![]() After the Mongols submitted to the Chinese Qing Empire in the late 17th century, the emperor ruled that all future reincarnations of the Bogd were to be found in Tibet, to prevent a Mongol uprising. It had been nearly 300 years since the title of Bogd belonged to a Mongolian. In many ways, the challenges with the search underscored the weakened state of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia. The monk he climbed on was the Ninth Bogd’s assistant. That afternoon, the objects that A Altannar picked up - the necklace and the bell - had belonged to the Ninth Bogd. They followed an ancient custom of parsing mystical visions and astrology to winnow the selection down to 11 to take the secret test - although the families of only nine boys responded. The team pulled 80,000 names from the list of boys born in Ulaanbaatar in 20, the years after the last Bogd died. Mishigish Bataa, left, a religious scholar at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and an adviser to the government who participated in the search for finding the 10th reincarnation of the Bogd, at Gandantegchinlen Monastery in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on May 17, 2023. They had to dust off old religious texts from the National Archives and consult with experts in the Dalai Lama’s office in Dharamsala, India. The process of finding a reincarnation had almost been lost to time. ![]() ![]() When Bataa, the religious scholar, and the leaders of Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar set out on the search for the next Bogd, they were flummoxed. “If he wants to play video games, he should.” Hope of a faith’s revival “We want our son to grow up in a normal environment, not under pressure, not under scrutiny of heavy teachings,” said Munkhnasan Narmandakh, 41, the boy’s mother. ![]() And it put Mongolia on the spot, straining its delicate relationship with China, its much bigger and richer neighbour. So when the Dalai Lama appeared with A Altannar in public this year, it was a defiant assertion of his influence over the faith and a challenge to Beijing’s claims over succession. In 1995, China kidnapped a boy the Dalai Lama had named as the Panchen Lama, the second-most-recognisable figure in Tibetan Buddhism. Dalai LamaĪfter the last Bogd died in 2012, there was concern that China would try to choose or influence the selection of the next one. Although officially atheist, the party has asserted that only it can name his reincarnation, and those of other high lamas. The Chinese Communist Party has sought to assert its authority over Tibetan Buddhism even outside China’s borders, part of a long campaign to tighten its control over Tibet.Ĭhina regards the 88-year-old Dalai Lama - who fled Tibet as a young man in 1959 and has been living in exile in India ever since - as an enemy determined to free Tibet from Chinese rule. When someone sneezes, Mongolians say “Bogd bless you.”īut who gets to be the Bogd is a sensitive question with implications for Mongolia, China and Tibet. Today, the title adorns banks, cashmere boutiques and auto dealerships. In the early 20th century, a Tibetan-born Bogd was the theocratic ruler of Mongolia, revered as a god-king figure. The Bogd is a symbol of Mongolia’s identity, a position dating back nearly 400 years to descendants of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, who embraced Tibetan Buddhism and helped it spread across China and other conquered lands.
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