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Lusos BELKA stay in the city served for acclimatization (of the seven members only Lumir Jisl had been in Mongolia before; all the others were in Asia for the first time) and exploration of the city and its vicinity. By coincidence they witnessed a historic event: the consecration ceremony. The documentation of the ceremony is all the more invaluable that no other visitor from abroad participated apart from the Czechoslovak archaeologists (and the Russian wife of architect B. Chimid Anna Vasilyevna, see Fig. 9). The oldest document is the authentic recording of the ceremony, which can be found in the unpublished private travelogues of L Jisl. The record was made on the day of the ceremony: “9 July 1958, Wednesday Telegrams about the arrival in Ulaanbaatar sent home and to the Director of the Archaeological Institute. At eleven we were received by the vice-chairman Seretrand the head of historical section Natsagdorj. We were offered kumys. In the afternoon we witnessed the Lamaist ritual of consecration ofthe new suburgan located between Gandantegchinling and Maidar’s Temple.’ This afternoon we attended the lama’s ceremony of the consecration of the new suburgan [stupa] located between the Gandantegchinling and the Maidar Temples. There was a colored canopy in front of the suburgan with a gilded image on the bumpa; below the canopy was the altar with the offerings in glass tubes and the torma (sacrificial offerings from dough.) There were even blue and white ornaments in front of the tent. The ceremony consisted of prayers, alternating music (trumpets, drums, and bells), the fumigation of incense sticks and the throwing of grain. The entire ceremony did not last for long. The guests of honor with the high-ranking lamas went by car into the large yurts where the feast was. I greeted the abbot and his deputy. When the abbot got into his car, a crowd of people threw themselves at the car and kissed it.”* In Jisl’s Czech monograph about Mongolia*’ there is only one black and white photograph capturing the religious conduct of Mongolian lay Buddhists; where you can see aman ina low bow, the prostration. All the other published photographs with religious topics, which form the majority of the book, do not show people; they mostly depict artifacts, such as painted or printed canvas scroll paintings, frescoes, sculptures and reliefs, clay offerings. A one-page long text about the consecration ceremony appeared > Suburyan is the Mongolian term for a stupa, a sacral structure, formerly a reliquary. The first Buddhist stupa was erected in the place where the body of Buddha Shakyamuni was cremated. Since then, stupas have been built in countries where Buddhism is professed. Jisl, Lumir: Soukromy denik z prvni pracovni cesty do Mongolska, Cinske lidove republiky a Sovetskeho svazu, vykonane od 3. srpna 1957 do 19. unora 1958 [Private travelogues from the first journey around the Mongolian People’s Republic, the Chinese People’s Republic, and the Soviet Union, August 3, 1957 — February 19, 1958]. Unpublished handwritings in Czech, in three volumes. 7 Sisl, L.: Uméni starého Mongolska [The Art of Old Mongolia], 1961, Fig. 41. 420
