The Sixteenth-Century Renaissance of Buddhism in Mongolia

Erdeni Juu is the oldest extant Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Khalkha Mongolia (present-day Republic of Mongolia) and its holiest monastery, due to its prestigious origin, holy relics, and icons (fig. 1). It has a long history of construction and partially escaped destruction several times.1

It is located in the fertile valley of the Orkhon River, which was the center of former steppe empires. Not only it is located adjacent to the ruins of Qara-Qorum, capital of the Mongol Empire between 1235 and 1260 (razed to the ground by the Ming armies in 1388), but recent excavations have revealed that it was built directly above the palace of Emperor Ögedei (r. 1227–1241), son of Chinggis Khan.2

The Late Sixteenth-Century “Renaissance” of Mongol Buddhism

Erdeni Juu was founded by Abatai Khan (1554–1588), a descendant of Chinggis Khan who ruled the Khalkha Mongols, and grandfather of First Jibzundamba Khutugtu Zanabazar (1635–1723).3

Abatai Khan converted to Tibetan Buddhism, following his cousin Altan Khan (1507/8–1582), ruler of the Tümed in Southern Mongolia (now Inner Mongolia, China), who had met Sonam Gyatso, the hierarch of the Geluk tradition, and granted him the title of Dalai Lama in 1578. This period of massive reconversion of Mongols to Buddhism was a time of cultural and artistic renaissance. In 1579–1580, Altan Khan had Chinese carpenters build a temple south of his palace of Hohhot (Inner Mongolia), to house a statue of twelve-year-old Shakyamuni modeled on the Jowo Rinpoche, the holiest icon of Lhasa. The statue and the temple were known in Mongolian as “Erdeni Juu,” translating Jowo Rinpoche (“Juu” being the Mongolian pronunciation of Tibetan Jowo, “lord”).4 The temple, now known as Great Juu/Temple (Yekhe Juu), and its statue have been preserved (fig. 2). The Tümed monasteries developed a Chinese-style version of the large Tibetan main temple with a porch, an assembly hall, and a back shrine in one building, covered by a succession of three Chinese roofs. The back shrine is surrounded by a colonnade to allow circumambulation of the main icon from the outside (fig. 3). Most of the other monasteries were itinerant, in felt tents.

The Three Juu Temples

Following Altan Khan’s example, Abatai Khan met the Dalai Lama, who entrusted him the mission of founding the first Khalkha monastery. He commissioned a Shakyamuni statue to enshrine a relic given by the Dalai Lama and hired Chinese carpenters from Hohhot to erect his own Erdeni Juu monastery. The clay statue we observe today replaced an older one. According to oral tradition, the statue would be an old “true portrait” of the Buddha dating from the Uyghur Empire (744–840) or its copy.

Abatai Khan settled his palatial tent on the ruins of Ögedei Khan’s palace and probably rebuilt the old walls. His temple, erected in 1586–1587, is located in the southwest corner of the square wall, maybe because the palace was in the middle (fig. 4). Erdeni Juu may first have been a Sakya tradition monastery (the school favored by the Mongol Yuan dynasty, 1271–1368), and converted to the Geluk tradition in the late eighteenth century.

Abatai Khan’s temple (now known as the Central Juu) is a Chinese-style two-story pavilion with bracket sets supporting a double-eaved gable and hip roof covered with green tiles, standing on a terrace (fig. 1). It reused bricks and stones from Qara-Qorum. Several Tümed temples may have inspired Abatai Khan’s construction, such as the Glazed [Tile] Hall of Maidari-yin Juu, located fifty-four miles (eighty-seven kilometers) west of Hohhot.

The Right Juu/Temple and the Left Juu/Temple, erected by Abatai’s son and grandson on either side of the Central Juu, were completed around 1630 (fig. 5). Each was a one-story pavilion with a gable and hip roof. Their original icons probably represented the Buddhas of the Past and Future Eras (Dipankara and Maitreya); around 1880 they were replaced by statues of Amitabha and Shakyamuni.5 These statues are now said to represent Shakyamuni at two stages of his life: at eighty years and thirty-five years—flanking the twelve-year-old Shakyamuni of the Central Temple.

These three temples are unique in Mongolia. First, they stand in a line and face east, a configuration that is not seen in Tibet and China, but which appears to be a Mongol characteristic. A second distinction of the three temples is the presence of an inner circumambulation corridor surrounding the central shrine, as in Central Asian and Tibetan temples of the first millennium. The pilgrims’ practice of circumambulating outside Erdeni Juu’s wall and inside the corridors to worship the Juu statues recalls the concentric circumambulations around the Jowo Rinpoche at Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.

The facades and roofs of the Three Temples are decorated with Buddhist symbols (Kalachakra mantra, double vajra, brass plaques depicting deities), consecration formulas in Lantsa script, and Chinese decoration. Their interiors have coffered ceilings and Chinese framework with red-lacquered columns circled by dragons. Additional structures were later added in the compound, surrounded by a wall, including the square-shaped tomb-stupas of Abatai and his son Gombodorji (1594–1655) (fig. 5).

Abatai Khan also founded the small Blue Temple (Khökhe süme, rebuilt in 1970) to house an image of Vajrapani donated by the Third Dalai Lama. In 1675 his grandson and heir Chakhundorji (r. 1655–1698) built the small Dalai Lama Temple with a Tibetan-style door frame (preserved).

After the death of its founder, Erdeni Juu became a funerary temple. In addition to the two tombs, it preserved mural paintings depicting Abatai Khan with his wife.6 Abatai Khan’s tent-palace with a capacity of three hundred people served as his ancestral shrine; it contained Abatai’s throne, armor, and weapons, and wrathful statues of his marshals (Zanabazar moved the tent-palace to Urga/Yekhe Khüriye, where it was known as the Western Palace). Erdeni Juu can be compared to Maidari-yin Juu, also a fortified palace that was progressively converted into the funerary temple of Altan Khan’s family, with a funerary stupa and a painting depicting two princesses and donors (fig. 6).7

Erdeni Juu in the Qing Period

The square-shaped fortified wall was rebuilt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Made of earth with brick cladding and painted white, it encloses an area of 1,540 by 1,360 feet (470 by 415 meters), with four monumental gates opening at the four directions. Four stupas were built at the corners, and ninety-six other stupas were erected between 1730 and 1804 (the lucky number of 108 was never reached). The stupas were of different shapes and sizes but were rebuilt as identical structures around 1970 (fig. 7).

New temples were founded after the Khalkha joined the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) in 1691. In the nineteenth century, the site included twenty major temples and about forty smaller temples and administrative buildings (figs. 8 and 9). Fifteen hundred monks and novices lived in some five hundred yurts and houses within wooden fences, forming quarters divided by narrow alleys. A major restoration was made from 1795 to 1798 by Chinese carpenters from Hohhot.

The heart of the monastery, near the center of the complex, was the three-story assembly hall (fig. 10). Its front courtyard served for tsam dances. The main temples were dedicated to the deities Avalokiteshvara, Vajradhara (private temple of the Jibzundamba), Mahakala, Geser, and Amitayus; there were also six academic colleges and many stupas. Most of the buildings adopted the Chinese style and construction techniques, but their Tibetan Buddhist identity was immediately recognizable from the outside by means of symbolic elements decorating the exteriors. Their interiors did not greatly differ from those of Tibetan temples.

About two-thirds of the structures were demolished in the antireligious persecutions of 1938 that destroyed the greatest part of the Mongolian Buddhist heritage; thirteen main temples and five smaller ones survived, but were heavily damaged.8 The surviving structures include the Three Temple complex, the Dalai Lama Temple, the thirty-three-foot (ten-meter) Golden Stupa flanked by smaller stupas (built in 1799), and the residence (Labrang) of the reincarnated lama, in the northwest, built between 1780 and 1785 (fig. 11). The Labrang is a flat-roofed, three-story building constructed of brick; its appearance is Tibetan, with decorations of dark friezes, brass mirrors, and Kalachakra mantra medallions.

Erdeni Juu now operates both as monastery and museum, and is registered on the heritage list of UNESCO. The Labrang (partially rebuilt) serves as the assembly hall for the Gelukpa community that revived after 1990; in addition, a yurt-temple houses the only Sakyapa community of Mongolia. Erdeni Juu enshrines two miraculous images: a small statue of the Sandalwood Buddha, said to come from India, and a stone statue of Gur Gombo (Sanskrit: Panjara Mahakala), special protector of the Sakya tradition. These statues have been preserved, along with paintings and liturgical objects.