Life of Zanabazar: First Bogd Gegen of Mongolia

This second meeting between Avtai and the Dalai Lama began less than auspiciously, according to the traditional accounts. Avtai rode ahead of his baggage train with forty-five armed escorts and as they passed by a place known as Black Tamarisk Head he and his men got into a battle with some local people. The leaders of these people went to the Dalai Lama and said, "The one called Avtai Qayan of the eastern Khalkha shot three times and inflicted wounds upon us. We have only just been able to come to you with our lives, O Lama." The Dalai Lama replied, "This one called Abudai [Avtai] Qayan is a reincarnation of Vajrapani. Therefore do not harm him." The Dalai Lama sent some men to met Avtai and his cohorts, but Avtai ignored them and rode straight away into his presence. "When I saw you being overwhelmed by the majesty of the Qayan [Avtai], even I was afraid," the Dalai Lama exclaimed to the abashed leader of the Tibetan escorts, at least according to the Mongolian version of this event.

Avtai quickly redeemed the situation, making obeisance to the Dalai Lama and proclaiming, "I your servant am [Avtai] Qayan of the people called the Khalkha of the North." He explained that he had built a temple in the land of the Khalkas, at Kharkhorum, and asked the Dalai Lama to come to Mongolia and perform a full inauguration of the new building. He presented the Dalai Lama with one hundred white prayer scarves with one hundred white gelded horses, another hundred white prayer scarves with a hundred bay gelded horses, one thousand assorted gelded horses, plus an assortment of jewels and fine cloths.

The Dalai Lama replied that he was not able come to Mongolia at that time-indeed he had very little time left to live-but that Avtai should return to Mongolia and fix a day for the inauguration of the new temple, and that he, the Dalai Lama, would inaugurate it from where he was at on that day.

It should be mentioned here that in 1586 the Dalai Lama is known to have been in Khökh Khot, where he gave a sermon before over 100,000 people. Intriguing, the Rosary of White Lotuses says that one "Dorje Gyalpo of Halha" was present at this event and presented the Dalai Lama with a number of precious gifts, including a tent made of sable skins. At another point, the Rosary refers to a "Halha Dorje Gyalpo" who built the Erdene Zuu Temple on the Orkhon. Was Dorje Gyalpo another name of Avtai, who elsewhere the Rosary calls Ochir Opatai? If so, then Avtai did in fact met the Dalai Lama at Khökh Khot in 1586?

In any event, Avtai had one more request of the Dalai Lama: "Moreover, I wish to invite a good lama, who will be of advantage to the faith which is revered forever, and to instal [sic] the most blessed shrines." Could the Dalai Lam please recommend such a monk and send him to Mongolia? The Dalai Lama told him to interview various monks and then chose one himself. Here again the record is extremely vague. According to one account, Avtai then proceeded to Lhasa to look for a teacher of the Dharma who could come back with him to Mongolia. The Dalai Lama, it is clear, did not accompany him on this trip. While visiting a temple in Lhasa Avtai noticed a monk sitting all by himself at the end of a row of seats and for some reason felt drawn to him. Avtai eventually asked this lama to come Mongolia and teach. The man replied, "I am unable to go in this incarnation, but later I will meet you."

This lama was supposedly Taranatha (1575-1634), who later, in 1615, founded the Takten Phuntsok Ling Monastery in the Tsangpo Valley near Shigatse, and eventually achieved great renown as a teacher and historian (his famous History of Buddhism in India is still in print today) Admittedly, this story presents certain chronological problems. Taranatha was born in either 1573 or 1775, and thus would have had to have been very young indeed if and when Avtai met him in Tibet in mid-1580s. This is one of several inconsistencies in the account of Avtai's second trip to Tibet, a journey which over the years may have acquired some accretions of a purely mythical nature

Taranatha, however, eventually did go to Mongolia, where he reportedly founded several monasteries. Little more is known about his years in Mongolia, except for the fact that he died there in 1634. It is related that while still in Tibet, Taranatha, known as a great humorist, made a joke about where he would be reborn. A Mongolian student studying under him cried out, "Oh, please come to Mongolia next time!" Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegen, who was believed to be Taranatha's reincarnation, fulfilled this request.

During his second meeting with the Dalai Lama Avtai apparently again asked the Dalai Lama to visit Mongolia. He replied,: "Although I cannot go now, later I will meet you at your own place." Avtai then returned to Mongolia and prepared for the full dedication of the new temple at Kharkhorum, making offerings and sacrificial cakes as the Dalai Lama had instructed him to do. According to tradition, "On that very day, when, offerings and cakes were there prepared, barley fell in showers, like scattered grain, from the direction of the west [where the Dalai Lama dwelled], and this is how the seeds of barley became widespread among the Khalka." According to another tradition, a shower of flowers fell, signaling that the Dalai Lama had indeed performed the inauguration from afar, as he had promised. When the famous Russian ethnographer A. M. Pozdneev visited here in the 1890s he was shown dried flowers on a temple altar which the monks maintained were the very flowers which had fallen during the long-ago inauguration.

Avtai would eventually build several temples on the old site of Kharkhorum. The first, however, was known as the Khun Temple. This temple formed the core of what was to become the vast Erdeni Zuu Monastery near the present-day town of Kharkhorin. It survived the large-scale trashing of Erdeni Zuu by the communists in the 1930s and can still be seen there today. It is quite small, inconspicuously located, and un-signposted, however, and many visitors to Erdeni Zuu, now one of Mongolia's premier tourist attractions, walk right by it unaware of its significance.

Not long after the temple inauguration Avtai was out hunting with his entourage on the steppes about 60 miles east of Kharkhorum. From the middle of a wide plain bounded on east by saw-toothed ridges Avtai saw a thin plume of a smoke rising from a fire of a lone camper. "Go and see what sort of man that is, whether a hunter or a mendicant," Avtai ordered one of his men. The man came back and reported that the stranger had wore a blue gown but had a shaved head. Avtai noted that the color of the gown made no difference, but since the stranger has a shaved head he must be a lama. "When formerly I made obeisance to the Dalai Lama I took an oath that I would make obeisance to the lamas I saw, since priests of the clergy are rare in our land," said Avtai. To the amazement of his entourage Avtai went up and bowed to the simply-dressed stranger. "What a fortunate qayan you are," said the man, "to be the only one to make obeisance when today so many men have not done so." He then offered some of his simple food that he had prepared to Avtai, who ate it with relish. He offered what was leftover in his own bowl to members of his entourage but they refused to eat it, shocked that their Khan should be consorting with such lowly man. Then the stranger said, "This place where we have met is possessed of great significance. Erect a monument here." A monument was built and the place was given the name Yëson Zuil. The traditional account of this meeting concludes with: "The mendicant took a most blessed object from his load and offered it to the Qayan, and this is how the Dalai Lama Sonam Gyatso, in accordance with his having said at an earlier date, 'I shall go later', met with him [Avtai] in the guise of a mendicant."

Of course it is highly improbable if not impossible that the Dalai Lama actually traveled to Mongolia in the guise of a mendicant, particularly in the last year or two of his life-he died in 1588. Some might dismiss this story as a simple legend, while others might suggest the possibility that an emanation of the Dalai Lama appeared before Avtai. The place Yëson Zuil exists by the same name today, however, and local people are quick to point out the exact spot where Avtai supposedly met the Third Dalai Lama, whatever form he may have appeared in.

Avtai himself died shortly after this alleged meeting, in 1587, a year before the Dalai Lama. Avtai's remains were eventually placed in stupa-like tomb in front of the three so-called Zuu Temples at Erdene Zuu, which are enclosed in a compound of their own. This tomb was damaged in the iconoclastic upheavals of the 1930s and it is not clear if Avtai's remains are still present, although the structure itself has been restored. Again, it is not sign-posted, and very few of the thousand of visitors who walk by give it a second glance. Such is the fate of Avtai, the khan who brought Buddhism to Mongolia.