From Buddhism to “Cosmic Religion”: Religious Creativity in Kalmykia

Abstract

This article explores aspects of religious innovation that have developed since the early 1990s in the process of the reconstitution of ethnic and religious identity in Kalmykia, a republic in the southwest of Russia. After a brief overview of Kalmyk history and the contemporary Kalmyk Buddhist landscape, the author focuses on new religious groups. Participants call themselves adherents of a “cosmic religion,” involving the worship of the deity the White Old Man. Their beliefs and ritual activities are based on texts allegedly dispatched from the cosmos in an unknown language. The article draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2012.

Notes

^1. Buddhist monasteries and temples are referred to in Kalmykia by the word khurul, literally meaning “assembly.”

^2. During the German occupation of Kalmykia in 1942, several khuruls were reopened. When the Germans retreated a year later, over 4,000 Kalmyks, including monks from the reopened temples, joined the Germans.

^3. Interview with Aleksei Dorzhinov (September 2012).

^4. Among the popular places of education for Kalmyk lay Buddhists are Gandan Tegchinlen in Ulaanbaatar and the Aga and the Ivolga monasteries in Buryatia.

^5. Kalmyk Buddhists express opposing opinions regarding meat offering and especially animal sacrifice in traditional rites, a topic beyond the scope of this article (e.g., Sinclair 2008).

^6. The figure of the White Old Man, as a comical character, is found in Buddhist masked dances (Tib. ’cham).

^7. The traditional Kalmyk Urus Sar coincides with Vesak, the central Buddhist festival marking the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and entering parinirvāṇa.

^8. Bakaeva (2003, p. 100) has pointed out that although Kalmyks believe in the existence of numerous protective deities and spirits, over the course of time their individual names were forgotten and the cults of various local deities have merged into a single cult of the White Old Man.

^9. Interview with Galina Muzaeva (September 2012).

^10. Galina confessed that the first president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, participates in some of the rituals conducted by their group. She believes that he possesses extraordinary visionary powers.

^11. The Russian word dar, literally meaning “gift” or “talent”, refers in this context to one’s healing and visionary abilities.

^12. These practitioners are called both “channels” and “channelers”, perceived simultaneously as conduits for incorporeal entities and disseminators of information received from them. Scholars sometimes correlate channeling with shamanism, spiritualism, oracle, or prophecy (Klimo 1988, p. 75; Hastings 1991, p. xi), with Hanegraaff (1996, p. 27) uniting these phenomena into one general category of “articulated revelations.”

^13. Saigas are small steppe antelopes. Believed to be mount animals of the White Old Man, their horns are said to possess medicinal qualities and are traditionally used in Kalmyk folk healing.

^14. It is a popular method of removing anxiety and impediments, as well as divination, in Kalmykia. Some lead is melted and poured in a bowl of water, held above the patient’s head; by deciphering the floating figures, it is possible to establish the cause of anxiety. To remove anxiety, this procedure is said to be conducted three times.

^15. It is a short uncanonical text in the form of a Buddhist sutra, relating the encounter of the White Old Man with the Buddha.

^16. The initiation conducted in Ekaterina’s group is similar to that performed in Vozrozhdenie.

^17. Zunkva is a Kalmyk pronunciation of Tsongkhapa, a Tibetan monk of the fourteenth century, whose teachings led to the foundation of Gelugpa Buddhism.

^18. Another reason for this attitude is the fact that Telo Tulku is an American citizen who speaks neither fluent Kalmyk nor Russian and is therefore seen as detached from the local people, the same applying to the Central Monastery consisting predominantly of Tibetans. Vozrozhdenie has held several protests, including in September 2007 in front of the Central Khurul, demanding the preservation of the national features of Kalmyk faith.

a. On repressions of Kalmyks, see also Elza Bair-Guchinova “The Republic of Kalmykia: Mongols in Europe” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 1999, vol. 37 (4), pp. 11-90, as well as our theme issue on “Punished Peoples” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 1993, vol. 31 (4), pp. 1-101. For context, see M. M. Balzer, ed. “Kalmyk Connections” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 2015, vol. 53 (4), pp. 1-92.

b. Telo Tulku Rinpoche usually spells his name Erdne Ombadykow. Tulku means a reincarnated being from a specific lineage of teachers; Rinpoche is an honorific meaning “honored teacher.” Erdne Ombadykow’s biography of being chosen for Buddhist training at age 7 and later plucked from an American life as a telemarketer and landscaper is quite dramatic. It was frequently in the press at the time of his sacred selection as Kalmykia’s head lama. See especiallyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/world/the-saturday-profile-an-ex-telemarketer-s-other-life-as-a-buddhist-saint.html

c. The author’s use of the word cult in no way implies negative connotations.

d. See also the excellent monograph Ippei Shmamura The Roots Seekers: Shamanism and Ethnicity Among the Mongol Buryats (Kanagawa, Japan: Shumpusha Publishing, 2014), as well as Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer Shamans, Spirituality and Cultural Revitalization: Explorations in Siberia and Beyond. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

e. See the article by Dmitry Arzyutov in this issue. See also the analysis of Nicholas Roerich and his mystical art in M. M. Balzer, ed. “Art, Identity and Ethnicity” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia 2015, vol. 54 (3), pp. 1-98, especially the article by Svetlana Tyukhteneva “Art and ethnic identity: On the Example of the Culture of the Altai People,” pp. 58-78. The literature on Elena Blavatsky (Madame Helena Blavatskaia) is huge. In addition to the biography by Jean Overton Fuller cited here, see for context Birgit Menzel et al, eds. The New Age of Russia. Occult and Esoteric Dimensions (Munich, Berlin: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2011).

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Valeria Gazizova

Valeria Gazizova, is postdoctoral research associate at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Her PhD is in History of religion (Mongolian religion and culture), awarded 2015 from the University of Oslo. A citizen of Russia, her first degree was in English and French Philology from Kuban State University in the city of Krasnodar in Russia, where she grew up in a Tatar-Russian family.