (2002) argues that Teb Tenger and Pürevjav occupy a similar position. They both knew they could be killed for what they had said. He explains that shamans do not communicate dangerous information because they want to die. Instead, shamans do not have any other choice but to pass on this information as it is the spirits who force them to do so. According to Mongolian shamanism, spirits force shamans to act in certain circumstances. For instance, ‘shaman’s sickness’ (böögiin övchin) is an example of spirits’ coercion of the shaman. When spirits choose someone to become a shaman, the person becomes psychologically ill or suffers terrible misfortunes. However, it does not necessarily follow that shamans have no alternative but to reveal the information that they have received and, indirectly, to condemn themselves to death.

Pürev’s analysis stresses the importance of spirits in the transmission of prophecies. According to him, without the force of spirits shamans would not be able to reveal prophecies. Shamans say that they are a medium through which spirits convey information. The complexity of the transmission further makes the matter of belief problematic. Believing in the prophecy is not only a matter of trusting the prophecy itself, but also of believing in every stage of the transmission, including the idea of spirits and shamans.

We can find more recent examples of shamanic prophecy in Mongolia. In the following section, I present two famous shamans’ prophecies. One example is the Darxad Mongol shaman T. Baljir (1913-2003), from Xövsgöl province. The other example is a Buryat shaman called Ch. Tseren, from eastern Mongolia, Dornod province. After the 1990s, Tseren was one of the few powerful shamans that survived the communist regime and he has contributed to the re-emergence of contemporary Mongol shamanism.

As local people and a few other researchers know, T. Baljir issued several prophecies, which she claims were sourced from what her spirits (ongod) had told her. In an interview with Sh. Süxbat (2003: 68, 97, 121), the head of the Golomt Shamanic Centre in Mongolia, she predicted that the Ox (1997) and Tiger years (1998) would be the most difficult years for Mongolia, especially two months in these two years, but she did not know which two months they were. According to her spirits’ information, the hard time will end and life in Mongolia will improve from the Sheep (2003) and Horse (2004) years. This will also be the time that the gate of the Sky-god of Death (üxliin tenger) will open and many men and herds will die. The gate of the Sky-god of Death will close in August of the year of the Horse (2004). This prediction matches the shaman Enxjargal’s prophecy explored in chapter two. The solution to this impending problem is, first of all, Mongols should build a stable and powerful state, and keep unity and solidarity. Secondly, they should ask and pray for blessings from Heaven (Tenger).

In 1978 and 1979, T. Baljir issued prophecies (or in shaman’s words; ‘was told by her spirits’) concerning the democratic revolution and the fall of communism in 1990 (Pürev 2002: 1939). Local people recall that she was shocked by the information and could not imagine that the state would collapse. On the other hand, she did not think that the spirits would lie to her.4 Also, in July 1997, she mentioned to Pürev (2002) ‘my spirits are telling me that there is a nineteen-year-old man who lives in an area around two households, in the south of the country, in five aimags (provinces) distance from here. In the future, this man will be the leader of Mongolia and the country will develop very well. No one will bring him out but he will come out by himself through history’ (Pürev 2002: 177-178). Besides these predictions, she and her spirits also predicted a plane crash in 1995. On the 15th of September 1995, six days before the plane crash, after shamanising, Baljir said that the spirits had told her: ‘the sky is falling or something is coming down from the sky’. On receiving this information she pondered on what it could mean, then a plane crashed close to the province capital of Xövsgöl province (Pürev 2002: 139). For shamans, the question of believing in prophecy is easy compared to the final recipients, the general public. Shamans and the whole shamanic community believe in spirits. Because they believe in spirits, they trust spirit information even thought the information maybe unbelievable and unrealistic. To sum up, shamans have an indirect belief in prophecies through their unquestionable belief in spirits.

Our next example concerns a shamanic prophecy that was issued by the Buryat shaman Ch. Tseren5. After fieldwork in 1995, we (B. Dulam and S. Dulam) became good friends with this shaman and his family. The shaman is an old man, in his late seventies. He is quite famous, not only in his local area, but also in many other parts of the country.

Image 7.

Photograph of Ch. Tseren Zaarin in antelope skin garment with metal skeleton corset,

Baikal Lake shamanic ceremony 1995

Photograph by Bumochir Dulam

In 1996, his son Oyunbaatar sent a letter to us on behalf of his father on the official letter paper from his shamanic monastery ‘Dambadarjaalin xiid’ (see Figures 1 and 2 in appendix). The first part of the letter was concerned with our trip to Buryatia, in Russia.6 The second part outlined a pronouncement made by Chinggis Khan through the shaman Ch. Tseren. They claimed that Chinggis Khan entered the shaman while he was in trance and left a message for the President of Mongolia and other government officials. Chinggis Khan’s messengers asked people in the ritual to deliver this message to Mr. Ochirbat, the President of Mongolia. Below is a part of the letter written by the shaman’s son on behalf of his father (to view the full letter, see Figure 2 in appendix):

25th Feb 1996

Dear S. Dulam, Bumchka [Bumochir] and all the family.

While I [Oyunbaatar, the son of the shaman] was away, Master Lord Chinggis Khan (Ezen Bogd Chinggis Khan) himself came and possessed Tseren and left a message and a duty. People in the ceremony wrote down the messages that were left for the president and other top officials. They tried to transcribe what Bogd Chinggis said. Please read the letter. I wonder what you and your son think of it? What shall we do with it? Do not pass the letter around. It is a secret? It cannot be allowed to reach the hands of mercenary people!

In the evening before the New Year (tsagaan saryn bitüün), when we were ‘doing the ninth ceremony’ (yösnöö xiix)7 Chinggis Khan’s janjin [warrior], Muxulai, came as an envoy and brought a message from Chinggis Khan. He presented greetings and asked whether we had delivered the message. Then we thought that we had to discuss it and take it more seriously and decided to tell you. I have attached the draft transcriptions of this message [See Figures 3-8 in the appendix]. I am sending it to you with trust that you will believe in it. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Old Tseren, son Ts. Oyunbaatar and all the family (trans. Bumochir Dulam)

On receiving this letter we did not know what to do with the information. From the covering letter it seemed as if they also did not know what to do with it, until the envoy Muxulai came and insisted that they pass on the message. When this was announced they decided to send this information to us in the form of a letter. For them, we are academic people based in the capital city and are closer, and therefore have more access, to government officials. However, in the letter they did not ask us to give the information directly to the president. Instead, they asked for our advice about what to do with the information. Unfortunately, the letter and the prophecy ended with us and did not go further. As it says in the letter, they also attached drafts of the pronouncement ‘made by Chinggis Khan’ through the shaman. The pronouncements have been noted down by one of the participants in the ceremony, as the shaman was in trance and was relaying the information from the spirits. In the transcript of this pronouncement, some sentences are not very clear and the general composition is poetic and reminiscent of the folk teachings of the great Khans.8 But its meaning is prophetic, in that it provides information on how to develop the country and resolve its problems. Other parts are more like an ethical teaching about what is good and bad, and what is right and wrong. The following is an English translation of the transcribed pronouncement (for further information see Figures 3-8 in appendix):

[The spirit (of Chinggis Khan) declares where he is from]

I have come from the Heaven Ochirvaani

At 64 years of age I was killed by the red Chinese

I have 33 clans (omog)

I am from the Borjigin clan

My father is of Buryat origin

Boar canine takes away [heals] the poison of vodka

([the spirit, through the shaman] drank vodka)

Announcement for masters and lords

State officials should think of what is good for the people

[You] can win over sufferings by thinking of your state officials as your father-master

Until the age of 64 [I was] mistakenly greedy for various properties

Everyone who thinks of the welfare of the Mongol country should think good thoughts for the

country

Let the supreme erx [sovereignty] grow

The supreme knowledge is good

Who is the master of the Mongols?

Son of a wife?

Announcement for the master of the country Mongolia

Think hard

If it is useless, then throw it away

Sons who oppose the state will break the state (tör) [father-master]

Taking bribes is foolish

Offer a black blood libation for the nine black standards

Oppressing people in the name of the state is foolish

To think of yourself [to be selfish] is foolish

Selling things that have been taken from inside the ground is foolish

By selling these highest of things they will never come back

I never gave them to anyone for 64 years

Sale of copper treasures will bring an end to the state

Gnawing at each other, they will suck all the good things and use them up

Forgetting the decree of previous Khans

Is an extreme form of foolishness

Forgetting the past leads to foolishness

By destroying one family you will destroy the country

The Khan is foolish who destroys creations already built

If diseases grow,

If people kill each other,

If people drink too much,

All [these problems] will become extreme

Women who rule men are demons

Wives who dictate to husbands are an abomination

Wives do not dominate men

Middle woman will not get up in the morning

They will marry other peoples’ husbands and bring things back home

Marrying a foreigner is bad


Zaarin [shamanic title] Tseren is in charge of chunsal9

If he does not do it

Horse will …

Cattle will be sick

Camel will be hurt

[Rites have to be done]

Worship the Burxan Xaldun [Mountain]

Born in the place ‘Lamyn Xüree’

At the white Onon Lake there are two bronze cauldrons

Two people should go there and worship them with blood

Suffering will then go away

If [people] worship me [Chinggis Khan]

Then worship me with a white sheep that has a black head

Help the monastery of Tug [flag or standard] urgently

Then, Mongolia will improve

Otherwise it will be bad

It is good for Mongolia to pray to Master Bogd Chinggis

Give my announcement

To the door of the state

It is good to give it to Ochirbat, successor of the crown of Master Bogd

Ochirbat is a good man

Eight ministers of Ochirbat, listen please!

(trans. Bumochir Dulam)

The beginning of this text is typical of the kinds of things mentioned during shamanic possessions. They usually start with the spirits introducing themselves, reporting their age, and residence in heaven, telling of their death, and then drinking vodka. This is what most spirits do when they possess a shaman.10 At the beginning of the trance, the spirit of Chinggis Khan, speaking through the shaman, states that he is from Ochirvaani’s Heaven.11 There are many other oral and written sources among the Mongols that state that Chinggis Khan is a reincarnation of the Bodhisattva Ochirvaani.12 The shaman Tseren is a ‘yellow shaman’ (sharyn böö)13 who was deeply influenced by Buddhism and has adopted Buddhist shrines and gods. The next line states that Chinggis Khan was killed by the Chinese. There are several stories about the death of Chinggis Khan, but the most popular one, according to historical sources such as the Secret History of the Mongols, states that on his way to fight the Tibetans Chinggis Khan fell off his horse when he was hunting wild horses. The next line specifies his age and corresponds to other historians’ theories about his lifespan (i.e. 1162-1227). It is also interesting to note that he states that Chinggis Khan’s father was a Buryat. I leave the discussion of the historical content of the prophecy here, because exploring the text’s historical content is not the aim of this chapter.

In terms of transmission, the contemporary shamanic prophecies discussed above are not widely known by the public. The prophecies do, however, concern the public and people are supposed to know about them. Nevertheless, these shaman’s prophecies are not widely known in Mongolia. We think that this may be because, in contemporary Mongolia, a particular ruler does not institutionalise shamanism. Maybe not only shamanism, but also prophecy itself, is considered peripheral to the concerns of those in power. Furthermore, even if people do pay attention to such predictions, they do not take actions according to these prophecies as Chinggis Khan did against his brother Qasar in the thirteenth century. The prophecies that we have presented have not all reached the wider the public, especially the last prophecy concerning Chinggis Khan. The way in which these prophecies have been transmitted can be divided into five stages. In the first stage, spirits issue prophecies. In the next stage, shamans transmit the spirits’ words, sometimes in a state of trance. In the third stage, kin members and local people are the first to hear the prophecy. In the fourth stage, academics received the prophecy in the form of a letter. In the final phase, these prophecies may be published in academic books and articles that publicise the prophecy. In the prophecies of the shamans Baljir and Tseren, they both passed the information concerning their prophecies to academic researchers. The final recipient of the prophecy is the public. This is the last stage in the ‘breaking news’. For the public, believing in a given prophecy is a matter of trusting the academic, or the President who revealed the prophecy to the public, as well as in the shaman or the seer and possibly in the spirits. Passing the information to people we know, who believe in shamanism, is an easy task which does not risk one’s reputation or life. Yet, passing this information to the public, to the whole nation, is risky.14 This was our task. We had to believe in the spirits first and then in the shaman. Even if we did believe in both, it would still have been difficult for us to pass on the information and convince the public. We were in the situation of being in-between believing and not-believing, being both believers and non-believers. The believers were our shaman friends and the shaman’s community, while the non-believers were the majority of the public. This is not an unusual dilemma; it is a situation that many academics in this field regularly find themselves in whenever they are questioned about belief.

On the other hand, prophecy itself is also a kind of knowledge that is on the border of being both true and false. In other words, judging it as true or false does not necessarily end with us. If the predictions in the prophecy come true, we can still reveal this prophecy to the public. Alternatively, if the prediction does not reveal itself, the prophecy may be considered to be of no use. Because it is a prediction, no one knows whether it is true or false unless it actually happens. Sometimes people suspend their uncertain belief in prophecy and believe in it directly, by believing in the spirit or the shaman. Shamans believe in prophecy because they believe that spirits do not lie, some continue to reserve judgment and suspend their belief, while others still reject it as false.

Gürten15

We turn now to focus on a kind of prophet in contemporary Mongolia referred to as an oracle (gürten). Like the shamans mentioned previously, ‘gürtens’ are also involved in spirit possession and they are able to deliver prophecies on behalf of the spirits. As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, a gürten is neither a shaman nor a ‘choijin’. In contemporary Mongolia these three kinds of practitioners are different from each other. The relation between gürten and choijin is quite complicated and they have many shared boundaries. At first we were unaware of the difference between the two, but in researching the materials, even though people were uncertain about the distinctions, we found many differences and it became clear that they are different. Historical sources present very vague data on gürten and choijin practices, and sometimes the terms refer to the same thing. For example, in chapter two, Humphrey explores the prophecies of the revolutionary hero Xatanbaatar (Hatan Bator) Magsarjav (1878-1927). Some materials refer to him as a choijongi or choijon, while other sources say that he was a gurten (gürten). Humphrey states: “Evidently Magsarjav was not a gürtüm attached to a monastery. But what kind of choijin was he?” Furthermore, the gürten Dulamsüren16 told us that Xatanbaatar Magsarjav was a gürten, while Myagmarsambuu (2005) refers to him as a choijin. Also the ‘oracle’ at the Mergen Monastary in Inner Mongolia is described as a gurtum (see chapter two). However, according to Myagmarsambuu’s story, what he did was the same as what choijin do. This suggests that there is confusion in the terms used for similar kinds of ‘oracles’. People we interviewed were not aware of the differences between these two kinds of ‘oracles,’ and people often hold that the two terms refer to the same kind of person. The question is whether the two terms refer to one thing, or two. We think that there are two types of practitioners and two terms, which may sometimes overlap. If we compare historical sources and examples of contemporary oracle practitioners in Mongolia, it is clear that there are two kinds of oracles. On the one hand, there is a ‘complex’ and wrathful ‘oracle’, sometimes called gurtum (gürten) and sometimes choijin, which is the one usually described in historical materials. In the present day, Mongolian Buddhist specialists claim that we do not have any real wrathful ‘oracles’ in Mongolia. We will call this wrathful kind ‘choijin’, to distinguish it from the other kind, which is still found in Mongolia today. Besides the choijin, who has a special costume, weapons, interpreters and supporters at their monasteries, and perform at big public possession rituals, there is another type of oracle referred to as ‘gürten’. There are several people who call themselves gürten in Mongolia. They are mostly from Bayanxongor province. They are quite different from the choijins described in the historical documents (see chapter two, this volume). Dulamsüren calls herself a gürten, rather than a choijin. According to her, a choijin is a higher and more developed type of gürten. Unlike a choijin, she is not attached to a monastery. She practises at home, does not perform big ceremonies involving many monks, calls her guardian spirit (saxius) whenever she needs to, does not wear a special costume, performs in her everyday clothes, does not use weapons, does not become completely possessed by her saxius, and she does not dance and jump around, in fact, she does not even stand up when she communicates with her guardian spirit. In the following section we discuss further what it means for her to be a gürten.

A Mongolian gürten

One day, when Dulamsüren’s maternal great uncle17 was escaping from the revolutionaries, he passed through Dulamsüren’s grandmother’s house and gave her something wrapped in a ceremonial silk scarf (xadag). It was a silver plinth for an ochir (vajra in Sanskrit, a Buddhist ritual object). He told her to give it to her grandchild, even though Dulamsüren’s mother was only three or four years old at the time. Her grandmother asked him where the ochir for the plinth that he had given her was. He answered that the ochir will reveal itself in the future. This ochir revealed itself to Dulamsüren through her father. Before her parents were married, Dulamsüren’s father was a monk at the monastery of Sangiin Dalai. He was one of the followers of Naran Gegeen in Bayanbulag. When he was attending a ceremony in his early twenties, he saw that the Naran Gegeen had something in his mouth while he was reading texts. During the break he met the Naran Gegeen outside the temple and asked him what was in his mouth. Naran Gegeen took an ochir out of his mouth and whispered a spell (shivshleg xeleed) on it and gave it to Dulamsüren’s father. He told him to give it to his future child (i.e. Dulamsüren). The young monk (Dulamsüren’s father) was very surprised by what Naran Gegeen said about his future child. At that time he was a monk and had never thought of having a family. He thought that there must be something wrong which would cause him not be a monk in the future and he asked Naran Gegeen why he would have to ‘turn black’ (xar bolox)18 and become a layperson (xar xün). Naran Gegeen answered that in the future all monks will ‘become black’, and that all the monasteries will be destroyed. This was Naran Gegeen’s prophecy about the revolutionary movement and its fight against monasteries. What he said came true, after a few years the monastery was burnt, Naran Gegeen and many other monks were killed, and the younger monks ‘became black’. One of them was Dulamsüren’s father. Later he married Dulamsüren’s mother, and this is how the two objects (the plinth and the ochir) came together.

Later, a Tibetan seer (üzmerch), whose name was Renyam, informed Dulamsüren’s parents that they would have a ‘good [special] child’ (sain xün). He warned Dulamsüren’s mother to be careful during her pregnancy, and told her that she ate too much meat and should be careful. Her parents did not really understand what the seer meant until events began to unravel themselves. Once, when her mother was pregnant with Dulamsüren, she ate mutton from a sheep that had been attacked by a wolf. According to Mongolian concepts of purity and pollution, because she hate this meat, she had become impure. But her mother did not care and ate the mutton anyway. On that same evening, when she went to milk the mares, she was badly kicked by one of them. They called the seer, Renyam. He made a cure (zasal) for the mother and the baby (Dulamsüren). He told them that the baby was meant to be a boy but because of what had happened the gender had been changed and the baby had become a girl. Furthermore, he said that the baby might be better as a girl, because no one would suspect her of being a Buddhist practitioner. The seer also said that it would be very good if she gave birth on the ‘candle festival of the 25th’ (zulyn xorin tavan, the celebration of the birth of Tsongkhapa), which she did. When she was a child, Dulamsüren could sense (zön) various things. For example, in the autumn when she was three years old her family moved pasture and decided to settle in a very beautiful place with plenty of grass, but Dulamsüren cried and asked her parents to leave. Her father immediately decided not to settle there, and some of the families moving with them agreed. However, two households continued to stay there and did not take heed of what the three-year-old had said. A week later an epidemic (taxal) spread through the area and many people died.

From the age of seven, Dulamsüren secretly began to learn elementary religious practices from her father and her teachers. At the age of eleven she could invoke the saxius (guardian spirits) by herself and was able to go into trance. Besides her father, she had several other teachers such as Baatar gyalxai (a title for a Buddhist monk), who used to ‘seize a saxius’ (saxius barikh), invoke the spirit and go into a trance. There was also gürten Begzjav, Lut gürten, and Bazarjav, a tantric specialist, who taught her tarni (spells). During the Xalx Gol War (during the Second World War), her teacher, Lut went to war as a soldier. After he had gone, on the night that the soldiers were supposed to go to the front, the saxius in his domestic shrine issued a strange sounding noise, such as: ‘turrr’.19 His mother heard the noise and worried about her son and sensed that something was happening to him. At the same time, just before getting into the truck that was leaving for Xalx Gol, Lut blacked out so he had to stay behind. Later, he explained that his saxius saved his life and did not let him go to war, maybe because it knew that he would be killed.

When Dulamsüren was a small child, her first teacher Baatar used to visit her parents. Once he told her parents that she was not an ordinary child. He said that she would not learn Buddhist philosophy. Rather, she would learn how to communicate with saxius (guardian spirits). Later, he became her teacher. In the evenings, her father used to take her to her ‘great teacher’ (ix bagsh) Baatar to practice. When she was possessed by the spirit, represented in the object, her teacher used to gently support her right hand. When she was thirteen years old her teacher granted her permission to practice by herself. After this she became a gürten.

Image 8.

Dulamsüren gürten holding her saxius

photograph by Bumochir Dulam, 2003

Possession by saxius

We have seen that gürten worship their saxius (guardian spirits).20 The term saxius has two meanings. Firstly, it refers to the actual spirit. Secondly, it refers to the object that represents the spirit and is used as an instrument to go into a trance. In Dulamsüren’s case this object is a plinth for an ochir (vajra in Sanskrit, Buddhist ritual object) and an ochir, wrapped in a ceremonial silk scarf (see Figure 9). The sacred saxius object does not always have to be a plinth and an ochir. As she told us, it can be anything, such as a knife, for example. Later, when I (Bumochir Dulam) visited her again, she had a big wooden stick with a metal human skull sculpture on top of it, with many coloured streamers (Figure 10). She said that this was another saxius that belonged to one of her apprentices. Her apprentice could not go into a trance and communicate with the spirit. Therefore, the guardian spirit wanted to stay with Dulamsüren. Besides the plinth and the ochir, Dulamsüren also has a rosary (erx) that acts as an object through which she receives the spirits. She says that her saxius likes to stay at home at her house most of the time, and when she goes somewhere she takes her rosary instead, so that she can go into a trance if she needs to by holding her beads.21

Unlike the spirits of choijins and shamans, a gürten’s saxius does not have a physical images that is painted or sculpted like Buddhist deities, or are made of wool, felt, wood, metal or cotton like shamanic ones. Rather than being an object of worship, the ochir and its plinth, or the skull on the stick, are instruments that allow them to go into ‘trance’. Many families in Bayanbulag have their own saxius with different instruments that gürtens hold to go into a trance, just as the shamanic spirits and their corresponding effigies. Choijin saxius, by contrast, are only found in temples. When Dulamsüren once visited her natal home, many families wanted her to establish communication with their saxius and asked her to go into trance to communicate with them. None of these saxius had possessed a gürten for about forty or fifty years. Dulamsüren complains that at the Gandan Monastery in Ulaan Baatar, there are also many saxius who attack her and try to possess her. She laments that people in Mongolia do not know about saxius and that all the monks just read texts and do nothing to revive the gürten and choijin practices.

According to what gürten say, their saxius are not human souls, like shamanic ancestral spirits. Instead, saxius are similar to actual gods. Dulamsüren says that it is not an ‘emptiness’ (xooson yum bish), meaning that saxius is not something that does not exist. Instead, saxius is a ‘thing’ (yum) that belongs to gods, like the god Damdinchoijoo, one of the ten Xangals (ten wrathful gods of Ninma-pa sects of Buddhism). More precisely, their saxius are messengers (zarlaga) of wrathful Ninma-pa Buddhist gods. This is the answer Dulamsüren had from her saxius, and she always uses the term ‘ömnöös buux’ (to descend on behalf of one of the gods) when describing how her spirits visit and possess her. For example, her saxius descend on behalf of the gods Gombo, Lham, and Damdinchoijoo. She worships images of these gods, but there are no images to be found that represent her actual saxius. In the sense of worshiping the wrathful Ninma-pa deities, a gürten is similar to a choijin because these gods are the deities and spirits of the choijin.

However, in the case of a spirit possession by a choijin they do not invoke the wrathful gods, but their messengers. Another aspect that distinguishes gürten from choijin is the difference in spirit possession. Compared to choijin, the spirit possession of the gürten is quite simple. For example, Dulamsüren first purifies herself by washing her hands and burning juniper incense, she then sits in front of a chest, with pictures of wrathful gods on it, and is seized by her saxius through the ochir plinth and the ochir, which she holds in her right hand. She purifies the saxius in the juniper smoke and, while raising her right hand she supports it by holding her right elbow. She closes her eyes, concentrates, and reads an invocation (solxo) in Tibetan. Choijins have similar invocations for spirits and gods and they are also referred to as ‘solxog’. Unlike the gürten, who reads these texts by herself, the choijin has other monks who read these for him. The term ‘solxog’ refers to a text (unshlaga) that is recited in order to invoke the spirit or god. Every saxius or god has its own specific invocation text (cf. Myagmarsambuu 2005: 37). Gürten do not go into deep trance, or become unconscious. When they go into a trance, their right hand which holds the saxius begins to shake. The spirit possesses the hand, rather than the whole body of the gürten. Dulamsüren says that if the saxius is angry then the possessed hand will beat her chest incessantly. Once it has entered her, she talks to her saxius in her mind and keeps her eyes closed. After ten or twenty seconds she opens her eyes and tells people what her saxius has said. If people ask further questions, she closes her eyes again and talks to her saxius in her mind and again opens her eyes and tells people the answers. The conversation between the saxius, the gürten and the clients continues in this fashion. Dulamsüren describes the words of the saxius as coming to her mind ‘like letters appearing on a computer screen when we type’. In Mongol shamanism a similar kind of possession is called yavgan böölöx ‘to go into a trance without a mount’. It means to go into a trance without wearing a costume and the use of a drum, which is the shaman’s mount. Instead, shamans sometimes use the Jews’ harp (xuur) and metal mirror (toli) to talk to their spirits (ongod) in the same way as a gürten. We suggest that this type of spirit-medium relationship cannot be considered to be ‘possession’ or ‘trance’ in comparison to the deep trance achieved by shamans where mediums do not remember anything. Maybe the hand of the gürten can be considered to be possessed, but not the whole body or the mind. A gürten or shaman in possession is often conscious and communicating with people. We presume that this situation is not complete possession or trance.

We asked Dulamsüren whether any of her children or grandchildren would continue to communicate with her saxius. She answered that her saxius does not want any of them to be her successor. The transmission of the ability to gürten is different from shamanic inheritance which is passed down through family lineages. Instead, succession is decided by the saxius. The saxius chooses the next gürten, who may not necessarily be from the same linage. According to her, when gürtens die they do not come back to the family as a shamanic ancestoral spirit. They go to another world or are re-born on Earth. For example, Dulamsüren was told by her saxius that she is a reincarnation of a monk, and that another monk of the monastery, Baruuny Nandin Xüree had been the mediator gürten of her saxius.

Choijin

Another type of prophet that receives prediction in trance, similar to the gürten and shaman, is the choijin. This is our third case of ecstatic prophecy. The choijin practice was prohibited during the Communist period, and now there are not many people who know about it. Nevertheless, before the Communist period and even during the early revolutionary period many district and province monasteries used to have their own choijin. In this part of the chapter, we continue to illustrate the difference between gürten and choijin by focusing on the position of the ‘state choijin’ (töriin choijin), Luvsankhaidav (1872-1918) (see Figure 12 in appendix), whose temple has become a museum in Ulaan Baatar.

According to Mongolian Buddhist specialists there are no choijin in Mongolia at present. However, many historical sources present rich material on choijin, as discussed in chapter two. For example, Montell (1934) describes a choijin using the term gurtum (gürten), among the Torgot Mongols in Inner Mongolia. As mentioned previously, sometimes the two terms (gürten and choijin) refer to the same thing. However, the following description of an oracle in trance is nothing like the one we explored in our discussion of Dulamsüren gürten.

…the gurtum entered the tent and began to wash his hands and face with milk-white liquid, which was poured out of a highly decorated teapot. The gurtum was slowly dressed in his outfit. Once dressed, he sat down on a prepared box with a high pile of cushions on top. Incense filled the inside of the tent and the chanting of prayers began again. Suddenly, the gurtum’s feet began to tremble and with this sign flags were placed in his belt and a very large helmet decorated with skulls was placed on his head. This was tied very tightly under his chin with khattaks [xadag, a ceremonial silk scarf] so that he could not move his chin at all. This is a safety precaution to ensure that, while in trance, he does not bite off his tongue or break his teeth. His whole body then began to tremble, his bloodshot eyes began moving wildly and turned out and in. He jumped up and down on his throne while out of his mouth poured a bloody froth. With a sword he lashed around wildly and looked like a dangerous demon. The lamas bang on their drums and cymbals throughout and recite Tibetan texts.

Now the moment is ready for the public to have the future told to them. One after the other they move towards the gurtum with khattaks [xadag, a ceremonial silk scarf] and ask questions concerning illness, travel plans, the outcome of business affairs etc, etc. The answers are given in an unknown language which one of the Gurtum’s assistants translates. When everyone has asked their questions and the trance is subsiding, the helmet is slowly removed and a peculiarly decorated black hat that is drawn down below the eyes is placed on his head. The gurtum then rushed out of the door and into the other tent that was decorated for the fire offering. There he performed a wild dance with huge prancing leaps and jumps and after some time fell down exhausted. After a little while a fire offering is performed in roughly the same way as described before.

[…] A lama once described the gurtum’s power in the following way: “He can extend or shrink his body, twist his limbs, bend and drag out iron weapons as he wishes. He knows everything, he can predict the future, he does not fear an enemy, however strong or powerful they may be. He can take away illnesses by placing his hands on people or with a single slash of his sword” (Montell 1934:192-196, trans. Rebecca Empson).

Compared to gürten Dulamsüren discussed in the previous section, this gürten appears to be completely different. According to the historical sources a choijin (gurtum) had an elaborate costume including a hat, garment and boots. Secondly, they had weapons such as swords, bows and arrows, (cf. Montell 1934: 192-196; Haslund 1992: 58; Myagmarsambuu 2005: 39). Thirdly, they were attached to monasteries. Fourthly, they performed at large public rituals and were possessed on particular days in the presence of other monks who recited Buddhist texts so that they could enter trance22 (cf. Montell 1934:192-196). Fifthly, when the choijin or gurtum was possessed he spoke in a strange language, sometimes he spoke through his mouth but at other times it has been noted that he spoke through his armpit and therefore had an interpreter called gombo lama (cf. Myagmarsambuu 2005: 37; Montell 1934:192-196). Sixthly, there was a monk on each side who supported the choijin when he collapsed (cf. Haslund 1992: 58, Myagmarsambuu 2005: 37). The choijin ritual is more complex than Dulamsüren gürten’s calling down of her guardian spirits. This is because the choijin is not possessed by the ‘messengers of the gods’. Rather, they are possessed by the gods themselves. In the example presented by Montell (1934), the god is held to be the god Dharmapala, or a fire god, depending on different perspectives.

‘The ordinary Etsingol Mongols understand that it is the fire god that possesses the gurtum’s body and speaks through his mouth. The orthodox Tibetan theologians hold that the god that possesses him is Dharmapala, that is one of the protectors of the lamaist faith’ (Montell 1934: 195-196, trans. Rebecca Empson).

Haslund (1992 [1935]) describes a similar ritual also using the term ‘gurtum’.23 According to this example it is an actual god who possesses the gurtum.

…the possessed gurtum was not a human being, but was a god himself incarnate in a chosen human body. No man could be responsible for the actions of a possessed gurtum, since during the ecstasy he was a god. A gurtum carried the god’s dangerous weapons, and it might happen that the god’s will was to make away with an objectionable person.

…Everyone regarded the two gurtums with reverence, for in their present condition they were not human lamas bearing the dress and symbolic weapons of Damchan. No, they were possessed by Damchan who had changed their appearance to his own and the deeds they performed and words they uttered were those of the god himself. … Damchan is one of the Tavan Khan, “the five kings” who have given a sacred and eternal promise to protect religion and who are the lords of all magicians and the wisest of all soothsayers (Haslund 1992 [1935]: 58, 59).


According to a Mongolian lecturer in the philosophy of religion at the institute of Buddhism, named Bulgan, there are two categories of choijin. The first consists of a choijin who is born with the ability (törölxiin). They are the reincarnations of previous choijin. The other kind consists of a choijin who has learnt his skill from teachers (oldmol). Bulgan makes a further distinction between a nomyn choijin (official) and a nomyn bus choijin (unofficial). The Nomyn choijin becomes a proper choijin by passing certain tests, learning different spells and undergoing religious teachings, they are usually recognized officially by higher religious authorities and reveal prophecies for society. On the other hand, nomyn bus choijin do not have any of these characteristics, they simply call themselves choijin, without official recognition. They practice at home and deal with the personal issues of individual clients. We suggest that this classification reflects the differences to be found between a choijin and a gürten, introduced in this chapter. For the purposes of description, let us call nomyn choijin ‘choijin’, and nomyn bus choijin ‘gürten’.

Like the other ecstatic practitioners discussed above, the choijin also predicts the future. Before the revolutionary period, Mongolians respected choijin and used to visit them when they needed to solve problems. People received spiritual treatments (arga zasal), were told what would happen in the future and what had to be done. The presence of the choijin was common, especially in cases of revolts and strikes against the state or in any other significant disasters or problems affecting the whole nation. People asked the choijin to hold ceremonies to defeat enemies, clear obstacles and predict the future (cf. Myagmarsambuu 2005: 54).

In the 1920s, just before the revolution in Mongolia, the People’s Revolutionary Party (Ardyn Nam) received information about a prophecy made by a choijin lama (Maygmarsambuu used this term to describe him), whose name was Gütembe.24 The prophecy made by his saxius declared that the state needed some help and it was time to help the state, referring to the need for a revolution. The party sent Dogsom, Galsan and Dendev to find out about the prophecy. They described Gütembe’s home as being full of religious implements and pictures of gods. In front of the images there were small offerings (takhil), sacrificial offerings shaped out of dough (balin) and incense and candles burning on the altar. On the left side of his house, there was a costume consisting of a mask, helmet and a metal mirror. An image of mandala (representation of the cosmos) and a butter lamp (zul) were placed in front of them on another smaller altar. On the two sides of the altar, there was a sword, bow, arrow and bayonet. To the right of the main altar there was a drum, and a cymbal was hanging from the wall of the house. Gütembe told them that the previous day his guardian spirits had suddenly possessed him and told him about the present situation of the state and society. He went into a trance to ask more. He lit the lamp and the incense and started to recite a text. After a short while, the skirts of his garment (deel) suddenly began to shake and he yawned and roared. He shook his head, his face was red, and red and white foam was dripping from his mouth. His assistant lama then poured a glass of vodka into his mouth and mopped his eyes with heart meat (zürxnii max). This returned him to normal. He said that he had asked his saxius about state affairs and the saxius had replied that a specific Buddhist text referred to as ‘Damdiny Dordog’ had to be recited for a week to clear the obstacles. Three days after this, they would see an improvement (cf. Myagmarsambuu 2005: 55-56). While the 1921 revolution was predicted by this choijin for the Communist revolutionaries, the monarch of Mongolia at the time also had a state choijin.

State oracle (töriin choijin)

In 1874 when, the eighth reincarnation of Bogd Jebtsundamba (Agvaanluvsan 1870–1924) was four years old, he came to Mongolia with his parents and brothers. He was Tibetan, born in Lhasa, the son of a senior civil servant in the administration of the Dalai Lama. He was the Holy King of the Mongolian state and head of religion from 1911 to 1921. His younger brother, Luvsanxaidav (1872-1918), was appointed as the ‘state oracle’ (töriin choijin). In 1883-1884, the Xamba Lama Baldanchoimbol, the religious leader of Xüree, capital of Mongolia, discussed with the Bogd Khan about training his brother Luvsanxaidav as a choijin to protect religion. In 1884, Mongolian religious leaders invited the choijin Setev from Tibet to lead the training. Luvsanxaidav learned to go into a trance and the three main gods that possessed him were Naichun Choijin, Zumer and Dorjsug. By the decree of the Bogd Khan he started performing a possession ritual twice a year; once on the eighth day of the first lunar month, and once on the twenty-eighth of the last. The rituals were held to strengthen the Mongolian religion and state, and to defeat enemies and demons (cf. Myagmarsambuu 2005: 65, 66, 67).

Image 9.

The State Oracle Luvsanxaidav

Photograph reproduced with kind permission by the Choijin Lama Temple Museum, Mongolia

Luvsanxaidav first began training in a Mongolian felt tent (ger). Later, when he became a choijin, he had two temples built for him. The first temple was built between 1898 and 1901 at East Xüree. It consisted of one main, and several small prayer halls, and some other small buildings and fences. Fifty of the Bogd’s disciples became students in the Choijin Temple (Choijingiin Süm), and they collected alms as taxation for the monarch. The temple was called ‘zanxan’ and had the title ‘The Palace that Defeats the Demons of the Black Direction’ (xar zügiin shulamsyn aimgiig daragch ord). In 1903, the temple, including the Choijin’s personal quarters, burnt down. Therefore, they started building a new temple in 1904, which was finished in 1908. This new temple later received the honorary title ‘Forgiveness-Promoting Temple’ (Örshööliig xögjüülegch süm) from the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. The temple consisted of several different pavilions (see Figure 13 in appendix). The preserved body of Luvsanxaidav’s teacher, Yonzon Xamba Baldanchoimbol, was seated like an image of a god in a meditative position in the main prayer hall. Choijin Luvsanxaidav’s corpse was also preserved in the same way after his death and was kept in his house.25 This house burnt down in 1934 and the Choijin’s remains were destroyed. After this, his ashes were placed in an effigy that was placed in the main prayer hall. During the 1930s almost all of the temples in Mongolia were burnt down, but this temple survived. A rumour says that the temple was saved by the Communist leader Choibalsan and his wife, because they believed in the choijin Luvsanxaidav.

In 1916, Luvsanxaidav received the position of ‘State Oracle’ (Töriin Choijin), and the title of ‘Protector of Xalx Religion’ (Xalxyn Shashnyg Xamgaalagch).26 After his death in 1918, the temple continued to perform rituals, as usual, reciting texts until it closed in 1936. In 1941 it reopened as ‘The Choijin Lama Temple Museum’ (see Figure 13 in appendix). There are several theories about the circumstances of Luvsanxaidav’s death. For example, Myagmarsambuu (2005) claims that on the morning of the 28th March 1918, he suddenly blacked out and passed away (cf. Myagmarsambuu 2005: 67, 68). We were told, however, by the museum guide that he blacked out and died while he was in trance.27 The guide also mentioned another theory, according to which he died in his sleep when his home was destroyed by a fire. This explains why the museum does not have many of his costumes or instruments.

For the possession ritual, Luvsanxaidav used to light candles and close all the doors and curtains. State officials and religious leaders used to come to participate in the ritual and to pray and ask the saxius for protection. While in trance he issued prophecies from the gods to the participants. He became very powerful and demonstrated many magical feats, such as tying swords into knots, licking hot metal from a fire, issuing fire from his body, flying and so on. People who were wounded by his sword during the possession were considered to be very lucky. Because of his enormous power, his arms and legs would sometimes be tied to columns.

Now the temple is officially a museum, however, it is also an active religious temple. People come to pray and worship at the temple. All the gods and saxius inside are considered to be alive and, therefore, active. Lamas even come from Tibet and India to worship and read prayers in the temple. People believe that a god called ‘Yadam’ who resides at the temple helps them to find their pre-destined spouse and that the god ‘Zanxan’ brings success in work and life, as well as in money. When the government started privatizing property, some lamas wanted to privatize the temple museum and re-open it as a choijin temple. One of the motivations to re-open the museum as an active temple is the revival of the highly esteemed position of ‘state choijin’.28 In this sense, the choijin and his temple are a good example of a prophet who existed in a highly centralised powerful position with regards to the state.

Conclusion

Given the diverse sources of prophecy and the different ways of distributing its messages, we turn now to focus on belief in prophecy. The question of belief varies according to different historical periods. One of the ways in which we can gauge whether people believe in prophecy is to note if people’s actions have been influenced by prophetic predictions. For example, as discussed in chapter two, in the Secret History of the Mongols, Chinggis Khan is reported to have believed in the prophecy of the shaman Teb Tenger. After hearing his prediction, he arrested his brother Qasar. If a similar kind of prophecy were to be issued in contemporary Mongolia, it is doubtful that people would react in a similar way. For example, the former president of the country, Mr Ochirbat, mentioned to us that if someone issues a prophecy concerning an impeding plane crash then he could not do anything to stop it.29 People would not cancel their flight due to the prophet’s prediction. If people did cancel their flight, they would not find out if the prophecy were true or not. Therefore, as the prophet Dashtseren mentioned,30 prophecy is something that people believe in after the predicted event has come true. Apart from the type of prophecies that can be acted upon, there are other types of prophecies which simply state that things will happen and nothing can be done to prevent them (see, for example, the prophecies of Molon Bagsh in chapter five).

In contemporary Mongolia, people do not always take prophecies at face value. There are certain circumstances when people believe in prophecies and reveal to others that they do believe in them. In present day Mongolia people can be said to have two major ways of thinking, which could be seen to contradict each other. The first way of thinking is based on modern, scientific rationality. The second way of thinking is based on traditional and spiritual reasoning. Before the 1990s, the scientific mode of reasoning dominated Mongolian society. After the advent of democracy, however, both ways of thinking have become popular. Modern scientific reasoning has started to refer more to Western concepts, such as ideas about globalization and democracy. Alongside this, however, traditional and spiritual practices have also re-emerged throughout the country. The two ways of thinking can be seen to govern different parts, or aspects, of society. Nevertheless, distinctions between ‘globalized’ and ‘traditional’ ways of thinking are not always distinct. For example, belief in prophecy is not only thought to be a ‘traditional’ way of thinking in Mongolia. Many people, who consider themselves followers of modern scientific reasoning, also draw on prophetic knowledge. For example, the prophecies of the Bulgarian prophetess Gushterova Vangalia, and Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame 1503-1566) are both well known and wide-spread across Mongolia.

Using the popular Mongolian distinction between ‘traditional-spiritual’ (ylamjlalt yxaan / shutleg bishrel) and ‘modern-rational’ (shinjlex yxaan) thinking, we can identify two general groups of people in Mongolia. One group of people do not believe in prophecies, regardless of where the prophecies come from. The other group is made up of people who do. However, its should be noted that this classification describes not only two groups of people, but also highlights two types of reasoning which may coexist in a single person. Recourse to globalized and scientific rationality is often something that people commit to publicly. The other type of reasoning is often considered to be something that comes to the fore in private. So what, one might ask, do people think about public state sacrifices and communal acts of ritual worship? The answer we give is that these are mostly symbolic acts.31 One does not need to believe in the real existence of ‘spirits’ in order to take part in and revive public rituals. In public, people hesitate to answer the question whether they believe in prophecies or not. However, in private, among family members or in their local areas, people reveal their belief in spiritual, religious and prophetic reasoning. It is important to note here that the two kinds of reasoning cause many people not to act in accordance with what they really think. More precisely, many people who believe in spiritual and prophetic knowledge cannot admit this in public, especially if they are public figures. People do not officially announce their beliefs in public in order not to be seen as abnormal by people who do not believe in prophecies. For example, when the shaman Tseren and his family received the command from Chinggis Khan, they did not do anything until the warrior Muxulai came and checked if they had issued the predictions. They did not act immediately, not because they did not believe, but because they knew that many others would not believe in them and they were hesitant as to how to proceed. For the shaman, it was safer to send the letter to us, where it has remained. We could have delivered the prophecy to President Ochirbat and he might have acted upon the prophetic information, as we know that he supported his own seer. But he could not have made this public. When his support for the seer was made public, his reputation was put into question. On the other hand, publicly declaring that one does not believe in these kind of knowledge presents a similar kind of danger. Therefore, the best option is to suspend ones belief and attribute these beliefs to others. The conclusion, therefore, is that many people do believe in prophecies and many others do not, and the way in which a prophecy is transmitted and delivered to others depends on who believes in whom and what. People confess their belief or disbelief in private, even if many of the matters raised in the prophecies that have been presented in this chapter actually have the potential to speak to issues that concern the public at large.

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1 In Time, Causality and Prophecy in the Mongolian Cultural Region, ed. Rebecca Empson. Inner Asia Series, Cambridge: Globe Oriental, 2006.



2 Gandan Monastery is the main centre of Buddhist authority in Mongolia. It is based in Ulaan Baatar.



3 Although, some monks at Gandan Monastery in Ulaan Baatar hold public lectures concerning how one should interpret previously known prophecies.



4 Pers. comm. S. Dulam (Professor of Mongol studies).



5 He passed away in late summer 2005. We have heard that his body will be embalmed in his shaman temple.



6 B. Dulam and S. Dulam were invited to participate at the symposium of the International Society for Shamanistic Research (ISSR) in Ulan-Ude, in Russian Buryatia.



7 Shamans in Mongolia routinely worship their ancestral spirits three times a month, on the 9th, 19th and 29th of each month of the Lunar calendar. Darxad shamans, from the north, call this worship ongodyn tailga (sacrifice for the spirits), while Buryat shamans from the east call this worship yösöngöö xiix (to do the ninth).



8 Folk teachings and wisdoms, such as the Oyun Tülhüür (Key of Mind) and Chinggisiin Bilig (Wisdom of Chinggis), teach people traditional political ideology and what is right and what is wrong in a poetic form.



9 This is a ritual consisting of burning food to feed spirits. For further information see S. Dulam and B. Dulam (1999).



10 This is similar to what other spirits (ongod) do when they possess a shaman. Spirits greet people in the ceremony, introduce themselves, drink vodka, tea and milk and smoke a cigarette, talk about their previous human lives, give advice on how life should be led on earth, and finally say farewell. For further information, see Bumochir Dulam (2002).



11 Ochirvaani is one of the wrathful deities of Buddhism.



12 Pers. comm. Dr. Hürelbaatar and Dr. Erdenebayar.



13 In Mongolia there are two main categories of shamans. One category is referred to as ‘black’ (xar). This usually refers to the Darxad shamans of Northern Mongolia who do not worship any Buddhist gods. The other category is ‘yellow’ (shar), the colour of Buddhism, referring mostly to Buryat shamans in the East of Mongolia, who do worship Buddhist gods.



14 At the time, it was difficult to pass this information to the public, especially just after the President, Mr. Ochirbat’s reputation had been compromised, in the eyes of some people, by his support for the seer, Dashtseren.



15 The term is spelled in different ways in the Mongolian cultural region, such as: gurtum, gürtüm, gurten and ghurtam (see chapter one). I will use the above version, following contemporary Mongolian usage.



16 Dulamsüren was born in 1938 in Bayanbulag district (sum) of Bayanxongor province (aimag) in central Mongolia. Her father, Norov, was a monk from Xovd province. He married her mother Tsend-Ayush and they moved together to Bayanbulag district.



17 He was a reincarnation of Lama Lash.



18 Buddhist practitioners are called ‘yellow’ (shar) people in Mongolia, referring to the Gelug-pa sects of Buddhism. In contrast, laypeople and state officials are called ‘black’ (xar) people, and the term ‘to become black’ means to stop being a monk.



19 Here the term ‘saxius’ refers to the object or figure representing a spirit, such as the plinth and ochir of Dulamsüren.



20 The literal meaning of the word saxius is ‘guardian spirit’. However, in some contexts, especially for choijin, saxius is ‘god’ rather than ‘guardian spirit’.



21 I (Bumochir Dulam) met a Tibetan gürten in Lhasa, in the summer 2004. Her name is Tseyan. She is ‘xor’, that is, a Tibetan Mongol and a descedent of Chinggis Khan’s armies. When we visited a reincarnated lama together, as soon as we entered his room she began to shake, especially in her right hand, which was raised like when a gürten goes into trance. I remember that she was not holding anything in her hand, only her rosary which she always carries.



22 A 96 year-old lama in Mongolia called Sereeter, told us about the same ritual. He was a lama at Ix Xüree (Gandan Monastery) and saw an actual possession ritual of a choijin. He recalled: ‘When a chojin is possessed by a saxius it is because a lama is sitting next to him reading a special book, when a shaman becomes possessed he can have the saxius enter him by himself’ (Ulaan Baatar, May 2003).



23 An extract from Haslund’s description (1992 [1935]) includes: ‘And the Mystery came. A pair of grotesque apparitions rushed out of the temple closely surrounded by the red-robbed lamas. On their heads were shining helmets and from their backs fluttered long, many-coloured streamers. In their hands they held bows, arrows, swords and other weapons. Their faces expressed complete madness. Their eyes bulged, bloodshot and staring, their cheeks were swollen and livid, and white froth foamed from their slack drooping mouths. The creatures reeled as if drunk. From time to time they crumpled up and would have fallen to the ground had not the attendant lamas held them upright. The air was rent by hideous roaring, and with the strength and agility of wild beasts the two possessed creatures rushed with drawn swords towards some imaginary prey in the fleeing panic-stricken crowd. Countless people were wounded and red blood flowed’ (Haslund 1992 [1935]: 58).



24 We suspect that Gütembe was not his real name; instead it may have been his gürten title.



25 An English language newspaper in Mongolia, The UB Post, recently published an interview with the Mongolian lama G. Pürevbat about the practice of embalmment concerning Luvsanxaidav. The article reports:

[Journalist:] The embalmed mummy of Luvsankhaidav, the brother of Bogd Jebtsundamba, is in the Choijin Lama Temple. What can you tell us about this embalmment?

[Pürevbat:] The great writer B. Rinchen said that it is the embalmed mummy of Luvsankhaidav but I heard that it is just paper …We have not studied it. The legs of the body are different from the Mongolian tradition; its legs are hanging down from the body but [a mummy is usually] made to sit crossed-legged. Most embalmed mummies in Mongolia were destroyed at the time of political persecution around 1937, including the mummies of the seventh and eighth Bogds that were in Gandan Monastery (The UB Post, Self-embalmment in the Buddhist faith, 10th August 2005, www.ubpost.mongolnews.mn/culture, as accessed in December 2005).



26 Xalx Mongols are the largest ethnic group in Mongolia.



27 Ch. Jargal, a researcher and guide at the Choijin Lama Temple Museum.



28 For reasons of privacy, we have not revealed the name of the lama who became a choijin and started his own temple.



29 Interview conducted by Bumochir Dulam in June 2003, in Ulaan Baatar.



30 Interview conducted by Bumochir Dulam in June 2003, in Ulaan Baatar.



31 For further information concerning communal acts of ritual worship, see S. Dulam (2004).