Browsing by Subject "Khalkha"

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    Buddhist Archeology in Mongolia: Zanabazar and the Géluk Diaspora beyond Tibet
    (University of Hawaii Press, 2019) Tsultem, Uranchimeg; Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair of International Studies, Herron School of Art and Design
    This article discusses a Khalkha reincarnate ruler, the First Jebtsundampa Zanabazar, who is commonly believed to be a Géluk protagonist whose alliance with the Dalai and Panchen Lamas was crucial to the dissemination of Buddhism in Khalkha Mongolia. Zanabazar’s Géluk affiliation, however, is a later Qing-Géluk construct to divert the initial Khalkha vision of him as a reincarnation of the Jonang historian Tāranātha (1575–1634). Whereas several scholars have discussed the political significance of Zanabazar’s reincarnation based only on textual sources, this article takes an interdisciplinary approach to discuss, in addition to textual sources, visual records that include Zanabazar’s portraits and current findings from an ongoing excavation of Zanabazar’s Saridag Monastery. Clay sculptures and Zanabazar’s own writings, heretofore little studied, suggest that Zanabazar’s open approach to sectarian affiliations and his vision, akin to Tsongkhapa’s, were inclusive of several traditions rather than being limited to a single one.
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    Cartographic Anxieties in Mongolia: The Bogd Khan’s Picture-Map
    (University of Hawaii Press, 2016) Tsultem, Uranchimeg; Edgar and Dorothy Fehnel Chair of International Studies, Herron School of Art and Design
    This article extends cartography into ethnographic and representational practices for territorial inclusion (Hostetler 2005) and nation building (Krishna 1994). Outer Mongolia, a vassal state of the Qing Empire until 1911, produced ethnographic paintings intended as new cartographic visuals around the time of its independence. Mongolia’s last ruler, the Bogd Khan (1870–1924) commissioned the artist Balduugin Sharav to produce a large painting of the Mongol countryside titled Daily Events, a work that constitutes an unusual cartographic “picture-map” (Paul Harvey 1980) intended for a special public display. The work (now known as One Day in Mongolia) depicts the Mongolian people as a distinct ethnic group in quotidian scenes of Central Mongolian (Khalkha) nomadic life. This article demonstrates how the covert connections between the scenes together construct a Buddhist didactic narrative of the Wheel of Life, and argues that this picture-map was the result of the Tibetan-born ruler’s anxieties over ethnic identity, national unity, and the survival of his people, who strove for independence from the Qing, as well as their safe positioning vis-à-vis new political neighbors.