by Nikolay Tsyrempilov
Published in Biographies of Eminent Mongol Buddhists. Ed. by Johan Elverskog. International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 2008. P. 117-137.
The period from the second half of the 19 th through the first third of the 20 th century marks the highest... more
The period from the second half of the 19 th through the first third of the 20 th century marks the highest development of Buryat Buddhism. Once a derivative and integral part of the Tibetan-Mongol Buddhist world, by the end of the 19 th century Buddhism in Transbaikalia was subject to conditions that differed sharply from those in the remaining Tibetan Buddhist world. Accelerating modernization and the development of capitalist relations during this period of Russian history, resulted in a revision of the center's politics towards its national minorities, thereby exacerbating internal contradictions within the centralized Siberian Buddhist monastic institution.
In 1918, the former head of the Kudun datsan, Sandan Tsydenov, finding himself in the eastern regions of Transbaikalia after 20 years of solitary mediation, laid the foundation for one of the most surprising movements in the history of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism by founding an independent theocratic government. Despite the fact that this Buddhist theocracy was crushed, and its leader arrested by the authorities within a few months, followers of the Balagat (supporters of Tsydenov’s theocracy) movement opposed the Soviet government until the middle of the 1930's. In addition, indirectly, Sandan Tsydenov's ideas continue to influence members of the Russian intelligentsia to the present day: I am referring to followers of the Buryat Tibetologist, Bidya Dandaron, who founded a religio-philosophical school of neo-Buddhism, and considered himself Tsydenov's spiritual son and successor.
Despite the considerable and long-reaching consequences of Sandan Tsydenov's actions, scholars still know very little about the theocratic government founded in the Kudun valleys and even less about the religio-philosophical views of its founder. An extensive legendary tradition has developed around the figure of Tsydenov, further obscuring his true portrait. Until recently, Sandan Tsydenov's personal archive, confiscated by the Buryat People's Duma, was considered lost. Recently, files were found in the Buryat History Museum archives, containing an entire series of valuable materials written in Tibetan and Mongolian, which reveal the philosophical foundations of the Balagat theocratic movement and its historical development. One of these documents is Sandan Tsydenov's diary during his trip to Moscow, as a member of a delegation of Buddhist monks invited to the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896, where Tsydenov grounded arguments for the future theocracy in ideas about the essence of monarchy and the sacredness of this governmental form. Among other materials, the most interesting is Tsydenov's philosophical notebook, completely devoted to his conceptions of power, government, monarchic privileges and theocratic forms of government supported by quotes from canonical and non-canonical Buddhist texts.
The reasons for the rise of the theocratic movement, headed by Tsydenov, can be found in the clash between conservative and modernist models for Buryat ethnic development in the first third of the 20 th century. The so-called Volost reforms sparked processes of political nation-building, leading to the preeminence of a new generation of young Buryat intellectuals, who based their goals for the national rebirth of the Buryats on progressive European values. To this end, they united with a faction of Buddhist clergy, gathered around the official Buddhist administration, who advocated radical liberal reforms in administrative and economic spheres of the Buddhist church. Although officially part of the conservative Buddhist movement opposed to these liberal reforms, the Balagat leaders suggested an alternative form of government, sharply differing from the conservative movement's ideology of monarchic restoration. With the fall of the Romanovs, Tsydenov's piety for the monarchy, emotionally expressed in all his essays, transformed into the idea of theocracy. The sacred character of the Russian emperors, who in the eyes of Buddhists were the incarnations of White Tara, denied legitimacy to any form of power not endowed with religious blessing. The fall of the monarchy created a vacuum in the perception of thousands of believers which Tsydenov offered to fill with a local Buddhist form of government, declaring himself Dharmaraja of the three worlds. However, the use of traditional Buddhist terminology should not be taken as evidence of an archaic form of government. Preserved official administrative documents of the Balagat government (meeting protocols, decrees, materials from nomenclature commissions, etc.) demonstrate its debt to European governmental traditions and their inherent parliamentarianism.
The theocratic movement reveals fundamental contradictions among the ranks of the Buryat Buddhist clergy, related to the administrative system of the Buddhist church in Russia – the institution of the Pandito Khambo-Lama. Tsydenov's attempt to secure the preeminence of his power by establishing a line of reincarnations (the first of which is supposed to have been Bidya Dandaron) demonstrated a crisis in the system of electing monastic leadership. Despite the fact that this opposition ended after the destruction of the Buddhist church in the 1930's, Buryatia is once again undergoing a new phase of Buddhist development and Tsydenov's ideas are again evoking interest in modern Buryat society.
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