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the position would have acquired considerable academic credentials he
could have held the post only after his studies at Drepung. But after his
stay at Drepung he was wanted for murder in Tibet, and this would seem
to preclude him from holding a high position in a Tibeto-Mongolian
Buddhist institution in Beijing. Either officials in Beijing were unaware
of his past, or he had just made up this episode about being a Da Lama
in Beijing to further burnish his reputation after he began a famous man
in Mongolia.
We have covered most everything known about the first three decades of
Dambijantsan s life. Up until 1890 he had, in effect, been in training for his
future role. At the age of thirty or so he was about to assume a new per-
sona: the descendant of Amarsanaa returning to the land of the Mongols
in order to free them from their Qing oppressors.
Chapter Five
The Legend of Amarsanaa
ow Dambijantsan spent the late 1880s remains unclear, but in the
H
spring of 1890 he suddenly appeared near the city of Kulja, on the
Ili River in what is now Xinjiang Province of China. Whatever he had
been doing in the previous years he was now transformed. He was no
longer an aspiring member of a monastic community, nor an itinerant
drifter, nor a hired-hand with Russian expeditions, nor an alleged thief
and outlaw. Instead he made a startling announcement to all who would
listen: he was the grandson of the Oirat chieftain, Amarsanaa, who had
led the last great revolt again Qing rule, and he had returned to take up
the struggle once again and free Mongol peoples from the tyranny of the
Qing Dynasty.
The Ili Basin where Dambijantsan chose to reappear in his new guise was
part of the New Frontier (xin jiang) added to the domains of the Qing
Dynasty China after the defeat of Amarsanaa in 1757, but separated as
it was from the rest of Xinjiang by formidable geographical barriers it
constituted a distinct domain of its own. Also, as one geographer points
out, the Ili Basin is of  special interest as the historical divide between the
eastern and western halves of Inner Asia. 1 As such it was more oriented
toward the west, towards the vast steppes and deserts that stretch off to
the shores of Caspian Sea, than to mountain-rimmed basins and depres-
sions to the east. The Ili River was the easternmost of the rivers known to
the Türks who inhabited the region in the sixth century as Jetisu, or  Sev-
52
The Legend of Amarsanaa 53
en Rivers. Later this area would become known as Semireche, Russian
for Seven Rivers. Bounded on the west by the Talas River and the east by
the Ili, and including the Chu and other rivers in eastern current-day Ka-
zakhstan,  Semireche is an area where sedentaries and nomads have met
at various points in history coexisting, overlapping, or competing be-
cause it lends itself to both ways of life . . . 2
The Ili River itself begins about thirty miles east of the current-day
city of Yining (also know as Ili, Yili, Kulja, and Gulja), at the confluence
of the Kax and the Künes rivers. Both of these rivers, which flow roughly
parallel through the Ili Basin, begin about 150 miles farther east, originat-
ing from glaciers sheathing 18,044-foot Erenhaberg Shan (shan = moun-
tain), a peak located at the nexus of the of the Tian Shan Range and the
Borohogo Shan Range. The Tian Shan, which bisects Xinjiang east to
west, culminates in the 22,949-foot peak of Khan Tengri, about 260 miles
west of Erenhaberg Shan. This formidable range separates the Ili Basin
from the huge Tarim Basin and Taklimahan Desert to the south. From
the peak of Erenhaberg Shan the Borohogo Shan Range extends west
to the Zungarian Alatau Mountains on the current-day border between
China and Kazakhstan. With peaks of up to 11,000 feet, this range sepa-
rates the Ili Basin from the immense Zungarian Basin to the north. The
Ili River itself flows 388 miles west from the confluence of the Kax and
Künes rivers, emerging from the double prongs of the Tian Shan and the
Borohogo Shan and flowing out into the Khusundaka Steppe before fi-
nally debouching into the land-locked, 6,562-square-mile Lake Balkhash
in Kazakhstan.
Up to sixty miles wide near the current border with Kazakhstan, well
watered by rivers flowing off the flanks of the Borohogo Shan and Tian
Shan ranges, with fertile riverine bottomlands bordered by rich grass-
lands ramping to the mountains on the north and south, the Ili Basin
was a prize that was coveted and fought over by nomads for at least 2500
years. Many of these nomads, after rising to power in this fecund land,
eventually migrated elsewhere and founded great dynasties and empires.
The people known as Scythians, or Saka, may have inhabited this area as
early as the seventh-century b.c.3 After they were dislodged by the Yue-
zhi in the second century b.c. they emigrated to northern India where
they eventually founded a Indo-Scythian kingdom. The Yuezhi, an Indo-
European people described by some sources as having reddish or blonde
Ja Lama: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan
54
hair, established their capital in the Ili Basin. With a population of some
400,000 people (apparently adults), they were capable of mobilizing a
mounted army of 100,000 archers.4 The Yueshi were in turn displaced by
the Wusun and moved westward to found the Kushan Empire in what
is now Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.5 The Kushan Empire, strad-
dling the great trade routes between India and Inner Asia, became one of
the major vectors for the dissemination of Buddhism throughout what
is now Xinjiang and Transoxiana and on into China. The Wusun, who
replaced them, occupied the Ili Valley and set up a capital on a tributary
of the Ili River believed to be the current-day Tekäs River. At one time
they numbered some 120,000 households with 630,000 individuals, in-
cluding 188,000 men capable of bearing arms.6 As such they were a power
to be reckoned with in Inner Asia. According to one Chinese annalist,
 Of all the [people] of the Western Regions, the Wusun looked the most
peculiar. [They] have cerulean eyes and red beards and look like Mi mon-
keys are their descendants. 7 The Wusun were eventually defeated by the
Xiongnu (Hunni), who then presumably occupied the Ili Valley, although
little it known about their presence in the region. By the seventh century
a.d. the western branch of the Khökh Türks occupied the Ili Basin, and
still others, including Sogdians, the Khara Khitai, and Uighurs would
also make their homes here between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.
With the rise of the Mongol Empire the Ili Basin came into still greater
prominence. In 1209, Barchug, the Uighur ruler of Uighuristan, centered
around the capital city of Khocho, near current-day Turpan in eastern
Xinjiang, recognized the rising power of the Mongols and prudently al-
lied himself with Chingis Khan, thus avoiding the terrible fate of so many
who opposed the Mongol khan. In appreciation, Chingis gave him one
of his daughters in marriage and even referred to him as his  fifth son. 8
Eastern Xinjiang thus secured the Mongols moved on to western Xinji- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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