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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 tobacco. 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 concerning 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 occasions, 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 Actually 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: Nationalism 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. 327
