Mongolian Connections: Lingua Franca

Before Mongolia, I’d never traveled alone in a country of which I did not know the language. Though I was intimidated by this prospect at first, I’ve discovered something: I do know the language. Sort of. Not Mongolian, but English; one can get by in Ulaanbaatar with just English, and even in the countryside, “Hi” and “Thanks” seem to be pretty standard knowledge. Though I feel weird expecting people to know English, I also feel weird trying in Mongolian sometimes, when they probably do know enough English to help me. I’d never had to realize before how universal English is. Sure, plenty of countries don’t have many English-speakers, but generally nations are implementing English in their curricula (which is convenient for would-be traveling Americans who can teach it just about everywhere except Spain). One (very very strange) article I read in a Mongolian newspaper mentions the importance of educating people “in internationally recognized English language.” (There was more to that sentence, but I’m not sure exactly what it said; it in itself is evidence that there should be more English education in Mongolia.) And English isn’t in use just for the benefit of native English speakers; my Bulgarian friend who lives in Switzerland communicated with me and university employees completely in English, and almost all tourists here use English. At a café, I’ll hear a German speaking with a Mongolian, both in English. On one countryside-tour, the Frenchman in our group used an English translator, and he then translated into French for his wife. English has become the language of international communication. With European-Mongolian interactions, this is interesting because the language is a neutral third ground, what Esperanto was meant to be (and sort of failed, but we should keep working on it!) Of course, it’s only a neutral third ground for the non-American/British/etc. But I’m not complaining about that.

This de facto universal language just sort of sprung up organically, as, I suppose, languages have to. (Unfortunately for poor L L Zamenhof.) English is one connection here, but the idea of an international language of communication is another; of course, the idea of a neutral language that different nations used to communicate reminded me of one of my favorite things: Latin. In the Middle Ages, educated people spoke Latin; monks and scholars from different nations communicated in Latin, and texts were written in Latin so that everyone could read them. If you knew Latin, you knew that, even in a very regionally centered world, you could find someone with whom to communicate. In many senses, English is the new medieval Latin.

I wonder what this indicates about the world. The elite of the medieval world used an international language to communicate, before vernaculars came into fashion, and now, after a hiatus when the elite sort of just spoke all the languages they’d need, English has become a necessity for travellers and/or speakers of obscure languages. What does our age have in common with the Dark Age that necessitates such a language? Furthermore, I think it’s significant that not only the elite are speaking in this new universal language; for the first time in a long time (ever?) the common man in one nation can communicate with the common man in another. Of course, for the first time in a long time (ever?) the common man is travelling. But I’m not sure that’s all there is to it.

As much as the similarity between Latin’s function and English’s function interests me, the differences between the languages interest me, too. I’ve always thought English to be near-impossible to learn. Why don’t “through,” “though,” “cough,” and “tough” rhyme? It makes no sense. But when I speak to people who’ve learned English as a second language, they tend to have the same response to my denigrations of my language. They all say that English is easy to learn. Part of this, I think, is the fact that one is exposed to English all the time, even in a foreign country. But the other reason, as my friend K pointed out to me, is because English is so flexible. Though its irregularities must be frustrating, its lack of structure means that there aren’t grammatical tomes to be pored over. Perhaps it is very difficult to learn to speak English correctly (who/whom, “to boldly go,” final prepositions), but it’s pretty easy to pick up how to construct sentences.

English’s flexibility is also one of the things that makes it Awesome. It absorbs phrases and words effortlessly; “je ne sais quoi” and “fajita” are both equally at home in the English language. (Though you don’t even want to know how I just tried to spell that first one.) Somehow, they’re as at home as “whatever” and “hot dog.” Other languages aren’t like this, I think. K says that Chinese is so rigid that foreign words sort of just can’t be imported, while “home run” makes it into Spanish as the bastardized “jónron,” because that fits Spanish’s rules. In Latin, words have to fit a grammatical structure, and so foreign terms often had to be forcibly wedged into that structure. (And looking at how Ancient Greek imported foreign names can lead to hilarity.) English, however, takes words just as they come. I’m sure this isn’t true with some words, but for the most part it is more flexible than other languages.

This might be the reason for another difference between English and Latin: how they change. English is rapidly transforming, picking up new structures, new words, and new grammar in addition to new idioms. Latin, on the other hand? Though style, syntax, and vocabulary changed, I can read Plautus and I can read Abelard, and they were separated by over twelve centuries. Most English speakers can’t even manage Shakespeare fluently, and he was writing sort of recently. This is for reasons other than the rigidity and flexibility of Latin and English, respectively; I think part of it also has to do with who is speaking these languages. Latin was preserved by the intellectual elite, and it was taught to people as a second language. Little monks would be constantly corrected, and one wouldn’t put up with mistakes in scholarship. Latin wasn’t given a chance to evolve much in the structured settings in which it occurred. Compare this to how grammatical errors and stylistic faux pas are allowed not only in everyday conversation, but also even in published works and the New York Times (though not the New Yorker, of course). English and Latin both serve(d) as common languages, methods of communication across cultures, but the ways they play that role, the origins, the evolution, their use, and the repercussions, are quite different.

The modern English/medieval Latin connection is the subject of this Mongolian Connection, but I think I also, after a couple months of writing about why Mongolia is Awesome, want to remind everyone that English is Awsome, too.

(And I’ve used four words or phrases imported from other languages in this post, just by accident.)

Meditations: Don't Tread on the Grass, Lam

“Bogd Khan” is not a term that is familiar to most people, but in Mongolia, the Bogd Khan is kind of a big deal. He was the Buddhist religious leader in Mongolia, and also functioned as a political leader after Mongolia declared its independence in 1911. He was the religious leader because he was the eighth reincarnation of the Jebtsundamba, the spiritual head of Mongolian Buddhism;  though he, the last official Jebtsundamba, died in 1924, an unofficial Jebtsundamba now lives in Tibet but is unable to enter Mongolia for some hazy political reasons. These reincarnations lead back to the first Jebtsundamba, Zanabazar, the greatest Mongolian artist of all time who was also Awesome in a lot of other ways, and who was, in turn, a reincarnation of some other big deal Buddhist leader.  

But this post is not about the Jebtsundambas; it’s about the Bogd Khan’s palace. Though the Soviets destroyed the Bogd Khan’s summer palace and temples, they left intact his Winter Palace. His Winter Palace complex also included many of his summer temples, so it’s a mystery why they didn’t tear it to the ground. His property (including religious artifacts) were all auctioned off to get money for the State, and when communism fell, supposedly all the buyers (or descendents of the buyers) donated his things so that they could be placed in the Winter Palace Complex as a museum. If this is true, it’s pretty Awesome. In any case, the Winter Palace is now a museum filled with religious artifacts, and the building of the palace itself is filled with all sorts of luxurious and lovely belongings of the Bogd Khan.

One quick interruption for a Mongolian Connection: It seems like everywhere I go, there are museums filled with the most beautiful luxurious things for the obscenely rich. There are the Crown Jewels in England and the giant diamonds and studded daggers of Topkapi Palace, and the lovely unicorn tapestries of the Cloisters that took 1,000 handmaidens 1,000 days to weave. (Okay, I made the 1,000 thing up. But that gets the point across.)  Everywhere you go, as a constant, there will be absurdly beautiful and expensive things for the top .0001% of society. And every time I see these things hanging on walls or encased in glass, I get the same exact “I want that! Why can’t I have that?!” feeling. Which just goes to show that some things are constant. And also maybe explains how exactly communism did manage to sprout where it did—a society collectively taking its “I want that!” feeling and turning it into a “If I can’t have it you can’t have it!” feeling and turning that into a rebellion. But I don’t know about history or communism, so I imagine I’m grossly oversimplifying everything. What I do know is that seeing the 25 silk cushions of the seat of the Bogd Khan, and his capelet made from 160 mink tails, and his cloth-of-gold del, and a fox fur cloak the size of a bed, and an embroidered silk hat for his pet elephant, and his wife’s peacock feather giant parasol that went above her litter (seriously?), I probably would have started a rebellion if I’d thought I’d get some cloth-of-gold, too.

That’s all just background. I’m really bringing up the Bogd Khan’s palace (and his wealth, and the Jebtsundambas) to talk about the grass. Something struck me as a little off about the grounds of his palace and the courtyards between the temples. It seemed a little shabby, and then I noticed: The grass isn’t cut. The grasses were allowed to grow tall, with some scrappy shrubs and shorter grass and maybe weeds poking through concrete. I tried to imagine it in its former glory, all maintained and sprinkled and shiny. And I thought, “I think, maybe, I like it just the way it is.” There was something nice, something peaceful and pretty about its overgrownedness. I figured maybe it’s just because I was used to Oxford, where they have OCD over grass quads down to an art form. (Ask me someday about their grass clippers that have a tray to collect the grass as they trim the edges of the quads.) A while later, I joined an Australian group and their guide, and one of the women asked, “Why don’t they trim the grass here? It would be so lovely if they trimmed the grass.” This was interesting to me, because though I’d had the first question, my reaction was the opposite.

But then it got really interesting. One of the guides explained, “Oh, that’s the Mongolian way. We don’t like to disturb nature. Maybe they take out the weeds, but they don’t cut the grass because nature is beautiful on its own.” Ohhhhhhhh… At first, this seems like such a nice sentiment, and my favorite gardens at Oxford are the ones that are carefully engineered to look “natural.” But then I thought about all the other parks in Mongolia. They are all like the Bogd Khan’s palace, but when the background is concrete or apartment blocks instead of Buddhist temples, it sort of loses its charm. In fact, I lament the lack of just a pretty space in UB to sit and read outside. There are a few parks, but most of them are overgrown and unkempt and add to the abandoned Soviet city feel of UB.

So why do Westerners prefer nature combed and cut and tame looking? And why do Mongolians prefer it wild? There can’t really be a version that’s objectively more beautiful, can there be? Is it just because of what we’re used to? I think of parks as ideally pretty and nicely cared for, but a Mongolian thinks of parks as beautiful when they are thick grasses pouring out of the sidewalk... Is that it? Or do our park preferences reflect some deeper social phenomenon or philosophy? From our perspective, I think it might have to do with wealth. Taking care of our gardens demonstrates labor and equipment, which cost money. Overgrown areas tend to be poorer areas, because they can’t afford the upkeep. So I see an overgrown park and think it’s overgrown because no one’s bothering to take care of it, which gives it that feel of abandonment/neglect. But what do overgrown parks symbolize for Mongolians? Is there an economic background for their preference, too? Or is it deeper than all that? Is it somehow related to a man vs. nature phenomenon, in which Westerners want to be the victors? Mongolians, on the other hand, are more comfortable with nature and accept their role as part-victim (in terms of nature’s sometimes harsh ways) and part-beneficiary (in terms of nature’s providing for them and its incredible beauty)… Is that it? Or am I reading way too much into this?

And lastly, it occurs to me that in fact there are circumstances in which Americans/ Westerners love natural beauty. The monasteries here with overgrown courtyards and the rock ruins poking through grass are beautiful, in contrast to the urban parks. And in America, sun-dappled meadows overflowing with wildflowers are idealized as nature’s untouched wonder; add a cottage to that meadow and it’s the setting for a heartwarming movie about the importance of family over financial success or something like that. So why are these types of overgrown nature considered good, while too much nature in our parks?—Get that under control! Does it have to do with the idea of things being out of place? We feel a need to control everything, from dirt to trash to our brains to our children’s brains to the weather, and nature fits into this. Having a well-maintained park keeps nature carefully in designated spots, but it’s okay for meadows to be overgrown because that’s what they’re for. That is, nature has its place, but it’s not where we live and work. (Unless, of course, we live in a cottage in a sun-dappled meadow overflowing with wildflowers, probably taking care of a handful of orphans, our senile mother, and a crippled dog, waiting to teach a stockbroker from the city how worthless money really is.)

And I think I’ve just hatched the plot for a new Kate Winslet movie.

Mongolian Connections: Prayer & Production

At Gandan Khiid last week, R explained to me the family/lama system that takes care of the practical needs of the monks. I knew that a lot of the Gandan monks lived in gers in the district around the monastery, but I expected that they lived in monastic communities, or that there would still be a lot of housing for them in the temple complex (it is a monastery, after all). But that’s not how these monasteries (the urban ones, at least) work. Basically, a family “sponsors” a monk, and provides his material needs. They feed him, house him,  and though I don’t know if they clothe him, they even do his laundry. In return, the monk is expected to keep them in his prayers, and to intervene with the divine powers for them in times of crisis. Taking care of a lama gives one very good karma, and the way the deal works is essentially: Material support in exchange for spiritual support.

Though the Christian system never worked quite the same way, the material/spiritual support exchange was crucial in medieval Europe. Wealthy merchants, nobles, and even royalty often donated a lot of money to particular monasteries, and in exchange, the monks were expected to pray for the donor and Gregorian-chant for him/her every so often. Oxford is a great place to see this in action—New College was founded by a bishop/chancellor (not a layperson, but it proves the point) so that, after his death, the choir there would sing masses for his soul. Even peasants without a lot to give utilized this system; because there were so many religious communities (and so much bureaucracy) in Oxford, there are still records that show the donations peasants made to this or that parish or monastery in their will. In return, the donor expected a grave near the church and maybe a psalm every Sunday or something.

The exchange was not always so specific. When we stopped by a convent in Greece, one student on my trip asked a nun what service the convent provided for the outside community. (I can’t remember the context of the question, but it did fit.) The nun, a little indignantly, explained, “We pray for them.” Being modern, enlightened high school students, this hardly seemed like a worthwhile endeavor.

But it is interesting that this exchange is crucial in these different religious traditions. There is a divide, in both cases, between the people who pray and the people who work. The lay/clergy or lay/monk distinction was generally clear in medieval Europe, as it is generally clear in Mongolian Buddhism.  There was/is not supposed to be too much crossover in the roles. Yet in the Christian case, the group of people specializing in prayer has become less significant. Christians are expected to pray mostly for themselves, and they don’t hear much about donating to people to pray for them. (The personal connection to God carries more weight now than it did in the hierarchical church system of 700 years ago.) That being said, most laypeople still don’t devote the bulk of their daily lives to prayer. So they are still, decidedly, laypeople, unlike the somewhat blurrier Beguines of the 13th/14th centuries, who worked for their subsistence but spent as much time as possible praying. Now prayer happens, but it usually comes after material needs (and usually also after material wants).

The Buddhist system in UB, on the other hand, still actively maintains (at least from what I heard) the idea of having a group of people dedicated to prayer, while others are dedicated to keeping them alive and praying.

So this Connection comes with a Meditation: What is it that, in different religions at different times, makes the need for separate groups so important? Why should some people pray and some people work? Is it like a spiritual mass production system, where more gets done if each person fits in one part? Are there political or economic reasons that people maintain it? And why did it change in Christianity? (A historian would be able to help with this question.) At what point did the system in which laypeople provided food/housing/clothing and a separate community was devoted to prayer become a system where most people did some of both? From a spiritual standpoint, does this mean people are losing out on prayer (or material goods, I guess, though that seems unlikely)? And lastly, do we still have any kind of system like this, in which some people are dedicated to ideology and some people are dedicated to material production?

A couple spring to mind. First I thought of academics; higher humanities education doesn’t produce a lot (except papers), but professors/ researchers are supported because, by teaching and researching, they are advancing knowledge (as opposed to prayer). To an extent, I think this makes sense—we value education in a similar way to how people used to value religion. My second idea was, of course, the world of “finance” or “consulting” or “banking.” (I will never understand what sort of a Venn diagram those three belong to.) No matter how many people try to explain it, it seems that this is just turning money (aka paper) into more money, and usually for the people who had money to begin with. In some ways it makes sense (providing mining equipment and railroads to mine Mongolia’s gold, for example), but a lot of it just looks like a whole lot of nothing. (And, as evidenced by certain financial situations, it becomes a whole lot of nothing sometimes, too.) These people who do not produce are supported because the world values money. (Did finance/banking as we know it originate in the US, where money was valued in a way, if not to an extent, that it hadn’t been before?) I’m not sure finance fits in as well, because people do not actively support financiers the way people actively support academics; it’s more that financiers know how to manipulate a system dependent on capitalism (and the fact that people do value capitalism) for their benefit. These examples bring up another possibility: Are the four systems (Christian monks, Buddhist monks, academics, and finance) just a way to perpetuate the rich being able to avoid manual work or physical production, the way academics and finance often seem to be to me? (Yes, a lot of people advance themselves from poverty through academics or finance, but this often seems to be the exception.)

If anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear.

Mongolian Connections: Religion is Religion

At the end of my first week here, I finally got a taste of Ulaanbaatar’s religious life. Though they are never particularly conspicuous and don’t seem to impact everyday life much (if at all), there are a few temples scattered around the city.

A quick updated rundown on Mongolia’s religious life: Under Stalin’s regime, the temples were (almost) all destroyed and the monks “purged.” The purges of priests in Russia were small compared to the purges of monks here. Although statistics in Mongolia generally seem pretty dubious, it is estimated that 30,000 lamas were executed during religious purges. All temples were razed, except for four (that I know of) that were preserved for cultural reasons. Two were converted into museums, and one (Gandan Khiid) was mostly destroyed, though Russian officials used some buildings to stable their horses and store things, until the prime minister of Mongolia had to whip up an active temple pretty quickly when a dignitary wanted to see one. Gandan Khiid was then kept in controlled “working condition” for diplomatic purposes. (Read: So that the government could pretend it hadn’t killed all the monks.) Unlike in the USSR, where religion was discouraged and at times persecuted, everything I’ve read describes it as pretty much forbidden in Mongolia.  

Since the fall of communism, however, it’s had a relatively tremendous resurgence. About 50% of Mongolians now identify as Buddhists, though 40% still consider themselves “not religious at all.” I’d be interested to see how that applies in Ulaanbaatar versus the countryside, and I’m not sure exactly how people were polled. (I tried looking up statistics for different areas of the US to compare, but the polls tend to be adherent-based, and I can’t really equate the two.) So although atheism/agnosticism is alive and well, religious devotion is on the rise. Christian denominations are apparently succeeding in various missionary efforts, and their influence has been significant as well, according to R and Prof. O. One result of this new rise in religion is the re-opening or founding of a few Buddhist temples. The largest of these is Gandan Khiid, the one that was allowed to operate under the communist government. It is one of the city’s main tourist attractions, so Friday R and I headed over to check it out and see a ritual. 

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but I think there were two things influencing my preconceptions… First, my idealized vision of a population coming back to religion after years of oppression. In my imagination, I guess, though devotion still wasn’t the norm, (as evidenced by my post on the city’s lack of religious atmosphere), when people did embrace religion, they did it out of faith and enthusiasm for their beliefs. Second was a somewhat Orientalist idea of Eastern religion as more spiritual and even “pure.” Rightly or wrongly, Buddhism does tend to be considered more spiritual, closer to true belief and philosophy and separated from ritual, and a lot of people who identify as non-religious but “spiritual” identify more with Eastern religious doctrines. (If you disagree, let me know. I could be way off-base here, and trying to find people’s general opinions on forums, etc., yielded little of interest and made me lose a little faith in humanity.)

So I guess those things were swirling in my subconscious when I attended my first Buddhist ceremony. R and I arrived at Gandan too early, wandered around the monastery grounds and the streets outside, and then, when we heard a gong, (the first I heard in Ulaanbaatar, though I live across the street from a temple), we came back to try to watch the morning ceremony a bit. We walked past a huge incense burner on the way in, and the incense was thick in the air of the small main room of the temple, along with another smell I couldn't identify. There was a row of lamas on each side of the temple, and behind that a row of smaller lamas-in-training, young boys with shaved heads and dressed in the monastic red-and-yellow. The adult lamas were chanting (in Tibetan, we think), some from memory and some from books, and every once in a while the kids would join in for a line or two. (Though the kids’ participation was pretty sporadic and definitely seemed based on their whims rather than liturgical mandate.) 

A few laypeople did seem to be worshiping somewhat, walking to the back to revere the Buddhist statue there, and I vaguely recall someone touching one of the young lamas for a blessing. It was sometimes hard to tell the worshipers from tourists or onlookers, so I'm not sure exactly how many I saw. One older couple was especially interesting—very weatherworn, and the man was dressed in a traditional Mongolian herder’s outfit. R and I sat for a while to watch, and as I was observing all the lamas and their mini-lamas, something became obvious: They were bored. Not necessarily painfully fidgety-bored, but more bored than an average student would be in class, or a teenager in church. 

I noticed this first with the mini-lamas. They weren’t really paying attention (and the adult sitting next to them didn’t seem to care), and instead kept pinching each other or guffawing or chattering under the chants about whatever it is schoolboys chat about. (Having never been a schoolboy, I can only imagine what that is, and I suppose I will never know.) They looked exactly like boys their age (10-13?) might look like in the back row of a very boring assembly. Except this wasn’t the back row of a very boring assembly—it was the second row of a religious ritual. The kids were wedged right between the laypeople and the adult monks, and they seemed to care very little about the opinions of either, and even less about the ceremony.  

The adult monks weren’t chattering, but they were pretty clearly not putting in much effort to attain spiritual enlightenment, either. One kept yawning, occasionally through his recitations, but mostly in his pauses, and another chanted monotonously away, looking every bit like a kid who is made to apologize recites, “I’m sorry I called you a poo-head and broke your doll, and I promise not to do it again.” He looked about as much like like he was rolling his eyes as he could without actually doing it. It seemed to be just chant-chant-chant, another day at the monastery for these guys. I’m aware that I’m making a few assumptions, and reading into these guys’ expressions maybe more than I should. After all, these were a few monks at a morning ceremony at one temple. But I do want to say that these specific monks just did not seem that into it. They didn’t look spiritual, and they didn’t look like they cared one bit about what they were doing; they were just trying to get it done. I was confused as to why one would become a lama in a still relatively non-religious society unless one really felt called to it, but R explained that it is already very prestigious, and kids are sometimes put into training at a young age because of the honor of having a lama in the family. 
 

So that was my first impression of Buddhism in Mongolia. The next night, I found out more about it. While talking (or listening, more) to a group of expats, I heard that it is well-known that monks in Ulaanbaatar are corrupt. That was most of what I heard, confirmed later by R, and I wasn’t sure exactly what “corrupt” means, but one guy (X) did tell this story:  He had been talking with a monk the day before, and the monk said that he was worried about going back to the monastery because he was in trouble. When X asked why he was in trouble, the monk said that earlier that week, he had taken his wife’s car for a drive, gotten too drunk, and crashed it into a bus. (I can’t remember if it’s a bus, a car, or a truck, but I remember it being a relatively big vehicle, so I’m going with bus.)

Fun facts: Monks here are not supposed to marry, they are not supposed to drink to excess, and they are definitely not supposed to drink to such excess that they crash their wife’s car into another vehicle. Twenty years in, and already Lamaism in Ulaanbaatar is going the way of the medieval papacy. This is not a new phenomenon, however. The giant Buddhist sculpture at Gandan Khiid was originally commissioned in 1911 by the Bogd Khan, the spiritual leader of Mongolia, in the hopes that such devotion might restore his eyesight. His eyesight was due to a “severe illness” according to the plaque in the temple, and further research reveals the nature of the “severe illness”: Syphilis. Earlier, in the nineteenth century, the monk and poet Danzan Ravjaa spoke out against the corruption and hypocrisy of his contemporary lamas. (It should be noted, however, that Danzan Ravjaa was a member of a monastic tradition that allowed drinking and marriage, and his criticisms were more against the lack of compassion and devotion he saw in other monks.) His most famous poem “Shame, Shame” has a line that certainly might apply to the lamas I saw at Gandan Khiid:

“And the monks who call meditation a hindrance, shame!”

The whole thing reminded me of medieval monasticism and priesthood in Europe, and how, though there were devout monks, there was also a lot of corruption and a lot of simply not being true to the philosophy they were meant to be following. I can imagine monks at Cluny reciting their psalms with exactly the expression of the bored lama, and little nobles dropped off at Monte Cassino gossiping with the same subdued zeal as these mini-lamas. Across cultures, though monasticism has high ideals and attempts to root itself (initially) in its belief system, as it becomes popular or prestigious, it descends into just another way to be, at best, an ordinary human being, mistakes and all, (eg drunk-driving and crashing), and at worst, corrupt and sinful and power-hungry (*coughcough BORGIA coughcough*).  

I don’t have a conclusion in particular here; I just want to point out that religion is religion, and religious institutions don’t seem to be any better or any worse depending on the societies (or faiths) from which they spring.

Mongolia is Relevant: The Dalai Lama

Perhaps you have heard of the Dalai Lama. He’s kind of a big deal. The word “lama” is the word for a high-ranking Buddhist monk; it’s Tibetan in origin, but it is used here (though technically incorrectly) interchangeably with "monk." So when you go to a monastery, you can refer to the men there (all in red, with orange sashes) as either monks or lamas. (In one amusing typo on a museum plaque, a great “llama” had bestowed a gift on the temple. I immediately thought of The Emperor’s New Groove.) 

So that’s what the “Lama” in Dalai Lama means—but what about “Dalai”? It’s not Tibetan, but is the Mongolian word for “Ocean.” In the sixteenth century, Altan Khan, a ruler in Mongolia, bestowed the title of “Dalai Lama” on Sonyam Gyatso, the first person to receive it. (Two other Dalai Lamas were retroactively declared, making Sonyam Gyatso the third official Dalai Lama.) Thus, the most powerful living man in Tibetan Buddhism owes his title to a Mongol Khan, centuries after Genghis’s reign.

The Tibetans tend to refute this legend, saying that “Dalai Lama” was a Mongolian translation of a term already in use in Tibet, and that “Gyatso” (Tibetan for “ocean”) was used in titles before the Mongols applied “Dalai” to “Lama.” However, Mongolia legendarily thinks of itself as an ocean, (because of its vastness), and Genghis Khan means “Ocean King.” Genghis took this title after he had united all the Mongol people and had finally become ruler of the whole “ocean,” that is, Mongolia. 

(Definitely Ocean.)

Tibet and Mongolia are both landlocked, but one has a literary tradition of using the “ocean” as a symbol of significance, and historical precedence in using “ocean” as a person’s title. So, whatever the direct linguistic lineage of “Dalai Lama” is, I’m thinking the influence was very much Mongol. So you’ve been mentioning a Mongolian tradition for years and haven’t known it.

 Rajat and the Dalai Lama are tight.