Oldal 416 [416]
OCR
Lusos BELKA [The Art of Old Mongolia]. It is certainly noteworthy that the Czechoslovak edition contained at least 40 less photographs than the English and German editions and that the text also differs. In the English and German editions there are far more photographs documenting religious life in Mongolia as it was at the time; there are photographs of the consecration of the large stupa at Gandan Monastery which took place on July 9, 1958: Jisl and his colleagues were the only foreign guests at the ceremony. The third and last trip took place from September 9, 1963 to October 3, 1963 and in contrast to the others had a different purpose: “The goal of the expedition was, in the context of creating an inventory of the monuments of the Mongolian People’s Republic, to discover as yet unknown archaeological sites, to register them, document them, and to verify sites previously known of from publications or by word-of-mouth. The goal of the journey was the northern part of Khentii Aimag (province), mainly the Onon River basin. We covered a distance of 2638 kilometers.’””! At the beginning of this trip Lumir Jis] surveyed the area of the Kiiltegin monument for the last time in order to document the state of this archaeological site. He then travelled with the Mongolian archaeologist Namsrain Ser-Odjaw, whom he knew from his first expedition, and with whom he had worked on the excavations during the second trip: Ser-Odjaw was the director of the Mongolian part of the expedition. So after five years, Jis] once again was able to return to Mongolia, this time to examine north-eastern Mongolia. It can be said that Jisl spent more time with Ser-Odjaw than with any of the other Mongolian participants. They set off together on their expedition, which one would certainly wish to characterize as nomadic in this case, as it truly differed from the last, ‘classically’ archaeological expedition of 1958. From September 9" to September 30" 1963, they covered more than 2500 km, travelling in the Soviet-manufactured terrain vehicle GAZ 69 with the driver from the Academy of Sciences — himself a former lama — Lhanaajav. The expedition therefore had the goal of archaeologically mapping out a huge amount of territory and, by means of surface collections, to gather small artefacts, photograph petroglyphs, deer stones, and the like. The true focus of their attention, however, which went unmentioned in their plans and their work task sheets, was what is referred to today as religious field studies. In Jisl’s case, they were creating a ‘passive’ documentation of the ruins and remains of the sacred architecture of Buddhism: monasteries, temples, ovoo offering places, as 20 Jisl, Lumir: Mongolian Journey. Batchworth Press and Artia, London — Praha 1960, p. 27, 144 ill.; Jisl, Lumir: Mongolei. Kunst und Tradition. Artia, Praha 1960, p. 30, 144 ill.; Jisl, Lumir: Umeni stareho Mongolska, Statni nakladatelstvi krasné literatury a uméni, Praha 1961, p. 35, 104 ill. Jisl, Lumir: Zprava o Ceskoslovensko-mongolske archeologicke expedici v Mongolske lidove republice vroce 1963 [Report of the Czechoslovak-Mongolian archaeological expedition in Mongolian People’s Republic in 1963]. Unpublished and undated typescript in Czech, Prague 1963, p. 1. 414
