In Search of Genghis Khan

by Tim Severin

  Lamaism blended easily with the Mongols’ earlier notions of the spirit world, and the first Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu was seen to be very like a master witch doctor or shaman. He was to be followed by six Great Incarnations, and during their rule the power and wealth of the church increased dramatically. Generation after generation of devout Mongols gave land and flocks and tithes to the monasteries. Hundreds of thousands of Mongols joined the church as lamas or pledged themselves to it as serfs, either from piety or to avoid the grinding taxes imposed by the Mongol barons, who were in turn obliged to pay dues to the Chinese governors or were heavily in debt to Chinese merchants. With its ever-expanding wealth and population the church built more lamaseries in the countryside, and these in turn soaked up more pastureland and more recruits. In a land of nomads, the lamaseries were the only permanent structures, and they became the nucleus of any town, however meagre. Thus Ulaan Baatar’s pre-revolutionary name of Urga meant simply ‘the temple’.

  In their fiefs the head lamas of the monasteries wielded more power than any comparable medieval abbot in Europe. They were largely exempt from civil law and exercised power of life and death over their districts. Their lamaseries offered virtually the only education, craftsmanship and literacy in the entire vast country, but their government was not all sweetness and light. Life in the monasteries was often appallingly brutal. Offenders against the rules were sometimes beaten to death or, to avoid the stigma of killing, were left tied up, naked, in the open air on a winter’s night, which meant they were stiffened corpses by morning. Children could be taught by sadistic lamas who scratched the letters of the Tibetan alphabet into their scalps with sharp bamboo pens. Homosexuality was condoned, senior monks keeping catamites euphemistically described as their ‘disciples.’ Some individual lamas also operated as moneylenders who made loans to their flock at an interest of as much as 200 per cent a year, and when the eighth and last Exalted Revelation was also created king, the highest ranks of lamas - an amazing total of forty-seven Incarnations were living in Urga at the time - greedily snapped up civil as well as church titles and privileges. By way of comparison, the entire apparatus of civil government at that stage numbered just 300 people including door guards, messengers and storekeepers. At the opposite end of the scale large numbers of ordinary lamas were neither devout nor scrupulous. They wandered about the countryside as beggars, or made a living from the credulous herdsmen by selling them indulgences and telling fortunes. Nor were these petty lamas any more celibate than their seniors. They were held responsible for the extraordinarily high level of venereal disease which was the major medical affliction of the country at the beginning of this century.

  Erdenzu was a natural choice for the site of the first lamasery to be built in Mongolia. It was constructed close to the spot where Ögodei, Güyük and Möngke, the second, third and fourth Khakhans of Genghis Khan’s dynasty, had held their great quriltais. By the time of Rubruck’s visit a small town had also grown up there, to house the hundreds of traders and diplomats who arrived from China, Central Asia, the Near East and even from Korea to attend the Mongol court. In the Forties a Russian archaeological expedition found that stones from the ancient imperial buildings and the medieval town had been re-used to construct the present lamasery. The religious enclave that the monks built for themselves with this recycled material was immense. Each side of the outer wall had space for 108 stupas, paid for by subscription from devotees. Inside Erdenzu’s temples the sacred effigies were said to have been fashioned by the first Khutukhtu himself. He was a renowned sculptor who, incidentally, was also a married man. Folklore relates that when critics complained about his having a wife, the first Khutukhtu called to her to come out from his tent. She appeared holding a lump of molten bronze in her bare hands, and as the critics watched she shaped the soft metal into a statue of the Buddha. This silenced the complaints.

  Today the outer wall of Erdenzu tries to reclaim something like its former glory, and is whitewashed not from piety but because the modern government badly needs foreign currency, and realised that the site would be a unique tourist attraction. Inside the perimeter wall, however, the compound is mostly a grassy void. In the distance, opposite the main gate under its tower, stand a few blue-roofed temples and a stupa or two, dwarfed by the immensity of the intervening open space. Once the compound must have been full of buildings - temples, dormitories, refectories, storehouses - and it has been calculated that to have achieved the present obliteration most of the original buildings of the lamasery complex must have been dynamited to smithereens. But there is not a single document to tell the tale. The destruction of the church-state of Mongolia which reached a crescendo in the late Thirties remains among the best-kept secrets of modern vandalism.

  The communists waited until the last Khutukhtu-king was dead in 1924, at the age of 54. Then, with increasing severity and confusing changes of emphasis, they attacked the church like sharks tearing chunks out of a fat prey. First the lamaseries were stripped of their lands and privileges. Then the monks were assessed for huge taxes. One cynical device was to make those lamas of military age pay a special fine for not doing army service. Lamasery after lamasery was ruined financially. Others were forcibly relocated away from their parishioners, and therefore withered from lack of local support. Many lamaseries were shut down by deputations of fanatical Party cadres whose orders were enforced by armed posses. From one monastery alone 400 lamas were expelled in a single day, and many of the cruellest evictions were done in the depths of winter, leaving the refugees to perish from cold. Several monasteries were bulldozed so that the lamas could not creep back. In 1937 about 97,000 monks were ‘reclassified’. Most were resettled in towns or allocated to work brigades, some were taken away to labour camps and never seen again. A few were liquidated. The lamas’ books, which included irreplaceable manuscripts brought from Tibet, were thrown on bonfires. Obos were flattened, and even the sacred relics which were plastered into the stupas were gouged out and smashed to powder. As a sop to outside criticism, a showpiece of religion was kept on. A part of the magnificent Gandan monastery in Ulaan Baatar was preserved under a complacent abbot and a handful of monks as a so-called ‘religious school’, and the lesser Oracle Palace was fossilised as a dusty state museum. It seemed that religion in Mongolia was destroyed root and branch.

  Then, two years ago, the effects of perestroika and glasnost initiated in the Soviet Union spread to Mongolia and began to reshape the attitude of the central government towards religion. Although no one was quite sure what the official policy was towards lamaism, there were hints that religious worship would be permitted again. For a start, the great monastery at Erdenzu was to be reactivated as a functioning religious centre, not just a tourist attraction, if lamas could be found. To the astonishment of no one but the most obtuse Party officials, the lamas reappeared. Not all the monks had been done away with, or had fled the country during the great purges. Some of them had slipped away quietly to find refuge among the country people. For half a century they had been living unostentatiously among the herders. They wore ordinary civilian dress, but kept their lama robes, and most had been secretly practising their religion. These survivors, like exotic flowers growing up through the cracks in the state monolith, emerged to don their brilliant red gowns and yellow hats. They brought out the long thin wooden cases like long pencil boxes which contained their sacred texts written on parchment. They refurbished the drums and bells and incense-burners, and these they brought back to Erdenzu, though they were to find most of the shrines destroyed and the images in bits. Twenty or thirty lamas took up residence once again. They cleaned and repaired a small building on the very far side of the square where they hung up again the holy banners. They refurbished the scaffold platform from which they sounded the conch shell announcing the call to prayer, and began their chants for the well-being of the people. They were an extraordinary sight, wizened and ancient. Not one of them looked less than 70 years old, and their faces could have
come from the Hobbit world of Tolkien.

  Their Chief Lama was glad to help us. Either Gerel or Ariunbold must have been in touch with the local commune bureaucracy in Karakorum town to arrange our official departure ceremony, and through them had contacted the lamasery, because the Chief Lama sent word that he and his monks would bless our expedition. Also, they approved the horoscope which decided that the Hour of the Silver Horse, on the Day of the Black Horse and in the month of the Horse was the best time for their rites.

  Ariunbold’s mystifying failure to keep track of practical details nearly wrecked our lucky calendar. Not only did he omit to get the expedition’s new equipment ready ahead of time, but he did not trouble himself to arrange any transport to ferry the members of the team to Karakorum where we were expecting to find our gift horses which had been sent ahead. It had been clearly understood by all the team members - Gerel, Bayar, Doc, who had volunteered to continue as interpreter, Paul and myself - that as Gerel had organised the trial ride in the Hentei, now it was Ariunbold’s turn to supervise the horseback journey which would take us westward from Karakorum towards the Soviet frontier. The idea was that we should follow the medieval Mongol courier road as far as the aymag of Bayan Olgei in the Altai mountains, some 600 miles distant. There the horses would be left for the winter, and - if the Mongolian national committee for the UNESCO Silk Roads Project continued to give its support - a team whose membership was yet to be decided would continue on the ride towards France. But as the official date for our departure from Karakorum drew closer, we waited impatiently in Ulaan Baatar trying vainly to locate Ariunbold.

  At the last minute, when Ariunbold still had not shown up, there was much scurrying to and fro to borrow vehicles to take us the eight-hour cross-country drive to Erdenzu. Eventually Mongolian TV Film Studio offered to send Paul and Bayar ahead in a decrepit jeep. It was loaded with a dozen saddles and assorted paraphernalia, and set off with Paul and Bayar, a driver and two unidentified Mongols. Their job was to locate the gift horses which had been pastured near Karakorum and bring them to the monastery in time for the departure ceremony. I watched as, clutching his cameras, Paul squeezed himself into the front seat next to Bayar, who was nursing a half-finished bottle of vodka. Our happy-go-lucky Mongolian film cameraman was blissfully and totally drunk, and wearing what apparently would be the expedition working rig of denim jacket and jeans, sewn with leather patches. It made him looked like a tipsy coolie.

  Ariunbold surfaced later the same day - still without explaining his absence - and by then Doc had taken matters into his own hands and contacted the Foreign Ministry, who agreed to the temporary loan of another cross-country vehicle. The three of us set out for Karakorum with a fourth passenger, a handsome woman who was, rather obviously, Ariunbold’s current mistress. She had the good grace to look very embarrassed for most of the drive, and tactfully made herself scarce whenever we stopped, because accompanying us in a second vehicle was the Deputy Foreign Minister of Mongolia who would officiate at our departure. He was a clever and sophisticated man, and had been extremely helpful in his role as chairman of the Mongolian National Committee for the Silk Roads Project. He visibly stiffened with shock when he saw Ariunbold’s companion, and frostily stared right through her. To make the situation worse, the Minister was travelling with his wife and her elderly parents who had never visited the monastery of Erdenzu before and wanted to see the lamas for themselves. It occurred to me that when a Mongolian minister of cabinet rank was prepared to attend a public religious service at the lamasery of Erdenzu, then the wheel of Mongolian politics had turned full circle.

  The summer rains had begun. This was the season when Mongolia receives nearly all its annual rainfall, and much of it arrives in sudden torrential downpours. The entire countryside was waterlogged, and the rivers had flooded. There was not a single bridge on the route to Karakorum, and most of the fords were impassable. We splashed and slithered our way through the night, finally arriving at our destination in the small hours of the morning of 16 July, and were put up at the official guesthouse in town. The Minister and his family went to an upper room, and Ariunbold tactfully disappeared with his lady friend to search for our missing camp of gift horses. Doc and I were assigned to a lower dormitory. We were warmly greeted by the only other occupant, a most friendly and talkative Mongol. I offered him a tot of whisky and realised too late it was a waste. He was already totally inebriated, and soon after fell across his cot where he snored and belched loudly for the rest of the night.

  Paul appeared next morning, not knowing whether to laugh or groan. He had spent the night some 6 miles away where a herder family had been looking after our gift horses. The camp food had given him severe stomach cramps but he was doubled up as much with mirth as indigestion. It seemed that the previous evening he had been shown the famous new tent of which Ariunbold had boasted. Nothing had been previously tried out or tested, and inevitably it was found that none of the poles fitted and that the whole design was a catastrophe. The tent sagged and drooped and looked like a collapsed balloon.

  It was cold and windy and lashing with rain as we made our way to the monastery that same afternoon for the official send-off, and entered through the huge wooden gates. The weather was so foul that only a small crowd had assembled, and they huddled under umbrellas and plastic raincoats as the Deputy Minister made his speech in front of a small temple covered with greeny-blue tiles that was popularly known as ‘Ögodei’s Temple’. The speech had a suitably rural feeling. There was no public-address system and no crowd control so everyone pressed in closer and closer to hear what was being said, until we were all in a central, soaking wet, huddle. Then we squelched off to the lamas’ chapel and, thankful to be out of the rain, attended their special service of blessing.

  It was an exotic send-off in the semi-gloom of the chapel, and a scene which Brother Rubruck would have recognised. Two rows of high, broad benches faced one another to make a central aisle. On each bench sat a line of aged lamas, cross-legged in their bright red robes. Laid out in front of them were their books of mantras and little brass prayer bells. They kept up a steady mutter of blessing, each phrase repeated again and again, and raising steadily in pitch until finally there was a tremendous climax, and at that moment the elderly but very sprightly lama at the end of the row seized his curved drumsticks and briskly hammered at the drum hanging by his left shoulder, while the others blew conch shells and rang their brazen bells. It made a tremendous banging, sounding, clashing din to drive away the evil spirits from our venture. Then the sound died away, and the muttering chant picked up once more, gently now and from the bottom of the scale, to begin all over again.

  The riding team were given seats on a second row of benches, behind the monks, and lay servants dressed in brown robes passed us large plates heaped with layers of holy bread - sweet bread made of white flour and then kneaded so there was a little hollow in the top which was filled up with lumps of sugar and dark yellow cubes of dried butter. For drink they poured us salt tea from a great brass kettle. To our left the candles flickered on the small altar, and incense smoked from a metal trough. Everywhere was red. Red cloaks on the monks, pillars and ceiling painted red, red banners hanging from the ceiling, red tassels, red light reflecting from the wizened faces and the gleaming scalps of the lamas.

  The abbot handed us good-luck charms, the same cheap brass frames with pictures of Indian gods which are bought on bazaar stalls, and I hung mine inside my shirt. Then we were ushered out of the chapel door and through the crush of onlookers who had been peering in. The rain had eased now, and though it was still drizzling a fair-sized crowd had assembled around our horses, which had been brought up by a group of herdsmen. The animals stood in a line, shifting nervously, while a Mongol woman dressed in national costume offered each rider in turn a dipper of mare’s milk scooped from a wooden pail. She knelt on the wet grass as she offered up the milk, then rose after we had taken a sip, and tipped a dribble of the milk on the horse�
��s poll, then into its stirrup, and then on the wet rump. We mounted, the milk still trickling from our unhappy horses, and led by a young novitiate monk bearing a bright red banner on a staff we rode off in a ragged column across the grassy compound towards the great double gates under the gate tower. Someone tugged open the gates, which gave out a suitably dramatic creaking groan, and we rode out down the ramp through yet another crowd of onlookers. As we turned to our right, the lucky direction, another lama dressed in red was dipping his ladle into a bucket of mare’s milk and flicking it to the skies to propitiate the spirits. The droplets of milk mingled with specks of rain and spattered over us.

  Ten minutes later the heavens reopened in a massive downpour that made it difficult to see the way forward. Wet and chilled, we abandoned our horses, handing them over to the guides, and got a lift in a leaky jeep belonging to the local commune which took us back to camp. One look at the new official expedition tent, drooping and slack, persuaded Paul and me that we should again set up our little mountain tent on a properly drained spot of level ground. There we sheltered until we were summoned to the herdsman’s ger for the feasting. Ariunbold had asked me to bring four dozen bottles of local vodka as a contribution to the expedition stores. ‘It will be useful as presents for our herder-guides,’ he had told me when I pointed out four cases of vodka made a heavy and very fragile load for pack-ponies. I need not have worried.