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MAKING OF Monastic SEXUAL MorAaLIty IN MONGOLIA’S PASTORAL CULTURE
reality of the period in which a significant number of monks in the remote rural areas
and in Urga engaged in sexual relations with women, drank alcohol, and smoked to¬
bacco. His laments did not yield any results, as his own sexual morality was becoming
questioned and the long periods of his drunkendness noted.” After the collapse of the
Qing dynasty, the Ministry of Justice of the new Mongolian monarchial government
sought to legislate against monks’ misbehavior by drafting a new law, called The Laws
and Regulations to Actually Follow (Jinxene Dagaj Yawax Xiil’ Diirem), which for the
most part replicated the statutes of the Qing’s Mongol Code of Law. The Laws and
Regulations to Actually Follow explicitly states that thirty-two of its articles concern¬
ing the misconduct of monks in the capital had to be drafted in order to terminate
the monks’ bad behavior. The law required that seven groups of high-ranking monks
and officials (jaisan ttismel) be appointed to inspect the conduct of monks, including
whether or not they are mingling with women. During religious ceremonies such as
tsam (cam) dances and the Maidar (Maitreya) festival, police were required to keep
monks separate from women. Similarly, if women wished to pay homage to the Eighth
Bogd Jebtsundamba or to make offerings of incense and butter lamps on special oc¬
casions, they could do so only under the supervision of policemen and soldiers in the
empty area in front of Ikh Khiiree. According to these new regulations, a monk who
was found guilty of misconduct with women and girls had to be handed over to a senior
monk, put in a cangue, beaten with sticks, and forced to attend püjas for thirty days
and make a hundred prostrations each day. The new regulations also required that
even if a woman who was caught visiting monks’ residences or walking with monks
in a market place was not guilty of sexual misconduct with a monk, her ankles were
to be flogged twenty times and in some cases forty times, and she was to be forbidden
to return to Ikh Khiiree. In reality, the legal reforms during the Autonomous period
seem to have had very little impact. According to The Laws and Regulations to Actu¬
ally Follow, the incidents of women and girls illegally wearing red and yellow robes
in order to mingle with monks in Ikh Khiiree did not diminish despite the imposed
fines. Therefore, the All-Governing Ministry recommended that they be penalized with
an increased fine in taels of silver. The same document also stipulated penalties for
9 In his unpublished Autobiography read by Owen Lattimore described the Eighth Bogd Jebtsundamba
as he saw him in 1920 with these words: “... he was very hard to do business with because he was such
a fearful drunker. He would sometimes sit cross-legged for a week, drinking steadily night and day. ...
he would go on drinking, never lying down to sleep and never moving except to go out to the toilet. At
times he would seem to be completely unconscious, with his head lying on his chest; he would not seem
to understand anything that was said to him. Then he would raise his hand and demand another drink;
and the new drink would seem to sober him up so that he could conduct business. Even after a bout like
this he would not sleep except in naps of two or three hours at a time. Yet, he was a very able politician
and kept control of things within the limits of his rapidly vanishing power.” See Lattimore, Owen: Na¬
tionalism and Revolution in Mongolia. With a Translations from the Mongol of Sh. Nachukdorji s Life
of Sukebatur. E. J. Brill, Leiden 1955, pp. 49-50. For references to the questioned sexual morality of
the Eighth Bogd Jebtsundamba. See Bawden, Charles R. (translated): Tales of an Old Lama. (Buddhica
Britannica Series Coninua VIII.) The Institute of Buddhist Studies, Tring 1997.
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