O'ndo'r Gegeen Zanabazar

Considered the sixteenth incarnation of Bogd Zhavzandamba, the highest-ranking Buddhist saint in Mongolia. In addition to his significance earned as a religious and political authority, he is revered as the founder of the Mongolian school of religious art. His masterful bronzes of the Tara goddess, for example, are highly unusual for their combination of the religious and the aesthetic; breaking away from the austere conventions of Tibetan art, he endowed the statues with human beauty and Mongolian features. The grandson of Abtai Sain Xan, Zanabazar was born in 1634 and was declared the reincarnation of the Bogd in 1639. At the age of fifteen, he travelled to Tibet to study under the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Upon his return the hermitage at To'vxen (now To'vxen Monastery) was established site of personal refuge, where he spent the next years reading and meditating, writing treatises on art and philosophy, painting and sculpting. He also created the soyombo script, designed to be suitable for transcribing Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mongolian, the first character of which has become the official symbol of Mongolia (see soyombo). Zanabazar played a leading role in the decision to surrender the political autonomy of Xalx Mongolia to Manchu China in 1691, fearing that the alternative would be annexation by Imperial Russia. Relations with the Manchus rapidly soured, however, and Zanabazar was assassinated in Beijing in 1723.

CategoryEncyclopaediaMongolica

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