The Mongolia-Tibet Interface Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library Edited by Henk Blezer Alex McKay Charles Ramble VOLUME 10/9 The Mongolia-Tibet Interface Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia PIATS 2003: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Oxford, 2003. Managing Editor: Charles Ramble. Edited by Uradyn E. Bulag and Hildegard G.M. Diemberger LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 On the cover: Copy of a painting of Dugan Jaisan by Tsagaan Jamba in the Fine Arts Musuem, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (Caroline Humphrey's private collection; photograph by Don Manning). Back cover: ‘Mongolian leading the tiger’ in a Tibetan painting, courtesy of Dr. Stephen Hugh-Jones. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data International Association for Tibetan Studies. Seminar (10th : 2003 : Leiden, Netherlands) The Mongolia-Tibet Interface : opening new research terrains in Inner Asia : Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Oxford, 2003. p. cm. — (Brill’s Tibetan studies library) “Authors Hildegard G. M. Diemberger and Uradyne E. Bulag” Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-15521-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Tibet (China)—Civilization— Mongolian influences. 2. Mongolia—Civilization—Tibetan influences. 3. Inner Mongolia (China)—Civilization. I. Bulag, Uradyn Erden. II. Diemberger, Hildegard. III. Title. IV. Series. DS786.I485 2006 303.48’25150517—dc22 2007031193 This book is printed on acid-free paper. ISSN: 1568-6183 ISBN: 978 90 04 15521 3 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................ vii HILDEGARD G.M. DIEMBERGER AND URADYN E. BULAG—Towards Critical Studies of the Mongolian-Tibetan Interface ....................................... 1 URADYN E. BULAG—From Empire to Nation: the Demise of Buddhism in Inner Mongolia .................................... 19 JOHAN ELVERSKOG—Tibetocentrism, Religious Conversion and the Study of Mongolian Buddhism .......................... 59 GERHARD EMMER—Dga’ Ldan Tshe Dbang Dpal Bzang Po and the Tibet-Ladakh-Mughal War of 1679–84 ................. 81 HILDEGARD DIEMBERGER—Festivals and their Leaders: the Management of Tradition in the Mongolian/Tibetan Borderlands ...................................................................................... 109 DAVID SNEATH—Ritual Idioms and Spatial Orders: Comparing the Rites for Mongolian and Tibetan ‘Local Deities’ .............................................................. 135 CAROLINE HUMPHREY—Vital Force: the Story of Dugar Jaisang and Popular Views of Mongolian-Tibetan Relations from Mongolian Perspectives ........................................... 159 MORTEN A. PEDERSEN—Tame from Within: Landscapes of the Religious Imagination Among the Darhads of Northern Mongolia ...................................... 175 NASAN BAYAR—On Chinggis Khan and Being like a Buddha: a Perspective on Cultural Conflation in Contemporary Inner Mongolia ..................................................... 197 HANNA HAVNEVIK,BYAMBAA RAGCHAA,AGATA BAREJA-STARZYNSKA—Some Practices of the Buddhist Red Tradition in Contemporary Mongolia ....................................... 223 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LCE NAG TSHANG HUM CHEN—a Brief Introduction to Ngag dbang dar rgyas and the Origin of Rnying ma Order in Henan County (Sogpo), the Mongolian Region of Amdo ............ 239 HAMID SARDAR—Danzan Ravjaa: the Fierce Drunken Lord of the Gobi ................................................................ 257 JALSAN—On the So-called Secret Biography of Tshang Dbyangs Rgya Mtsho ...................................................... 295 ERDENIBAYAR—Sumpa Khenpo Ishibaljur: a Great Figure in Mongolian and Tibetan Cultures .......................... 303 KESANG DARGYAY—The Origin of Malho Mongolian County ........................................................................... 315 SHINJILT—Pasture Fights, Mediation, and Ethnic Narrations: Aspects of the Ethnic Relationship between the Mongols and Tibetans in Qinghai and Gansu ............................ 337 DENLHUN TSHEYANG—Mongol Cultural Sites and Customs in Modern ’Dam Gzhung (Tibet Autonomous Region) ................... 363 BURNEE DORJSUREN—A Review of the Tibetan-Mongolian Lexicographical Tradition ................................................................ 371 Notes on Contributors ...................................................................... 379 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors would like to thank the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit of the University of Cambridge, the British Academy, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Science Fund, the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan), the Ev-K2-CNR Committee and the Kalpa Group for providing financial and material support for the research and the editorial work in this volume. The participation of many of the scholars who took part in the orig- inal panel at Oxford in September 2003 was made possible through the support of the Sino-British Fellowship Trust of the British Academy, the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, the Oesterreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft, Trace Foundation, Eco-Himal and the Italian Ev-K2 CNR Committee. Thanks are due in particular to Gerhard Emmer and Mary-Elisabeth Evans for their editorial work and are also due to Robert Barnett, Paul Caldwell, Jana Diemberger, Yangdon Dhondup, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Charles Ramble, Maria Antonia Sironi, Alexey Smirnov, Sonam Tsering, Kaethe Uray-Köhalmi, Dashdondog Bayarsaikhan and many other friends and colleagues for providing useful information and for assisting in this publication. TOWARDS CRITICAL STUDIES OF THE MONGOLIAN- TIBETAN INTERFACE HILDEGARD G.M. DIEMBERGER AND URADYN E. BULAG INTRODUCTION: IN SEARCH OF THE MONGOLIAN-TIBETAN INTERFACE On September 6th, 2003, a group of scholars from all over the world gathered in Oxford. What brought them together was their common interest in Tibetan culture. Almost as a new ritual, the 10th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) took place in the quasi-monastic setting of an Oxford college—St Hugh’s. There was a tangible feeling of the richness and diversity of the living Tibetan tra- ditions of scholarship, as among the crowd were monks, nuns, tantric priests, bards, writers and doctors coming from many different areas of Tibet and beyond. Moreover, for the first time in the history of the IATS conferences there was also a sizeable contingent of Mongolian and Mongolist scholars who were eager to explore the complex interface between Mongolian and Tibetan cultures. This volume consists of the papers that were the direct outcome of a four-session panel entitled ‘The Tibetan-Mongolian Interface’ organ- ised by Hildegard Diemberger and Uradyn Bulag. As a follow-up to ‘The Tibetan-Mongolian Interface’, a special issue of Inner Asia (vol.4, no.2, 2002), edited by Diemberger, this volume has similarly aimed to create a platform to encourage various forms of interfacial scholarship, thereby not only allowing new materials to emerge but also bringing to the fore a variety of different approaches to studying Mongolian and Tibetan cultures and societies. The panel and the volume build on the work of many scholars who have crossed boundaries of language and culture following the links suggested in historical sources (Geza Uray, Luciano Petech, Elliot Sperling, Leonard van der Kuijp, Dieter Schuh and Christopher Beckwith to name but a few). There has been little research in the West focusing specifically on the Mongolian-Tibetan interface, in terms of major political, social, cultural and religious histories. Perhaps the most substantial work was done by Klaus Sagaster in Germany, a contribu- 2 HILDEGARD G.M. DIEMBERGER AND URADYN E. BULAG tion duly honoured by a devotional volume published recently: Tractata Tibetica et Mongolica: Festschrift für Klaus Sagaster zum 65. Geburtstag (Kollmar-Paulenz & Peter [eds] 2002). Most of such works fall into the school of evidential scholarship, examining the religious and literary influences of the Tibetans upon the Mongols. Owen Lattimore’s Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940), David Farquhar’s (1978) and Joseph Fletcher’s (1978) studies of Qing governance in Inner Asia remain the rare exceptions. Sechen Jagchid, a Mongolian-American scholar, originally hailing from Inner Mongolia, wrote arguably the first comprehensive scholar- ly book on the interface entitled Studies on the Historical Relationship between Mongolia and Tibet (in Chinese) in 1978 published in Taiwan. In mainland China, Chen Qingying has been a major writer on the rela- tionship, publishing and editing A Brief History of the Mongolian- Tibetan Nationality Relationships (with Wang Furen, 1985, in Chinese) and a multi-volume series entitled