7 - Buddhist Devotion to the Russian Tsar: The Bicultural Environment of the Don Kalmyk Sangha and Russian Orthodox Church in the 1830s

Summary

Abstract

Inoue Takehiko's paper analyses how the close and long-lasting relationship between Kalmyk Buddhists and Don Cossacks (in the Don Cossack province) developed during the nineteenth century. This relationship was mediated both by Kalmyk Buddhist monks and the requirements of military and religious services to the Tsar, leading to transformations in the identity of this Kalmyk group. He uses the example of the ceremony surrounding the opening of a Kalmyk Parish school in 1839 to demonstrate how both parties sought to combine their socio-religious cultures in furtherance of the alliance of their interests.

Keywords: Kalmyks, Don Cossacks, Russian Orthodox Church, Tsar

Introduction

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Kalmyks living on the steppes of Southern Russia broadly consisted of two groups: the majority Dörböd, Torghūd, and Khoshūd, who were under the control of Astrakhan province, and the minority Don Kalmyks (Buzāva), a distinct group of people from Torghūd and Dörböd origins who migrated to the Don region in the eighteenth century. In 1806 the Don Kalmyks were officially incorporated into the Province of the Don Cossack Host, where they served in the military with the Cossack soldiers.

The Russian authorities established an administrative district for the Don Kalmyks called the Kalmyk district (Kalmytskii okrug). This administrative district was divided into three units (ulus): Upper (Verkhnyi ulus), Middle (Srednii ulus), and Lower (Nizhnii ulus). The Upper unit consisted of four squadrons (sotnia), the Middle—two, the Lower—four, and the other three squadrons moved separately. A squadron had a chief (sotnik), chosen by squadron members themselves. Two judges, also elected, assisted the chief. Eight out of the thirteen Buzāva squadrons were primarily of Dörböd extraction while the remaining five were primarily of Torghūd origins.

The Don Kalmyks had at least one Buddhist temple (khurul) in each squadron, and in each temple there was a bagsha. The temples were portable tents (khurla ger). In 1806, while not banning Buddhism outright, the Russian authorities tried to both reduce the number of Kalmyk temples from twenty to thirteen and limit the number of monks attached to these temples. Galina Dordzhieva's survey of the attempts of the Russian administration to limit and control the number of Don Kalmyk Buddhist temples and monks points out that “This [the limit of thirteen temples] began the Tsarist government's intervention in the spiritual affairs of the Don Kalmyks.”