After photographing 1,000 Buddhist artworks in the Zanabazar National Fine Arts Museum and posting these on the Himalayan Art Research website (www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=916), and also building a website for the Museum (www.zanabazarmuseum.org), the then director Mr. Batdorj Damdensuren suggested that we travel to three other museums with strong Buddhist collections, meet their directors and curators, and see if they felt that their institutions would benefit from a program similar to what we had done in the Zanabazar national Fine Arts Museum. I dropped a letter describing the concept to a Chicago friend, and she came up with $2,000 for the project.
A few weeks later ten of us hopped into a rented minivan and headed off west to Orhankhai and Arhankhai Provinces.
Our destination in the former was Karakorum, the city built by Chinggis Khan in the 13th century as the capital of his newly formed empire. Most of the original city was destroyed in the 15th century as a result of Mongolia’s wars with Ming China, after the Mongol colonization of China came to an end and the Ming armies attempted to push the Mongols north. However, some of the seventy-eight temple complexes of Erdene Zuu (www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdene_Zuu_monastery) had survived, and in 1585 these were restored and new temples added by a Mongolian disciple of the Third Dalai Lama. During that period Erdene Zuu had 78 temple complexes. Most were in the traditional Mongolian wooden pagoda style, patented somewhat after Nepali Buddhist temples; a few were in the Tibetan rock style.
Erdene Zuu remained an active monastery from then until the Communist cultural purges of the 1930s, when it was closed and many buildings were damaged or destroyed. In the 1950s, however, it was converted into a museum. Then after the fall of Communism in 1991, the Mongolian-style buildings were kept for the museum, and the Tibetan-style complex on a corner of the grounds was allowed to re-open as an active monastery.
Because both the Museum and the Monastery stand within the same enclosure, most visitors are unaware of when they are in the museum and when in the monastery. Most web articles on Erdene Zuu seem to confuse the two.
The dating of the monastery is fuzzy in the Mongol mind. Even the monastery’s own website (www.erdenezuu.mn) claims it as Mongolia’s oldest monastery, and gives the date as 1585, whereas there is no doubt that a Sakya monastery stood on the site from the time of Kublai Khaan in the 13th century. (This was probably destroyed by the Mings, when they sacked Kharakorum in the early 15th century.)
In reality there were hundreds of monasteries in Mongolia prior even to 1585. For example, the nearby Old Man Monastery, or Obgon Hrid, was allegedly built eight centuries earlier, when a Tibetan monk, Pelgyi Dorje by name, who had assassinated the Tibetan emperor Ralpachen, fled his homeland and took up residence here.
In Erdene Zuu we met with the Museum’s director and curator, and discussed the possibilities of both getting their collection posted on the Himalayan Art Research website, and also building them a site of their own.
Next we drove north to Arhangkhai and its capital city of Tsetserleg, where the monastery of the great Zaya Pandita had once stood. Just as Tibet had its Dalai and Panchen Lama incarnations (as lamas number one and two respectively in both spiritual and temporal matters), so too Mongolia had its Jetsun Dampa and Zaya Pandita as numbers one and two.
The Communist destructions of the 1930s brought mass murder of the monks, and much of the monastery was destroyed. As usual with the Communists, however, some buildings were kept for military storage purposes. Then following the liberalization of the 1950s, these remaining buildings were restored and turned into the Arhanghai Museum.
Again we met with the museum’s director and curator.
The Arhanghai Museum does not have a great collection like the Zanabazaar Museum in Ulaanbaatar. However, they do have several stupas containing the holy relics of some of the previous Zaya Pandita incarnations. They also have numerous tangka paintings and statues, several of which belonged to early Zaya Pandita incarnations, that somehow managed to escape the Communist destructions.
After a few days of horse-riding at Tsagannur (White Lake) we returned to UB and went south to Manjushir Hrid in Tuv Province. Again, Manjushir Hrid was once a monastery complex, but was completely destroyed by the Communists in the 1930s. The monastery was the home of another of Mongolia’s great incarnate lamas, the Manjushir Khutagt.
Not much is left from the monastery, although a small wooden museum has been constructed in the middle of the ruins. The monastery grounds have been converted into a park. Although the museum’s Buddhist collection is small, it is sacred, for many of the pieces belonged to the great Manjushir Khutagt.
The last museum on our route was the Danzan Rabjaa Museum in Sainshand, an eight hour train ride on lhe rail line running southeast toward Beijing. Because this museum was described in the descriptive texts accompanying Projects 12 and 13, the reader can look there.
The directors of all four of these museums were enthusiastic with the idea of cooperating with our “Ariun Rashaan NGO,” or “Magic Healing Waters.” Our purposes here were solely forming links and an analysis of their needs. What comes out of the meetings remains to be seen.
All four of the directors had very large bodies. Batdorj, the then director of the Zanabazar National Fine Arts Museum, who fascilitated the meetings, joked, @You have to be quite fat even to be considered for the job of museum director in Mongolia.”
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| Erdene Zuu Museum stands behind a stupa complex that seperates the museum from the temple. |
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| The Arhanghai Museum in Tsetserleg. The museum formerly was the monastery of the Zaya |
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| The Manjushir Hrid Museum in Tuv Province, built amid the ruins of the great Manjushir Monastery |
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