Writing True Places in the Twilight of Empire and the Dawn of Revolution: The Buddhist Historiography of the Mongol Zawa Damdin Luwsandamdin (1867-1937) by Matthew William King A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto © Copyright by Matthew William King 2014 Writing True Places in the Twilight of Empire and the Dawn of Revolution: The Buddhist Historiography of the Mongol Zawa Damdin Luwsandamdin (1867-1937) Matthew William King Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation examines the life and historiography of the Khalkha Mongol polymath, Zawa Damdin Luwsandamdin (bLo bzang rta mgrin; bLo bzang rta dbyangs) (1867-1937); a Buddhist monk, abbot, pilgrim, and modernist discontent who wandered extensively through the shifting socio-political landscape of the Qing-socialist transition in Outer Mongolia. Focusing upon Zawa Damdin’s autobiographical and historiographic works, previously unexamined outside of Mongolia, in the first place this study analyzes monastic literary constructs of the space and time of Mongolian Buddhism after the Qing imperial collapse in 1911, and before the purges of the late 1930s. Drawing upon Michel de Certeau’s notion of the “historiographic operation” and Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope, in the second place this dissertation explores the generative practices of monastic historiography, focusing especially upon interpretative techniques and writing strategies. What emerges is Zawa Damdin’s stark dystopian-utopian contrast between the degeneracy of the revolutionary-era and a embattled monasticism, and an idealized form of Buddhist authority most fully manifested during the Qing formation but long absent by the author’s present. Zawa Damdin inscribed this binary firmly embedded within a Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist interpretative community, but still drew upon newly available ii European scholarship on nationalism, science, Asia and Buddhism. This dissertation suggests that holistic analyses of Inner Asian Buddhist mediations of modernist trends in the late-and post-imperium could contribute to a dynamic, and much needed, cultural history of both Orientalism and Occidentalism. iii Acknowledgments The completion of this dissertation was made possible through the financial assistance of several programs and institutions. I wish to acknowledge the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Association for Asian Studies, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, the Khyentse Foundation, the Sheng-Yen Lu Foundation, and the University of Toronto’s Asian Institute and Julia Ching Memorial Fellowship in Chinese Thought and Culture. I have benefited from the kind assistance, critique and support of many individuals during my dissertation research, without which this project would have never been brought to completion. I owe my greatest debt to my supervisor, Frances Garrett, for her ongoing support of this dissertation project, but also for so generously directing many other research, teaching, and travel endeavors that have greatly enriched my graduate training while at the University of Toronto. In all that, I, like Prof. Garrett’s other students, am especially grateful for her own creative research and innovative teaching that serve as example to which we can only aspire. Similarly, I am eternally indebted to the other members of my dissertation committee, Profs. Natalie Rothman and Amanda Goodman, for their encouragement, patience, and especially their critique of this and other projects. Their exemplary scholarship and generosity as supervisors has helped me extend this dissertation in incredibly helpful ways. They too set an example of scholarship, collegiality, and excellence in teaching to which I aspire. This project also owes a tremendous debt to Khenpo Kunga Sherab, my kind friend and consultant on all things Tibetan and Buddhist. Khenpo has made himself available to patiently work with me on all of the texts treated in this project and others besides, always taking time to work through the often confusing concepts they evoke. Our hundreds of hours together on this and other research projects, in addition to our daily conversations in our shared office, has been iv an entirely unexpected course of study in Buddhism alongside my graduate program at the University of Toronto. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have studied under (and alongside) such a learned Tibetan scholar trained in the traditional monastic system (though, all mistakes in doctrinal and historical matters in this study are my own). Earlier in my graduate career, Thubten Champa graciously helped me begin working through these materials outside of his seminars on Classical Tibetan, and so I also wish to thank him here. Also at the University of Toronto, I would like to thank Professor Pamela Klassen, who has been very generous in inviting me to collaborate with her in print and to share my research with a variety of academic audiences in the study of religion. Her example as a gracious, imaginative scholar and teacher continue to inspire, and have helped extend the horizons of what I hope to accomplish after this dissertation. Thank you also to Professors Christoph Emmrich, Juhn Ahn, Amira Mittermaier, Jennifer Harris, Simon Coleman, and Joseph Bryant who have all, at different times and in different ways, generously given feedback on parts of this project. More recently, Professor Emeritus Wayne Schlepp has been especially kind with his time and expertize on issues related to the Classical Mongolian language. Graduate student colleagues in Toronto and elsewhere who have helped me think through this material include Uranchimeg Tsultem, Maria Dasios, Andrew Erlich, Ryan Jones, Barbara Hazelton, Rory Lindsay, Bryan Levman, Nicholas Field, Arun Brahmbhatt, Tim Langille, Simon Wickham-Smith, and Sunmin Yoon. Paul Nahme, now Assistant Professor at Brown University, has long been a close friend whose intellectual abilities, determination, warmth and humor in the study of Judaism continue to support, direct, and inspire my own work on Buddhist traditions. Rebecca Bartel has also been a close friend and outstanding interlocutor whose far ranging interests and academic ability have shaped this dissertation tremendously. Ben Wood and Sarah Richardson, graduate student v colleagues and close friends in Buddhist Studies at Toronto, have provided tremendous feedback and support for this and other projects, and will be missed as we all move forward. Outside the University of Toronto, I have been the recipient of tremendous support and enthusiasm from scholars and graduate student colleagues. Their feedback has not only helped direct the present study, but continues to sustain my fascination with Inner Asian Buddhism. Especially, thank you to Professor Vesna Wallace at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has for many years supported this project over coffee and sweets in places as diverse as Ulaanbaatar and San Diego. Tremendous thanks also to Professor Johan Elverskog of Southern Methodist University, whose creative scholarship on Mongolian Buddhist history inspired my own academic route many years ago, and who over the course of this project became a very generous and supportive interlocutor. This project also benefited from several conversations with Professor Christopher Atwood and Dr. Lauran Hartley’s assistance in accessing materials held in Columbia University’s Tibetan Studies library. Many Mongolian friends and colleagues, all of whom I cannot thank here, supported this project amidst the unpredictability that often defines research and travel Mongolia and Tibetan regions of the PRC. For their hospitality and support (and for helping me recover from many illnesses, providing food and housing, arranging meetings, rescuing me from broken-down vans deep in the Gobi, and countless other “obstacle blessings”), I wish to thank in Mongolia: Boldbaatar Nyemsuren, his wife Nomon, his brothers and his mother; Damdin Gerlee and her extended family, especially her recently departed mother; Tusheet Lam; Gombo Lam; the abbot and monks of Amarbayusgalant Monastery; and the centenarian Guru Dewa Rinpoche and his staff, with whom I stayed several times before Rinpoche’s passing. A most sincere thanks to Munkchimeg Tserendorj, a colleague and friend at the National Library of Mongolia, who continues to be so generous in helping locate contemporary Mongolian scholarship on Zawa vi Damdin. My most sincere thanks to the current incarnation of Zawa Damdin, Zawa Rinpoche Luwsandarjaa, his entire family (especially Ama-la and Bilguun), and all the monks at Delgeriin Choir in Dungov Aimag: their hospitality and help has been overwhelming. In Qinghai Province (PRC), I’d like to acknowledge the help and friendship of Wendekar Bod and his family. In the Yushu area, I’d like to sincerely thank Jamdak, Lamgön and Nyéthen and their extended Gégyel family for their help during the panic of the awful 2010 Yushu earthquake. Thank you to my family for their patience and support. To my parents and sister for their patience and encouragement, even as this path must have seemed bewildering at times! Zasep Jamseng Rinpoche first invited me to Mongolia prior to graduate school, suggested I pursue Buddhist Studies at the graduate level, and has used his position to help support this project for many years,