Tovkhon Monastery
According to his biography Zanabazar spent the summer
and early fall of 1655 engrossed in religious exercises here at Tövkhön.
Suddenly, in the midst of his meditations, Zanabazar decided to return
to Tibet. This trip, while it apparently did occur, presents a number
of historiographical problems for the current-day student of Zanabazar's
life. First of all, Zanabazar and his six companions allegedly traveled
to the monastery of the Panchen Lama in Tibet, a sojourn which normally
took months, in seven days. This nature of this speedy journey becomes
perhaps more evident when we realize that "of those who were honored
by witnessing it, it seemed to some that there were seven mounted men
riding and to others that there were seven turpans [large ducks] flying."22
The host of miraculous events that occurred to the travelers on their
way to Tibet, either on horses or flying as birds, need not be detailed
here. Anyhow, despite their haste the party arrived at the monastery
of the Panchen Lama too late; he had died three days before. "'O,
how unhappy I am,'" cried out Zanabazar. 'Knowing my teacher .
. . to be of great age, I purposely made great haste that I might bow
to him and acquire the rest of the precepts which I was not able to
get before from his spiritual treasure house.'" The spirit of the
Panchen Lama, hearing this lament, suddenly reanimated his body. "'I
should not have returned,'" announced the now alive Panchen Lama,
"'but once it became known to me that thou didst come from a far
land and art wasting away in such sorrow, I resolved to come back.'"
He thereupon commenced to instruct the young Bogdo Gegen in new and
varied teachings, precepts, and doctrines.
Back on firmer ground, Zanabazar's biography states that he returned
to Mongolia in the late autumn of 1656. Thus he had been gone at least
a year, enough time to travel to Tibet by more conventional means
and in the usual time frame, receive religious instruction, and return
back home. Whether he received these instructions from the reanimated
Panchen Lama or from some other exalted personage is open to speculation;
however; we do know that Zanabazar returned from Tibet further empowered
and that from this point on his star began to rise. Pozdneev, commenting
on the miraculous stories surrounding Zanabazar's sojourn, says, "There
is no doubt that the lamas' tales of such a nature had in their time
an enormous influence on the minds of the superstitious Mongols and
thus we are inclined to trust the biography of the Öndur-gegen,
which states that the Khalkhas, on hearing of the circumstances of
this trip made by their hutukhtu to Tibet, began to venerate the hutukhtu
and pray to him far more than they had before."
The following year, in the spring of 1657, the princes
of Khalka Mongolia held a huge convocation in honor of Zanabazar during
which he performed the rites he had supposedly learned from the Panchen
Lama, thus greatly increasing his standing among both the nobles and
the common people. In 1559 another great convention was held and by
this time Zanabazar, then twenty-four years old, was deemed powerful
enough to bestow titles on both the Mongolian aristocracy and leaders
of the Lamaist religion. It was from this time that he began to play
a political as well as religious role in the life of the Khalka Mongols.
Thus he soon became the most influential Mongol of his day.
Leading us back down
to the main temple our lama tells us that he must continue work on the
preparations for the consecration of the new god, but that we should
continue on the path to the right of the monastery which leads to the
summit of the mountain. There are two little boys lurking nearby and
he tells them to show us the way and to point out Zanabazar's secret
tunnel. Also, he warns Badmaa that while she can go up the mountain
she cannot proceed the whole way to the top; women are forbidden to
stand on the summit. Following the two dandiprats we climb to a knife-edged
spine that leads upward to the summit. Part way up an inconspicuous
trail edges back along the face of the cliff. Following this we soon
come to the opening of a cave which is hidden from view from below by
overhanging rocks. Proceeding through this cave about fifty feet we
find ourselves overlooking the steep wooded backside of the mountain.
According to the boys, who have apparently acted as guides before, this
was Zanabazar's secret escape route. If anyone attacked the monastery
from the front side he and his followers could climb up and take the
hidden path to the cave. Those who followed them would continue on to
the summit of the mountain where they would be confronted by impassable
cliffs which prevented access to the back side of the mountain. This
is how Zanabazar escaped from the forces of Galdan during the invasion
of the Jungarians back in the 1680s, according to the boys.
We retrace our path back to the spine and continue on to the summit.
There are actually two domes on the top of the mountain, the first
a little lower than the other. Here on the first dome, the boys indicate,
Badmaa must stop. The two domes are connected by a narrow neck of
rock, perhaps originally impassable, over which a passageway has been
laboriously built up with field stones. The higher dome appears to
have been originally rounded, but tall walls of carefully fitted field
stone had been built up around its sides, creating a sort of crown,
and then this area was filled in with dirt, resulting in a fairly
level area perhaps sixty feet in diameter. In the middle is the requisite
ovoo. Someone went to an enormous amount of work creating this mountain-top
aerie. The stones for the passageway connecting the two domes and
retaining walls on the higher dome, many tons of them, and the dirt
to fill in the top of the dome must have been laboriously carried
up here by hand. And to what purpose? Simply to provide a scenic view,
or were some kind of ceremonies held up here on this alter-like platform?
The boys just shrug when asked.
The view from this platform certainly is impressive. According to
my altimeter the altitude is 7110'. Just to the south is another mountain,
thickly forested almost to its top, which appears to be slightly higher,
and to the northwest not far away is another peak of about equal height,
but in all other directions the horizon appears fifty or more miles
away. And looking straight down from the edge of the retaining walls
can be seen the temples on a narrow shelf of rock, and then more cliffs
dropping down into a clearing in the forest. If an artist had to picture
an appropriate setting for a monastery he could have hardly come up
with anything more appropriate or dramatic. The boys insist I take
their photos by the ovoo and then leave me alone to my own thoughts.
I sit down on the edge of the cliffs and try to imagine Zanabazar
coming here for a brief respite from his artistic labors.
It was at his workshop here at Tövkhön
that Zanabazar created the great statues which to this day grace the
temples and museums of Mongolia. These include at least twenty-one Taras,
including his masterpieces, the White Tara and the Green Tara; his five
magnificent dhyani-Buddhas; at least two Vajradaras, one residing in
the main temple at Gandan Monastery in Ulaan Baatar and the other, which
has a huge emerald embedded in its forehead, at Erdene Zuu (this was
one of the Zanabazars reportedly stolen, as I alluded to earlier); figures
of Amitayus and Manjushri (the later is in the Fine Arts Museum); a
thirty-inch high bronze stupa (likewise in the Fine Arts Museum); and
at least eight silver stupas. These are the works we know about; there
may have been many more about which no contemporary record was made
and which have subsequently been lost or destroyed. Most if not all
of these works were reportedly created in the 1680s, although certainly
before 1688 when Zanabazar was forced to flee this area because of the
invasion of Galdan and the Jungarians. Zanabazar would have been forty-five
in 1680 when this creative period in his life began. How do we explain
that this man who had spent his entire life engaged in religious activities
was also able to develop into an artist whose works are now considered
world-class masterpieces?
As I mentioned earlier even as a little boy Zanabazar had occupied
his time fashioning small burkhans and drawing pictures, but from
his biography we get no further indications of artistic leanings in
his early life. We do know that at the age of fourteen he was in the
Tibetan capital of Lhasa when the Dalai Lama's great palace the Potala
was being constructed and here he would have come in contact with
a wide variety of artists and craftsman, including sculptors from
Nepal, some with whom he may have studied. Art historians, at least,
have pointed out traces of Nepalese influence in his work. When he
returned from Tibet, as I noted earlier, he brought, in addition to
lamas, a number of artists, some of whom may have been able to instruct
him on the complicated procedure of casting bronzes. During his studies
he would have certainly been exposed to the vast corpus of aesthetic
theory which had grown up around Buddhist art. On this subject I'll
simply repeat without comment the observation of Mongolian art historian
N. Tsultem: "Zanabazar's work reflects a sound knowledge of the
teaching contained in the Tanjur [commentaries on the teachings of
Buddhism] on the canons of the classical proportions of the human
body and, in particular, a knowledge of the ancient shastras Pratimalakshana,
Chitralakshana and Sambarudaiya, whilst observing the Dashatala-10
palm linear measurement."
Then there's a legend that Zanabazar's consort the Girl Prince-it
should be repeated here that there is no mention of her whatsoever
in his biography-not only served as a model for the White and Green
Taras but also may have instructed Zanabazar in a unique way of casting
bronzes. According to this tale a group of Mongolian nobles visited
Zanabazar one day and chastised him for living with a woman, apparently
in violation of his religious vows. The Girl Prince then appeared
out of Zanabazar's ger with a lump of molten bronze in her hands which
she proceeded to kneed into a beautiful statue as if it were dough.
So awed were the nobles by this performance that they went away without
another word. In the end, however, none of these influences seem enough
to explain Zanabazar's art, and we must simply accept the fact of
his creative genius. "During his lifetime he was the greatest
Buddhist sculptor in Asia," flatly states one current-day art
historian, and in contrast to all the insubstantial legends and myths
which swirl around Zanabazar the results of his artistry are very
real physical evidence of his extraordinary life.
My mountain-top reverie is interrupted
by the distant whine of a engine. Soon a large gray van emerges out
of the woods into the clearing below. Then right behind the van appears
our jeep with the trusty Tumur at the helm. Badmaa, who has been lost
in her own cerebrations on the dome below, shouts that we should go
down and check in with Tumur. It develops that he was able to get the
jeep into first gear and thus drive up here to the monastery, but the
transmission still isn't working. He is going rip out the whole gear
box and do some major readjustments. It sounds to me as if we might
be here for the consecration of the new god after all.
The gray van contains six people from France, plus a translator and
driver. The Mongolian man from Ulaan Baatar is disheartened to learn
that they also have not come for the upcoming consecration and celebration.
Instead, they had just been to the Orkhon Waterfall where someone
had informed them about this monastery, and they had decided to make
a quick detour here. Apparently their translator had told them that
no other foreigners ever came here, and thus thinking they were in
for a unique treat seem a bit petulant to find me, an American, already
present. Or perhaps they are just being irascibly French; anyhow,
their translator seems to have her hands full.
Ignoring all this, I spread out our remaining scraps
for a picnic lunch. The two boys we had met earlier, reappearing at
our side in anticipation of a free meal, offer to take us to a nearby
spring for water-the two wells at the monastery are not used for mundane
purposes-and on the way they show us what they claim is Zanabazar's
hitching post. He had apparently found two saplings growing close
by each other and had tied the tops together in a knot. Over the centuries
the two saplings had grown together so that now there is a U-shaped
tree with both ends rooted in the ground-very handy for tying horses.
Zanabazar, it seems, thought of everything.
After taking a rueful look at our transmission,
which now consists of about two dozen parts laid out on a piece of
canvas, I drag the long-suffering Badmaa back up the steep stone steps
to the monastery. I am very curious about this story about Zanabazar
escaping from here when Galdan and the Jungarians attacked. The lama,
however, just laughs. This is just a story the local people tell,
he says; actually Zanabazar was staying somewhere near Karakorum when
he was forced to flee the invaders. But the tunnel did serve as a
secret escape route in case someone did come here with evil intentions.
After all, Zanabazar was the most important religious and political
figure in Mongolia and there were those who might have wanted to eliminate
or kidnap him. And yes, the hitching post we had seen was indeed made
by Zanabazar, of this I can rest assured.
I go back to the summit of the mountain while Badmaa
returns to the jeep to take a nap. I sit quietly for over an hour,
simply trying to soak up any vibrations which might be emanating from
this spot. Soon a car appears-one of those tank-like Russian models
which go anywhere-and a half dozen Mongolians emerge, including two
in lama dress. Then half a hour later Badmaa shouts and motions to
me to come down. On the way down the rocky spine to the monastery
I encounter the Mongolians who had arrived a bit earlier. This group
includes two ancient lamas from Ulaan Baatar who are making a pilgrimage
here. Although they can barely walk, the two old men insist on going
to the summit of the mountain. I have to stop and help hoist the old-timers
up over a couple of steep spots on the trail. Offering my arm to the
one old man he grips it with a viselike lock of someone truly afraid
of losing his balance and falling.
Back at the jeep Badmaa informs me that the transmission
is just about fixed and that Tumur says he will soon be ready to go.
I find this hard to believe, but indeed the gearbox is reassembled
and Tumur is pounding out new gaskets from a cardboard cigarette carton
he got from the driver of the gray van. When we do pull out of the
clearing a half an hour later I look back and see the two ancient
lamas standing on the very top of the mountain behind the monastery.
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Tovkhon Khiid
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