Last weekend I went to Sainshand/Сайншанд (which means "good pond"), a small town of around 50,000 people. It is the homeland of Mongolia's so-called greatest mystical poet, Danzanravjaa (1803-1856). My friend Allison and I took the train from UB. It was my first ever train ride and I thought it quite wonderful.
We arrived in Sainshand around 8 p.m. on Saturday and since it was dark we decided to stay in and read. I watched television as I always do at night in hotels. (Although I don't watch television at home, one of my guilty pleasures is to channel surf all night on hotel televisions. This usually occurs the first night I'm in the hotel; after that, I get bored with it. However, in general, Mongolian television is more interesting to me than television in the U.S. Last night I saw a cooking show on television. It was really great because it was so real. The cameras were just in some guy's apartment, not some glossy and sterile studio.)
Back to Danzanravjaa.
Heaven is complete.
Let's hold and enjoy eight magic feasts.
When clouds appear and the time of rain comes,
What is the difference between the altar and the door?
When the activities cease and the time of death comes,
What is the difference between old and young?
When you plant a moiler tree,
A snake and poison will come from the tree.
When you make friends with a bad person,
You will learn bad things from them.
When you plant a spreading tree,
From each branch the fruits will come.
When you have friendship with a good person,
Brightness and wisdom will appear.
Even though there are many heavenly stars,
The brightest ones are only one or two.
Even though there are many earthly creatures,
The wisest ones are only one or two.
They say that cold weather brings a chilly wind,
And that the ravine plant will revive
When you are happy.
Talk about unhappiness produces unhappiness.
Zee zee hoo, zen vaiduu ze, (have mercy,) three saints.
From Lama of the Gobi, Michael Cohn
This is "The Heavenly Sky," a song by Danzanravjaa, who is officially known as the Fifth Noyon Incarnate Lama of the Gobi Desert. He was a poet, writer, composer, educator, artist and founder of Mongolian theatre. The first two stanzas of the song were, as legend would tell us, composed by Danzanravjaa around age five. He was identified as the Fifth Noyon Khutagt when he was seven years old.
Sainshand is also the home of the Danzanravjaa museum, which holds
thousands of the saint's relics such as poetry books, music scores, theatre
costumes, textbooks, gifts by foreign statespeople to Danzanravjaa,
his childhood clothes and toys, etc. It also contains his remains.
Among the many important projects that the Arts Council of Mongolia has undertaken, their Cultural Heritage Program recently completed a 16-month project to create two new storage rooms for the museum, train museum staff (and staff from other small museums) on international preservation standards and obtain locally produced supplies that can meet these standards.
The reason for the new storage rooms is an interesting story. In 1938, all of the relics from Danzanravjaa's monastery, Khamariin Khiid, including his remains, were in danger of being destroyed in the Communist purge. A man named Tudev who was born of a long line of men who were given the task of caring for the relics foresaw the coming destruction and each night carried one large wooden box of relics into the Gobi desert and buried it. There were 150 boxes to begin with; he was only able to get 64 of them buried before soldiers were ordered to destroy the monastery and everything it contained.
Fast forward twenty years or so. In great secrecy, Tudev began to show his grandson, Altangerel, the location of the boxes and to educate him in detail about each of the objects. Tudev would take Altangerel into the desert and unearth one box at a time and go through each item in great detail. Altangerel's family thought Tudev had plans to make Altangerel a monk because they spent so much time together. The family had no idea about the boxes. Not even Tudev's wife knew.
Fast forward forty years or so. Only after Mongolia's democratic transition in the early 90s were the boxes able to be unearthed. Altangerel, pictured here with some of the boxes, brought out 34 or so of them and founded the Danzanravjaa Museum.
30 more boxes remain under the sands of the Gobi, primarily because there has been nowhere to put the objects they contain. Still, only Altangerel knows the location of the boxes. With the two new rooms the ACM has helped to construct and bring up to international standards for preservation, the remaining boxes will be dug up very soon.
I wrote a story about this for the UB Post last week. Check it out. And, in case you've got extra time on your hands, check out this worthy blog on religion, culture, history and birdlife in Mongolia. You won't be disappointed.
