India and Mongolia: Shared Heritage

India and Mongolia: Shared Heritage

By Prof Lokesh Chandra May 15, 2016

First published

Author of more than 500 books, Vedic and Buddhist scholar Prof LOKESH CHANDRA, president, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, was recently conferred the Order of the North Star by the Mongolian government for his stellar contributions in fostering greater understanding between India and Mongolia. He spoke to NARAYANI GANESH
Culture is not just music and dance — culture is power….Now China is proud of its culture but we are not. In Mongolia they have Kalidasa’s Meghdoota in Mongolian. The Astangahridaya Samhita of Vagbhata is translated in Mongolian and they follow it. Most of the culture in Mongolia has gone from India.We don’t realise it but India is a cultural super power in Asia,”says Prof Lokesh Chandra.“ It is imperative for India to have a national culture policy.” Shiva’s trishul figured in the scepter of Emperor Chinggis Khan, the great Mongol conqueror, the symbol perhaps borrowed from Kanishka’s Kushan dynasty when they were in Central Asia.The name of the Mongolian president during the communist period was Shambu. Mongolia’s highest civilian award, the North Star, refers to Dhruva Tara or Sudarshan.

These kind of GK nuggets you get aplenty from Prof Lokesh Chandra, president of ICCR, who was recently conferred the Order of the North Star for his scholarly contributions to the study of Buddhism in Mongolia and for fostering cultural ties between India and Mongolia that go back to his father,Prof RaghuVira’s time.

“The Sudarshana Sutra in Mongolia points to the auspiciousness that Sudarshan or North Star brings to you,” explains Prof Chandra.The nomads in Mongolia needed a constant point of reference to determine the direction and the North Star fitted the bill perfectly. The grasslands are uniform and show no signs and so nomads needed to look to the skies for guidance. Prof Chandra says that Mongolia is very interesting for us because in the 13th century, Chinggis Khan, with an extensive empire, became the first Asian emperor to rule over Europe.

“With 11 countries in Asia being Buddhist,they are all looking up to India as a great cultural power — a fact we are not aware of. It is all shared cultural heritage.What we call culture is part of a much bigger system where everything is involved,” points out the professor who says a cultural renaissance is going on and India needs to be part of it.
What Was Their Secret?

“My father, Prof Raghu Vira, Sanskrit scholar and linguist,was a student in London and his professor asked him if he would like to join the Indian Civil Services.My father replied that he would rather serve his own country than serve the British Empire.That inspired him to do some research and he found that the Huns ruled Europe for 300 years. Later on, the Golden Horde originating from the Mongolian region was ruling Russia. And then of course, Chinggis Khan.

What was their secret?

Chinggis Khan introduced three very important things: first, unification of the scattered Mongol tribes; second, a script for the Mongolian language. With the introduction of a script, the Mongols got a tool for the first time, to evolve a good system of governance. Third,he welcomed Uyghur Buddhists as secretaries of the empire and they introduced Chinggis Khan to Buddhism. The script and Buddhism gave stability to the Mongols.Monasteries were built and the transition began from nomadic to settled life with development and buildings. Literature and a secretariat, bureaucracy, soon followed.

Says Prof Chandra, “Mongols gave to the world paper currency; they introduced steam.They used steam to move the prayer wheels from which emanated the chant,Aum mani padme hum mechanically. And it was the Mongols who, for the first time, opened the west to the east and the east to the west.” Chinggis Khan was responsible for making Buddhism part of his country’s culture. All those running his empire were Buddhist monks. Bakshi in Mongolian means ‘professor’.The word came from bikshu.The Bakshi title was carried by muslims to India.

Prof Chandra says there are so many aspects of Mongolia and India and other countries in the region that strongly indicate a shared heritage.“A coin in Mathura of the second century BCE has an inscription that has the word Khagan on it and in Mongolian it means emperor”. Prof Raghu Vira had invited to India, a professor from Mongolia called Rinchin, a great nationalist. Rinchin was very angry because the Soviets burned five million books of the Mongols.With the efforts of the two scholars, for the first time an International Congress Of Mongolistics (Mongolian Studies) was held in 1959 in Mongolia.“My father took Rinchin to Nehru who proposed inclusion of Mongolia in the United Nations.The Indian embassy was established in Mongolia in 1956 and the Beijing ambassador also became concurrently the ambassador to Mongolia”.

In 1956, Mongolians celebrated Buddha Jayanti in India.They took water from the Ganga back to Mongolia in remembrance of a similar sharing way back in the 17th century when two Indian acharyas or teachers took Gangajal with them to Mongolia along with stories of Krishna, Vikramaditya, King Bhoja, Vikram-Betaal and they narrated all these stories and added the Gangajal to the waters of Lake Baikhal.

Today,symbolically, Mongolians convert their water to Ganga water by reciting local hymns written by local masters. But who took Buddhism to Mongolia? Prof Chandra says that fourth century inscriptions in the tombs of Huna emperors mention Buddhism. The first translation of Buddhist texts is from India, and the second is from Tibet. Even during Chenggis Khan’s time, it was the Uyghurs who took Buddhism to the Mongolians. Buddhism went to Mongolia in different ways over many centuries.

According to the professor, there’s no conflict here between Buddhism and Hinduism.He adds that for two whole generations, the Mongols lost out on culture due to communist regime. “There is a tremendous resurgence of Buddhism now, and all destroyed monasteries have been rebuilt…” says the professor whose research into Mongolian Kanjur (Buddhist scriptures) resulted in a 108-volume edition published in original of the Mongolian Kanjur in the 20th century. It is a seminal reference point for scholars worldwide, in Classical Mongolian.

How did he get access to it?

“Today only three copies of the original text are there,in Paris,Harvard, and in my house.My father was in China in 1954 and Premier Chou en Lai presented a frayed copy of the Mongolian Kanjur to him in classical Mongolian. ‘You are the Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang) of India’ he said.” Pointing to India-Mongolia connections, Prof Chandra says, “The Jibchundampa are incarnations of Tara Nath from Tibet, all with Sanskrit names.They have now found an incarnation of Jibchundampa in India, and officially recognised him. The Mongolian state is now supporting Buddhism in a big way because it is their identity. Mongolia has evolved a national form of Buddhism with a large Tibetan component, creating new sutras translating into Mongolian modern language, creating ethnic Mongolian Buddhism — all Vajrayana Buddhism.”