Oldal 97 [97]
OCR
INCARNATIONS AND THE SPIRITUAL LEADERS AS SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS sent to St. Petersburg with his nephew, also a monk. After visiting Moscow en route to St. Petersburg, and then being appointed to settle in southern Russian regions, Delek lama, on the way to his new settlement, fell ill and died in Voronezh-town.* Thus, the life of Delek lama is the wonderful illustration of the possible fate of clerics, who did not act in accordance with the wishes of the western Mongolian rulers. It is well-known that the Oirat lamas had also been the ambassadors to other countries, for instance, to Russian Empire; in this case the ethnicity was an important issue, which meant that the ambassadors had to be the ethnic Kalmyks. For instance, Fedot Alchin, the interpreter of the Russian Ambassadorial Order, testified that “the Kalmyk ambassadors told him that they are the ethnic Kalmyks of the Kontaisha [1.e. of the Dzungar leader] people. Their Kontaisha did not send anyone off the foreigners as [his] ambassadors to the Grand Sovereign [Russian Tsar], except his naturally ethnic people. And earlier Kontaisha sent to the Grand Sovereign the same people." Conclusion The analysis of these cases allows assuming, that the Oirat clergy had not been simply subordinated to the secular authorities, but also the special factor had had the significant importance — that was the identity issue; only the ethnic Kalmyk and Oirat spiritual persons (lamas) were able to be the subjects of political activity. Therefore, 1. The independent political role of the clergy has not been allowed among Oirats and Kalmyks, although they had been the subjects of the political activity, acting as ambassadors or tantric masters. But if they didn’t obey the demands of the authority, they could be prisoned or anyhow punished. The most important thing for them was the “naturalness” of the clergy, i.e., their ethnic affiliation to the Oirats and Kalmyks. 2. Since the clergy of no-Oirat and no-Kalmyk origin (that means, of the Tibetan or Mongolian lineages) could not have been the subjects of political activity of the Oirats and Kalmyks, they, as a rule, were its objects. Simultaneously, there were the unique leaders, like the Dalai Lama, who could be understood as the subject and object of the political mechanism and activity of the Oirats and Kalmyks; that was the unique case within the political idea of creating of the clerical state with the Tibetan leader as tutor and the Oirat ruler as upholder of the Faith. 3. The Oirat and Kalmyk spiritual leaders had been able to be the influential political figures when they did get support not only from the highest religious authority (the Dalai Lama), but, above all, had had either hereditary rights (Galdan Khan, Ensa Khutuktu’s incarnation) or a higher level of political patronage (the Russian authorities in the case of Shakur lama; the Qing government in the case of Anjjatan lama, after Kalmyk exodus to China in 1771). 33. The National Archive of Kalmyk Republic. Collection 145, list 1, case 429, p. 34. +4 Russian State Archive of Old Documents. Collection 113 “Zjungarskije (kontajsiny) dela,” list 1, 1640, case 1, p. 156. 95
