A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

Introduction 39
Arabic verb zara = to visit, literally means “place of visitation,” and in
the religious context, a shrine to which the faithful perform a ziyara or
local pilgrimage (in contrast to the hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, which only
a fortunate minority could ever afford).In Central Asia the “cult of
saints” became especially important during the Soviet period, and we
shall return to this subject in the final chapters of our book.
(b) Buddhism
At present, Buddhism is the principal religion in Mongolia.Again, this
is meant in a sociological and historical sense, regardless of how many
Mongols are actually believing and practicing Buddhists.We shall deal
with their conversion in the historical narrative of this book; here we
shall briefly sketch the origin and chief traits of the Buddhist religion.
Like Islam in Arabia, whose founder put a stamp of finality on his
modification of Judaism and Christianity, Buddhism in India appeared
as a development and modification of earlier religions or philosophies.
Some time toward the end of the sixth century BC Buddha (a Sanskrit
word, originally an epithet with the connotation of “The Awakened
One”), dissatisfied with the dominant Brahmanism, kept some of its
tenets but rejected others and created a new spiritual edifice.The continuity
included one of Brahmanism’s fundamental aspects, the doctrine
of the reincarnation or transmigration of souls; the novelty introduced
several concepts whose essential message was the following: this material
world is one of unending suffering, whereas there also exists an ideal
spiritual world whose attainment, nirvana, should be the goal of every
human.This attainment is impeded by worldly passions that condemn
a living creature’s dharmas (constituent elements) to be trapped in a cycle
of rebirths which in turn reflect the creature’s earlier actions.It is
through a total renunciation of passions and desires, the basic causes of
evil, that a human being can hope to have his dharmas escape yet
another reincarnation and attain instead the eternal bliss of nirvana.
Like virtually all the other founders of great religions, the Buddha
himself left no known writings; again as elsewhere, eventually a vertiginously
voluminous theological literature came into being, and
Buddhism itself evolved into a number of sects.Three principal groups,
however, dominate its history: two of these, Hinayana and Mahayana
Buddhism, resulted from a split that occurred in India during the first
century of our era; the third sect, Lamaistic Buddhism, appeared in
Tibet toward the eighth century.One feature especially characteristic of
Buddhism from very early on was monasticism; indeed, the very essence