Tovkhon Monastery
The town of Khujirt, occupying a large bowl in the
valley of Khujirtyn Creek, a tributary of the Orkhon River, is famous
for its medicinal hot springs and attendant resort. Many Mongolians
come here to take cures under the supervision of the resort's therapists
or simply to relax in the hot springs with their fellow countrymen.
Since the town is located on the road from the now must-see attraction
of Erdene Zuu at Kharkhorin and the equally renowned Orkhon Waterfall
in the upper Orkhon valley, it also attracts a lot of foreign tourists,
many of whom overnight here, and so there's a fairly decent hotel
and a sizable ger camp in addition to quarters at the resort itself.
We check into the ger camp where indeed Tumur is already known. He
has brought tourists here to the hot springs before. The gers each
have four or five beds inside, electric lights, and a wood stove.
Badmaa and I share a ger, and Tumur will again sleep in his jeep.
The dining room, in a permanent building off to the side, is full
of German tourists who have just returned from the Orkhon Waterfall.
The road is very muddy from recent rains, they say, and their four
vans only just made it out.
In Ulaan Baatar I had been told that the Tövkhön
Monastery, the next stop on my itinerary, was "within hiking
distance of the Orkhon Waterfall." It was unclear if it was possible
to drive there and what actually remained of the monastery, since
it was reportedly damaged during the anti-religion campaigns of the
1930s. Tumur, who had gone to see about getting his jeep fixed and
ask directions, soon joins Badmaa and me over dinner and reports that
the monastery is on the other side of the Orkhon River about twenty
miles downstream from the waterfall and a good distance back up in
the mountains. We should proceed to the bridge over the Orkhon and
ask directions from there, he was told. There is a road to the monastery
but no one here can say for sure if it is passable after the recent
rains. Thus is it not necessary to go the whole way up the Orkhon
valley to the waterfall as I had originally thought, but having come
this far it seems positively churlish not to visit this landmark which
has been memorialized on countless calendars, postcards, tourist brochures,
and other ephemera to the point where it has became virtually a symbol
of Mongolia. I tell Tumur we'll check out the waterfall-the road permitting-then
backtrack and try to find Tövkhön Monastery.
It's raining hard the next morning, which Tumur
says does not bode well for the road to the waterfall. He suggests
we wait till noon to see what the weather does and in the meantime
he'll try to get a new spring for his jeep. Badmaa and I stroll through
the resort complex, where several hundred Mongolians of all ages are
milling about. Water is fed to the bathhouses via pipes from the hot
springs in a marshy area some distance away. Near the springs is a
statue of a female deer and two fawns. An old man puffing away on
a pipe on a nearby bench tells us that long ago a hunter named Shunkhlai
shot a female deer in the leg and began to follow it, but then a big
male deer ran across his path and he decided to follow it instead.
The stag climbed to the top of a nearby mountain and waited for the
hunter. The old man pointed to a rocky knob overlooking the town:
"That is Shunkhlai Mountain, named after the hunter, and there
on top is the stag." Indeed, on the summit is a statue of a male
deer which I had noticed the evening before when we arrived in Khujirt.
The hunter Shunkhlai climbed the mountain, the old man goes on, but
when he got to the top the stag suddenly disappeared. Then he looked
back and saw that the doe had lain down in the mud along the valley
bottom. Shunkhlai decided to go after the doe, but when he approached
it jumped up and ran off, the wound in its leg apparently healed.
Shunkhlai noticed that the deer had been lying in the mud next to
some hot springs and concluded that it was the mud and the water which
had cured the wound. This was how the hot springs and their medicinal
properties were discovered. The statues of the doe and the fawns by
the hot springs and the stag on nearby Shunkhlai Mountain commemorate
this event.
An interesting story, but having heard almost an
identical tale when visiting the celebrated Shumak hot springs, on
the Shumak River in the East Sayan Mountains in Siberia just north
of the Mongolian border, I assume it is simply a legend commonly associated
with medicinal springs. Not so, counters our informant. Shunkhlai
was a real man and lived in historical times. It was he who discovered
the medicinal properties of the Khujirt springs and not, as some people
like to claim, Zanabazar. Hold on, I say, Zanabazar visited these
springs? In fact, I had read that Zanabazar was very interested in
the therapeutic properties of hot springs and had done considerable
research on the subject, but I was unaware he had any connection with
Khujirt. Zanabazar may have visited these springs, the old man allows,
but he adamantly maintains it was Shunkhlai who discovered their medicinal
properties.
The rain clouds dissipate during the
morning and by noon when we leave Khujirt the stag on Shunkhlai Mountain
is outlined against a deep cobalt blue sky. The road to the Orkhon Waterfall
goes over some ridges due west of Khujirt and after about ten miles
drops into the Orkhon Valley. The Orkhon River, the longest river totally
within Mongolia, begins in the Khangai Mountains about fifty miles west
of here and flows 697 miles before conjoining with the Selenge River
just south of the Mongolian border with Siberia. Here in its upper reaches
the Orkhon valley is several miles wide and flanked by wooded spurs
of the Khangai Mountains. The road skirts around huge basalt flows which
in places blankets the valley bottom for miles. About thirty miles from
Khujirt we come to a wooden bridge across the Orkhon, here about 150
feet wide. By the bridge a man and a woman repairing a motorcycle tell
us that the Tövkhön Monastery is about ten miles away, across
the river and back up in the mountains. We continue on up the left side
of the river. The road has apparently dried out quickly in the hot afternoon
sun and there is little mud. The road does go through some nasty lava
flows. Bouncing and careening over these-Tumur had been unable to get
a new spring in Khujirt-we finally reach the waterfall, which in fact
is thirteen miles upstream from the bridge.
In a parking lot just about the falls are about fifteen vehicles-though
no tourist buses-and a half dozen tents are set up on the river bank
nearby. About a hundred yards downstream the river suddenly drops
about eighty feet into a cliff-lined bowl 200 feet across and then
continues on through a narrow canyon another hundred yards before
joining a larger river. I assume that the stream with the falls is
a side channel of the Orkhon, since all the tourist brochures and
guides I have read say the falls is on the Orkhon River, but some
local people lounging on the grass above the bowl say no, the river
that goes over the falls is in fact the Ulaan River, a tributary of
the Orkhon. The waterfall's name in Mongolian, Ulaan Tsutgalangiyn
(ulaan = red; tsutgalan = waterfall), reflects this fact. Badmaa and
I clamber down a steep path into the canyon bottom and hike back up
into the bowl for a close-up look at the bottom of the falls, then
return to the parking area where we find Tumur having dinner with
a Mongolian family. A quick tour of the campground along the river
reveals parties from Germany, France, and Slovakia, in addition to
a half dozen groups of Mongols. I decide we too might as well spend
the night here, which pleases Tumur. He has soon moved on to dinner
with another group, and appetizing smells are drifting from the campfires
of still others.
Tumur did indeed seem to make a lot
of friends. The next morning at breakfast about a dozen Mongolians gather
around our campfire to chat and drink tea. Badmaa doesn't bother to
translate most of their palaver, which she assures me is merely local
gossip. Not until nine o'clock do we finally head back down the valley.
We cross the wooden bridge on the Orkhon and stop at the first ger we
come to. The Tövkhön Monastery is about eight miles over the
mountains to the north, but you can't get there from here, at least
not in a straight line, the man tells us. We have to go down the Orkhon
valley maybe ten miles, then go up a side valley another six or eight
miles. The last part of the trail is very steep and we may not be able
to make it by jeep. The monastery has been partially rebuilt, he adds,
and there should be several people staying there, including two lamas.
Heading down the north side of the Orkhon our transmission begins to
make dire noises. By the time we head up the narrow side valley we're
down to only one gear, third. Near the head of the valley the road veers
to the left and heads up a steep wooded hillside. Soon it's obvious
we can't make it up this grade in third gear. Tumur gets out a tool
box and begins what looks like ominously complicated repairs. Figuring
the monastery can't be far I suggest to Badmaa that we continue on by
foot while Tumur fiddles with the transmission. She agrees without a
great deal of enthusiasm. The jeep track inclines sharply upward through
a thick larch forest. The temperature has risen into the low eighties
and we're soon soaked with sweat, but when we stop to rest we're besieged
by mosquitoes. We slog upwards for forty-five minutes before emerging
into a clearing. At the base of a high cliff is a ger and log cabin,
and at the top of these cliffs are several small temples. Directly behind
the temples more cliffs soar up another hundred feet or more to the
summit of a mountain. This is Tövkhön Monastery, the personal
retreat and workshop of Zanabazar.
From the ger at the base of the cliffs a stout, elderly woman appears
and invites us in for milk tea and chunks of rock-hard curds. From
her cheery demeanor it almost seems as if she is expecting us. Then
a middle-aged man enters and says, "So, you are here for the
consecration of the new god." It turns out that in four days
a delegation of lamas from Ulaan Baatar is bringing a new statue of
the deity Gombo Makhgal which will be placed in one of the refurbished
temples and consecrated. The monastery was actually reopened on October
27, 1993, says this man, who works for a cultural organization in
Ulaan Baatar and is here to help organize the upcoming events, but
the presentation of this deity will mark, as I understand his words
through Badmaa's translation, its official re-consecration. Many local
people are expected to come and in addition to the religious ceremonies
there will be horse races-these will be held in the valley through
which we came-and other games and festivities. He apparently thinks
that I am the first of a wave of foreign tourists who will be arriving
for this event. To his disappointment I tell him that I had no idea
this re-consecration was taking place, and as much as I would like
witness it I don't think my jeep driver and translator would be willing
to hang around that long.
Well, no matter, he says, let's take a look at the monastery. To
the right of the ger a wide ramp of carefully fitted field stones
leads to a cleft in the cliffs. More stone steps wind up through this
cleft to a shelf at most sixty feet wide and a hundred feet long behind
which sheer cliffs rise another hundred feet. Here in this aerie are
the several small temples which constitute the monastery. At the moment
there's a lot of activity. In front of one temple two men are painting
long tables-altars apparently-a brilliant red, and at least a half
dozen more are sawing and hammering away at last minute repairs on
the temples. We stop for a moment to examine a deep narrow well near
the top of the staircase. This well, according to our guide, has clear
water in it, while maybe twenty feet away is another well with slightly
brackish water. No one has been able to explain why one is brackish
and the other not, or for that matter, how there can be wells at all
here in the solid rock very close to the summit of a mountain, where
ordinarily there would not be any underground water courses. This,
allows our friend, is just one of the many oddities of this place.
While we're pondering this curiosity a red-robed lama perhaps in
his early thirties comes over to greet us. This is Shagdarsuren, one
of the two lamas now in residence here, and he offers to show us the
main temple, which is not much larger than the average living room.
This temples was ransacked but not totally destroyed by the communists
during the 1930s, he says. Part of the roof was torn off, but the
beams were thrown nearby and some of them were used in the reconstruction.
Inside, on the altar of the temple, are statues of three gods: on
the left Bandanlkham Burkhan, in the center Bogd Lkham Chorsum-the
main god of the temple-and on the right Gombo, although of course
the names mean nothing to me. On a shelf above Bogd Lkham Chorsum
rests a small statue of Zanabazar. Below the gods is a large chunk
of rock in which can be seen an impression that with a little bit
of imagination resembles a human hand. This, claims Shagdarsuren,
is the hand print of Zanabazar himself. I ask if this is simply a
natural phenomena which resembles a hand-any hand, but perhaps Zanabazar's,
who knows?-or does he really believe that Zanabazar somehow imprinted
his hand in this rock? He and Badmaa have a long discussion about
this, and according to her brief paraphrase it's all a matter of what
you want to believe.
In fall of 1649, when Zanabazar was fourteen years old, he traveled
to Tibet where he hoped to further his religious training. His caravan
overwintered at the great monastery of Kumbum, and the next spring
he met with the Panchen Lama, like the Dalai Lama one of the great
reincarnated religious leaders of Tibet. After receiving religious
instruction and additional ordinations from the Panchen Lama he proceeded
to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to meet the fifth Dalai Lama, by name
Losang Gyatso. Here he spent at least six months receiving still more
religious training, some apparently from the Dalai Lama himself, and
most significantly the Dalai Lama, after due consideration, also announced
that Zanabazar was in fact the sixteenth appearance of a khuvigaan
(khuvigaan = reincarnation) known as Javzandamba.
The various biographies are unclear or contradictory on this matter,
but from most we get the impression that up until then Zanabazar was
considered an extremely gifted young man obviously destined for a
religious life, but that he had not been known to possess what might
be termed a spiritual lineage. It was the Dalai Lama who declared
that Zanabazar was, as I alluded to earlier, a reincarnation of Taranatha,
who was the earthly vehicle of Javzandamba before Zanabazar. Javzandamba
had first appeared, according to the spiritual genealogy which eventually
became attached to Zanabazar, as Lodoi-shindu-namdak, who lived during
the lifetime of Buddha Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, and who
served as one of the Buddha's 500 original disciples. The next three
reincarnations also appeared in India; the fifth through the eleventh
in Tibet. The eleventh was known as Jamyang Choje and established
the famous Drepung Monastery outside Lhasa. The twelfth reincarnation
was born in Ceylon, the thirteenth in Tibet, and the fourteenth in
India as the son of a Indian king. The last reincarnation before Zanabazar
was the fore-mentioned Taranatha. As a symbol of his elevation into
the ranks of these esteemed reincarnations the Dalai Lama presented
Zanabazar with a yellow silk parasol which reportedly can be found
to this day in the Bogd Khan Museum in Ulaan Baatar, although it is
usually not out on public display.
Since there were only fifteen incarnations of Javzandamba between
the time of Buddha, generally recognized as about 2500 years ago,
and the birth of Zanabazar, the first Bogdo Gegen, in 1635, and given
the average life span of human beings, there would appear to be long
periods of time when there was no living representative of the line,
and that it was in effect dormant. This is not precisely the case
however. As learned lamas explained to Pozdneev in the 1890s:
. . . during the rest of the time he [the Bogdo
Gegen] was reborn in diverse parts of the universe with the purpose
of benefit not only to people but to beings of other worlds; these
reincarnations of him are unknown to anyone beside the Gegen himself,
and that is why there are no legends about them whatsoever.
Empowered by his new-found spiritual lineage Zanabazar then made
a tour of monasteries in Tibet which previous incarnations of Javzandamba
had founded or where they had lived. In addition to making offerings
at these places, he also managed to collect numerous statues and other
artwork, books, and various valuable relics which he took back to
Mongolia with him and placed in his own monasteries. Among these was
a religious text written in gold on leaves of sandalwood. This document
can be found today in the State Central Library in Ulaan Baatar.
The Dalai Lama also contrived to convert Zanabazar to the Gelugpa
sect of Lamaism to which he himself belonged and which by then had
become dominant in Tibet. It will be remembered that at Shireet Tsagaan
Nuur Zanabazar had been ordained as a member of the Sakhya sect, and
most of the monasteries of Mongolia, including the main one of Erdene
Zuu, still followed the Sakhya teachings. (The precise nature of these
teachings and how they differed from the doctrines of the Gelugpa
sect is, I am afraid, outside the scope of this brief travelogue.)
Zanabazar became such a firm proponent of the new Gelugpa sect that
when he returned to Mongolia in 1651 he brought with him, according
to one account-and the accounts do vary-600 Tibetan lamas of the Gelugpa
sect (plus assorted artists, craftsmen, and other useful individuals)
to help him spread the new doctrine. He also apparently refused to
live in any monastery which followed the old Sakhya faith. His followers,
therefore, established for him several new monasteries. One of these
eventually settled at the confluence of the Tuul and Selbi rivers,
at the current site of Ulaan Baatar. In addition, in 1653 Zanabazar
asked of his followers that a small retreat be built for him where,
presumably, he could escape the time-consuming demands of the larger
monasteries. This was done, and the place became known as Tövkhön
Monastery.
From the main temple our lama guide
leads us to a narrow, precarious path that winds up through the cliffs
to the left of the monastery. Part way up the cliff is a broad sloping
shelf of rock where the lama stops and points out three more impressions
pressed into the native rock. These, he announces, are the "foot
prints of the gods." Crouching down and carefully outlining these
indentations, he explains that one represents a Mongolian-style boot,
the second the foot of a small baby, and the third the hoof of a horse.
Badmaa and Shagdarsuren engage in a lengthy discussion about these prints
and from what I can gather from her brief paraphrases it would appear
that the first two represent Zanabazar as a small child and as an adult,
while the third represents his horse. Despite repeated inquires however
I still cannot determine if the lama believes these impressions were
made by Zanabazar, either by conventional or supernatural means, or
if they are simply natural phenomenon which resemble foot prints, but
from the way the lama lovingly strokes the outlines of these depressions
it's clear that he considers them imbued with a special significance
and that they are yet another indication of the sacred nature of the
environs.
From this shelf of rock we climb still higher up the cliff face
until we come to the mouth of a cave. This, explains the lama, was
a kind of retreat within the retreat of Tövkhön Monastery,
a place where Zanabazar came alone to meditate and "talk to the
gods," as Badmaa translates it. The cave is perhaps eight feet
high, ten feet wide, and fifteen feet deep. Daylight just barely penetrates
to the back wall, where there is a small wooden bench. Apparently
this bench is where Zanabazar sat when he meditated. I ask if I can
sit down here and the lama motions me to go ahead. Perhaps it was
when sitting at this very spot that Zanabazar got the idea for his
second trip to Tibet.
Continued
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