-- 作者：wgh1256
-- 发布时间：2013/2/24 18:27:04
-- [转帖](英文)The Impact of Buddhism on Mongolia
来源: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/corff/im/Texte/redi.unx
The Impact of Buddhism on Mongolia
A News Group Discussion in soc.culture.mongolian
by
Kaa Byington,
Sambu Dakuginow,
Christopher Kaplonski
and
Kathy Petrie
(in chronological order)
(This discussion took place in July/August 1994. Only mini-
mal editing took place.)
O.C., August 25th, 1994
A heated debate was launched by Kaa Byington\'s casual
remark:
[...] I was in Mongolia as a tourist for two weeks in 1989,
and was fascinated. Stayed in a yurt (gehr) in the Gobi for
a week, among other things. Decided, along with Owen Lat-
timore, who was much admired there, that Buddhism was the
worst thing that ever happened to the Mongols. Would love to
discuss this with someone who knows more than I do. I have a
few references on it--in German.
Sambu Dakuginow rejects this:
I don\'t recall Lattimore ever saying that Buddhism was the
worst thing that ever happened to Mongols. Please point me
to the reference saying so! I happen to be a member of the
Mongolian immigrants to the US that Lattimore interviewed.
We\'re all Buddhists.
Kaa Byington replies:
Sambu: check out Encyclopedia Britannica, article on
Mongolia by Owen Lattimore. Also see: _Prschewaksi, Reisen
in der Mongolei im Gebiet der Tanguten und den Wuesten Nord-
Tibets in den Jahren 1870-73_. "China has a plainly ruinous
effect on the nomads. It exterminates them in a silent war."
Tibetan Buddhism was imposed on the Mongols. It is a
religion developed by a sedentary people, peasants, on a
nomadic people. It nearly destroyed them. The khans should
have chosen Islam, instead. It fit the circumstances. Sorry,
but that\'s a fact of life. The Chinese, who hated the
Mongols, did everything they could to promote Buddism. It
was totally destructive to Mongol society.
Christopher Kaplonski enters the discussion:
I think a few points need clarifying here. First, a note
about Lattimore. He was a talented scholar for his time, but
he is not infallible. Also, he had a tendency to play up the
nomad as an embodiment of the Noble Savage.
Kaa replies:
Noble savage or not, the only way to survive in the Gobi is
as a nomad. In the 1500s, nobody had the technology to sur-
vive otherwise. Deserts do not support cities without
enormous engineering works the Mongols were not capable of.
There is still no agriculture in the Gobi. The majority of
Mongols now are nomads.
Christopher:
Second, what is your evidence for claiming "Tibetan Buddhism
was imposed on the Mongols"? There is clear evidence for
Buddhism among the Mongols as far back as Khubilai. It was a
conscious decision on his part to introduce Buddhism, in
part for political/legitimacy purposes. Altan Khan also re-
established links with Buddhism for (at least in part)
political reasons, drawing definite linkages to the custom
of the "two principles".
Kaa:
Yes, Buddhism was imposed on the Mongols, by their own
leaders. They deliberately chose Tibetan Buddhism because it
was specifically not Chinese They needed a unifying
religion, and they wanted one that would provide literate
monks, who could help them in the administration of govern-
ment. They had no one litereate in Mongolian. The Dalai lama
was brought in from Tibet to organize the religion in
Mongolia, and he found a reincarnated lama, left some
Tibetans monks behind, and returned to Tibet. (Dalai, I
hear, is a Mongol word.)
Christopher:
While the Manchus may have promoted Lamaism (I don\'t have
the time right now to check this) they were also very wary
of it. To go back to Prejevalsky: "They [the Chinese] have
indeed good cause to be watchful, for if a talented,
energetic person were to appear on the throne of the Dalai
Lama, he might with one word, like the voice of a god, cause
a rising of the nomads from the Himalayas to Siberia. " The
same held for the Javzandamba Khutagt -- the Manchu court
was eager to keep him under their control for fear that he
could provide a rallying point to the Mongols. And finally,
the main point. The idea that Buddhism caused the Mongols to
become pacifistic is an old one, but much disputed. David
Morgon writes "it is not easy to demonstrate that the
Mongols, except for the increasingly large proportion of the
population that became monks, were much less warlike than
their ancestors. They were certainly less effective
militarily, but this probably has more to do with political
developments and changes in military technology than with
religion. " (P. 205)
Kaa:
Please note that "except for the increasingly large propor-
tion that became monks" statement. by the 1800s, 50 percent
of the adult male population was in the temples, chanting.
Every chanting monk was one less fierce fighting man on
horseback. The Chinese must have felt 50% safer. Plus, they
had loaned the Mongols, via their puppet emperor, tons of
money to build very elegant temples--at very high interest
rates. Meanwhile, since 50 percent of the male population
was not working, but chanting in temples encrusted with
gold, that left the aged, the women, the children, producing
the, er, GNP, to pay back the loans. The Mongols sank into
utter misery and poverty, victims of the landlords who took
their herds to pay the Chinese loans that supported the
temples. Finally, what happened was that the population died
off to the point where it could not reproduce itself. By
1920 it was appraoching extinction.
Christopher:
It should be remembered that just because a large portion of
the male population became monks, it does not mean they were
effectively removed from daily life. Many of them lived with
their families on the steppe, and often married.
Kaa:
Not from what I read, heard, and saw. Monks in Tibetan
Buddhism in Mongolia spend their lives in the temple. In
1920, Urgha consisted of 400 temples full of chanting monks,
and one pitiful imperial palace. There were a few other
temples clustered in odd places, but Tibetan Buddhism is a
sedenary religion. Monks do not go in and out, or travel
around with their families. This is what I learned while I
was there, what I read in every reference I can find, and
what every traveller up to 1920 said: due to the thousands
of monks chanting their lives away in the temples, Mongolia
was a dying country.
Christopher:
Bawden also supports this argument. He further notes that
the evidence indicates most of the Buddhist texts were
published at the request of Mongol nobles, not Manchus. And,
still on this point, does it need to be further pointed out
how long it took the Manchus to subdue the Jungar empire
(also Buddhist)? They were a real threat to Manchu power for
quite some time. In short, there is no real evidence that
the introduction of Buddhism caused the Mongols to become
less war-like.
Kathy Petrie enters the discussion:
Just a few comments to support what Chris has said. On the
one side, there is plenty of evidence that Buddhism was
known to the Mongols during the late 12th and the 13th
centuries when Chinggis Khan and his descendents were lead-
ing the Mongols on a world tour. The various Mongol tribes
and individuals followed a range of religions. Mo:ngke, the
4th KhaKhan, was reported by William of Rubruck to have paid
attention to religious observances of several different
beliefs. (This may have had as much to do with political
wisdom & even- handedness as religious curiosity) Neverthe-
less, Rubruck counted 12 Buddhist temples in Karakorum.
Khublai, Mo:ngke\'s younger brother, was attracted to
Buddhism, and his chief wife Chabi was a Buddhist. The
Mongols also had plenty of opportunity to view Islam close-
up, including in Mongolia, where a number of Moslems filled
administrative posts in the empire\'s government. However,
IMHO there are several more compelling reasons for explain-
ing the decline of the Mongols\' political and -shall we say-
aggressive prowess than that they somehow picked the "wrong"
religion. First, there was the difficulty of holding the
enormous territory of the Empire together: they had the most
state-of-the-art communication system in the 13th century
world, yet what they really needed wouldn\'t be available for
another 750 years. Second, Thomas Allsen estimates that
there were 700, 000 Mongols in the 1250\'s. The Mongols were
in no position to force their much more numerous subjects to
adopt Mongol ways even if they hadn\'t had a policy of
toleration. However, that inevitably leads to cultural as-
similation with one\'s subjects\' culture - which also drove
cracks into Mongol unity. You don\'t have to look further
than Berke, Batu Khan\'s brother and heir to the Golden
Horde. Having adopted Islam, he sided with the Arabs against
his cousin Hulegu. (Would he have done so for political
reasons anyway? Maybe.) [Going off on a tangent: Islam was
adopted as the state religion of the Il-Khanate, the Per-
sian/central Asian territory Hulegu founded. From what I\'ve
read, it didn\'t appear to have much effect in reviving a
world-conquesting spirit in either the Golden Horde or Il-
Khanate. Then again, I don\'t know much about how the Il-
Khanate got to be the Mughals in India. ] Third, advances in
the art of warfare eventually neutralized the power of the
Mongols\' best weapon, the horse cavalry. As the technology
of war became more sophisticated and machine-oriented, the
basic Mongolian economy\'s limited purchasing power doomed
its ability to keep up. But fundamentally I think the
problem lay with the Mongols\' tribal focus. This is probably
a natural function of the steppe economy: harsh conditions,
limited grazing lands and resources like convenient watering
places. Survival was a family or clan affair, with continual
jockeying for control of the best terrain. A Mongol\'s
identity was a clan identity; Chinggis Khan succeeded in
overlaying a Mongol identity along with the famous world-
conquerors vision. There were problems keeping the Mongols
together even *with* that: witness the tug-of-war over the
successions after Chinggis died. Eventually, as the wars
became more remote and the empire strained under its own
weight, the tribal identities re-asserted themselves.
However, (probably even before the end of the Yuan dynasty)
the Chinese and then the Russians were growing stronger,
more cohesive, and with better war machines. Now, when the
Mongol tribes fought among themselves and appealed for out-
side aid, it was a lot harder to get back out from under the
aid-givers than it used to be in the times before Chinggis.
Sorry for the length of this! I\'m not a historian, so these
opinions could all collapse under close professional
scrutiny :^)
I have been scanning over a summary of Mongolian history
from _Mongolia: A Country Study_. Frankly, I am hard-pressed
to see that Buddhism did much to "water down" the Mongols\'
fighting ways. Tibetan Buddhism was adopted as a state
religion in 1586, shortly after Altan Khan was converted
during raids into Tibet. After that time,
* Ligdan Khan and his Chahan Mongols fought successfully to
prevent the Manchu from expanding westward beyond the
Ordos region in southern Mongolia (Ligdan died in 1634);
* the Torgut, westernmost of the Oirad, fought their way
through the Kirghiz and Kazakhs, became renamed as the
Kalmyks and raided in Russia for 20 years, until 1646
before settling there;
* The Dzungar Mongols continued to raid in Tibet after
Altan Khan died. The book says "by 1636, they had
established a virtual protectorate over the region."
* Responding to Russian activity, the Torgut Mongols raided
through western Siberia, over the Urals & Volga, and into
Russia in 1672 - making peace later on their terms;
* The Dzungar conquered additional western territory (Kash-
gar, Yarkand, and Khotan) as well as Kazakh lands in a
bid to re-unify the Mongol tribes. The Khalkh turned for
help against them to the Manchus in 1688.
* In fact, the Dzungar had ongoing clashes with other
Mongol tribes and with the Qing dynasty in China up
through 1757. Even during Chinese rule in the later
centuries, there were plenty of rebellions and uprisings.
Again, my personal thesis is that the Mongols\' real weak-
ness was that their tribal identity was stronger than a
"Mongol" identity, which made it easy for growing powers
like the Chinese, Russians, and Manchu to divide and con-
quer.
Christopher:
I think this is an important point. (Although I\'m a bit
leary about the word \'tribal\' -- It seems possible to me
that even pre-Chinggisid Mongolian social structure was (at
least to some extent) more feudal-like than tribal. But this
is a different issue entirely.) In fact, I\'m not sure to
what degree we can speak of a "Mongol" identity during much
of this period. Any reading back of a "Mongol" identity is
much more plausibly seen as a project back of twentieth-
century nationalism. If you look at the Secret History, you
see that Chinggis had \'unified the people of the felt-walled
tents\' (sec. 202). Actually, looking at the Mongolian ver-
sion, it doesn\'t even say that. It first says something more
akin to having brought peace to them. It does later in the
section talk of uniting the Mongol people. But this was a
document written after the fact. The point is, \'Mongol uls\'
was referring to a state, a political entity. There is no
need to assume a greater Mongolian identity. There probably
was some more abstract nomad vs. sedentary opposition, but
again, the case for a pan-Mongol identity doesn\'t seem that
strong. Groups have gone to war and conquered other groups
without the necessary belief in a group identity that some-
how encompasses them all. In many cases, in the West, that
was left for the Romantics to invent. And as Kathy pointed
out, such intergroup rivalries continued for quite some
time. So, in short, I\'m not sure we can say there was a
"Mongolian identity" that people owed allegiance to before
the end of the nineteenth, start of the twentieth century.
(Even today, in Mongolia, one finds a tendency to equate
\'Mongol\' with \'Khalkha\'.)
(to be read tongue in cheek:) "All other notions are unsup-
ported and unrealistic delusions prompted by undisciplined
souls. The facts of existence confirm our remarks."
-- Ibn Khaldun
Sambu concludes:
Mongolia was a much divided country and the use of the term
tribal IS justified. Western Mongols often battled with
groups from the North. There are many great tribal stories
that result from these wars. The greatest misfortune that
fell upon the "Mongolians" was the fact they were so separa-
ted and couldn\'t unite against the Chinese storm. The
Chinese used tactics like giving some of the Mongol tribes
much money and power if they joined forces. As an end
results many Mongols had to flee Mongolia (Kalmuks) while
the remaining tribes from the North were termed the Khalkas.
The term nationalism never applied to Mongolians, in large
part due to their nomadic tendencies.
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