̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit

Academics to explore legacy of Genghis Khan

hcf38 — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:45:13 +0000

Under the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding, Cambridge’s Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) will work together with the Mongolian government to promote and further academic links, including the possibility of a programme for visiting research fellowships and travel grants to promote the study of Chinggis Khaan.

̽��ֱ��agreement was signed during a visit to the UK by Mongolian Culture Minister Nomin Chinbat, a former media CEO who brought the TV show Mongolia’s Got Talent to the Asian country. ̽��ֱ��visit adds to a growing awareness of Mongolian culture in the UK, with historic art and precious artefacts from the early years of the nomadic Mongol Empire set to be displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the opening of ̽��ֱ��Mongol Khan theatre production at the London Coliseum.

Professor David Sneath, Director of the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said:

“This is all about exploring the historical reality behind the myth… We are interested not just in the man himself, Chinggis Khaan - although of course he is of great historical interest - but in his legacy. We are trying to encourage a deeper study of Chinggis Khan and his impact.”

Minister Chinbat said: “Of course Chinggis Khaan is primarily known for his warriorship, but he was also a great diplomat, innovator and ruler. How many people know he invented the postal service, the first passports? That he showed great religious tolerance, and he himself was a peacemaker?

“That’s why we look forward to working with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to foster the next generation of Mongolian academics and strengthen understanding of the Mongol Empire’s impact across the world.”

MIASU’s Professor Uradyn E Bulag added: “Because in Mongolia we didn’t have a written tradition as strong as our neighbours, to some extent our history – and the history of Chinggis Khan – was written by others… This will be a chance to hopefully reset the balance.”

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have signed an agreement with the Mongolian government which will see them explore the legacy of the legendary figure Genghis Khan - or Chinggis Khaan as he is known in Mongolia.

getty images rache1

Large statue of Genghis Khan that sits in the central square of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Ailing bodies, angry mountains, healing spirits: shamanic healing in Mongolia

lw355 — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 09:30:05 +0000

Read the story here

Through sound and photography, Cambridge researcher Dr Elizabeth Turk shares her experiences of talking to shamanic healers in Mongolia. Over the past eight years, the social anthropologist has been exploring the increased popularity of nature-based remedies and ‘alternative’ medicine in the wake of the region's seismic politico-economic shifts of recent decades.

Elizabeth Turk

Buyankhishig criss-crossed the hillside before making offerings of vodka and milk. Then, beating her drum and chanting, she invited her ancestral spirits to enter her body.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Life in the snow forests: 100-year-old photographs reunited with communities

sjr81 — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 06:00:34 +0000

Previously unseen photographs showing life in a remote corner of the world a hundred years ago will be displayed for the first time as part of River Stars Reindeer at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

̽��ֱ��photographs document the indigenous Evenki and Orochen communities and were made by Russian ethnographer Sergei Shirokogoroff and his wife Elizabeth between 1912-1917, and by Cambridge graduate Ethel Lindgren and her husband, Oscar Mamen, between 1929-1932.

̽��ֱ��exhibition, which opens on June 23, is the culmination of a painstaking curatorial process, which involved choosing 70 images from more than 26,000 photographs; a process further complicated by the research team coming from ten different institutes located in three different countries.

One of the exhibitions curators, Jocelyne Dudding, said: “This is a unique opportunity to see the very best of their images together for the very first time. ̽��ֱ��photographs are not only a wonderful record of the ways of life for Evenki and Orochen, but they also speak of the more personal stories behind every image.

“Each photograph tells many, many different stories about the lives of the people, the clothes they wore, the animals they raised and the places they called home.

“These stories continue still as members of the community recognise the names or faces of family and friends that they had not seen for decades, or had never seen, as was the case of Anta Bu and her father.”

̽��ֱ��conversations Dudding and her fellow researchers from Aberdeen, St Petersburg and Hohhot had with the indigenous communities directly influenced the selection process for the exhibition. As the project developed and word spread, more and more communities from other areas came forward and asked to be included.

“River Stars Reindeer comes about from a digital sharing project to reunite Evenki and Orochen communities with their photographs, and thereby their histories and their cultural heritage,” added Dudding. “We are now in the process of digitally sharing our photographs with them - having spent the last 18 months digitising 16,000 images so far.

“ ̽��ֱ��response of the Evenki and Orochen to seeing these photographs has been very humbling and we are excited at the prospect of displaying these pictures and telling these stories for the first time here in Cambridge.”

̽��ֱ��exhibition title River Stars Reindeer speaks of the cosmologies and realities of the lives of Evenkis and Orochens in an area known as the three rivers region.

River Stars Reindeer runs from June 23 to September 27, 2015 at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Indigenous people from the snow forests of Inner Mongolia and Siberia have been reunited with century-old photographs of their family and communities as part of a research project and exhibition at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Each photograph tells many, many different stories about the lives of the people, the clothes they wore, the animals they raised and the places they called home.

Jos Dudding

Sergei Shirokogoroff

A shaman, shamaness and Achinsk Lama with helpers, June 1912. Right: A young boy with his sister, July/August 1912.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

̽��ֱ��1,000-year-old manuscript and the stories it tells

amb206 — Sat, 09 May 2015 08:00:00 +0000

One thousand years ago, a scribe called Sujātabhadra put his name to a manuscript known as the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas (Skt. Aṣṭasahāsrikā Prajñāparamitā). Sujātabhadra was a skilled craftsman working in or around Kathmandu – a city that has been one of the hubs of the Buddhist world from around 500 CE right up until the present day.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas is written in Sanskrit, one the of the world’s most ancient languages, using both sides of 222 oblong sheets made from palm leaf (the first missing sheet has been replaced with a paper sheet). Each leaf is punctured by a pair of neat holes, a reminder that the palm leaf pages were originally bound together with cords passing through these holes. ̽��ֱ��entire palm leaf manuscript is held between richly ornate wooden covers.

Today the fabulous manuscript that would have taken Sujātabhadra and fellow craftsman many months — perhaps even a year — to complete is held by the Manuscripts Room at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Over the past 140 years, it has been studied by some of the foremost specialists of the medieval Buddhist world.

A digitisation project has now made the manuscript accessible online to scholars worldwide and has revealed fresh evidence about the origins of some of the earliest Buddhist texts.

̽��ֱ��presence of the Perfection of Wisdom, safe in the temperature-controlled environment of one of the world’s greatest libraries, many thousands of miles from its birthplace, is especially poignant at a time when the people of Nepal are struggling to survive in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

Buddhist texts are more than scriptures: they are sacred objects in themselves. Many manuscripts were used as protective amulets and installed in shrines and altars in the home of Buddhist followers. Examples include numerous manuscripts of the Five Protections (Skt. Pañcarakṣā), a corpus of scriptures that includes spells, enumerations of benefits and ritual instructions for use, particularly sacred in Nepal.

Manuscripts produced in Nepal, Tibet and Central Asia during the period from the 5^th until the 19^th century are evidence of the thriving ‘cult of the book’ that was the subject of a recent exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is also an important historical document that provides valuable information about the dynastic history of medieval Nepal. Its textual content and illustrations, and the skills and materials that went into its production, reveal the ways in which Nepal was one of the most important hubs within a Buddhist world that spanned from Sri Lanka to China.

̽��ֱ��text is lavishly illustrated by a total of 85 miniature paintings: each one is an exquisite representation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (beings who resolve to achieve Buddhahood in order to help other sentient beings) – including the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. ̽��ֱ��figures represented in the miniatures include also the embodied Perfection of Wisdom goddess (Prajñāparamitā) herself on the Vulture Peak Mountain near Rājagṛha, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Māgadha, in today’s Bihar state.

̽��ֱ��settings in which these deities are depicted are drawn in meticulous detail. ̽��ֱ��Bodhisattva Lokanātha, surrounded by White and Green Tārās, is shown in front of the Svayambhu stupa in Kathmandu – a shrine sacred for Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhists, damaged in the recent earthquake. ̽��ֱ��places depicted in the miniatures represent a kind of map of Buddhist lands and sacred sites, from Sri Lanka to Indonesia and from South India to China.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is one of the world’s oldest illuminated Buddhist manuscripts and the second oldest illuminated manuscript in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Its survival – and its passage through time and space – is little short of miraculous.

Without the efforts of a certain Karunavajra, quite probably a Buddhist lay believer, it would have been destroyed in 1138 — in that period the governors challenged the king in a struggle for power over the Kathmandu Valley.

“We know that Karunavajra saved the manuscript because he added a note in verse form,” said Dr Camillo Formigatti of the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project. “He states that he rescued the ‘Perfection of Wisdom, incomparable Mother of the Omniscient’ from falling into the hands of unbelievers who were most probably people of Brahmanical affiliation.”

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library acquired the manuscript in 1876. It was purchased for the Library by Dr Daniel Wright, a civil servant working for the British government in Kathmandu.

“From the second half of the 19^th century, western institutions were hugely interested in the orient - and museums and libraries were busy building collections of everything eastern,” said Dr Hildegard Diemberger of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. “Colonial administrators were almost literally given ‘shopping lists’ of manuscripts to acquire in the course of their travels.”

Scholars are able to pinpoint with remarkable precision the date that Sujātabhadra recorded his name as scribe in the ‘colophon’ (details about the publication of a book).

“Using tables that convert the dates used by Nepalese scribes into the calendar we use today, we can see that Sujātabhadra added his name and the place where he completed the manuscript on 31 March, 1015. ̽��ֱ��study of mathematics, astrology and astronomy were central aspects of ancient and medieval South Asian culture, and time reckoning was very accurate — both the lunar and the solar calendar were employed,” said Formigatti.

A thousand years on from its production, the manuscript is still yielding secrets. In the course of digitising the manuscript in 2014, Formigatti identified 12 of the final verses to be the only surviving witness of the Sanskrit original of the Ripening of the Victory Banner (Skt. Vajradhvajapariṇāmanā), a short hymn hitherto considered to have survived only in its Tibetan translation. ̽��ֱ��popularity of this hymn is borne out by the fact that the Tibetan version of the text is also found in manuscript fragments found in Dunhuang, a city-state along the Silk Route in China.

̽��ֱ��production of this precious manuscript is evidence not only of the thriving communication channels that existed across the 11^th century Buddhist world but also of a well-established network of trade routes. ̽��ֱ��leaves used to make the writing surface came from palm trees. Palms do not flourish in the dry climate of Nepal: it’s thought that palm leaves would have come from North East India.

“ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library’s manuscript of Perfection of Wisdom shows us that ten centuries ago Nepal, which westerners often perceive as ‘remote’ and ‘isolated’, had flourishing connections stretching many thousands of miles,” said Formigatti.

“When Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade. Buddhist manuscripts and texts travelled huge distances. From the fertile plains of Northern India, they crossed the Himalayan range through Nepal and Tibet, reaching the barren landscapes of Central Asia and the city-states along the Silk Route in China, finally arriving in Japan.

“ ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is perhaps the most representative textual witness of the Buddhist cult of the book, and this manuscript written, decorated and worshipped in 11^th century Nepal, is one of the finest specimens of Buddhist book culture still extant.”

Inset image top – Folio 123 verso, a representation of a famous caitya (Buddhist reliquary), called Sri Kanaka-caitya, in the city of Peshawar in today's Pakistan. Credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Inset image bottom – Folio 14 recto, a representation of the Bodhisattva Lokanātha in front of Svayambhunath in Kathmandu. Credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

One of the greatest treasures of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is a Buddhist manuscript that was produced in Kathmandu exactly 1,000 years ago. ̽��ֱ��exquisitely-illustrated Perfection of Wisdom is still revealing fresh secrets.

When Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade

Camillo Formigatti

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Folio 13 verso, a representation of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Tibetan scholar’s first hand account of the earthquake in Nepal

pbh25 — Fri, 01 May 2015 15:59:29 +0000

When the first earthquake struck Kathmandu close to midday on April 25 Dr Lobsang Yongdan was in a small hotel getting ready to head out into the city and find some food.

A scholar working on Tibetan historical texts Yongdan had been in Tibet visiting relatives following the successful completion of his PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology.

Following his visit to relatives Yongdan had then travelled from Lhasa to Nepal’s capital by road on his way back to the UK because he wanted to see the Nepalese countryside up close and knew Kathmandu was a good place to buy classical texts and dictionaries.

Sitting in the safety of the Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit’s (MIASU) Mond Building in Cambridge just a few days after leaving the capital he says: “ ̽��ֱ��Nepalese will need our help. I saw villages on hillsides during my 24 hour car journey to Kathmandu. I do not know what condition they are in now. ̽��ֱ��villages are remote and in the mountains so I can imagine the landslides affecting whole villages and wiping out the roads.”

Yongdan's scholarship reflects the strong links between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Nepal and Tibet. They encompass many disciplines including archaeology, biological and social anthropology (for example the Digital Himalaya project and the work of the MIASU). ̽��ֱ�� students have also volunteered as English language teachers in rural Nepal through charities. Some of those students have undertaken their own fundraising following the disaster.

Arriving in Kathmandu Yongdan had bought a Tibetan-English dictionary and a few classical texts and was ready to “do the tourist thing”, taking in some of the city’s famous sites such as the Boudhanath, a place of great significance to Buddhists and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Such sites reflect the connections between Nepal and Tibet, says Yongdan: “ ̽��ֱ��links between Nepal and Tibet are strong. Many craftsman who helped build the Tibetan temples and monasteries came from Nepal.”

But as he prepared to take in the sights the earthquake struck.

“When the earthquake came I was lucky as I was on the ground floor of my hotel so it was easy to run outside. But there were many large flower pots on the balconies of the surrounding building which were all falling down. I was very lucky not to be hit as these pots were falling from the fifth and sixth floors. A large one just missed me by a few centimetres,” says Yongdan.

By this time many other guests were flooding from the building into the courtyard. “Many were crying. There was shock and a lot of distress. ̽��ֱ��first earthquake was over in just one minute I think – but there were many aftershocks.”

It is those aftershocks which took a huge psychological toll, says Yongdan, adding: “Everyone reacted very strongly to the aftershocks. ̽��ֱ��first, big quake, was all about fast reactions, but the later shocks created much more fear and anxiety. Even a heavy footfall, or airplane flying overhead, would cause feelings of panic. I was there for just two days; those still out there, feeling aftershocks over a longer period, will have suffered much more and the trauma could be very great.”

Yongdan remained in the courtyard for some time, eyeing the cracks in the building warily, conscious that they had no food or water. Knowing he was due to fly from the capital that very day Yongdan risked entering the hotel to retrieve his wallet and passport. Eventually he was able to walk into the city and buy some water and a biscuit. It was then he got his first glimpse of the powerful and tragic effects of the earthquake. “There was a wall, about 10 feet high, which traders used to do their business from. It had collapsed and it was here I saw the first people who had died.”

Back at the hotel Yongdan and his group moved to an open field nearby and spent a fearful night as the aftershocks continued.

“During the night we had two big aftershocks at about 4am and 6am, I think. We could not sleep as all night we could see the buildings shaking. Sometimes the shocks came like a wave, sometimes quickly like a train going along the tracks.”

Yongdan realised that food and water would be a huge problem and that should take his flight, if possible. ̽��ֱ��next day Yongdan, accompanied by an US woman in her 60s, went looking for a car to take them to the airport. “It would be a long way to walk. People were in the centre of the road, staying away from the buildings, finding a car seemed impossible. To our surprise we eventually saw one single taxi driving around. He charged us fifteen times the normal price but we got to the airport,” says Yongdan.

On the way to the airport the full extent of the devastation hit Yongdan. Buildings had collapsed or were heavily damaged. “When we got to the airport there was a truck which was delivering water to people who had gathered in a nearby field - but there were thousands of people in the field and a long queue.”

“ ̽��ֱ��airport was crowded and everything was being done manually. Only those who had tickets were being allowed to fly at this stage. People were shouting. We stood in line for three hours waiting to hear if we would fly out or not. Once through we were in an open field and I felt much safer. We waited almost five hours and saw the Indian Air Force flying in with supplies.”

It was only when Yongdan was in the air that he relaxed enough to sense how lucky he was – and only once in Abu Dhabi that he felt anything close to the full impact. “I suddenly realised what I had been through and that I had nearly died. I called my family. I have never heard my father cry before but both of them were very emotional.”

It was at Abu Dhabi that the news of his having reached safety finally reached colleagues in Cambridge.

Dr Hildegard Diemberger, Director of MIASU, says: “I was hugely relieved when I was woken up at 1am by a text message from New York telling me they had heard Yongdan was safe. When he arrived at Pembroke his luggage had been left somewhere between Kathmandu and Abu Dhabi and he just had the clothes he was standing in.”

Safe in Cambridge, staying in a student room at Pembroke College, Yongdan says his thoughts are with those left behind. “I had to leave,” he says, “I thought whether I could help there and then but without knowing much about the place and the people I would have been another burden. I thought that mobilising competent international help would have been more useful and I hope we can help get the Nepalese and the Tibetans affected by the earthquake food, water and whatever they need as soon as possible. We keep hearing heart-breaking messages of people, including young children, now exposed to rain, lacking water, food and trying to cope with loss and fear”

̽��ֱ��problem will not just be food and water, says Diemberger: “Sewage will now be an issue as will disease. ̽��ֱ��way some buildings are constructed means the earthquake has had a devastating effect.”

Once the initial battle for survival is over and food and water supplies have been secured other priorities will surface.

“We must look to the international relief effort first and then in the long term we can look to charities and action to support communities and help rebuild and ensure the rich heritage of Nepal is protected. But first they will have to get through the monsoon season. It will be a difficult process. Once the reconstruction process is underway there will be an enormous amount to do. Many of the sites affected are UNESCO World Heritage Sites so the hope is they will not be rebuilt too quickly and destroy what little is left. I am also thinking about the multitude of temples and monasteries scattered across the region. They house precious ancient manuscripts and prints, which are likely to have become exposed to the rain and are at risk of being lost forever” says Diemberger.

Much will need to be done to rebuild Nepal and the focus now must be the international aid effort. To donate go to: www.dec.org.uk/appeals/nepal-earthquake-appeal.

I hope we can help get the Nepalese and the Tibetans... food, water and whatever they need as soon as possible.

Dr Lobsang Yongdan

More information:

For more information on the Nepal relief effort and how to offer support go to: www.dec.org.uk/appeals/nepal-earthquake-appeal.
Yongdan is a scholar who straddles the ancient and modern worlds. Initially educated in the Buddhist monastery of Kumbum (Qinghai Province, PRC), he possesses a rare talent for languages being fluent in Classical Tibetan, the Tibetan dialect of Amdo, Chinese and English. His PhD at Cambridge was on a remarkable Tibetan text, the Dzam gling rgyas bshad (DGRB), which translates as ̽��ֱ��Detailed Description of the World. He is currently working on an AHRC project hosted at MIASU to create a database of the earliest printed texts in Tibetan culture and the biographies of the Tibetan masters involved in the production of woodblock prints since the 12th century.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Mongolia: unravelling the troubled narratives of a nation

amb206 — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 08:00:00 +0000

In the spring of 1991 Franck Billé sat in a north London cinema watching the movie Urga. Nikita Mikhalkov’s award-winning film tells the story of the unlikely friendship that develops between a Russian truck driver and a Mongolian herder. Billé, a Russian language student at the ̽��ֱ�� of Westminster, was captivated by the movie’s narrative and the stunning landscapes. He decided that, instead of going to Moscow for the semester abroad required by his course, he would travel to Ulaanbaatar.

A few months later Billé flew in to Mongolia’s capital city airport where he was met by the local family he was going to stay with. His knowledge of Mongolia, a country three times the size of France, was confined to what he had read in the Lonely Planet guidebook. “I spoke fluent Russian but only a few words of Mongolian which I’d picked up from an old conversation book,” he says. All this was to change as he immersed himself in Mongolian culture, and began studying the language.

Today Billé is one of around a dozen researchers based in the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Recently published books by Billé and his MIASU colleague Dr Christopher Kaplonski make important contributions to the scholarship that has emerged from MIASU since its establishment in 1986. Both books are the outcome of recent fieldwork in Mongolia and both deal with universal human issues that are deeply uncomfortable. A launch of the books takes place at Heffer’s bookshop in Cambridge next Tuesday (3 March 2015).

In Sinophobia: Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity, Franck Billé explores the identity of a country that feels increasingly under pressure from its booming southern neighbour. ̽��ֱ��Lama Question: Violence, Sovereignty and Exception in Early Socialist Mongolia by Christopher Kaplonski challenges accepted narratives about the violent crushing of the Buddhist establishment in the 1930s as the monasteries that had dominated life for centuries were torn apart.

With a population of 2.8 million, Mongolia shares a border with two of the world’s foremost powers which have long played a pivotal role in its identity. Russia, lying to Mongolia’s north, is a declining player on the global stage. China, to its south, is a flourishing economy hungry for the resources that Mongolia possesses – notably coal, copper and gold.

From his first visit, Billé was fascinated by the politics of Mongolian nationalism and how this informs the country’s relationships with its neighbours. His initial encounter with the country took place just eight years after its liberation from the Soviet Union. ̽��ֱ��Soviets had held the country in a tight grip for 70 years and had presided over the dismantlement of Mongolia’s traditional nomadic society, a process that saw many thousands of deaths.

Primed by dire warnings in the pages of his guidebook, Billé was nervous that as a Russian-speaking stranger, he would be unwelcome. His fears were unfounded. Instead, he was struck by the lack of post-socialist resentment shown by the Mongolians he met, including the family with whom he lodged. Yet, as Buriads, a Mongolian ethnic group living mostly in the Russian Federation to the north of Mongolia, their community had suffered tremendously, particularly in the political purges of the 1930s. Many of those considered to be ‘intellectuals’ were Buriad and, as ‘enemies of the people,’ they were deported to Siberia, never to be seen again.

Why, wondered Billé, were the Mongolians so apparently accepting of their recent history as a nation until the control of an outside force? “Russians have made mistakes but generally their presence was positive. They brought a lot of good things,” he was told by his hosts in Ulaanbaatar. These good things included forms of ‘high culture’ (such as ballet, opera, urban living) and protection from Chinese territorial ambitions.

On each successive visit, Billé became increasingly aware of the striking differences in Mongolian attitudes to its neighbours – and modern Mongolia’s discourses about China form the backbone of his book. Over the course of his fieldwork in Ulaanbaatar, he has built up a picture of a nation whose identity is contingent on a deeply-entrenched distrust and dislike of its Chinese neighbours – a phenomenon described as Sinophobia.

Since Mongolia’s southern border reopened in the early 1990s, the Chinese have invested heavily in Mongolia, quickly becoming its main trade partner. Mongolia’s coal resources were crucial to China’s rapid growth. In turn, China has been able to supply household goods that are no longer available in Russia. While the Mongolians have undoubtedly benefited from their position on the border with China, they have remained deeply suspicious of their southern neighbour’s intentions. China is suspected of sending men to reproduce with Mongolian women and dilute the gene pool. Chinese vegetables are said to be purposefully poisoned. It is even rumoured that China is biding its time to take over the country.

“In the west, we see Mongolia as part of Asia, its people and culture enmeshed with those of its neighbours. But this is not how the Mongolians see themselves. They draw a clear line between themselves and other Asians, particularly the Chinese. Because Mongolians are so keen to deny any cultural and ethnic overlap, to be called Chinese is perceived as a great insult,” says Billé.

“It’s common to hear derogatory statements about the Chinese and to see insulting graffiti. Hip hop songs, in particular, have been an important vector of national pride and anti-Chinese sentiments. Tourists visiting Mongolia may well return home with little idea of the level of anti-Chinese sentiments but anyone who can read and understand Mongolian will be immediately aware of the Sinophobia that pervades public discourse.”

At its most extreme, Sinophobia takes the form of Dayaar Mongol (All Mongolia), a far-right nationalist group. In 2009, Dayaar Mongol signalled its disapproval of Sino-Mongolian relationships by posting a video of a woman with her hair shorn as punishment for the ‘crime’ of having sex with a Chinese man.

“These extreme groups do not enjoy widespread support and are generally seen as hooligans. But, for the vast majority of Mongolians, dislike of China isn’t seen as racist. It is perceived primarily as self-defence. Voicing criticisms of the Chinese is functionally equivalent to a patriotic statement,” says Billé.

“Many Mongolians will confide in private that they do not have anything against the Chinese. However, making such statements in public would render them suspect. They would be seen as unpatriotic and potentially traitors. And they would also be suspected of being part Chinese.”

Christopher Kaplonski comes to the subject of his book, which explores the violence again Buddhist monks in Mongolia in the 1930s, culminating in genocide, as an anthropologist interested in the way in which nations and individuals build narratives around political violence and its aftermath. Kaplonski was one of the first Western anthropologists to carry out fieldwork in Mongolia. He has worked on collective memory, political violence, identity, and coming to terms with the past.

Kaplonksi’s research covers the dynamics of political conflict, as well as the processes of social-political reconstruction in coming to terms with the past. In the turbulent period covered by his book, ̽��ֱ��Lama Question: Violence, Sovereignty and Exception in Early Socialist Mongolia, the newly-installed socialist government sought to break the power of the Buddhist establishment, and establish Mongolia as the world’s second socialist country, following the Soviet Union itself.

In doing so, the socialists waged a decade and a half long struggle from the early 1920s to the late 1930s to win the hearts and minds of the Mongolian populace, deploying a wide variety of measures, such as propaganda, punitive taxes and eventually mass killings.

In particular, Kaplonski looks at the execution of approximately 18,000 Buddhist priests and how this dark episode has been absorbed into Mongolia’s history. Most significantly, he complicates the accepted narrative that Joseph Stalin ordered the execution of lamas and that the Mongolian government and the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, as agents of a nation under the thumb of Choibalsan, had no choice but to carry out the directives of a Communist dictator.

̽��ֱ��phrase ‘the lama question’ (lam naryn asuudal in Mongolian) is the term the socialist government itself used to signify the struggle between the socialist government and religious establishment of Mongolia.

Buddhism, in the shape of over 700 monasteries populated by some 80,000 lamas, had for centuries exerted an influence that extended deep into politics, economics and everyday life, rather in the same way that Roman Catholicism dominated pre-Reformation Europe. Often seen as backward and corrupt, even by reforming Buddhists, the Buddhist establishment represented an almost insurmountable challenge to the socialists determined to bring their vision of modernity and progress to Mongolia.

“One of the things that intrigued me most, from an academic point of view, was the fact that the violence took so long to erupt. Political violence is often seen as a tool of first resort for totalitarian governments the world over, but in Mongolia, it was a step they avoided taking for over a decade and a half. ̽��ֱ��book is an attempt to answer this question: why did it take so long,” says Kaplonski.

In the space of just 18 months, between late 1937 and mid-1939, many thousands of lamas were sentenced to death and shot. All but a handful of the monasteries across the country were destroyed – and with them countless numbers of religious artefacts, books and culture were lost to future generations. It is estimated that a further 18,000 people, many of them Buriads, were also killed during a period which is portrayed in both Mongolian and Western history as an episode sparked by Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’.

A chance discovery in the Mongolian National Central Archives in Ulaanbaatar of a trial against leading Buddhist monks prompted Kaplonski to begin the painstaking task of piecing together a story that conflicts with the narrative that most Mongolians recount if they are asked about the repressions and mass killings of the 1930s.

Intrigued by what he read, Kaplonski set about improving his grasp of Mongol bichig (the classic Mongolian script in use at the time ) and from 2008 to 2011 he spent months sifting through documents held in the Central Archives in and other archives. He also visited some of the surviving monasteries, since restored, and interviewed a wide range of people, those who had lost relatives, had been monks themselves, or grew up next to the ruins of a monastery.

“Day after day, I sat under a window in the Central Archives and ploughed through piles of government resolutions and reports in what often seemed like a fruitless exercise, occasionally rewarded by the appearance of a document that provided a key piece of the puzzle – such as a letter between top officials wondering what to do with the monasteries now that they were all empty,” says Kaplonski.

“The organisation of the archives is fairly rudimentary – for example, there is no cross-referencing of files. On top of that, the archives of the secret police, which hold the case files themselves, are closed to foreign, and most Mongolian, researchers.”

Kaplonski’s extraordinary determination bore fruit in 2008 when he was given permission to obtain copies of ‘rehabilitation documents’ from the secret police (known as the Dotood Yam) archives. His coup meant that he was able to add a small but important piece to the giant puzzle of the lama question.

A close reading of the ‘rehabilitation’ documents enabled Kaplonski to build a more detailed picture of the process by which people could apply to have their relatives cleared of the charges laid against them in the 1930s. This process, essentially a re-examination of the original case, not only brought closure to those who never knew what happened to their relatives, but the documents also provided key details to the bureaucracy and reasoning behind the mass killings.

̽��ֱ��personal stories of the countless lamas who were killed, or fled into the countryside, will never fully be told. “Monastic records for the 1930s simply do not exist,” says Kaplonski. “Such documents were either destroyed by the state or by the monks themselves as their impending fate became evident. Few Mongolians at this period wrote letters or kept diaries. Oral histories and reminiscences can give a personal account of a particular experience but not in the detail required to build a more comprehensive understanding of how and why what took place happened.”

Most other scholars have simply portrayed the events of the 1930s as Stalin’s Great Terror spilling over into Mongolia. Kaplonski has taken the inquiry still deeper into uncomfortable territory. His conclusion that the Mongolian secret police and government bureaucracies who carried out the monitoring and eventual killings of lamas, and others, had more agency than has been publically acknowledged will grate with popular Mongolian narratives for a period that, for many older citizens, falls within well living memory.

“Blaming Stalin allows unpleasant and potentially divisive issues of responsibility and guilt to be avoided. Few Mongolians, or other academics have questioned this view. Difficult questions about the agency of Mongolians in the killings for the most part haven’t really been asked,” he says.

“Indeed, it is reported that the archives of the security services remain closed precisely because to open them up would be devastating in a country where social networks are tightly intertwined and where it would not be a surprising for a descendent of a repressed person to know the descendants of his or her repressors.”

Sinophobia: Anxiety, Violence, and the Making of Mongolian Identity by Franck Billé and ̽��ֱ��Lama Question: Violence, Sovereignty, and Exception in Early Socialist Mongolia by Christopher Kaplonski are both published by ̽��ֱ�� of Hawai’i Press. Both books will be launched at an event at Heffer’s bookshop in Cambridge on 3 March 2015, 6.30-8.00pm. Booking not required but please RSVP to david.robinson@blackwells.co.uk.

MIASU was established in 1986 by the distinguished anthropologist Professor Caroline Humphrey. Ever since, it has played a pivotal role in the careers of researchers from all over the world seeking to understand this little known yet strategic region.

MIASU also facilitates visits from Mongolian and Tibetan scholars who typically stay in Cambridge for a few months, giving them the opportunity to access specialist and rare material in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library and discuss their research with colleagues at Cambridge.

Inset images: ger in Ulaanbaatar selling fermented mare's milk and horse meat (Franck Billé), street scene in Ulaanbaatar (Chris Kaplonski), anti-Chinese graffiti: Mongolians let's kill Chinese (Billé), Baruun Hüree, a Mongolian monastery in Övörhangai province, sutra (books) said to have been buried during socialism and later retrieved, two high-ranking lamas (foreground) on trial as counter-revolutionaries, 1937 (all Kaplonski).

In two separate books, anthropologists Dr Franck Billé and Dr Christopher Kaplonski look at the identity of Mongolia, a country that stands at a cultural and political crossroads. While Billé explores Mongolia’s relationship with its powerful neighbours, Kaplonski revisits a dark period in the country’s recent history.

In the west, we see Mongolia as part of Asia, its people and culture enmeshed with those of its neighbours. But this is not how the Mongolians see themselves. They draw a clear line between themselves and other Asians, particularly the Chinese.

Franck Billé

Chris Kaplonski

Traffic in Ulaanbaator

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

Creating a shared resource for the endangered culture of the Kalmyks

amb206 — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:00:00 +0000

Early in the 1600s, several groups of Mongols travelled thousands of miles west in search of new pastures for their herds. ̽��ֱ��migration of the people who became known as the Kalmyks was prompted by tensions between Mongol communities. Their journey lasted several decades and they travelled around 3,000 miles to settle in the wide pastures west of the Caspian Sea. Here they formed the Kalmyk khanate.

In 1771, more than half the Kalmyk population attempted to return to their original homeland of Dzungaria, a region of central Asia then depopulated as a result of the Qing-Dzungar war. Only a third of those who set out on this return migration survived the perilous journey. Those Kalmyks who remained on the southern edge of Europe were incorporated into the expanding Russian Empire.

Today the Kalmyk communities living in the Republic of Kalmykia and the neighbouring region of Astrakhan (part of the Russian Federation) are remarkable in being the only Buddhist nation in Europe. Kalmyk culture, however, has long been considered critically endangered by Western scholars. Existing Western research on their distinctive way of life has been directed chiefly at the relatively small Kalmyk diaspora in the USA.

Now researchers at the Mongolia & Inner Studies Unit of the Department of Social Anthropology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have started work on an ambitious project to document the cultural heritage of a people who are estimated to number around 300,000 worldwide. ̽��ֱ��objective of the project is to provide Kalmyk communities with a resource that can be used to compare, revive and popularise their endangered culture.

Making use of audio and video, the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project will document Kalmyk culture in its broadest sense, including traditional songs and melodies, musical instruments, dances, oral literature, cuisine, crafts, festivals and many other. This unique body of knowledge will be deposited in open-access digital archives so that it can be shared worldwide.

̽��ֱ��five-year project is being funded by Arcadia, a charitable fund dedicated to the preservation of at-risk cultural heritage and the environments. ̽��ֱ��principal investigator is Dr Uradyn Bulag, a social anthropologist known for his research into transnational studies of people, politics and culture – and particularly for his work on Mongolia and Chinese minorities.

“ ̽��ֱ��project will focus on the Republic of Kalmykia and the adjoining Astrakhan region which is home to more than half the worldwide Kalmyk population. It will also look more broadly at Kalmyk communities in China and elsewhere in order to understand the inter-connectedness of Kalmyk culture in the Eurasian context,” said Dr Bulag.

“From the outset the project will involve local Kalmyk scholars and students. We hope that the resource we create will provide a means for long-separated communities to understand, communicate and exchange cultural information with each other.”

Throughout history, the Kalmyk people have been repeatedly displaced and oppressed. Many of the Kalmyks who attempted to return to Dzungaria in the second half of the 18th century perished. Those who survived the trip found themselves divided into various segregated settlements by the powerful Qing Empire. In the late 19th century they suffered major devastations in the Muslim rebellions in Xinjiang.

̽��ֱ��increasingly marginalised Kalmyks who remained in south west Russia were drafted by the Russian government to fight various wars of conquest which exerted a heavy toll on the population. Between 1943 and 1957 the entire community was exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, charged with betraying the Soviet motherland and collaborating with the invading German army.

̽��ֱ��fractured nature of the Kalmyk community – and the shifting identity of groups within it - represents a challenge to those seeking to document their culture. “In terms of the project, we are defining as Kalmyk the people who separated from the Oirats of Dzungaria in the 17th century, travelled to Russia where they formed the Kalmyk khanate, and later scattered,” said Dr Bulag.

“We hold that these people have a common culture even though, as a result of historical migration processes, some of them later adopted other identities and are now no longer called Kalmyk. In China and Mongolia, for example, they are known as Torghut.”

Under the Soviet Union, observance of traditional cultural practises was discouraged or banned. With the collapse of the Soviet regime, opportunities opened up for minority cultures to rediscover themselves.

“ ̽��ֱ��Kalmyks in Russia lost many of their traditional knowledge bearers in exile and, when were allowed to return in 1957, they found themselves living as a minority in the autonomous republic that bears their name. In these circumstances, post-Soviet Kalmyk cultural revitalisation has been slow and ineffective,” said Dr Bulag.

"We hope that the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project will help to redress the balance by capturing and archiving an endangered culture and thus breathing new life into its richly distinctive practices.”

̽��ֱ��team contributing to the project reflects its ambitious transnational reach. Dr Bulag and Dr Borjigin Burensain ( ̽��ֱ�� of Shiga Prefecture, Japan) will be overseeing the gathering of material among Oirat/Kalmyk groups in China. Dr Baasanjav Terbish and Dr Elvira Churuymova (both ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge) will be working in Kalmykia in collaboration with local Kalmyk scholars. ̽��ֱ��project benefits from the expertise of Professor Caroline Humphrey ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge) who is renowned for her work on Mongolian cultures.

Inset images: a pagoda in the centre of Elista; opening of a stupa in Shatta village, Kalmykia; an interview in progress (Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project)

Arcadia is the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Since its inception in 2001, Arcadia has awarded grants in excess of $326 million. Arcadia works to protect endangered culture and nature. For more information please see: www.arcadiafund.org.uk

Almost four centuries ago, ancestors of the Kalmyk people trekked across central Asia to form a Buddhist nation on the edge of Europe. Today Kalmyk communities are scattered across Eurasia, with the largest group in the Republic of Kalmykia.

A new project will document Kalmyk heritage to produce an open-access online resource to help Kalmyk communities revive their culture.

From the outset the project will involve local Kalmyk scholars and students. We hope that the resource we create will provide a means for long-separated communities to understand, communicate and exchange cultural information with each other.

Uradyn Bulag

Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Project

Dancing at the opening of a stupa in Shatta village

Yes

Where empires meet

lw355 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:09:53 +0000

As rising economic and political powers, China and Russia often attract attention in relation to the West, but their interactions with one another, and comparisons between them, are less understood. Yet the two powers share thousands of miles of border, with the country of independent Mongolia lodged in-between them in the central part of the long frontier.

Our multidisciplinary project, based in the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU), has for the first time brought together international discussion on the theme of the border economies of the three countries.

Over the course of the past year, with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the network has provided a unique opportunity for social scientists from Russia, China and Mongolia to meet with their counterparts in the UK at two workshops and through an online network. And to maintain collaboration among the physically dispersed scholars, a virtual experimental and empirical research environment – a ‘collaboratory’ – has been built, in which researchers can share research and ideas and, ultimately, trace the cross-border trajectories taken by people, goods and ideas.

Global relevance

Global uncertainties are at issue in this region: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population; Russia’s fear of Han infiltration of its Siberian expanses; and the precarious independence of Mongolia as both neighbours negotiate to obtain rights to extract resources there.

Greater knowledge is needed on how the changing socioeconomic conditions of neighbouring states affect migration flows between China and Russia, as well as the different citizenship regimes that are practically operative between the three countries.

Deeper understanding is also needed about conflicts of interest – in cross-border practices, local governments and central state policies – and what the reality is of Chinese expansion into Siberia and Mongolia. With international ventures, such as oil or gas pipelines, or uranium mines, it is important to establish what the local reactions are and what implications such ventures have for environmental policies.

An in-depth analysis of these dynamics requires not only the kinds of accounts provided by political science and economics, but also the information and insights that anthropology can furnish. ̽��ֱ��rationale for this project lies in the lack of accessible and reliable accounts of the practical workings of the Chinese and Russian states, especially in minority-inhabited regions such as those along the frontier. Where new information about the situation on the ground does exist, much of it is ongoing and unpublished, or is buried in local publications and published in languages that are difficult for all to access.

If Russia and China are to be properly understood, both by scholars and policy makers based in the West and by those of the countries concerned, there is a need to collect, translate and disseminate this research and to analyse it comparatively.

Frontier knowledge

̽��ֱ��frontier zone linking China and Russia with eastern Mongolia is a region where MIASU has built strong links, engaging in policy debate as well as academic research. Although this 4,400-mile border is not an area of global economic advertisement for either country, it is a significant region for strategic policy.

Already, findings from the network are identifying how these hinterlands out of the public eye can tell us much about emergent processes of economic and political governance, through analysis of the practical operations of these post-imperial states.

For instance, two ongoing, and so far little-studied, regional processes are likely to be particularly illuminating. Russia has a policy of amalgamating small, ethnically defined territories into larger units with Moscow-appointed leadership. And China has a policy of relocating herding populations, almost all of which are from ethnic minorities, and closing pastures for purposes of environmental protection. Each of these policies may be compared with parallel, but different, solutions to problems of governance and environment on the other side of the border.

Such comparison is aided by the fact that the main indigenous population of the studied frontier zone consists of one ethnic group, the Buryat, a people of Mongolian origin. ̽��ֱ��two above-mentioned administrative decisions have aroused considerable anxiety for the Buryat and other local people. Work has begun through the network to assess existing information on the forms of protest and compliance found, and the effects on migration and trade.

̽��ֱ��inclusion of Mongolia in the network is also significant because it allows us to explore how Russia and China attempt to include such countries in their sphere of interest. Mongolia is resource-rich but underdeveloped, and a prominent object of resource extraction for both China and Russia.

This study allows us to examine processes of infrastructure construction and resource extraction that are comparable with Chinese and Russian ventures elsewhere in the world. It also enables us to investigate what particular consequences Russia and China’s rise might have for future regional divisions of labour, and for examining the social consequences of economic adjustment within Mongolian society.

Zones of uncertainty

Both Russia and China like to imagine themselves as centralised, vertically organised states that control all of the territories up to their borders. Yet, distant hinterlands remain zones of uncertainty, where there may be a potentially flammable mix of anxieties surrounding the extraction of valuable resources and mobile ethnic populations.

Recent anthropological research by MIASU members on the topic has shown that another phenomenon is to be added to the mix: laterally organised, informal, partially legal, local economies operate to some degree in opposition to central state policy and make their profits precisely because of the existence of the border.

One example is illegal salmon fishing and fish trade in the Amur River (the border), where ethnographers have shown the existence of networks of poachers and phoney companies linked across the border. ̽��ֱ��Siberian–Chinese–Mongolian frontier is alive with ‘transmigrants’, guestworkers, joint ventures, smuggling, mediators, shuttle-traders, illegal work gangs and fictitious companies.

Our discussions of the real situation on the border are addressing policy stakeholder’s concerns, such as poverty and survival strategies, transparency and social adjustment. ̽��ֱ��relation of this burgeoning frontier economy to more formal ventures, such as the Russia–China gas pipeline, Russian mining in Mongolia, or Chinese railways in Mongolia, as well as to potential ethnic conflict, will also be investigated, especially given that the same conditions do not apply everywhere.

But our end goal will be to contribute some answers to questions of global significance: is China expanding, and if so, how? And how do China and Russia actually govern their frontier provinces and potential disturbances therein?

For more information, please contact Professor Caroline Humphrey (ch10001@cam.ac.uk), Dr Gregory Delaplace (gd307@cam.ac.uk) and Dr Franck Billé (franck.bille AT gmail.com) at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (http://innerasiaresearch.org/).

How two ‘rising powers’ – China and Russia – interact across the border they share with resource-rich Mongolia is the focus of a network led by the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, as the researchers involved explain.

Global uncertainties are at issue in this region.

Sayana Namsaraeva

Siberian timber being delivered to China

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes