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SUSAN C. BYRNE
pendence with the introduction of a democratic system but also the revival of their
traditional religion, Buddhism, which had been suppressed but not extinguished
for over 50 years. Being acutely short of Buddhist teachers, with only a handful of
highly educated monks alive at the time though very elderly, they sought help with
the revival from the exiled Tibetans. The Tibetans had managed against all odds to
preserve their form of Buddhism in exile but they were still effectively stateless and
excluded from their homeland some 30 years after the Dalai Lama had fled Tibet.
The Head Abbot of Mongolia told me in 1993 that the Gandan management com¬
mittee had made the conscious decision to follow the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan
Buddhism and to follow the exiled Dalai Lama by sending the young monks to be
educated in the Tibetan monastic institutions in South India rather than seeking help
from the monastic community in Tibet, which was under the sway of the Chinese
Communist regime.
After 1990 the first young monks from the three philosophical temples in Gandan*
went to the Tibetan exile monasteries in South India to continue their traditional
Gelugpa monastic education (by now reformed by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama) with
the majority going to Drepung Gomang, and others to Sera Jey.** By the mid 2000s,
what had been a handful had grown to around 300 student monks studying in India.
Many came back before completing the 11-year study period although some stayed
on to do Geshe Lharampa studies. During this time I witnessed Gandan putting
a great deal of effort into building up the teaching capacity within its datsans and
the Dsanabadsar Buddhist University while limiting the number of Tibetan monks
coming to the country to teach. It was clear that the Gandan authorities wanted the
revival to be Mongolian led. However, the decisions made in the early years of the
revival is now playing out as more and more monks return from India bringing with
them the influences of their Tibetan teaching institutions.
Closing Thoughts
The story of the revival of a great Khégshin khiiree, which unfolded in Baganuur
was intriguing and revealing. There are competing reasons for claiming a temple
activated after 1990 is a revival of a monastery destroyed in the late 1930s. The
most unquestioned basis for the revival of Khdégshin khtiree was the one manifested
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For full description of these datsans see Majer, Zs. — Teleki, K.: Monasteries and Temples of Bogdiin
Khiiree, Ikh Khiiree or Urga, the Old Capital City of Mongolia in the First Part of the Twentieth
Century. Budapest 2006, pp. 76-78. www.mongoliantemple.org.
Project of the Berzin Archives. Study Buddhism. The monastic education system in the Gelug monas¬
teries covers five major topics, based on five great Indian scriptural texts studied through the medium
of logic and debate. The five main subjects are: Prajfiaparamita (Tib. phar phyin); Madhyamaka (Tib.
dbu ma); Abhidharma (Tib. mngon par chos, mdzod); Vinaya (Tib. ‘dul ba). Lama Zopa Rinpoche,
Head of the FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Trust), who came to Mongolia
in the late 1990s, was influential in re-establishing the re-connection between Sera Mey and Gandan
having raised the funds and rebuilt the Jdgaachoinzinlin datsan (in Gandan) in 2003.
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