| The Life of Zanabazar: The First Bogd Gegen of Mongolia
(Unedited: Work in Progress. Last Updated May 19)
Page 13 | Page14 Zanabazar returned to Mongolia as a newly converted member of Gelugpa sect and armed with a brief to convert his fellow Mongolian to the same Yellow Hat beliefs. He forthwith announced that he would now longer live in any monastery connected with the Sakya sect which had hitherto been dominant in Mongolia. Thus his first course of action was to establish a new Gelugpa monastery near the confluence of the Tuul and Selbi rivers, in the large basin surrounded by the four mountains now called Chingeltei Uul, Bayanzurkh Uul, Songino Uul , and Bogd Khan Uul. Although it is not precisely clear from the record what the original name of this monastery was it soon became known as Örgöö, meaning "palace" or "camp" of an important person." Later this word would be corrupted into "Urga", which would become the name used by foreigners for the capital of Mongolia before it was changed in 1924 to Ulaan Baatar. According to the Mongolian chronicle Erdeni-yin-erike the new monastery consisted of seven aimags, or divisions, each of which had it own assigned duties. The aimag known as Amduunar, made up of Tibetan lamas from the Amdo Region (roughly modern-day Qinghai province of China) who had come back from Tibet with the Bogd Gegen, was invested with task of instructing and educating lay people in Buddhism and specifically, we may assume, in the Gelugpa doctrines. Three aimags (Jisa, Sangai, and Dzoogai) were assigned to look over the personal needs of the Bodgo Gegen, prepare meals for the entire monastery, guard the monastery's supplies and treasury, and maintain order in the community. The remaining aimaks (Khüükhen noyan, Darkhan emchi, and Urliuud) were temples for worship maintained at the expense of followers of the Bogd Gegen. According to traditional accounts, upon his return to Mongolia Zanabazar also constructed two the temples of Vajradhara and Tabun-idzaagurtu; whether these were connected with Örgöö it is not quite clear." Apart from establishing Gelugpa monasteries, little is known about Zanabazar's attempts to instill the Gelugpa doctrines in Mongolia. Pozdneev, surveying the traditional Mongolian accounts available in the 1890s, exclaimed, "What is remarkable is the total absence of testimony concerning the manner in which the Gegen, having become a worshipper of the Dalai Lama and a follower of the Ge-lug-bas, forced out the rites and theories of the Sakya sect, which up to that time had been accepted in Khalkha. In all probability, the Ge-lug-ba lamas who accompanied the Gegen, seeing that the theoretical knowledge was but slightly developed in Khalkha, decided that the Khalkas might be converted without any struggle and that all that would be necessary would be to conduct the matter steadfastly and to introduce every innovation gradually, and then the people would not even notice the transition from one sect to another." Thus is would appear-keeping in mind that most subsequent histories were written by Gelugpa monks-that Mongolia was spared the sectarian strife which had plagued Tibet in the 1630s and early 1640s and resulted in the forceful suppression of the Jonangpa sect to which Zanabazar's previous incarnation belonged.
Zanabazar apparently
spent much of 1652 establishing his new monastery at the confluence
of the Tuul and the Selbi. In early 1653, according to the Rosary of
White Lotuses, but mentioned in no other biography of Zanabazar, he
traveled south across the Gobi Desert to Inner Mongolia for yet another
meeting with the 5th Dalai Lama, who at that time was just returning
from a visit to the Qing emperor Shunzhi in Beijing.
The Ming Dynasty had been overthrown and the Qing Dynasty established eight years earlier in 1644. The nominal founder of the Qing Dynasty, Abahai, had died a year before and left the throne to his five year old son Shunzhi. Thus the emperor was only fourteen or fifteen years old when he met the Dalai Lama-a detail omitted by the Rosary of White Lotuses-and was no doubt heavily under the influence of his regents. Nevertheless, "His faith in the Gelugpa teaching and its holders was unshakable," according to the Rosary. Shunzhi, or his Qing advisors, had sent a delegation to Lhasa to invite the Dalai Lama to Beijing back on 1650, but the Great Fifth was initially reluctant to go, fearing both the smallpox then raging in China and the political implications of appearing as a supplicant in the Qing court. After a period of meditation at the Oracle Lake he decided that the Qing Emperor could not be ignored and that he would have to make the lengthy journey to China. The young emperor Shunzhi personally rode out outside of Beijing to met the Dalai Lama and escorted him into the capital, where the so-called the Golden Palace had been specially built at the cost of 90,000 silver sangs to house the Tibetan religious leader. Shunzhi showered the Dalai Lama with a vast array of gifts-golden tea-churners, thousands of rolls of brocade and silk, golden saddles, skins of tigers, leopards, and various other fauna, pearls, silver ingots, and much else-and gave him the honorific of "Precious Glory of the West, Sovereign of the World, Possessor of All Wisdom, All-Knowing One, Talai Lama Vajradhara." The Dalai Lama reciprocated by anointing Shunzhi the "Lordly Emperor Melodiously Wise Bodhisattva Sky Divinity". Dalai Lama biographer Glenn Mullin, surveying the literature on the subject, provides an explanation for this love-fest:
The Dalai Lama left Beijing on the 20th day of the 2nd Hor month of 1653, according to the Rosary, having been given one final gift by the Emperor-a rosary made of pearls each the size of the tip of a thumb. After journeying ten days from Beijing, apparently in what is now Inner Mongolia, the Dalai Lama had the meeting with Zanabazar mentioned in the Rosary. Unfortunately more details are lacking. Ten days later, on the 10th of the third month, we are told that the Dalai Lama arrived at Taika Monastery (apparently in current-day Inner Mongolia; exact location unknown) where he met with a large assemblage of Mongols and Tibetans. Whether Zanabazar accompanied the Dalai Lama to Taika-assuming that he was in Inner Mongolia in the first place- and was present at this gathering is not clear. If he was he must have surely been impressed: "The faithful from all over Hor and Sog assembled there. . . To all of them, he [the Dalai Lama] gave a great and uninterrupted stream of the Dharma nectar. He was offered gold, silver, horses, cattle, etc., in amounts difficult for the mind to comprehend," the Rosary of White Lotuses tells us, adding somewhat enigmatically, "which was posing understandable problems every now and then."
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