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The Recovery of Cultural and Identity
Providing a documented record of all the active monasteries in Mongolia in the first part of the twentieth century
A MONGOLIAN INITIATIVE
The Arts Council of Mongolia carried out the Mongolian Monastery Documentation Project as part of its mandate for cultural restoration. A national survey, conducted from 2005 to 2007, covered all twenty-two aimags (provinces) and the capital Ulaanbaatar, formally known as Ikh Khuree. It aimed to locate all the active monasteries and temples in Mongolia in the first part of the twentieth century. The survey provides a documentary record for each monastery / temple located including precise geographical location (GPS coordinates of the site) and a digital photographic record.
Site identification largely depended on the memory of those Mongolians still alive at the time of the survey who were young at the time of the destruction – most of whom were in their seventies and eighties. Oral histories were collected from many of these old people most particularly from those who had been monks at the time of the destruction.
For the first time there is a complete record of all the monasteries and temples in the country along with valuable historical memories from a generation who were living in the monasteries in 1939.
Access to more detailed information on the sites will be granted to bone fide scholars.
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Mongolia’s Buddhist Cultural Heritage
From the sixteenth century, when the Mongolians re-adopted Tibetan Buddhism, Mongolia’s Buddhist monasteries and temples have been at the center of Mongolian cultural tradition. Similar to the role played by the great monasteries of China, Tibet, Bhutan, Himalayan regions and the Russian republics of Tuva and Buryatia, Mongolian monasteries became places of fixed settlement for an otherwise largely nomadic population and provided cultural leadership to Mongolian society.
By the time the Soviet Union first called for the liquidation of Mongolian monks and monastery sites in the 1920s, there were no fewer than 100,000 lamas in a population that numbered approximately 700,000 people. As an extension of the Soviet Great Purge under Stalin, between 1937 and 1939, Soviet and Mongolian authorities executed thousands of lamas and destroyed more than 1,000 priceless Buddhist temples and monasteries in actions that constituted the most violent extension of the Great Purge beyond the official borders of the Soviet Union.
Since the democratic revolution in 1990, in one of the most dramatic signs of the recovery of cultural and ethnic identity in the post-Soviet ‘transition’ period, Mongolian cultural leaders seek to identify and document the remains of these magnificent wood and stone structures that for centuries served as the focus of Mongolian Buddhist culture.
There was a particular urgency that this project be conducted at this time, because site identification depended on the memory of Mongolians who were young at the time of the destruction – many of whom are now in their seventies and eighties and will soon no longer be able to assist in the identification and documentation effort.
SURVEY METHODOLOGY
The national survey was done in the summer of 2007. The Arts Council recruited and trained five Mongolian survey teams each consisting of an academic, a monk from Gandanthegchenling and a driver. The sixth comprised of the two international scholars who also conducted the Ulaanbaatar survey in 2005/6.
The teams visited every administrative district in Mongolia and attempted to visit every site for which there was a textual or oral record along with other sites known by local people that have not been previously recorded. At each site the team took GPS coordinates, took a set of digital photographs, collected details of the monastery /temple and recorded basic oral history from locals including old monks who had known the monastery / temple in their childhood. They also collected any available local written sources. A supplementary set of Oral History interviews was conducted in late 2007 among old monks residing in Ulaanbaatar.
This information has been compiled into a database, which is now accessible from the web. |
