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The Oirad of the Early 17Th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology

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The Oirad of the Early 17Th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Fall November 2014 The Oirad of the Early 17th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology Richard P. Taupier University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Asian History Commons Recommended Citation Taupier, Richard P., "The Oirad of the Early 17th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 275. https://doi.org/10.7275/5802125.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/275 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Oirad of the Early 17th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology A Dissertation Presented By RICHARD P. TAUPIER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2014 History © Copyright by Richard P. Taupier All Rights Reserved The Oirad of the Early 17th Century: Statehood and Political Ideology A Dissertation Presented By RICHARD P. TAUPIER Approved as to content and style by: _____________________________ Audrey Altstadt, Chair _____________________________ Johan Elverskog, Member _____________________________ Steven Miller, Member _____________________________ Jonathan Lipman, Member _____________________________ Stephen Platt, Member _____________________________ Joye Bowman, Department Chair Department of History DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my Dorbot friend Andre Boskhomdzhiev and his parents Taiysa and Chimid from Kalmykia who survived Siberian exile to remain dedicated to their Dorbod heritage in the face of constant discrimination. It is likewise dedicated to Andre Badmaev in Kalmykia and Ch. Dalai from Mongolia, Dorbod and Zakhchin scholars respectively, who dedicated their lives to the history of the Oirad and Zaya Pandita and who have been exceedingly kind in sharing their knowledge and good wishes in this endeavor; and to Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, the last great Kalmyk Geshe from Drepung Gomang in Lhasa, who came to America and taught many fortunate American students. It is dedicated no less to my wife and sons who have always been supportive and made me feel that time spent on this effort was well invested. And last but certainly not least to my root lama Tara Tulku who was as the sun and the moon to me and to whom I shall always remain grateful. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Audrey Altstadt for her patience in waiting for a historian to emerge from the ashes of previous academic incarnations and for her kind and gentle persuasion in moving me in that direction. I also wish to thank Johan Elverskog for his scholarship, encouragement and suggestions in helping me to understand the field and become capable of making a contribution, and to all the members of my committee who have encouraged an academic rogue to learn a few new things and share them with others. I would like to thank the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Department of History for making it possible for me to pursue this degree and to make a contribution to the history of Buddhist Central Asia and the Oirad people who have been so instrumental in helping me to become the person that I am. I must also acknowledge Lkham Purevjav who spent a semester in Amherst helping me work through the translation of the Great Code of the Forty and Four. v SEPTEMBER 2014 RICHARD P. TAUPIER, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST PhD., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST PhD., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Audrey Altstadt The early 17th century Oirad ulus represents a major turning point in the politics that dominated Central Asian during the second millennia. The Oirad rose among nomadic and settled states to take control of the Central Asian steppes and play an instrumental role as the modern world was taking shape. Following several major studies of the 17th century Oirad over the past twenty years some fundamental issues remain unresolved. One key issue is the political status of the early 17th century Oirad. Confusions arise from conflicting sources and the absence of Oirat primary texts as well as from narratives influenced by the 19th century paradigm of primitive, kinship-based societies and the so-called pre-state polities into which they were organized. This fresh examination of the Oirad reframes the context in which the Oirad polity is discussed and looks to two 17th century Oirat texts to clarify the nature of the Oirad polity and the way in which vi the Oirad themselves viewed the state in which they lived. It concludes with a very different narrative of the early 17th century Oirad as a group heavily invested in building alliances and creating a new Buddhist state through a decentralized process of state building. That process resulted in the formation of a 17th century Oirad State with right and left wings that in 1640 co-created the Mongol-Oirat Great State that was unlike anything to come before it. It was a state without central authority other than the rule of law, founded not by conquest but by the mutual agreement of sovereign nobles. Some of those nobles came from aristocratic lineages that pre-dated Chinggis Khan and survived more than five hundred years of Chinggisid primacy to once again stand on equal ground. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………………… v ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………. vi LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………… vii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………... 1 Goals, Problems and Significance……………………………………….. 1 The Structure of this Dissertation………………………………………… 9 II: OIRAD ORIGINS AND HISTORY…………………………………………….. 15 Who were the Early 17th Century Oirad?.............................................. 15 A Brief Summary of the Oirad from the 13th to 17th Centuries………… 21 Characterizations of the Early 17th Century Oirat Polity……………….. 24 A Summary and Short Critique…………………………………………… 35 III: NOMADIC SOCIETIES, STATES AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES………. 40 A Critique of the Primitive Nomadic Social Paradigm………………….. 40 Definitions of State Relative to Nomadic Steppe Societies……………. 46 Central Asian Ideologies of Statehood and Political Authority………… 53 IV: GEO-POLITICS OF 16TH AND 17TH CENTURY CENTRAL ASIA………... 62 Mongols, Ming, Manchus, Russians and Tibetans…………………….. 62 The Mongols in the Late 16th and Early 17th Century………………….. 63 Tibetan Fragmentation, Reunification and Spiritual Authority………… 66 The Rise of the Manchu Qing…………………………………………….. 71 viii Russia’s Siberian Expansion and the Late Ming Dynasty…………….. 74 V: CONTEXT OF SEREN GEREL AND THE GREAT CODE OF THE FORTY AND FOUR………………………………………………………………………… 78 The Mongol - Oirat Code of 1640………………………………………… 78 Seren Gerel, the Biography of Zaya Pandita……………………………. 83 VI: THEMTIC ANALYSIS OF SEREN GEREL AND THE MONGOL OIRAT GREAT CODE OF 1640.…………………………………………………………. 89 Relationships among Oirat leaders and Extent of the Oirat Domain… 89 Conflicts and Alliances among Oirats Leaders………………………… 99 Oirat State-building Efforts………………………………………………. 103 Ideological Perspectives…………………………………………………. 117 VII: SUMMARY AND OBSERVATIONS OF THE 17TH CENTURY OIRAT STATE………………………………………………………………………………124 The Political Structure of the 17th Century Oirad…………………….... 124 Alliances and Conflicts………………………………………………….... 129 Zunghar and Barun Ghar……………………………………………….... 136 The Code of 1640 and the Mongol-Oirat Great State…………………. 139 State Building and its Effects…………………………………………….. 142 A Final Note…………………………………………………………………146 VIII: THE GREAT CODE OF THE FORTY AND FOUR………………………. 149 IX: SEREN GEREL (MOON LIGHT) – BIOGRAPHY OF ZAYA PANDITA…………………………………………………………………………… 186 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………….. 258 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Reflections on Zaya Pandita……………………………………………… 12 2. Oirat and other Uluses circa 1207……………………………………….. 15 3. Gushii Khan and Regent of the Fifth Dalai Lama………………………. 37 4. Oirat Buddhist Thangka circa 1650………………………………………. 70 5. Oirad circa 1600…………………………………………………………… 128 6. Extent of Mongol-Oirad Great State……………………………………... 147 x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Goals, Problems and Significance The early 17th century Oirad Ulus 1 represents a major turning point in the evolving cultural and political patterns that dominated the Central Asian steppes from the 3rd century BCE Hsiung-nu Empire to 17th century Oiratia. The Oirad were soon to enter the final major conflict between early modern states with increasingly well-defined geo-political boundaries, expanding urban/agrarian settlements and centralized autocratic authority, and nomadic states typified by shifting frontier zones, fluid membership, distributed authority, and nomadic socio-economic patterns lacking fixed geographic limits. It was also the last Central Asian polity built on Buddhist ideological principles concerning spiritual and secular authority. The Dörbön Oirad were important players in the political development of Central Asia in the 2nd millennium of the Common Era. During both the 15th and the 17th centuries they claimed center stage in the competition among nomadic and settled states for control of the
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