20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

Ritual and state in contemporary Mongolia. The case of Chinggis Khan 563power of the blue sky”. Thus, the shamans recognize him as a shamanist“even though he respected other religions”. They explain the shamanisttolerance towards the major religions by the similarities it shares withthem 21 and some, as a few Mongol intellectuals (see above) consider thatthe cult of Tenger could become the universal religion that our presentworld needs. In this perspective, Buddhism is seen as a foreign religion,and does not have its place in ceremonies concerning Chinggis Khan. Forinstance, when the private Ikh Zasag University (university of the “GreatLaw”, a collection of laws under Chinggis Khan) organizes ceremonies inhonor of Chinggis Khan, such as the one that took place at Khödöö Aral inJune 2001 for erecting a shrine with nine yurts (ger), nine white bannersand five black ones, or the one that took place in 2000 in the Universitycompound, shamans only officiate 22 .The mountain worship ceremonies had to be recreated by localhistorians and ethnologists basing themselves on old manuscripts andother archives. During the ritual organized at Burkhan Khaldun in 1995,ethnologist Kh. Nyambuu helped restore the ritual. He was present inperson and was explaining to the participants how to proceed. At the 1998ritual, it was S. Dulam, anthropologist and poet, who was the scientificadvisor. We can point here to a difference with similar rituals that survivedin Inner Mongolia, for which, despite the destruction suffered underChinese rule, and especially during the Cultural Revolution, there was nosuch long interruption. Ritual knowledge could be transmitted from onegeneration to the other. In Mongolia, such ritual supervisors had long goneand ethnologists and historians became the depositaries of traditions. Theyhave been instrumental in recreating the rules in this new era.In the 1995 ritual, on Mount Khentei (Burkhan Khaldun), the headof state took part in person at the sacrifice to the mountain, the “tutelaryspirit of the Mongolian nation”. Below is a brief description of the modernceremony, based on a description of the 2005 ceremony published in June2005 in the Mongolian paper Il Tovchoo; some elements come from a TVdocumentary on the 2006 ceremony, year of the 800 th anniversary of thefounding by Chinggis Khan of the Great Mongolian state (Ikh mongol uls,1206) that I watched during my stay in Mongolia that same year. This ritualwas mainly focused on Chinggis Khan and was less a celebration of nature.The worship takes place in spring (in the lunar calendar, it is the 15 thwas organized by the Ikh Zasag institute in June 2001 for erecting a shrine to ChinggisKhan at Khödöö Aral, in the same Khentei area (ibid. 5)21Pürev 1999: 92.22Email Daily News, 11/06/01, Mongol Messenger 20/06/01.