In the description of our previous project (Project 12) we introduced the reader to the remarkable story of Danzan Rabjaa (1803-1856), the fifth incarnation of a Mongolian Gelukpa monk from the southeast Gobi known as the Noyon Tulku.
As said there, his first Gelukpa incarnation was a contemporary of both the Fifth Dalai Lama and the First Jetsun Dampa in the mid 1600s, both of whom had been Gelukpa by monastic ordination and basic training, but who in their adult lives also combined several Nyingma lineages in their daily disciplines. It seems that most of the early incarnations of the Noyon Tulku did the same, including the fifth incarnation, the great Danzan Rabjaa.
Many Mongols today mistakenly proclaim that Danzan Rabjaa was Red School, meaning Nyingma, but in fact his biography make it clear that 90 % of his practices were Yellow School, or Gelukpa. This trend of historical mis-representation is an after-effect of Communism in Mongolia. The Communists destroyed everything to do with Danzan Rabjaa during the 1930s and 1940s. But they noticed that his popularity continued with the masses. Then in the 1950s several Communist scholars decided that particular passages in Danzan Rabjaa’s poetry demonstrated that he was anti- Manchu, anti-Chinese, and even anti Jetsun Dampa. The Communists decided that the best way to accommodate his popularity was to allow his celebration in this context. And because the Yellow School was the principal religion in pre-Communist Mongolia, they decided to also make him anti-Yellow School. Some Communist-period scholars even suggest that he was poisoned by jealous lamas (a Communist ploy to incite Mongols against their own religion), whereas it is clear that he was poisoned by a Gobi princess who was angered when he spurned her sexual advances.
In the text describing Project 12 we mentioned how Lama Tutob managed to save many of the Danzan Rabjaa treasures from the Communist destructions of the 1930s and 1940s by burying them in the Gobi, and then how he passed on the responsibility of their preservation to his grandson Altangerel.
Amongst these treasures were a number of paintings allegedly done by Danzan Rabjaa himself, as well as many done by his students.
Of particular interest is a set of twenty-five paintings portraying his lives prior to becoming the First Noyon Tulku (called the Noyon Khutagt by Mongols today). The list includes many of the most famous masters in India and Tibet, as well as several Mongol incarnations. Some of the images are nudes.
The paintings are said to be dream portraits, i.e., images of his previous lives as seen by himself in dreams. Although Altangerel is of the belief that Danzan Rabjaa painted them himself, most scholars believe that the surviving set (which is incomplete) are copies made by his students sometime in the last half of the 19th century.
The idea of photographing the set came up after my first two visits to Sainshand and Hamrin Hrid (sometimes spelled Khramiin Khriid). I asked Altangerel, who had guarded the images since age eight, and was director of the Danzan Rabjaa Museum in Sainshand, where they were kept, if he would like me to do so. He replied to the affirmative.
Several weeks later a group of us left by train once more for Sainshand. The Bhutanese artist and photographer Tsheing Penjor was in charge of the shoot. Accompanying us was my old friend Batdorj Damdensuren, who at the time was the director of the Zanabazar Mongolian National Fine Arts Museum in Ulaan Baatar, and also two of Batdorj’s close friends: Princess Shuree from the Foreign Ministry; and Bayanduren, one of the great felt artists (“The White Circle”) of the country.
Tshering did a wonderful job of photographing the set of Danzan Rabjaa’s Previous Lives.
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| Earliest known portrait of Danzan Rabjaa, presently in the Danzan Rabjaa Museum, Sainshand |
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| Tsheing Penjor and his two assistants |
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| Glenn Mullin with Batdorj (left) and Altangerel (right) |
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