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Institutionalization of Mongolian shamanism: from primitivism to

civilization

Article  in  Asian Ethnicity · October 2014

DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2014.939331

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Institutionalization of Mongolian
shamanism: from primitivism to
civilization
a
D. Bumochir
a
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, National
University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Published online: 22 Sep 2014.

To cite this article: D. Bumochir (2014) Institutionalization of Mongolian shamanism: from

primitivism to civilization, Asian Ethnicity, 15:4, 473-491, DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2014.939331

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 Asian Ethnicity, 2014
Vol. 15, No. 4, 473–491, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2014.939331

Institutionalization of Mongolian shamanism: from primitivism to

civilization
D. Bumochir*

Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar,

Mongolia
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This article traced the construction of the Mongolian term and concept böö mörgöl,
which denotes ‘shamanism’, later developed to böögiin shashin meaning ‘shamanic
religion’. Although the term bö’e (alternatively böge or böö), referring to spiritual
practitioners such as shamans, appears early in the literature from the thirteenth century
onward, the combination böö mörgöl and khara shajin meaning ‘black religion’ is
fairly recent and first appeared in sources from the nineteenth century. Its latest
version, böögiin shashin, has an even shorter history dating as recently to 1980s,
and has spread rapidly over the last two decades. I argue that ‘shamanism’ in Mongolia
has been constructed in scholarly works mostly by public involvement and shamans
themselves. More precisely, academic discourses have played a key role in institutio-
nalizing individual spiritual practitioners in two fields, first by creating a history for
‘Mongolian shamanism’ and second by creating archetypes for miscellaneous spiritual
practices and practitioners. The concept böö mörgöl have been used in translating and
importing the Western construction of ‘shamanism’ while in the next step of develop-
ment, böögiin shashin was important in institutionalizing a national religion of sha-
manism versus world religions. As a result, Mongols have an original religion which
has been the main building block in constructing Mongolian ‘nomadic civilization’.
Keywords: Mongolia; shamanism; shamanic religion; institutionalization; academic
knowledge production

Introduction
The major discussion in the literature on ‘shamanism’ from the end of the twentieth
century and into the early twenty-first century is about how diverse spiritual practitioners,
specialists, their rituals and practices in Asia, America, Oceana, etc. have been constructed
to form ‘shamanism’1 by Western colonial authorities2 and some scholarly works, namely,
by Mercia Eliade,3 Levis,4 M. Harner5 and P. Vitebsky6 among others. Postmodern
anthropologists argue that shamanism is a ‘made-up, modern, western category’ treated
as an entity ‘it’ and thus it does not exist as a ‘unitary and homogenous’ phenomenon. As
such, one should stop talking about ‘shamanism’, and instead write about ‘shamanisms’,
or ‘shamanary’ or ‘shamanizing’.7
However, ‘shamanism’ has not only been imagined, made up and constructed by the
authorities of the Western world.8 In parallel, there is simultaneously a process of
imagining, making up and constructing by Mongolians. This paper is about how
Mongolians, namely the public, local communities, scholars, spiritual practitioners and
specialists, have constructed the so-called mongol böö mörgöl, ‘Mongolian shamanism’

*Email: dbochir@yahoo.com

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 474 D. Bumochir

and mongol böögiin shashin, meaning ‘Mongolian shamanic religion’. K. Kollmar-

Paulenz has similarly argued that the emergence of ‘shamanism’ as a homogenous
religious system has to be examined. According to her, the spread of Buddhism in
Mongolia from the sixteenth century instigated a reification process of local religious
practices and beliefs as burugu uzel ‘wrong view’ further developed into a discourse on
the ‘teaching of shamans’9 (Mong. böge-ner-ün shasin).
This shows that the notion of ‘shamanism’ was formed not only in the Western
anthropologist’s imagination, but already existed in the imagination of Mongolian
Buddhist intellectuals between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.10 Moreover, I
argue that the instigation of the discourse on a reified shamanism is not limited to
Buddhist and Western scholars. Especially in more recent periods of history, Mongolian
shamans, scholars and the Mongolian state have constructed this discourse as a response
to the discourse of neighbouring states and Euro-Americans on the Mongols and
Mongolian ‘shamanism’. In other words, the construction of shamanism in the West
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and in Mongolia was a discourse created from dialogical relationships between states.
While in the West it is understood in the range of the term ‘shaman’, in Mongolia the
key term and concept was and continues to be böge and böö11 referring to spiritual
practitioners who go into trance and mediate spiritual beings. Recent ethnography shows
that not all böö self-reference as böö, instead many use different words. For instance,
when the Khalkh12 shaman Enhe13 was under trance, he called his ancestral spirit aav
‘father’ and this spirit’s name was Zamirlig. The spirit, Zamirlig, told me that they did not
use the common word böö to refer to a shaman. Instead, on separate occasions both the
shaman Enhe and his spirit Zamirlig used the word ulaach meaning a ‘medium’ for a böö.
Then, I asked what the word böö means and who used it if they did not. According to him,
the word böö is widely used among the Buryats in Northeast Mongolia to describe ‘a
ceremony of a group of spiritual practitioners’. When his aav spirit said ‘they did not use
the word böö’, then it raises the question of what time in history he is referring to.
Apparently, Zamirlig refers to the sixteenth century, when he was a shaman during the
time of Batmonkh Dayan Khaan. Ulaach Enhe and his spirits relate that the popular word
böö (or böge as written in traditional Mongolian script), which even appeared in the
thirteenth century Mongolian historical source Secret History of the Mongols, was not
popular among Enhe’s ongods (spirits). Here, I am not arguing whether or not they were
using the term böö (shaman), during the time of Enhe’s ongods (spirit), but rather I would
like to illustrate the inconsistent use of the term böö (shaman) and further question the
acceptance of this common term. This issue of inconsistency pushed me to elaborate and
question Mongolian terms and concepts such as böö (shaman), böö mörgöl (shamanism)
and böögiin shashin (shamanic religion), which tend to apply to different kinds of spiritual
practitioners not necessarily referred to as böö (shaman).14 In this way I argue that
Mongolian shamanism under the term böö has been constructed from time to time in
which projections of various periods of Mongolia’s social and political history are
embedded in these constructions.
In contemporary Mongolia, there are several terms referring to various spiritual
practitioners such as böö (shaman), ulaach (medium), udgan (female shaman) and zaarin
(male shaman), which are in extensive usage within shamanic communities and the
public. According to historical sources and in the literature, the word böö is more popular
than the other terms. On the other hand, according to my exploration as discussed above,
amongst shamans they often use the word ulaach more than böö to refer to themselves,
while in the public and literary contexts böö is more common. Moreover, when shamans
are possessed, ‘spirits’ use the word ulaach to refer to shamans, not böö, which is again a
 Asian Ethnicity 475

case within the shamanic community. Also, when a shaman refers to him/herself as a
medium of a certain spirit (ongod), they commonly use the word ulaach. For instance, ‘I
am an ulaach of this and that spirit’ rather than ‘I am a böö of this and that spirit’. Unlike
the word ulaach, böö is frequently used in the second and third person and by the public
to denote a shaman and shamans. However, I must admit that shamans do not make a
sharp distinction in the nature of what böö and ulaach are. Also, there is no formal, valid
and accepted definition of what and who the böö and/or ulaach are.15 However, if there
have been several terms used to describe various spiritual practitioners and specialists,
then it is a question of when and how and to what extent the word böö began to address
similar and related spiritual practitioners. In this paper, I will explore how the general use
of the word böö further developed to böö mörgöl (shamanism). I argue that the word böö
(shaman), and its extended later forms böö mörgöl (shamanism) and böögiin shashin
(shamanic religion), are a recent introduction and generally used among the wider public
to construct the concept of ‘shamanism’ in Mongolia.
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Shamanism re-emerged and rapidly spread in Mongolia following the social and
political changes that started in 1990, and the expansion and development of this re-
emergence reached its peak after 2000. As a result, researchers now face anticipated
ethnographic findings16 where the existing scholarly conceptions and definitions of
shamanism are limited when applied to interpret and understand this new era of
Mongolian shamanism. This is therefore an era that can be identified as being ‘under
construction’. Mongolian shamanism has been ‘under construction’ by nation state-build-
ing projects, public involvement, shamans themselves and, more than anything else, by
scholars. Therefore the current Mongolian concepts of shaman and shamanism need to be
deconstructed in order to accurately understand and interpret Mongolian shamanism. It is
not only a matter of deconstructing the Mongolian concepts such as böö (shaman), böö
mörgöl (shamanism) and böögiin shashin (shamanic religion) that is important. Moreover,
even the Mongolian version of the widely imagined concept of ‘shamanism’, developed in
Europe since the Evenk word ‘saman’ was introduced to Europe by an exiled Russian
churchman Avvakum in 1672,17 needs to be deconstructed. The Mongolian term böö has
a similar history to the Europeanized terms ‘shaman’ and ‘shamanism’, with a great
amount of imagination and social construction assembled in its history. As mentioned
earlier, even though there is no officially valid and accepted definition, the constructed
and institutionalized concept of böö has been developed into an instrument for shamans
themselves to identify and define what the ideal shaman is in this new era. In reality, it is
the diverse and indefinite, as well as ‘formless’ and ‘unpredictable’ as Pedersen18 puts it,
shamanism in Mongolia which requires deconstruction within the context of existing
academic understanding as echoed by C. Humphrey and N. Thomas.19

The spread of Buddhism and the primitivization of shamans

In contemporary Mongolia, there are two broad terms referring to what we call ‘shaman-
ism’ in Euro-American languages; one is böö mörgöl,20 often used as a translation of the
word ‘shamanism’, meaning ‘shamanic belief’, while the other is böögiin shashin, mean-
ing ‘shamanic religion’. Both terms have an interesting history that has brought it to its
current meaning. In this section I focus on a question of when Mongols started using a
general name for various spiritual practitioners and specialists, because in the past many
Mongol groups had spiritual practitioners and specialists but not a general name to cover
them all. For example, C. Humphrey and U. Onon21 state that Daur Mongols in Northeast
Inner Mongolia have no word for either ‘shamanism’ or ‘religion’, and acknowledge the
 476 D. Bumochir

absence of words such as shashin (religion) and khar shashin (black religion) among other
Mongol groups. Moreover, there is no mention of the terms böö mörgöl or böögiin
shashin among the Daurs, which is not surprising because many other Mongol groups
outside Mongolia do not use these terms.22
The word böö meaning shaman alone, without the later addition of mörgöl (shaman-
ism) or shashin (religion) making it a compound noun, can be found among most Mongol
groups. The word böö (böge in classical Mongolian script) appears in thirteenth-century
historical sources, namely the Secret History of the Mongols. The words bö’e (böö in
middle Mongolian) and bö’es (böö in plural form in middle Mongolian) appear several
times in this work and in every case the word was used to refer to individual spiritual
practitioners that we assume are ‘shamans’.23 It is difficult to illustrate in depth who were
the people called ‘bö’e’. The content of the word böö is clearer in the later sources of the
sixteenth century. A Mongolian dictionary (Khorin nigetü-yin tayilburi toil) published in
1717 has an entry under böö (böge), but not under böö mörgöl or böögiin shashin. It
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defines böö (böge) as ‘a person who prays to a returned spirit’ (khuvilgan ongod-tu
zalbiran guyukhu khümün).24 In more recent dictionaries of the early twentieth century,
the word böö is present but again not in compound words such as böö mörgöl and böögiin
shashin. A dictionary compiled by Shagja, around 1926–1929, explains that böö (böge) is
‘a person who can get possessed and pray’ (onggod-i bey-e-degen oroshigulju zalbarikhu
khümün).25 Many sources mention böö between the thirteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies, and it is clear that the word refers to an individual spiritual practitioner.
There is little information or historical material depicting the compound terms böö
mörgöl and böögiin shashin, includes that by various practitioners and specialists. As far
as is known in academic discourse, N. Poppe’s 1935 publication includes two Buryat
chronicles from the nineteenth century, where both of these compound terms appear. One
was written by a ‘leading aristocrat’ (Rus. glavnym taisha)26 of the Aga Buryats, Tuguldur
Toboev, in 1963, while the other was written by a Khori Buryat ‘tribal leader’ (Rus.
rodovym golovoyu),27 Vandan Yumsunov, in 1875 and gives a longer and much more
detailed description of ‘shamanism’ and shamanic rituals. Both texts include the term
böge-i-gin mörgöl28 or böge-ner-ün mörgöl,29 meaning ‘shaman’s belief’. In addition to
this term, V. Yumsunov used the term böge-ner-ün shashin.30 The chronicles were later
used by K. Kollmar-Paulenz in her article on Mongolian ‘invention and creation of
shamanism’ from the seventeenth century onwards:

In the wake of the Buddhist conversion of the Mongols the encounter and confrontation
between Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhist monks and Mongolian male and female shamans
led to the creation of the second-order terminology to select and distinguish the male and
female shamans that form part of the religious field in historical Mongolian societies. The
categorization of the shamans set in motion the reification of the loosely connected and local
shamanic ritual and performative practices into a unified single system, the so-called böge-
ner-ün shashin, the ‘teaching of the shamans’.31

I do support her argument in that newly developing Buddhism, by identifying non-

Buddhist native others as an opposing group representing burugu üzel ‘wrong view’,32
instigated the unification and homogenization of the existing religious practices. However,
I think that there is insufficient proof that shamans in the Mongolian cultural region never
experienced unification and a single system before the sixteenth-century invasion of
Buddhism. The existence of the compound term böge-ner-ün mörgöl preceding böge-
ner-ün shashin should lead us to think that there was some kind of unification before it
started to be addressed as böge-ner-ün shashin. This issue needs detailed examination of
 Asian Ethnicity 477

sources prior to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My second concern is the
translation of böge-ner-ün shashin into ‘teaching of the shamans’. The word shashin
might have a meaning of ‘teaching’ but it is, I believe, one of multiple meanings of the
word. Therefore, the English translation is quite reductionist. The seventeenth- to nine-
teenth-century Mongolian word shashin cannot be reduced to ‘teaching’ only, because it
dismisses the overall idea of ‘institution’. Obviously, the word shashin in the Mongolian
language initially mostly applied to Buddhism and was later used in conjunction with the
term böge shaman. One of the grounding differences between the two translations is the
issue of the presence of an organized institution. I suggest that the later attachment of the
word shashin, meaning religion, to böge should be regarded as a process of institutiona-
lization, intended or unintended, which is evident in the later development of Mongolian
‘shamanism’. However, in the range of this historical period, the usage of the compound
terms böge-ner-ün mörgöl and böge-ner-ün shashin is not clear and it is still not evident
whether shamans identified themselves as böge-ner-ün shashin or its competitors such as
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the Buddhist church, as illustrated by K. Kollmar-Paulenz. Moreover, I wonder whether

shamans ever unified and fought against Buddhism, or whether it was only Buddhism that
regarded shamans as an opposing entity. If there was a fight between Buddhists and
shamans, certainly Buddhists acted more as a unified homogeneous institution while
shamans struggled as individuals.
The above-mentioned historical sources also suggest that the process of unification
and homogenization of Mongolian shamanism went through at least two stages – one on
the level of böge-ner-ün mörgöl and the other on the level of böge-ner-ün shashin. In the
scripture by Vandan Yumsunov, there is a passage saying that originally Buryats had
böge-yin mörgöl (shamanism) and that individual male and female shamans congregated
to form a shashin33 religion.34 Finally, evidently Buryats used such concepts in the
nineteenth century, which means that other Mongol groups were not necessarily familiar
with the term.
Another term, khara shajin, refers to shamanism as a ‘black religion’ as used by D.
Banzarov, a Buryat Mongol scholar from the late nineteenth century. He states that, since
the development of Buddhism in Mongolia, shamans have been called khara shajin due to
the notion that shamanism holds ‘unenlightened’ characteristics, which was translated to
chernoyu veroyu in Russian, literally meaning ‘black religion’ in Mongolian.35 I will
illustrate Banzarov’s two statements here, one being a question of accuracy and evidence
regarding whether the compound term khara shajin emerged following the introduction of
Buddhism, the other being the negative connotation of identifying it as ‘unenlightened’. If
it is in fact Buddhism’s definition of shamanism then two pictures emerge, one being the
institutionalization of individual spiritual practitioners as discussed above and the other
the primitivization of shamanic practice in contrast to ‘enlightened’ Buddhism. In
response to Buddhist, Lamaist and Christian treatments of shamans, D. Banzarov’s
major achievement was to show that Mongolian shamanism was a self-reliant, elaborate
belief system and certainly not primitive,36 and that author identified it as a drevnaya
narodnaya religiya (ancient folk religion).37 I will focus on this theme in the following
section of the paper.
After the suppression of shamanism by Buddhism and the primitivization of individual
shamans and their practices, many native Mongol scholars, both intentionally and unin-
tentionally, reacted to such treatments, beginning with the work of D. Banzarov. I will
illustrate the influence of scholarly works on Mongolian shamanism from the end of the
nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. As I briefly outlined at the beginning of the
paper, many scholarly works regarded spiritual practitioners and specialists over different
 478 D. Bumochir

continents as a ‘homogenous entity’. This section will focus on academic knowledge

production and the homogenization of ‘shamans’ (böge-ner) in the Mongol cultural
region. As a reaction to the process of primitivization of shamanism, some Mongol
scholars developed the argument that shamanism is a religion. I have three major issues
with the academic knowledge produced primarily by Mongolian authors. The first of these
is the treatment of spiritual practitioners as a ‘homogenous entity’ and the development of
definitions and compound names for spiritual practitioners and specialists, which can be
witnessed in terms such as drevnaya narodnaya religiya (ancient folk religion) and
‘chyornaya vera’ (black faith) in Russian,38 and böö mörgöl (shamanism)39 and böögiin
shashin (shamanic religion).40 Second, many scholars have discussed ‘the history of
Mongolian shamanism’,41 but it is not clear whose history they are talking about. Third,
scholars produced archetypes for ‘shamanism’, which generated the expectation that all
shamans have chants and invocations, etc.42 Since 1990, the academic literature available
on the subject became a handbook for many newly appearing shamans to educate
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themselves, enabling them to reconstruct ‘contemporary Mongolian shamanism’. As

such, in the new era the construction process of ‘shamanism’ was not limited to academic
publications, but was extended to other agents such as the shamans themselves. In the
following section I will focus on the first issue, while the following section will cover the
other two.

Academic knowledge production and civilizing shamanism to religion

The compound terms unifying shamans found in the nineteenth-century Buryat texts
further appeared in scholarly works from the twentieth century. As I mentioned above,
the Russian versions of those terms appear in D. Banzarov’s works including terms like
shamanstvo, which denotes shamanism in Russian, böö mörgöl in Mongolian and drev-
naya narodnaya religiya (ancient folk religion) in Russian referring to the Mongolian
khara shajin (black religion), which later evolved to böögiin shashin, ‘shamanic religion’.
In 1957 Ts. Damdinsüren was one of the first scholars to use the term böö mörgöl after
D. Banzarov, in his Review of Mongolian Literature (Mongolyn uran zokhioloyn toim).
His book has a section titled Poetry of Shamanism (Böögiin mörgöliin yaruu nairag). Two
years later, Ch. Dalai published his book titled Mongolyn böögiin mörgöliin tovch tüükh
(A Brief History of Mongolian Shamanism). In that work he translated the Russian word
shamanstvo in Dorj Banzarov43 and B.Y. Vladimirtsov’s44 works as böögiin mörgöl.
According to these authors, by the mid-twentieth century scholars were using the tradi-
tional term böö, previously used to denote various individual practitioners, to construct the
concept of böögiin mörgöl shamanism. Other sources investigating the use of the word
böö are collections of shamanic chants and texts by B. Rintchen (national scholar),
published in France and Germany in 1959, 1961 and 1975. This author collected
shamanic texts, interviewed shamans and recorded chants. In these shamanic texts and
chants there is no occurrence of the collocation of böö mörgöl (shamanism) and böögiin
shashin (shamanic religion), except for the use of ‘chamanisme’ in French written in the
introduction. Therefore, this permits us to argue that the existing (though not widespread)
term, böge-ner-ün mörgöl, which only appeared in two Buryat historical texts, was
adapted in the translation of European terms (shamanstvo, chamanisme and shamanism)
and served in importing Western contents to Mongolia, becoming an equivalent of
‘shamanism’ in the early and mid-twentieth century.
Mongolian researchers of later generations continued to use the concept without much
review or critique. In the 1960s and 1970s the Mongolian ethnographer S. Badamkhatan
 Asian Ethnicity 479

often used the word böö mörgöl45 in his study of the Darkhad and Duha people in the
North of Mongolia, who inherited and secretly practised their shamanic tradition even
during the years of communism. Then in the 1980s and 1990s, S. Dulam, who had studied
Darkhad and Buryat shamanism, also used the term böö mörgöl extensively.46 However,
unlike the scholars mentioned above, although he titled his book The Tradition of
Darkhad Shamans (1992), somehow he hesitated to include the term böö mörgöl in the
book’s title. The concept of böö mörgöl was not only popular in Mongolia and Russian
Buryatia, but the same usage also appeared in Inner Mongolia, China. The popular Inner
Mongolian researcher on shamanism, T. Mansan,47 also used the word böö mörgöl.
Along with bringing together individual spiritual practitioners and reconceptualizing
them under the term böö mörgöl, at the same time there was another attempt to make
shamanism into a religion, referred to as böögiin shashin. As discussed at the beginning of
this paper, D. Banzarov made the first attempts to develop the concept of khara shajin
‘black religion’ and drevnaya narodnaya religiya ‘ancient folk religion’.48 Ch. Dalai in
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1959, using a citation from Russian and Chinese sources, also argued that shamanism is a
religion. The Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopedia (Grand Soviet Encyclopaedia) states that
‘shamanism is a unique type of religion’,49 while some Chinese sources denoted it as
‘saman jiao’ meaning ‘saman religion’.50 Even though Dalai used these citations he did
not develop a further argument regarding whether shamanism is a religion or not. Instead,
Dalai argued that shamanism became a religion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries51
and carried on using the term böö mörgöl shamanism, but not ‘shamanic religion’.
According to him it was considered a religion at that period of the time.
Later, an approach to make shamanism into a religion was developed by Kh.
Buyanbatu in his 1985 publication Monggol böge-iyn shashin-u uchir (Meaning of
Mongol Shamanic Religion) in Inner Mongolia and by O. Pürev in Mongolia in his
famous 1998 publication entitled Mongol böögiin shashin (Mongol shamanic religion).
Pürev argues against the approach of purposely titling shamanism as böö mörgöl rather
than religion. By using the term böö mörgöl, shamanism is relegated as a primitive,
unsophisticated, simple and poorly developed phenomenon, lower than what we call
‘religion’. Against such evolutionary perspectives, the author expressed an ethnocentric
and nationalist approach and attempted to promote the idea that shamanism is the original
religion of Mongolia and is no less so than any other religion.52 His approach to define
shamanism as a religion developed much earlier than his 1998 publication: he claims that
he inherited the argument from B. Rintchen and therefore clearly used the first page of the
latter’s book, for the citation says ‘MONGOLIAN SHAMANIC RELIGION IS THE
FAIREST RELIGION AMONGST ALL RELIGIONS IN THE WORLD’, to communi-
cate Rintchen’s 1968 argument (Figure 1). As far as we know, this sentence does not exist
in any of Rintchen’s writings. Presumably, Pürev is using the citation from his personal
communications with Rintchen. The statement communicates two arguments, one that
shamanism ‘is a religion’ and the second that additionally shamanism ‘is fairest and
therefore better than all other religions’.
Another motivation to claim that shamanism is actually a religion was a statement in
‘Mongolian law about the relationship of the state and monasteries’ issued in 1993.
Article Six of Part Seven in Chapter Three declares, ‘All other religions except
Buddhism, Islam and Shamanism are prohibited to organize religious teachings, trainings
and advertisements outside its monastery and temple’. Pürev argues that in this article, the
Mongolian State acknowledges the status of shamanism as a religion by putting it on same
level as other religions such as Buddhism and Islam.53 However, the text says böö mörgöl
‘shamanism’ rather than böögiin shashin ‘shamanic religion’. Although in the article
 480 D. Bumochir
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Figure 1. Shamanism is the fairest religion.

shamanism is included in the same line with other religions, this does not necessarily
mean that the state defines shamanism as religion; rather, it simply means that the state
regards shamanism as a religious phenomenon. The article had, generally, to include
religions and other similar phenomena like shamanism and spiritualism.
A different way of regarding shamanism as something more than shamans but at a
higher and wider level (e.g. as I mentioned in regard to religion) is Tenggerism or
heavenism, focusing on the supreme deity. Some scholars developed a slightly different
phenomenon and introduced the idea of Tenggerism or heavenism. They argue that the
theory of Tenggerism was elaborated on the basis of the worship of Tenggeri, a funda-
mental concept of Shamanism, the old folk religion of the Mongolian and Turkic nomadic
people. According to Shamanism,54 Tenggeri is something like God, solely representing
the supreme masculine power in the universe ruling all natural and social phenomena on
earth.55 Some argue that Tenggerism is wider and higher than shamanism, which should
be seen as somehow different and separate from shamanism. Several scholars established
an institute to study Tenggerism using only historical sources, dealing little with shamans.
Even though it is possible to study the cult of tenger using historical materials, I believe
that this and tenger, the supreme deity of the Mongols and their messenger shamans, are
inseparable and cannot be seen as distinct fields of study. As a result, we now have two
phenomena: the first is shamanism mostly using individual spiritual practitioners as a
source of study, while the other is Tenggerism, somehow higher and wider than shaman-
ism and therefore inclusive of not only Mongol shamans and shamanism, but all Inner
Asian Mongols and Turks. Under Tenggerism, Sh. Bira illustrated historical materials of
the supreme deity worshipped by the Mongols, especially documented in the case of
Mongol Khaans’ politics, conquest and worship. Tenggerism is again a reconstructed
concept, as Sh. Bira himself states that ‘… the theory of Tenggerism has not been
definitely formulated in any document, there is the possibility of reconstructing the
main ideas and considering its meaning and purpose’.56 He further claims that even
though tengger has a similar meaning to the God in monotheist religions such as
Christianity, its content is completely different.57 Although he does not develop an
 Asian Ethnicity 481

argument about whether Tenggerism is a religion or not, he believes that in the Middle
Ages for Mongols it was like a religion, the same as Christianity was for Europeans.58
Unlike Pürev, his intention to denote Mongolian shamanism as a religion is not through
shamans but through the supreme deity Tenggeri. This promotes the idea that Mongols
were not worshiping individual shamans, rather they were worshipping supreme spirits,
deities and heavens who used shamans as an instrument in the process of communication.

Scholarly invention of history for ‘Mongol shamanic religion’

In the next stage, historians starting from the Mongolian scholar Ch. Dalai (1957)
commenced research on the history of Mongolian shamanism (mongol böögiin
mörgöliin tüükh), which later was continued by the Pürev59 under the title ‘The history
of Mongol shamanic religion’ (mongol böögiin shashny tüükh). This was done not only
by native Mongol authors but also by some European historians, namely Klaus Hesse.60
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Conceptually the idea of the ‘the history of Mongolian shamanism’ is misleading because
under the term shamanism we have individuals and their life histories, as well as various
beliefs and practices, as opposed to an institutionalized religion. In addition to the absence
of a definite institution and a homogenous entity that can be addressed as ‘it’, the
so-called shamans who should be the building blocks of such institutions are again not
clearly defined. Ulla Johansen argues, in her critique on the ‘history of shamanism’ that
advances speculative hypotheses, that shamanism had its origins at the very outset of
mankind’s development, with no explicit definition of who is considered to have been a
shaman. Her article therefore reconsiders those Eurasian sources which report on who
qualify as shamans. Moreover she asserts that we should not conceive of shamanism ‘it’,
in contradistinction to all other continuously changing cultural elements as an immutable
institution.61
If we consider that shamanism had a lack of institution/s and the lack of a definition of
what shaman is, then historians were dealing not with the history of shamans and
shamanism, but rather with the involvement of various individual spiritual specialists in
various periods of Mongolian history. In this sense the correct way to describe their
research would be the ‘presence of spiritual practitioners in the political history of the
Mongols’. For example, Dalai in his Mongolyn böögiin mörgöliin tovch tüükh (A Brief
History of Mongolian Shamanism 1959) describes the importance of shamans in the
ruling process in various periods of history.62 Thus, his work is all about the history of
the state endorsement of shamans. For instances of increasing involvement of shamans in
the state administration he referred to the ‘revival of shamanism’, while the converse were
termed the ‘decline of shamanism’. However, this should be understood only within the
range of shamans’ participation in state administration, while shamans presumably con-
tinued practising in their own localities. As such, historians talk about individual shamans
but not about an overall institution. Therefore, I question whether this is a history of
certain persons, organizations or communities. Historians are talking about the history of
the ‘imagined religious institution’ titled shamanism and/or dealing with the engagements
of the state and shamanic practices during various points in history. Instead of accurately
understanding the nature of shamans Dalai and many others contributed to the process of
inventing ‘shamanism’ and the ‘shamanic religion’. However, this is not to say that
shamanism was always a loose localized practice, but the nature of these practices requires
further investigation.
The creation of the history of Mongolian shamanism and the imagined institutionali-
zation did not end with the works of Dalai. Later historians in the late twentieth century,
 482 D. Bumochir

namely G. Sükhbaatar,63 O. Pürev64 and Kh. Buyanbatu65 in Inner Mongolia, proposed

historical periods in the development of the ‘shamanic religion’. Buyanbatu66 suggested
five stages of development:

(1) Period of rise of Mongol shamanic religion, from the age of matriarchy to the
seventh century of Börte Chinu-a (Börte Wolf).67
(2) Period of renaissance of Mongol shamanic religion, from the seventh century to
1271, when the name Yuan was given to the Empire.
(3) Period of decline of Mongol shamanic religion, from 1271 to 1368, when the
authority of the Yuan Dynasty moved back to Mongolia.
(4) Revival of Mongol shamanic religion, from 1368 to the 1370s when Buddhism
started its domination in Mongolia.
(5) Period of extinction of Mongol shamanic religion, from the 1370s to the twentieth
century.
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Following Buyanbatu, two other Inner Mongolian scholars, T. Mansan68 and Yonsug,69
underlined the period of renaissence according to the time of Chinggis Khaan. Pürev
argued against them, criticizing their logic to mechanically link the imperial conquest and
expansion to the development of shamanism. Pürev accurately claims that the expansion
and growth of the power of the Mongol Empire does not necessarily correlate to the
growth of shamanism. Unlike Buyanbatu’s division into periods, Sükhbaatar argues that
the renascence of Mongolian shamanism was in the period of Xiongnu.70 Pürev claims
that the state organization of the Mongol Empire rested on the lengthy development of the
preceding empires of Inner Asia, which all followed the teachings and worldview of
shamanism. Therefore, according to him, the period of renaissence of shamanic religion
was in the time of Xiongnu, because from the third to the second century BC many of the
key concepts of ‘shamanic religion’, such as the worship of white and black standards
(khar, tsagaan süld), tenggeries white and black directions, and the concepts of spirits and
souls were all created during that time. Since that time little was added until later in the
thirteenth century. For this reason he claims that the renaissence of Mongol ‘shamanic
religion’ was in the time of Xiongnu.71 He suggested the following developmental
periods72:

(1) Rise of Mongol shamanic religion, from matriarchy to the time of appearance of
the first states in the region of Mongolia.
(2) Renaissence of Mongol shamanic religion, period of shamanic religion of the
Xiongnu.
(3) Period of multiple religions in the region.
(4) Period of cleavage of Mongol shamanic religion.

I join Pürev in the argument against making a link between the rise of the Mongol Empire
and the renascence of Mongol shamanism, but I do not support his idea of a ‘history of
shamanic religion’ repeating the mistakes of Dalai, Buyanbatu and others. Therefore, I do
not follow the overall argument on the renascence and decline of shamanism. What
criteria define the renascence and decline of shamanism if we consider the idea that
there is no such a thing as a ‘shamanism’ or ‘shamanic religion’? Can we consider all
Mongolian and Inner Asian folk beliefs, religious concepts, worldviews and rituals as an
inseparable part of this ‘shamanic religion’, as Pürev did in the case of a Xiongnu
shamanic religion? Can we use the term ‘shamanic religion’ for the Xiongnu when
 Asian Ethnicity 483

sources from Xiongnu do not acknowledge the concept? My response is, if there is no
‘shamanic religion’ then it does not make sense to discuss its periods of renascence and
decline. Rather than putting all folk beliefs and practices into an imagined institution of
‘shamanic religion’, it can be better understood if we consider various Mongolian and
Inner Asian folk beliefs, concepts and practices as interconnected items of religious
phenomena in the absence of organized institutions but rather as loose relationships
revealed through the characteristics of oral transmission. Rather than inserting all folk
beliefs and practices in the imagined ‘religion of shamanism’, it is more accurate to insert
all individual spiritual practitioners called shamans into the wider framework of
Mongolian and Inner Asian folk beliefs and practices.
Earlier I argued that the ‘history of shamanic religion’ is not about all shamans or
shamans as institutions, but about how random individual shamans were involved in state
governance processes. In other words, it is history without a subject. The subject is absent
because there are no institutions or individuals who claim this history, but instead it was
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invented by later scholars. Rather we should consider the creation of shamanism as a

religious institution to be a historical creation. By having a history it would easily seem to
be a religion. Therefore, I conclude this section with the argument that the creation of
history for ‘shamanic religion’ was actually a project to produce an instrument or a
method to further serve the process of constructing and institutionalizing the imagined
‘shamanic religion’ that might compete against other world religions.

Dogma and standards in the ‘shamanic religion’

Once various individual spiritual practitioners, folk beliefs and practices are considered an
institutionalized religion with a complete history, then it must have some standards.
Scholars also constructed various standards for ‘shamanism’ and ‘shamanic religion’
along with the creation of its history. In other words, the birth of the history of shamanism
and the birth of its standards were like twin brothers, which appeared in Mongolian
academic literature during the same period in the mid-twentieth century. Amongst a
variety of standards, one of the first was an idea that all shamans have duudlaga
invocations and chants. Unlike historians, scholars of philology contributed to the creation
of the understanding that shamans have invocations and they chant and dance, which
probably was and is currently very evident in the practice of many shamans and other
similar spiritual practitioners. However, many shamans do not necessarily chant texts and
dance, and some do not even play any musical instruments.
The Mongolian academician, Ts. Damdinsüren, first initiated the dogma that shamans
must have invocations and texts to call spirits in 1957. In his Review of Mongolian
Literature (Mongolyn uran zohioloyn toim) he has a section titled Poetry of Shamanism
(Böögiin mörgöliin yaruu nairag). Not long after, shamanic chants and texts were
published in France and Germany in 1959, 1961 and 1975 by Rintchen, who interviewed
shamans and recorded chants and collected shamanic texts for publication. Although
neither of the authors question whether all shamans have such invocations, they did not
argue that all shamans must have invocations, and these works have been known for
decades as ‘shamanic invocations’ (böögiin duudlaga) spreading an understanding that all
shamans have some kind of texts to recite when they invoke spirits. These scholars at the
time might not have had any intention to create a dogma for Mongol shamanism, but
eventually this helped later scholars and the wider public to perceive shamans as neces-
sarily having such standard features. My earlier works in the late 1990s and early 2000 on
the issue of shamanic chants also contributed toward creating the same dogma.73 I argued
 484 D. Bumochir

that the earlier scholars oversimplified different shamans’ various chants under a general
term of ‘shamanic invocations’ (böögiin duudlaga) by failing to see the issues of agency,
application, purpose and the propositional force of various shamanic texts, which are
actually a dialogue in the form of poetry. Even though my argument is valid to a certain
extent, I reproduced the former research without questioning whether all shamans must
have chants. More precisely, even though I did not state it, I developed it with an inert
expectation that chants and invocations are intrinsic to all shamans’ performances.74
Contrary to this idea, currently there is a growing number of shamans with no chants or
even sometimes with no musical instrument, as I will discuss in the following section.
From 2007 to 2009 I participated in the rituals of a young shaman named EB75 who
was 18 years old. His shamanic spirits are Khalkh, the majority Mongol ethnic group,
who come from the Govi-Altai region in the south of the country, though EB himself grew
up in Ulaanbaatar. I have known him since before he was a shaman. He went through a
serious ‘shamanic illness’ (böögiin övchin), with symptoms for over a year in 2006–2007,
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and had to go to see a shaman to find a cure.76 Soon after, in the summer 2008 he became
a shaman. Since then I have participated in many of his performances and produced
complete ethnographic notes about him. He does not have any costumes except a yellow
Buddhist monk garment and boots. The reason why he was wearing a monk’s garment is
due to his mixed ancestral spirits of shamans and lamas. Additionally, he did not have any
musical instruments. According to him, his ongod (ancestral spirits) said that at the age of
25 he would become a complete shaman with shamanic costumes and instruments.
Currently he is in a stage of preparation with a monk’s garment and no instruments
except beads and brass mirrors. Without all these other objects, he would go into a trance
in the same way as do other shamans who have proper costumes and other objects. This is
not the only odd feature that differentiates him from most other shamans – neither does he
dance, play instruments or chant when he performs. Rather he simply dresses up, makes
offerings such as milk, milk tea or arhi (traditional alcohol beverage made from milk), and
biscuits and candies for spirits on a small table and concentrates for a few moments with
closed eyes. As he claims, this is all he needs to go into a trance to communicate with the
spirits. He barely reveals any of the standard features of many other shamans, most likely
due to his state of being ‘not quite a shaman’.77 Regarding chants and texts to invocate the
spirits, he says that a few days before he was first ready to be possessed, his spirits
whispered in his ears a few lines of text in an unknown language, and asked him to
memorize them and not to tell anyone.
According to his level of experience, EB is not yet a proper shaman. He is an
incomplete shaman and has no dance, chants or instruments. One might argue that he
doesn’t have these things because he is incomplete. However, I have encountered other
cases of so-called complete shamans, complete in the context of costume and other
objects, but who still do not chant. Therefore, having no chants and invocations does
not necessarily relate to completeness or incompleteness. The following ethnography is
about shamans who were told by their spirits not to chant openly, in order to keep the
chants a secret. Altan, a young man in his early thirties, became a shaman in the autumn
of 2010. As with many other shamans, he has a shamanic costume consisting of a
headdress, boots and instruments such as a drum, mirror and beads. I have had the
opportunity to participate in many of his performances since he was initiated as a shaman.
He is of Sartuul origin from the Northwest of Zavkhan Province, but grew up in
Ulaanbaatar. From my first experiences participating in his rituals, it was peculiar to me
that he was not singing or reciting any texts to invocate his spirits in order to go into a
trance. It took me some time to confirm that he did not use chants. After a while I asked
 Asian Ethnicity 485

him whether he has chants in the same way as some other shamans. He responded by
saying that his spirits whispered lines in his mind before the very first trance when he was
trying hard drumming and waiting for spirits to come and possess him. Later, the spirits
told him to repeat the to himself inside until the spirits possessed him, and warned him not
to chant aloud to be heard by other people. It was a secret. Since the first time he received
these lines he rarely used them again, not even in his mind, to call his spirits. In 2002, in
my book on shamanic chants I argued that there is a text to call spirits stating their buudal
(place to descend) and suudal (place of residence and hierarchical position).78 In his case,
however, all that Altan does is simply sit on a specially made seat facing a small table
(takhilyn shiree) with offerings (tahil) and a candle (zul) on top and drum, for few
moments to be possessed, and spirits immediately possess him without reciting precise
chants for each and every spirit. Later I discovered that there are many other shamans who
do not chant to call spirits but still go into a trance. This forced me to rethink the dogmatic
ideas written about shamans and how these ideas can be misleading.
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I argue that all of the generalizations and simplifications are to a certain extent the
product of the scholarly study of shamanism. Methodologically, such preset constructions
limit us in understanding and observing the reality of Mongol shamans. Not only scholars,
but also the public, approach shamans with expectations and create endless arguments
regarding ‘genuine shamans’ (jinhene böö) without recognizing the plural reality of
shamanic nature, which is equally valid in their expression. In other words, whether
shamans chant or not, or wear a lama robe or a shamanic robe, they are still valid
practitioners. The problem appears when people try to project one shaman’s character-
istics onto another and, if these are not the same, then the shaman is accused of being
false. Rather, shamans’ natures are unpredictable and formless as Pedersen argues.79

Partnership of scholars and shamans in the reconstruction of shamanism

The institutionalization and standardization of Mongolian shamanism did not end with
attempts made by Soviet-era scholars. The task of constructing shamanism was continued
further by shamans. Traditionally Mongolians are keen to listen to those who possess deep
knowledge (erdemtei khün) and are scholars in the modern era. This tradition has helped
bring shamans into contact with scholars of shamanism to learn from their scholarly
knowledge. In this way, some shamans have readily absorbed and inherited scholarly
knowledge on shamanism. Many Mongolians believe that researchers of shamanism
should instruct and educate shamans and make sense of the current situation in the
rapid growth in the number of shamans.
In summer 2011, I received a phone call from a young woman. She asked me to help
her and tell her how to become a shaman. I had to respond that I did not teach shamans to
become shamans but that I did research. She was very disappointed, and blamed me for
not fulfilling my duty as a scholar to educate ordinary people by telling them about
shamanism and helping them to distinguish real from false shamans, etc.
There are many similar cases of ordinary people and shamans approaching scholars of
shamanism for consultation. D. Byambadorj is a perfect example of such a shaman – in
his late 60s, from the West of Mongolia. He was one of the first people to become a
shaman at the end of communism, and I have known him since the mid-1990s in the
course of my studies on shamanism. Since he was one of the few shamans in Mongolia in
the 1990s, all researchers knew him very well. Not only does he know these elderly
scholars very well, but also admits that he learned much about shamanism from them.
Based on his experiences, he decided to write a book on shamanism. He titled his book
 486 D. Bumochir

Shamanism: Religion of the Eternal Heaven (Mönkh tengeriin shashin böö mörgöl 2007).
The title of his book, as he admits, is an evident inheritance from Pürev, who claims that
shamanism is a religion – as I illustrated in the previous section. In autumn 2011, I saw
the shaman Byambadorj on TV talking about shamanism and his book. He talked about
editing and reprinting his book but with changes in the title. He declared that he had
decided not to use the term ‘religion’ in the title of his book. He further explained that the
historian Dalai, whom he addressed as bagsh, meaning ‘teacher’ or ‘master’, and who
wrote Mongolyn böögiin mörgöliin tovch tüüh (A Brief History of Mongolian Shamanism
1959) just before he passed away in June 2009, told him that shamanism is not exactly a
religion and that it is better not to use the term religion for shamanism.
There are clear partnerships between scholars and shamans, especially in the 1990s,
when there were only a few famous shamans and not many scholars of shamanism. At
that time it was easy to have a establish of community among scholars and shamans to
discuss the nature of shamanism and to learn from one another. Such a partnership further
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contributed to institutionalizing and standardizing shamanism in Mongolia. Later, people

understood shamanism in Mongolia through the experience of the few shamans who still
existed after 1990 and the scholars who had been researching shamans at that time. Many
people conceive of them as genuine shamans who survived communism and inherited
genuine knowledge and practice from the shamans who had been secretly practising
during communism. Both scholars and the public, including new shamans, now project
the features of those so-called genuine shamans onto new shamans appearing at the
present time. In other words, those scholars’ writings and the few other shamans became
an exemplar and lens with which to view and define later shamans. This lens and
exemplar failed soon after in the 2000s, because shamanism is unique and individualistic
with unlimited types and variations not necessarily repeating one characteristic, even if
they are in the same place with the same ethnicity. Not recognizing the unique and
individualistic nature of shamanism, but rather focusing on the similarities and some
common features, it was reinvented during the socialist period, mostly by Mongolian
scholars, and continued after socialism for about a decade by both scholars and sha-
mans.80 However, such a reinvention process that projected certain features and standards
did not function in all areas. Rather, shamanism was not so much reinvented by anyone
but was imposed upon itself.81 In other words, various new shamans are now being
imposed in different ways.

Conclusion
As we have seen in this paper, much of ‘shamanism’ and ‘shamanic religion’ over the past
200 years has been constructed and institutionalized by many different agencies, namely
Buddhism, Christianity, lay people, shamans and scholars. I conclude that the entire
process has been a discourse between various groups projecting their views on shamans
and their practices. The discourse is usually between Mongols and non-Mongols, where
Mongols claim ‘shamanism’ and ‘shamanic religion’ to be a civilized and sophisticated
religion equivalent to other world religions while others demote shamans and their
activities as ancient and primitive. My second concluding remark concentrates on meth-
odological issues. Available materials and sources to study shamans are always secondary
and include various parties’ projections onto shamans rather than being primarily based on
materials representing individual shaman voices,82 with the exception of the so-called
shamans’ invocation texts published by Rintchen.83 Rintchen did not provide readers with
full ethnographic information on the context, time and agency, claiming only printed texts
 Asian Ethnicity 487

evoked by shamans. There is no record of the study of shamans in Mongolia by

professional researchers prior to the nineteenth century. From the nineteenth century to
the second half of the twentieth century, scholars conducted research mostly on written
materials and produced works suffused by generalization, simplification, ethnocentrism
and nationalism, by making individual spiritual practitioners ‘something’ not necessarily
matching those individuals’ practices and knowledge. During the greater part of the
twentieth century, due to political restrictions and also because shamans have oral tradi-
tions, many scholars, mostly Mongolians, had to produce research on ‘shamanism’ and
‘shamanism religion’ without little or any involvement of shamans. Here, the absence of
shamans in the study of ‘shamanism’ and ‘shamanic religion’ has a double agenda: the
first is the issue of scholars not being fully aware of what a shaman is,84 while the second
is the use of historical sources on shamans documented and/or written by second and third
parties rather than by shamans themselves.
Finally, one should not exclude the state in a discussion of shamanism in Mongolia.
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There are still many questions about the degree to which the state contributed to the
institutionalization of shamanism. This paper illustrates the scholarly construction and
institutionalization of shamanism, but it remains unclear whether shamans have developed
their own institutions over the course of history.

Notes on contributor
Dr D. Bumochir is a professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology,
National University of Mongolia. He completed his first PhD in the field of Philology at the
Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 2000 with his study on Mongol shamanic rituals and chants.
He then extended his interest to anthropology and completed MPhil and PhD degrees in Social
Anthropology at Cambridge. His second PhD research was about respect, power and politics among
Deed Mongols in Qinghai, China, which defended in 2006. He has extensive fieldwork experience
from 1995, in most parts of Mongolia and the Northwest of China mostly among herders, exploring
shamanism, religion, respect, politics, development and lately pastoralism.
Author’s postal address: PO Box 457, PO 46, Ulaanbaatar 460621, Mongolia.

Notes
1. Humphrey and Thomas, Shamanism, History and the State, 1; and Morris, Religion and
Anthropology, 17.
2. Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man, 146; and Hutton, Shamans, 9–11.
3. Eliade, Shamanism.
4. Levis, Ecstatic Religion.
5. Harner, The Way of the Shaman.
6. Vitebsky, Shaman.
7. Morris, Religion and Anthropology, 14; Humphrey and Onon, Shamans and Elders, 4;
Hutton, Shamans, 9–11; Znamenski, The Beauty of the Primitive; Rydving, “Le chamanisme
aujourd’hui”; and Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans, 40.
8. Kollmar-Paulenz, “A Method that Helps Living Beings.”
9. Ibid., 7–11.
10. Ibid., 16.
11. In classical Mongolian script the word is written as böge while in Cyrillic Mongolian it is böö,
and there is no other difference in terms of contents.
12. Khalkh is a majority ethnic group in Mongolia inhabiting in the central regions.
13. He first contacted me in 2010 to tell me his story and share his experience. Since then I have
been working with him and participated most of his rituals.
14. Humphrey and Onon, Shamans and Elders, 4.
15. Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans.
16. Ibid., 5–9.
 488 D. Bumochir

17. Hutton, Shamans, VII.

18. Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans, 40.
19. Humphrey and Thomas, Shamanism, History and the State, 11–12.
20. The word böö literally means a ‘shaman’ and mörgöl means ‘praying’, but when the two
words are together then mörgöl tend to apply to a broader meaning of a system of belief and
faith.
21. Humphrey and Onon, Shamans and Elders, 47.
22. For example, during my fieldwork among the Deed Mongols in the Northwest of China from
2002 to 2004, I discovered that they do not use the terms böö mörgöl or böögiin shashin.
However, for many other Mongol groups there are no records of whether people are aware of
the terms, which needs to be explored. For example, there are studies about the shamanic
practices of Mongols in Inner Mongolia where the authors used the words böö mörgöl
(Khürelsha, Qorchin böge mörgül-ün sudulul) or böögiin shashin (Buyanbatu, Monggol
böge-iyn shashin-u uchir), but I have found no illustrations of whether local people use
those terms.
23. Rachewiltz, Index to the Secret History of the Mongols, 163–164.
24. Khorin nigetü-yin tayilburi toil, 274.
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25. Shagja, Monggol üge-yin tayilburi toil, 297.

26. Poppe, Letopisi Khorinskikh Buryat, VIII.
27. Ibid.
28. Toboev, “Hori higed ahuyin buriad nar-un urida dahan boluhsan anu,” 35.
29. Yumsunov, “Qori-yin arban nigen echige-yin jon-u ug ijagur-un tuguji,” 91–92.
30. Ibid., 92.
31. See note 10 above.
32. Kollmar-Paulenz, “A Method that Helps Living Beings,” 12–13.
33. See note 29 above.
34. Alayir-un Stifanoi Düm-e nar-un medel-ün buriyad nar-tai khamtu yabukhad tede buriyad nar
anu angkhan-acha khoishi böge-yin mörgöl-tei agsan-iyar, teden-i dahuriyaju, zarim-uud anu
bögenerün shashin shitültsejü, er-e inü böge, em-e inü iduhan bolultsahu-yin kho… khoyina-
aca manu khjim-un tsag-uud-du monggol hajar-aca böge iduhan ulus nar irejü neyilegsen-iyer,
tere üyi-e-dü böge ner-ün shashin büri delgeregsen bölüge (Yumsunov, “Qori-yin arban nigen
echige-yin jon-u ug ijagur-un tuguji,” 91–92).
35. Banzarov, “Chyernaya vera ili shamanstvo u mongolov,” 51.
36. Hesse, “On the History of Mongolian Shamanism in Anthropological Perspective,” 403.
37. See note 35 above.
38. Ibid.
39. Damdinsüren, Mongolyn uran zokhiolyn toim; Badamkhatan, Khövsgöliin tsaatan ardyn aj
baidlyn toim; and Mansan, Monggol böge mörgül.
40. Buyanbatu, Monggol böge-iyn shashin-u uchir; and Pürev, Mongol Böögiin Shashin.
41. Dalai, Mongol böö mörgöliin tovch tüükh; Hesse, “On the History of Mongolian Shamanism
in Anthropological Perspective”; and Pürev, Mongol Böögiin Shashin.
42. Rintchen, Les materiuax pour l’etude chamanisme Mongol-1; Rintchen, Les materiuax pour
l’etude chamanisme Mongol-2; Damdinsüren, Mongolyn uran zokhiolyn toim; and Bumochir,
Mongol böögiin zan uil.
43. Banzarov, “Chyernaya vera ili shamanstvo u mongolov.”
44. Dalai, Mongol böö mörgöliin tovch tüükh.
45. Badamkhatan, Khövsgöliin tsaatan ardyn aj baidlyn toim, 37–44.
46. Dulam, The Tradition of Darkhad Shamans.
47. Mansan, Monggol böge mörgül.
48. Badamkhatan, Khövsgöliin tsaatan ardyn aj baidlyn toim, 51.
49. Dalai, Mongol böö mörgöliin tovch tüükh, 3.
50. Ibid., 4.
51. Ibid., 21.
52. Pürev, Mongol Böögiin Shashin, 7–8.
53. Ibid., 7.
54. A Lecture given at the Royal Asiatic Society on 10 October 2002.
55. Bira, “Mongolian Tenggerism and Modern Globalism,” 3.
56. Ibid., 5.
 Asian Ethnicity 489

57. Bira, Tüüver Zohioluud, 53–54.

58. Dalai, Mongol böö mörgöliin tovch tüükh, VII.
59. Pürev, Mongol Böögiin Shashin.
60. Hesse, “On the History of Mongolian Shamanism in Anthropological Perspective.”
61. Johansen, “Further Thoughts on the History of Shamanism,” 40.
62. Dalai, Mongol böö mörgöliin tovch tüükh, 20–31.
63. Sükhbaatar, Mongolchuudyn ertnii övög, 75.
64. Pürev, Mongol Böögiin Shashin, 15–16.
65. Buyanbatu, Monggol böge-iyn shashin-u uchir, 89–168.
66. Ibid., 83–168.
67. Börte Chinu-a (Börte Wolf) is a wolf totem of the Khiad Borjigin clan of Chinggis Khaan.
Some historians claim that he was a leader of a clan living in the seventh century named after
the totem animal. Börte is the colour of the wolf, but there is no consistent agreement on what
this was.
68. See note 47 above.
69. Yonsug, Mongγol shasin surtaqun-u toyimu.
70. See note 63 above.
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71. Pürev, Mongol Böögiin Shashin, 28.

72. Ibid., 16.
73. Bumochir, Mongol böögiin zan uil.
74. Bumochir, “Bütej bui böö mörgöl.”
75. EB is an initial of the above-mentioned shaman. Like many other shamans, he was not keen on
his name being publicly revealed.
76. Bumochir, “Bütej bui böö mörgöl,” 212.
77. M. Pedersen (Not Quite Shamans) describes ‘half shamans’ and ‘not quite shamans’ in post-
socialism, mostly identified as ‘crazy people’ involved in heavy drinking and expressing
violent behaviour. Unlike his ‘half shamans’, the above-mentioned shaman EB exhibited no
such drinking habit and violent behaviour but showed similar symptoms of interacting with the
invisible and living a poor life, etc. Also unlike those ‘half shamans’, he has a costume – not
complete but a lama robe, which he wears to go into a trance. He illustrates a very different
type of ‘half-shaman’ from those described by Pedersen.
78. Bumochir, Mongol böögiin zan uil, 38.
79. Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans, 40.
80. Buyandelgeriyn, “Dealing with Uncertainty,” 128.
81. Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans, 39.
82. Bumochir, “Mongol boogiin zan uil shashin morgol bolson tüükh”, 57–59.
83. Rintchen, Les materiuax pour l’etude chamanisme Mongol-1; Rintchen, Les materiuax pour
l’etude chamanisme Mongol-2 (1961); Rintchen, Les materiuax pour l’etude chamanisme
Mongol-2 (1975).
84. Johansen, “Further Thoughts on the History of Shamanism”; Humphrey and Onon, Shamans
and Elders; and Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans.

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