20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

560 Marie-Dominique EvenIn post-Communist Mongolia, a new form of cult can be associated withChinggis Khan, the cult of Mount Burkhan Khaldun, in the Khentei, itselflinked to the worship of the black standard. S. Dulam draws attentionto the similar taboos concerning both the black standard and the BurkhanKhaldun (ibid. 41, 159).Chinggis, as related in the §103 of the Secret History of the Mongols,was able to escape from his enemies by hiding in this mountain. He decidedthat he would worship thereafter the mountain, praying, kneeling andsprinkling kumys (mare’s milk) everyday, and he entrusted his descendantsto keep this worship going. The area itself is close to his birthplace and mostprobably to his last resting place, the precise localization of which is yetto be discovered. In Mongolia, mountains are traditionally associated withthe cult of one’s lineage ancestors: their burial places were often locatedon the side of mountains overlooking the territory of their descendants.With the spread of Buddhism, the cult of sacred mountains changed; thespecific connection to one’s own lineage faded; ancestors were replacedby generic local spirits already developed in Tibetan popular Buddhism,such as the spirit-masters of the aquatic world (lus, tib. klu) or the masterspiritsof the ground (savdag, tib. sa bdag). Lama’s regulated mountain orhilltop sacrifices, declared the spirit or deity as “protector of the Religion”,and made u specific texts in Mongolian to accommodate the lay people’sdemands and traditional beliefs 13 . Yet the cult of mountains did not becomefully buddhicized: today still it reflects pre-Buddhist views, such as theexclusion of women from the sacred worship space at the top: a practicegoing back to the clan collective sacrifice to the ancestors, from whichpeople from other clans were banned – and by virtue of the exogamic rulethis included all the brides and wives of the clan members. During Manchusuzerainty official cult of the major mountains was also organized. Thelocal Manchu representative took part in it and the emperor even granted tothe mountain spirit-master an “allowance”: the money was buried in a holenext to the sacrificial place. When Mongolia recovered its independence in1911 as a theocratic regime headed by the Bogd Khan (the 8 th ŽebtsündambaKhutugtu, the most prominent incarnate lama of Northern Mongolia), newregulations for worship were established. The cult lasted for some yearsafter the instauration of a Revolutionary regime in 1921 14 . It was officially13On the cult of sacred mountains in Mongolia, see M. Tatár (1976). Of the tworituals presented and translated by the author one deals with the new regulations adopted bythe Bogd Khan. The cult of the four sacred mountains surrounding Khüree, «Monastery»,ancient name of Ulaanbaatar, has been more recently studied by S. Dulam, includingsome of its post-Communist developments (2004).14According to Sükhbat 2004: xx, the official cult ceased in 1924, after the