Bogd Khan

Biography

The future Bogd Khan was born in 1869 in the area of Lhasa, in a family of a Tibetan official. He was born as Agvaan Luvsan Choijinnyam Danzan Vanchüg. His father, Gonchigtseren, was an accountant at the 12th Dalai Lama's court. The boy was officially recognized as the new incarnation of the Bogd Gegen in Potala in the presence of the 13th Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The new Bogd Gegen arrived in Urga, the capital of Outer Mongolia, in 1874. After this he lived only in Mongolia.

As a result, from his young years the 8th Bogd Gegen was the subject of intrigues of Qing officials in Urga. Later he became the subject of propaganda campaigns organised by Mongolian communists, which attacked him by alleging that he was a prolific poisoner, a paedophile, and a libertine, which was later repeated in belles-lettres and other non-scientific literature (e.g. James Palmer). However, analysis of documents stored in Mongolian and Russian archives does not confirm these statements.

As a monk, the Bogd had limited access to physical means of imposing power, though some enemies were executed for blasphemy. The Polish traveller Ferdinand Ossendowski recorded that he knew "every thought, every movement of the Princes and Khans, the slightest conspiracy against him, and the offender is usually kindly invited to Urga, from where he does not return alive. Ossendowski's claims for his acquaintance with the Bogd Gegen were not confirmed by comparative analysis of his book and manuscripts.

By the spring of 1911, some prominent Mongolian nobles including Prince Tögs-Ochiryn Namnansüren persuaded the Jebstundamba Khutukhtu to convene a meeting of nobles and ecclesiastical officials to discuss independence. The Khutukhtu consented. To avoid suspicion, he used as a pretext the occasion of a religious festival, at which time the assembled leaders would discuss the need to reapportion taxes among the khoshuuns. The meeting occurred on July 10 and the Mongolians discussed independence. The assembly became deadlocked, some arguing for complete, others for partial, resistance. Eighteen nobles decided to take matters into their hands. Meeting secretly in the hills outside of Urga, they decided that Mongolia must declare its independence. They then persuaded the Khutuktu to send a delegation of three prominent representatives—a secular noble, an ecclesiastic, and a lay official —to Russia for assistance. The particular composition of the delegation—a noble, a cleric, and a commoner—may have been intended to invest the mission with a sense of national consensus.

On 1 December, the Provisional Government of Khalkha issued a general proclamation announcing the establishment of a theocracy under the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu. On 29 December, the Khutuktu was formally installed as the Bogd Khan of the new Mongolian state.

The Bogd Gegen lost his power when Chinese governance was restored in 1919. The Tusiyetu Khan Aimak's Prince Darchin Ch'in Wang was a supporter of Chinese rule while his younger brother Tsewang was a supporter of Ungern-Sternberg. When Baron Ungern's forces failed to seize Urga in his 1920 invasion, the Bogd was placed under house arrest; then he became a puppet of Ungern shortly before he took Urga in 1921. After the revolution in 1921 led by Damdin Sükhbaatar, the Bogd Khan was allowed to stay on the throne in a limited monarchy until his death in 1924, a year after that of his wife.