Journal of The International Association of Tibetan Studies: Issue 6 - December 2011

Journal of the
International Association
of Tibetan Studies
Issue 6 — December 2011
ISSN 1550-6363
An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)
www.jiats.org
Editor-in-Chief: David Germano
Guest Editors: Gray Tuttle, Johan Elverskog
Book Review Editor: Bryan J. Cuevas
Managing Editor: Steven Weinberger
Assistant Editor: William McGrath
Technical Director: Nathaniel Grove
Contents
Articles
• Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain (pp. 1-133)

– Karl Debreczeny
• Tales of Conjured Temples (huasi) in Qing Period Mountain
Gazetteers (pp. 134-162)
– Susan Andrews
• Tibetan Buddhism at Wutai Shan in the Qing: The Chinese-language
Register (pp. 163-214)
– Gray Tuttle
• Tibetan Poetry on Wutai Shan (pp. 215-242)
– Kurtis R. Schaeffer
• Wutai Shan, Qing Cosmopolitanism, and the Mongols (pp. 243-274)
– Johan Elverskog
• Mongol Pilgrimages to Wutai Shan in the Late Qing Dynasty (pp. 275-326)
– Isabelle Charleux
• Bla brang Monastery and Wutai Shan (pp. 327-348)
– Paul K. Nietupski
• The Jiaqing Emperor’s Magnificent Record of the Western Tour (pp. 349-371)
– Patricia Berger
• Maps of Wutai Shan: Individuating the Sacred Landscape through
Color (pp. 372-388)
– Wen-shing Chou
• The Thirteenth Dalai Lama at Wutai Shan: Exile and Diplomacy (pp. 389-410)
– Elliot Sperling
• Gifts at Wutai Shan: Rockhill and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (pp. 411-428)
– Susan Meinheit
ii
Article Related to JIATS Issue 4
• Of Horses and Motorbikes: Negotiating Modernities in Pastoral A mdo, Sichuan

Province (pp. 429-450)
– Lilian Iselin
Book Reviews
• Review of Jokhang: Tibet’s Most Sacred Buddhist Temple, by Gyurme Dorje, Tashi
Tsering, Heather Stoddard, and André Alexander (pp. 451-466)
– Cameron David Warner
• Review of Buddhism and Empire: The Political and Religious Culture of Early
Tibet, by Michael Walter (pp. 467-471)
– Sam van Schaik
Abstracts (pp. 472-476)
Contributors to this Issue (pp. 477-480)
iii
Mongol Pilgrimages to Wutai Shan in the Late Qing
Dynasty
Isabelle Charleux
National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Abstract: Since the beginning of the Qing dynasty, Mongols have viewed Wutai
Shan as a substitute for Tibet pilgrimages. Relying on various Mongolian, Chinese,
Japanese, and Western sources (stone inscriptions, local gazetteers, travelogues,
mountain guides), this paper tries to document the pilgrimage of Mongols to Wutai
Shan from the late Qing dynasty to the early twentieth century. Who were the
ordinary pilgrims, where did they come from, and what were their motivations?
How were they informed about the pilgrimage and how did they travel to Wutai
Shan? What were they particularly looking for and what were their priorities? The
final section deals with a particular type of cave, the famous “Womb Cave,” and
its connection to pilgrimage sites in Mongolia.
Introduction
Un lieu saint ne peut exister sans l’action centrifuge des saints et des religieux,
et l’action centripète des pèlerins. Les religieux proposent et les pèlerins disposent.1
Pilgrimage is one of the most important expressions of lay religiosity. Mongols

being reputedly pious and sincere devotees, their devotion at pilgrimage sites was
spectacular. As noted by a few nineteenth- and early twentieth-century observers,
they made pilgrimages to numerous local shrines, but none of them could compare
to Wutai Shan. James Gilmour for instance, who traveled from 1870 to 1880,
compared the Wutai pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Mecca.2 Yet this had not always
1
Katia Buffetrille, “Montagnes sacrées, lacs et grottes. Lieux de pèlerinage dans le monde tibétain.
Traditions écrites, réalités vivantes,” (Ph.D diss., Nanterre, 1996), 390.
2
“All over Mongolia, and wherever Mongols are met with in North China, one is constantly reminded
of this place. It is true that the mania which possesses the Mongols for making pilgrimages carries them
to many other shrines, some of which are both celebrated and much frequented, but none of them can
be compared to Wu T’ai.” James Gilmour, Among the Mongols (New York: Praeger, 1970 [1883]),
141.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011): 275-326.
http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5712.
1550-6363/2011/6/T5712.
© 2011 by Isabelle Charleux, Tibetan and Himalayan Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies.
Distributed under the THL Digital Text License.
Charleux: Mongol Pilgrimages to Wutai Shan 276
been the case: the transformation into a Tibeto-Mongol3 pilgrimage site was a
gradual process. Although Tibetan Buddhist monasteries were built on the mountain
by the Yuan Mongol emperors, we have no evidence of Mongol pilgrimages before
the mid-Qing dynasty, when Rol pa’i rdo rje (1717-86), the Second (or Third for
the Chinese) Zhangjia (章嘉, lcang skya) Qutuγtu, spent summers on the mountain
for thirty-six years (1750-1786). At that time, three thousand bla mas (lama, 喇
嘛, blama)4 lived in twenty-six Tibeto-Mongol monasteries at Wutai Shan.5
Although the Qing also subsidized the Chinese monasteries,6 the Tibeto-Mongol
ones were obviously wealthier and received more donations from the Qing court.7
These monasteries staffed by Mongol and
Tibetan monks attracted so many Mongol
pilgrims that during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries Wutai Shan
presented a strong exotic flavor for
Chinese visitors. With Qing support, the
Tibeto-Mongol monasteries became a
Tibetan enclave on the edge of Chinese
territory, only a few hundred kilometers
from Mongolia, ruled by the
Figure 1: General view of Wutai Shan in the
representative of the Dalai Lama in China
first half of the twentieth century. Ernest
Boerschmann, Picturesque China - Architecture – the head ruling lama (Jasaγ Da Blama).
8
and Landscape - A Journey through Twelve Under the emperor Jiaqing (嘉庆, r.
Provinces (New York: Brentano’s, 1923). 1796-1820), Wutai Shan was called Tibet
Photographs taken between 1906-1909.
http://www.pbase.com/lambsfeathers/image/43157671.
3
The terms “lamaist” and “Lamaism” – which are no longer in use in the academic world (see Donald
Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West [Chicago & London: The University
of Chicago Press, 1998]) – would be more appropriate for these monasteries that were staffed by
Tibetan, Mongol, but also Monguor and Han Chinese monks.
4
I here use the term “bla mas” in current Mongolian usage (fully ordained monks in Tibeto-Mongol
Buddhism), to distinguish them clearly from the monks of Chinese Buddhism. The Chinese sources
on Wutai Shan use the terms monk in yellow robe (huangyi seng, 黃衣僧), lama, or foreign monk
(fanseng, 番僧).
5
Tian Pixu et al., ed., Wutai xin zhi, juan 1 and 4 (Chongshi shuyuan, 1883).
6
See Nathalie Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor Go to Wutai Shan?: Patronage, Pilgrimage,
and the Place of Tibetan Buddhism at the Early Qing Court,” Late Imperial China 29, no. 1 (2008):
73-119.
7
The rent and produce from their lands were their first source of income. In addition, Tibetan
monasteries received larger imperial favors, as well as a tribute from Shanxi Province (Xin Butang and
Zheng Fulin, “Wutai Shan simiao jingji de tansuo,” Wutai Shan yanjiu [1995, no. 3]: 28). Of the five
monasteries that received the highest amounts of donations in 1936, four were Tibeto-Mongol
monasteries: Tayuan Si (塔院寺, suburγan süme; 17,000 yuan), Pusa Ding (15,000 yuan), Cifu Si (慈
福寺, byams dge gling, buyan ibegegci süme; 11,000 yuan), Zhenhai Si (鎮海寺, luus-i daruγsan süme;
10,000 yuan); Xin and Zheng, “Wutai Shan simiao jingji,” 28.
8
The six first head ruling lamas were appointed by the Manchu emperors; from the seventh on, they
were appointed every sixth year by the Dalai Lama and became ambassadors for Tibetan religious
affairs in China.
Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011) 277
of China (Zhonghua Weizang, 中華衛藏)9 and a statute was created granting

Tibetans there extraterritoriality. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who took refuge in
Wutai Shan in 1907-1908, felt more secure and free there than in Beijing. However,
during that period, Wutai Shan continued to be a very important pilgrimage site
for Chinese Buddhists, included in the circuit of the Four Grand and Famous
Mountains (Si da ming shan, 四大名山).
Figure 3: A Mongol Bla ma invited to make a

Figure 2: Bla mas playing music during the ritual for the festival of the Wuyemiao, the
’Cham ritual. Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 14. Chinese temple dedicated to the Five Dragon
Kings in Taihuai Village, July 2007. Photo by
Isabelle Charleux.
Popular Wutai Shan

If the imperial patronage of the mountain has attracted the attention of past and
present scholars – see the numerous publications on the imperially-founded temples
and the steles and poems written by emperors – the activities of ordinary pilgrims
are comparatively poorly documented. I will try here to move away from the
imperial center and focus on the ordinary Mongols who undertook the pilgrimage
to Wutai Shan: why, how they came, and what they did there. These pilgrims did
not write travelogues about their journeys, but had stone inscriptions carved to
commemorate their donations. About 340 Mongolian stone inscriptions still stand
at Wutai Shan and have not been published. Some were carved on very bad quality
stone, so they are now completely illegible, but the majority has been well
preserved. They generally inform us on the date of the donation, the name and
origin of pilgrims, and the amount of donations.10
9
Stele, “Qingliang Shan ji,” (1811) in Wutai Shan beiwen biane yinglian shifu xuan, edited by Zhou
Zhenhua, et al. (Taiyuan: Shanxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1998), 81.
10
The names, dates and authors of 249 stone inscriptions are listed in Zhongguo Menggu wen gu ji
zong mu bian wei hui, ed., Zhongguo Menggu wen guji zongmu (Beijing: Beijing tu shu guan chu ban
she, 1999), 2141-47, n. 12610-47, and 2178-211, n. 12786-996. I thank Vladimir Uspensky and Johan
Elverskog for this information. I found 91 more stone inscription on Wutai Shan.
Travelers’ accounts also inform us about the Mongol pilgrims’ practices.11

European explorers, scientists, diplomats and missionaries, as well as Chinese
officials, scientists and pilgrims who went to Wutai Shan in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries give us some vivid descriptions of the Mongol
pilgrims. At last, a useful source is the 1846 wood-block map made by a Mongol
monk of the Cifu Si. As shown by Chou Wen-shing, the map is not only a religious
record of monasteries, miracles and apparitions, but also an ethnographic document
that gives a glimpse of the daily life of merchants, pilgrims and monks, the roads
and paths they took, and the gestures they made in front of temples.12
These sources tell us about sacred features of the landscape – grottoes, springs,
ponds, strange rocks, as well as ritual practices associated with them, suggesting
the popular appropriation of the mountain. Some of these popular practices, such
as crawling through the cave of initiatory rebirth, which will be the object of the
third part of this paper, are not documented by official records, probably because
they do not belong to any learned tradition and because the eminent monks never
considered them as important compared, for instance, to the manifestations of
Mañjuśrī. The clerical views of the mountain differ from the pilgrims’ ordinary
experiences.13 These popular practices and narratives reveal the transformation of
the mountain as a Tibeto-Mongol pilgrimage site, and inform us, in a different way
than the Tibetan and Mongol gazetteers, about how the Tibetans and Mongol monks
and pilgrims reshaped the mountain.
I will thus raise a few questions about how the reconfiguration of Wutai Shan
as a Tibeto-Mongol pilgrimage site supported by the Qing emperors for the Mongols
was adopted and reshaped by them. What did Wutai Shan really mean for the
Mongols, how could it compare and compete with Tibetan pilgrimages, and how
did the Tibetans and Mongols transplant and superimpose Tibetan pilgrimage
11
I mostly used the following accounts: Gilmour, Among the Mongols, and Rev. Joseph Edkins,
Religion in China; containing a brief account of the three religions of the Chinese: with observations
on the prospects of Christian conversion amongst that people (London: Trübner & Co., 1893 [1878]),
who traveled together in 1872; D. Pokotilov, “Der Wu T’ai Schan und seine Klöster,” trans. from
German by W. A. Unkrig, Sinica-Sonderausgabe (1935): 38-89 (U-taj, Ego prošloe I nastojaščcee,
Zapiski Imp. Russk. Geogr. Obščestva po obščej geografii 22 [Saint-Petersbourg, 1893]: 2), who
traveled in 1889; William W. Rockhill, “A Pilgrimage to the Great Buddhist Sanctuary of North China,”
The Atlantic Monthly 75, no. 452 (June 1895): 758-69, who traveled in 1887 and 1908; Emil S. Fischer,
The Sacred Wu Tai Shan in connection with modern travel from Tai yuan fu via Mount Wu Tai to the
Mongolian border (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1923); John Blofeld, The Wheel of Life. The
Autobiography of a Western Buddhist (London: Rider & co, 1959), who traveled in 1935-36; Gao
Henian, Ming Shan youfang ji (Beijing: Zong jiao wen hua chu ban she, 2000 [repr.; first ed. 1949]),
who traveled in 1903 and 1912; Jiang Weiqiao, “Wutai Shan jiyou,” juan 10, 1918, in Gujin youji
congchao 3, ed. Lao Yi’an (Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shu ju, Minguo 50 [1961], 48 juan: 15-26); and
Zhang Dungu, “Wutai Shan can fo riji,” Dixue zazhi 3, no. 1 (1911): 17-28, who traveled in 1911.
12
Chou Wen-shing, “Ineffable Paths: Mapping Wutaishan in Qing Dynasty China,” The Art Bulletin
89, no. 1 (March 2007): 108-29, and this volume.
13
The “gap” which exists between a pilgrim’s mundane experience of a holy place and visionary
accounts of an environment’s sublime features has been explored by specialists of Tibetan pilgrimages
(Alexander W. Macdonald, “Foreword,” in Pilgrimage in Tibet, ed. Alex McKay [Richmond (Surrey)
& Leiden: Curzon Press, International Institute for Asian Studies, 1998], x).
traditions onto the preexistent Wutai Shan landscape and narrative by creating new
sites, legends and rituals?
I will begin with a presentation of how Wutai Shan became a popular destination
among Mongols during the late Qing dynasty, and then try to give an overview of
their peregrinations and daily religious practices. The third part of the article will
focus on pilgrims’ practices at natural holy sites, and particularly, caves. Many
questions will remain unsolved and demand further studies, in particular whether
the Mongol pilgrims observed certain vows, certain taboos, and in what ways their
pilgrimage was different from that of Chinese devotees.
Promoting the Mountain

The reasons why the Mongols considered Wutai Shan to be the most sacred place
to visit on earth are many – the ancientness and pan-Asian Buddhist character of
the pilgrimage, the particular promotion of the mountain during the Yuan dynasty,
the importance of the cult of Mañjuśrī in Buddhist Mongolia,14 the promotion of
the mountain by the early Manchus, linked with the cult of the emperor-Mañjuśrī,15
and by the Mongolian and Tibetan clergy affiliated to the Qing court. But what
were the means of propaganda used on the common Mongolian herders?
David Farquhar stressed the importance of the Mongolian guide-books (γarcaγ,
dkar chag) as a major instrument of promotion of the holy mountain for the
Mongols.16 The first guide-book of Wutai Shan in Mongol was written by Lobsang
Danjin (blo bzang bstan ’jin , seventeenth century), at the request of Awang
Laozang (阿王老藏, ngag dbang blo bzang, 1601-87), the first head ruling lama
of Wutai Shan.17 It was published in Beijing in 1667 or, more probably, 1721.
Farquhar showed that it was one of the first block-prints made in China for the
Mongols and assumed it was supported by the imperial court to promote the
mountain.18 This book had a very large circulation and was still available in the
early twentieth century.19 However, the guide-books were read by a minority of
learned Mongols and were probably not the main means of promoting Wutai Shan.
14
About the importance of Mañjuśrī in religious canonical texts as well as in texts and narratives
used in Mongols’ daily life, see Johan Elverskog, “Wutai Shan, Qing Cosmopolitanism, and the
Mongols,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011),
http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5715 .
15
David M. Farquhar, “Emperor as Bodhisattva in the Governance of the Ch’ing Empire,” Harvard
Journal of Asiatic Studies 38, no. 2 (1978): 5-34.
16
Farquhar, “Emperor as Bodhisattva.”
17
Uta-yin tabun aγulan-u orusil süsüg-ten-ü cikin cimeg orusiba (“A Guide to the Five Mountains
of Wutai: Ornament for the Ears of the Devotees”); see Walther Heissig, Die Pekinger Lamaistischen
Blockdrucke in mongolischer Sprache. Materialien zur mongolischen Literaturgeschichte, Göttinger
Asiatische Forschungen 2 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1954), n°7, n°58. Ngag dbang blo bzang
was appointed by imperial order in 1659.
18
Farquhar, “Emperor as Bodhisattva,” 30.
19
Heissig, Die Pekinger, 12, n. 4. On the other Mongolian guidebooks, see Farquhar, “Emperor as
Bodhisattva,” 30; Gray Tuttle, “Early Qing Patronage of (Tibetan) Buddhism at Wutai Shan: The
A second means was the wood-block images of Wutai Shan such as the Cifu
Si image dated 1846, which was widely circulated, recarved, and copied on other
supports (silks, mural paintings). It was exported to Outer Mongolia: Dr. G. J.
Ramstedt’s Finnish expedition purchased one print in 1909 at Örgüge (Yeke Küriye)
in a Beijing shop, “an agency representing the Wutai Shan monasteries,” along
with sixty-three brightly colored thang ka probably made on the mountain.20 The
print preserved in the Museum of the Mission of Fathers of Scheut (C. I. C. M.)
in Belgium was probably purchased in Inner Mongolia.21 In 1874, only
thirty-two years after the first print, the image was re-carved on new wood-blocks,
probably somewhere in China, and other similar style wood-blocks also exist.22
The Cifu Si image of Wutai Shan, by giving an easily decipherable panorama,
helped spread knowledge of the mountain. It could at the same time be used as a
guide-map,23 a model for painters, a souvenir, an object of worship comparable
with the paintings of famous monasteries found in Mongolian monasteries,24 and
even the locus of a surrogate pilgrimage. According to the Chinese inscription, the
pilgrimage to Wutai Shan and the act of seeing this map are two means of listening
to and preaching the dharma of Mañjuśrī and ensure blessings, happiness, longevity,
and deliverance from all calamities and diseases in this life.25 By worshipping the
map the pilgrim could even make a more complete pilgrimage than the original.26
The Mongolian gazetteers and the Cifu Si image were made widely available
to the Mongols, but the promotion of the mountain was mostly done in the field,
through the oral accounts of pilgrims and monks, the tales of miracles, visions and
encounters with Mañjuśrī, and the advices and prescriptions given by learned bla
mas and reincarnations who encouraged Mongols to undertake the pilgrimage to
cure an illness. Besides, the numerous monks from the Wutai Shan monasteries
who traveled around, gathering funds for restoration work or new construction,
spread the fame of Wutai Shan throughout Mongolia and even in Buryatia with
such persuasion that after their visit, the Mongol donors often made a vow to make
a pilgrimage to the mountain. These bla mas, in charge of the treasury of a
Chinese Language Register,” paper read at the “Conference Wutai Shan and Qing Culture” (New York,
May 12-13, 2007), Appendix 1.
20
Harry Halén, Mirrors of the Void, Buddhist Art in the National Museum of Finland, 64
Sino-Mongolian thang ka from the Wutai Shan Workshops, a Panoramic Map of the Wutai Mountains
and Objects of Diverse Origins (Helsinki: Museovirasto, 1987), 4. The thang ka and the map are now
in the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki.
21
Museum of China, Anderlecht, inv. Bouddhisme/N°193, personal communication of Father
Jean-Pierre Benit.
22
Chou, “Ineffable paths,” 126, n. 2, 11, and 12; 127 n. 48, 49.
23
Although its labels are written in Chinese and Tibetan, not in Mongolian.
24
A painting of Wutai Shan together with seven Tibetan monasteries is found on the second floor
of the Coγcin Dugang (built in 1757) of Badγar Coyiling Süme (or Aγui Yeke Onul-Tu Süme, Udan
Juu, Ch. Wudang Zhao, north east of Baotou). See Isabelle Charleux, Temples et monastères de
Mongolie-Intérieure (Paris: Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques & Institut National
d’Histoire de l’Art, 2006), fig. 104 and CD-rom 63.
25
Translation of the Chinese inscription in Chou, “Ineffable paths,” 125, “Appendix.”
26
Chou, “Ineffable paths,” 124.
monastery or of a reincarnation, organized annual collective fund-raising

expeditions, setting off with carts and tents; others traveled alone and were called
wandering monk.27 They left the mountain in the spring and returned before winter.
As noted by the missionary James Gilmour, “these expeditions are numerous and
indefatigable, and perhaps there is no tent, rich or poor, throughout the whole
length and breadth of the eastern half of Mongolia, which is not visited by such
deputation every year. These collectors penetrate even beyond the bounds of the
Chinese empire, and carry off rich offerings from the Buriats, who compared with
Mongols are wealthy. Food, tea, skins, cattle, money, all are eagerly received
[…].”28 Fund-raising bla mas from Bla brang, Dgon lung byams pa gling and other
A mdo monasteries also criss-crossed Mongolia, and found Mongol herders
generally wealthier than Tibetans.
The Wutai Shan wandering monk were held in great esteem by Mongol families.
Going from yurt to yurt, they delivered a speech about the monastery where they
came from, the temples and stūpa they had to repair, asking for the great compassion
of the donor and telling them of the infinite merits they could obtain. They brought
small gifts – silk they bought in Beijing, clothes for the children, silk scarves,
statues from the mountain, charm (adis, adhiṣṭhāna),29 as well as children’s shoes
for childless families as a promise to bring them children. Like other wandering
badarci, they also brought news and stories.30 Once they had gathered enough
funds, they returned to Wutai Shan, sometimes with large sums of money, gold
and silver, driving before them up to two thousand sheep and hundreds of horses.31
They usually sold some of these animals in the towns they went through.32 Those
who traveled to Eastern Inner Mongolia went via Beijing,33 where they purchased
various artifacts to take to Mongolia, and on their way back, they exchanged part
of the gifts they had received for silk in Beijing. Wutai Shan bla mas who traveled
in Mongolia for other purposes, such as to take back home ill or tired pilgrims,
also received many gifts from Mongol families on the way.34
27
A term that designates a wandering unordained practitioner who traveled for various purposes: to
collect funds to build a monastery, teach and spread the Dharma, further their religious training in
Tibet, or to run away from taxes and debts (C. Gocoo, “Le Badarci mongol,” trans. from Mongolian
by Sarah Dars, Études Mongoles 1 [Nanterre, 1970]: 73-77).
28
Gilmour, Among the Mongols, 151.
29
Squares of white paper written in Tibetan containing flour and sugar, rice, and so forth, to eat as
a medicine, to bring happiness, wealth and luck.
30
Song Wenhui, “Mengzu renmin de Wutai Shan qing,” Wutai Shan yanjiu (2000, no. 3): 33; quoting
a document written by a Qaracin bla ma and preserved in the Archives of the Qaracin Right Banner,
which relates the expeditions of alms-collecting bla mas visiting the Qaracin Right banner in Inner
Mongolia.
31
In 1930 a certain Babu (twentieth century), after having deducted his traveling expenses, brought
back 1,300 silver dollars to his monastery (Song, “Mengzu renmin,” 33).
32
Song, “Mengzu renmin,” 33.
33
John Blofeld met a fund-raising monk from Wutai Shan in Beijing around 1936-37 (The Wheel
of Life, 96-97).
34
The Mongol donors whose names were entered in the subscription list gained
good merit through the act of donation, and were to think that they had created
connections with Wutai Shan. They had established a particular relation, a special
link with a specific monastery, so that when they went to the mountain, they would
then be welcomed to that monastery “as old acquaintances by those who experienced
their hospitality in the desert, and were the recipients of their pious gifts.”35 These
fund-raising expeditions certainly played an important role in the spread of
knowledge of the mountain and were therefore a living advertisement for Wutai
Shan.
The Mongolian Pilgrimages to Wutai Shan
When Did the Pilgrimage Start?

We don’t know exactly when the pilgrimage started. Wutai Shan does not seem
to have been an important place for Mongols to visit during the late sixteenth
century renaissance of Buddhism in Mongolia. In the early Qing dynasty (Shunzhi
[顺治, r. 1644-61] and Kangxi [康熙, r. 1662-1722] reigns), Mongols started to
finance the restoration of temples on the mountain. We can assume that pilgrimages
of lay Mongols may have become popular when the population of Tibetan and
Mongol monks living in Wutai Shan increased significantly, that is, under the
Qianlong (乾隆, r. 1736-95) emperor and particularly when the Zhangjia Qutuγtu
Rol pa’i rdo rje lived on the mountain. The rise of religious poetry at that period
reveal the strong attraction Wutai Shan exerted over Tibetan and Mongol clerics
at that time.36 But sources suggest that the pilgrimage reached its peak of popularity
among the lay Mongols from the nineteenth century up to the 1930s.37 Stone
inscriptions reveal that the patronage of Mongol donors replaced the declining
imperial patronage in the second half of the nineteenth century: of the 340 stone
inscriptions in Mongolian or multilingual including Mongolian, 135 date from the
Republican period, 147 from the 1880-1911 and only thirty-four are dated before
1880 (on twenty-four inscriptions the date is illegible).38
Even if we can assume that maps of Wutai Shan were made before the nineteenth
century, the making of the Cifu Si map in 1846 by a Mongolian monk, and its
circulation again show Wutai Shan to have been a very lively place in the nineteenth
century.
35
36
See Kurtis R. Schaeffer, “Tibetan Poetry on Wutai Shan,” Journal of the International Association
of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December 2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5719.
37
However, in 1900, A. W. S. Wingate, “Nine Years’ Survey and Exploration in Northern and
Central China (Continued),” The Geographical Journal 29, no. 3 (March 1907): 276, noticed a “large
falling off in the number of Mongol pilgrims” and consequently “a heavy shortage in the amount of
contributions,” and gave as explanation the scarcity of water along the routes.
38
Elverskog, “Wutai Shan, Qing Cosmopolitanism, and the Mongols”; Zhongguo Menggu wen gu
ji zong mu bian wei hui, ed., Zhongguo Menggu wen, 2141-47, n°12610-12647, and 2178-211,
n°12786-996, and personal observation.
Who Were the Pilgrims?

The Mongol pilgrims were common people as well as the Borjigid aristocracy,
laymen and bla mas, coming from Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and China.39
The main Mongol group represented by the stone inscriptions are the Sünid of
Inner Mongolia (fifty inscriptions),40 then come the Caqar, Dariγangγa, Abaγa,
Kesigten from Inner Mongolia, and pilgrims from Secen Qan Ayimaγ in Outer
Mongolia. According to the stone inscriptions of Shifang Tang,41 the clerics (from
novices to abbots and reincarnations) represent one-third of the donors. However,
since this monastery was founded to accommodate Tibetan, Mongol and Manchu
bla mas coming from afar, the monks were probably over-represented in Shifang
Tang, and the general proportion of bla mas among pilgrims was probably less.
Antoine Mostaert noted that generally only the wealthy, and the itinerant begging
monks, could undertake long journeys such as going to Lhasa.42 However, it seems
that a pilgrimage to Wutai Shan was affordable to ordinary Mongolian families
because it was close to the Mongol border and herders were able to bring along
their flocks and herds more easily. Although there were no regulations concerning
the pilgrims in the Lifanyuan zeli, Mongol pilgrims did have to obtain a travel
permit from the administration of their banner.
Figure 5: Modern Mongol pilgrims from Otoγ

banner, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, July 2007.
Figure 4: Mongolian women attending the Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
festival. Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 23.
The Mongol noblemen and important reincarnations would take it in turns

(modeled on the New Year “pilgrimage to the emperor” [chaojin, 朝覲], every six
years) to make the pilgrimage to Wutai Shan. For instance, each year twelve of
39
The Mongols of China include the Mongols of the Eight Manchu banners as well as the Mongols
living in China since the Ming dynasty. I have no information on Monguor and Manchu pilgrims.
40
Since seventy percent of the stone inscriptions are located in Shifang Tang (see below), this could
mean that the Sünid Mongols stayed in Shifang Tang and used to carve a stone to record their donations,
while other Mongol groups did not.
41
Also called Guangren Si (廣仁寺, nub phyogs kun ’dus gling, örüsiyel-i badaraγuluγci süme),
founded by a monk from the Co ne Monastery in A mdo, and staffed by Tibetan bla mas.
42
Antoine Mostaert (cicm), “Matériaux ethnographiques relatifs aux Mongols Ordos,” Central
Asiatic Journal 2 (1956), 289.
the Inner Mongolian Ruling Princes and their families went on pilgrimage to Wutai
Shan, which means that each of the ruling families of the forty-eight banners of
Inner Mongolia would go to Wutai Shan every four years. Mongol nobles and
high-ranking monks were sometimes invited to accompany the emperor on his
pilgrimage. The First Jebcündamba Qutuγtu made a pilgrimage to the mountain
with the Kangxi emperor in 1698.43 In 1811 the Jiaqing emperor took Mongol
nobles to pray at Wutai Shan; they visited temples “in the spirit of a unique family
of interior (China) and exterior (outside China).”44
Worship and Fairs: The Motivations of the Mongol Pilgrims

The Mongols used to go to Wutai Shan
for three main reasons: worship, burial,
and trade. Their major motivation, as in
any Buddhist pilgrimage, was to
accumulate merit and gain a better
reincarnation for themselves or for living
or dead relatives (by transfer of merit).
As the meaning of the Mongolian word
for the Buddhist notion of merit (buyan
punya), which also means good luck,
fortune and prosperity,45 reflects, they
were also seeking happiness and
prosperity in this life and their future
lives. Some Mongols used to go to Wutai
Shan often, sometimes as much as once
a year, hoping that each new visit would
ensure happiness in a new life.46 Some
had specific goals such as to ask for an
heir, to look for a vision, to do penance,
or to cure an illness; but many were just
fulfilling their vow to go to the mountain. Figure 6: White stūpas and tombs on the
hillsides with Mongol script. Photo by Gray
It was sometimes the most important vow Tuttle.
of their life and also their most risky and
43
Charles Bawden, ed., The Jebtsundamba Khutukhtus of Urga (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,
1961, Asiatische Forschungen, 9), 56, 58.
44
As recorded in the stele “Qingliang Shan beiji,” in Wutai Shan bei wen, edited by Zhou, et al., 81.
On imperial tours to Wutai Shan in general, see Köhle, “Why Did the Kangxi Emperor,” and on the
Jiaqing emperor’s tour to Wutai Shan, see Patricia Berger, “The Jiaqing Emperor’s Magnificent Record
of the Western Tour ,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 (December
2011), http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5711.
45
For a discussion of “orthodox” benefits (notions of karma and accumulation of merit) and less
“orthodox” ones (such as good luck, purification of sins, transgressions and pollution, life energy,
longevity) in Tibetan pilgrimages, see Toni Huber, The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular
Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet (New York & Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 10, 16-19.
46
difficult venture ever.47 All this fits well with the standard definition of a pilgrimage,
“a journey to a sanctified place, undertaken with the expectation of future spiritual
and/or worldly benefit.”48
In addition to the ordinary pilgrims,
many Mongols traveled to Wutai Shan
carrying the bones of their deceased
parents and ashes of monks in order to be
able to bury them in the holy land of
Mañjuśrī, so that they could acquire
religious merit and have a better
reincarnation.49 They carried gold to buy
several square chi (尺)50 of land and then
erected small funerary stūpa on the plot.
Figure 7: The horse and mule fair (luoma dahui, So many Mongols asked to be buried
騾馬大會).
there that an edict restricted burials at
Wutai Shan to the resident monks.51 But the urns carrying the cremated remains
of many reincarnations and abbots from Mongol monasteries continued to be sent
there in the early twentieth century to be buried in stūpa.52 For instance several
reincarnations of the Caγan Diyanci Qutuγtu from the Caγan Diyanci-Yin Keyid
in Eastern Inner Mongolia (present-day Fuxin Autonomous District, Liaoning)
had their relic stūpa (stūpa śarīra) built in Fenglin Valley (Fenglin Gu, 風林谷)
on Wutai Shan. Nowadays many old white stūpa and tombs can still be seen on
the hillsides and even near the monasteries.
47
48
Alex McKay, “Introduction,” in Pilgrimage in Tibet, ed. Alex McKay (Richmond [Surrey] &
Leiden: Curzon Press, International Institute for Asian Studies, 1998), 1; a similar definition is given
by Susan Naquin and Yü Chün-Fang, “Introduction,” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 3.
49
According to the Lazarist fathers Huc and Gabet, who did not actually visit Wutai Shan: “The
most celebrated seat of Mongol burials is in the province of Chan-Si [Shanxi], at the famous Lamasery
of Five Towers (Ou-Tay) [Wu-t’ai]. According to the Tartars, the Lamasery of the Five Towers is the
best place you can be buried in. The ground in it is so holy, that those who are so fortunate as to be
interred there are certain of a happy transmigration thence. The marvellous sanctity of this place is
attributed to the presence of Buddha, who for some centuries past has taken up his abode there in the
interior of the mountain. In 1842 the noble Tokoura, of whom we have already had occasion to speak,
conveying the bones of his father and mother to the Five Towers, had the infinite happiness to behold
there the venerable Buddha. […] it is certain that the Tartars and the Thibetians have given themselves
to an inconceivable degree of fanaticism in reference to the Lamasery of the Five Towers. You frequently
meet, in the deserts of Tartary, Mongols carrying on their shoulders the bones of their parents to the
Five Towers, to purchase almost at its weight in gold, a few feet of earth, whereon they may raise a
small mausoleum” (Régis Evariste Huc [1813-1860], Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846
[trans. by William Hazlitt; ed. with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot, London: Routledge, 2
vols., 1928 (repr.; first ed. 1924)], 93-94).
50
1 chi = 0.32 meters.
51
Guangxu, ed., Qinding Lifanyuan zeli, compiled in 1811, 64 juan (1890): 16, s. l., juan 59.
52
A third reason why Mongol pilgrims

were attracted to Wutai Shan was trade,
which appears to have been – as with
many pilgrimages the world over – a very
important part of pilgrimages to Wutai
Shan, especially for the Mongols who
came every year. Wutai Shan became an
important Sino-Mongol trade center in
the late Qing dynasty. The pilgrims
brought with them cattle, camels, mules,
horses, hides, leather, wool, gold and
silver to give in offerings to the
monasteries, but also to sell; the
wealthiest came with dozens of animals.53
Of all the Mongol social classes – princes,
dukes, nobles (tayiji), monks, and
common people – the wealthiest of all
were the monks.54 During the sixth month
of the Lunar year, an important horse and
mule fair (luoma dahui, 騾馬大會 – but Figure 8: The Yanglin Street market. Photo by
also for cattle and donkeys) was Gray Tuttle.
organized, attracting traders from Zhili, Shandong, Henan, and southwest Shanxi.55
It was started in the Qianlong period and is still held today.56 The cool climate
allowed for the gathering of horses, and the pastures on Wutai Shan were said to
be excellent for horses and cattle; the grass and water quickly fattened, strengthened
and cured animals.57
The two main trading centers in the late Qing dynasty were Taihuai Zhen (two
li south of Xiantong Si [顯通寺, Гayiqamsiγtu tegüs süme], see the Rubin Museum
Cifu Si map) where twenty Chinese shops sold flour and other food products, and
Yanglin Street (Yanglin Jie, 楊林街), Xiantong Si’s main street. The Yanglin
Street market, stretching out from Xiantong Si to either side of the 108 steps leading
to Pusa Ding,58 had narrow lanes that were densely crowded with thirty or forty
Chinese merchant families. These shops belonged to the monasteries and were
53
Bai Meichu, Zhonghua Minguo shengqu quanzhi (Beijing: Beiping Shifan Daxue shi di xi, 1925,
vol. 3: “Lu Yu Jin sansheng zhi”), 154.
54
Zhang, “Wutai Shan can fo,” 25.
55
Bai, Zhonghua minguo, 92.
56
It was organized at the foot of Dailuo Ding near Taihuai, but was moved to the pastures facing
Zhenhai Si during the twentieth century.
57
Han Heping, and Wang Miao, Wutai Shan (Hong Kong: Xianggang Zhongguo lü you chu ban
she), 1999, 98-99.
58
The Pusa Ding, “Bodhisattva’s Ushnisha Monastery” or “Bodhisattva’s Peak Monastery”
(Bodisadua-Yin Orgil), was built during the Yongle (永乐, r. 1403-1424) reign on the old Da Wenshu
Si or Zhenrong Yuan that sheltered the “true image” of Mañjuśrī. It was the residence of the head ruling
lama and thus the Dge lugs pa principal monastery, sponsored by the Manchu emperors.
rented to the Chinese.59 They sold all sorts of Tibetan-style ritual objects – wooden
bowls,60 wooden rosaries, metal objects, statues, lacquer dishes, books, bells,
amulets, prayer-wheels, vajra, glass, precious stones, seeds, thang ka, banners,
charms in one, two, or three languages, oil paintings representing Buddha,
Bodhisattva, Dharmapāla, Chinese gods, three-dimensional maṇḑala, but also
furniture and cooking utensils for the yurt – everything that a Mongolian family
needed could be bought there.61 Other merchants sold silk, antiques and leather
objects.62 Two other markets were held at Yingfang Street (Yingfang Jie, 營坊街)
and Taiping Street (Taiping Jie, 太平街).63 In the late Qing and the Republican
period, the Chinese traders mostly came from Daizhou (Fanzhi District [Fanzhi
Xian, 繁峙縣], Wutai District [Wutai Xian, 五臺縣], and Guo District [Guo Xian,
崞縣]), and Xinding.64
Wutai Shan was certainly an important place
for Mongols to buy small statues and thang ka.
Some of the thang ka and bronze images that
were sold to the pilgrims were apparently made
in Wutai Shan’s workshops, located in the shops
of Yanglin Street. The pilgrims could also
commission a specific thang ka: this was the
case of the large appliqué of Tsong kha pa in
the Newark Museum, probably commissioned
by an Ongniγud Mongolian woman to a Chinese
artist at Wutai Shan, and containing a letter in
Figure 9: Large appliqué of Tsong kha

pa containing a letter in Mongolian
sewn inside dated 1805. Newark
Museum.
59
Bai, Zhonghua minguo, 92; Xin and Zheng, “Wutai Shan simiao jingji,” 30.
60
The production of wooden bowls made from outgrowths of willow roots, particularly prized by
Mongols and Tibetans, has continued up to the present day; they were reputed to be unbreakable, stay
cold when containing hot food and during the summer, and were used to store meat and oil because
they had preserving qualities (Han, and Wang, Wutai Shan, 96).
61
Bai, Zhonghua minguo, 92; Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, 123; Edkins, Religion in China, 237-38;
Rockhill, “A Pilgrimage,” 767; Pokotilov, “Der Wu T’ai Schan.”
62
Bai, Zhonghua minguo, 92.
63
Jiang, Wutai Shan jiyou, 22.
64
Yan Tianling, “Menggu ren ‘chao tai’ yu Meng Han gou jian,” Wutai Shan yanjiu (2004, no. 1):
42-43.
Mongolian sewn inside, dated 1805.65 The pilgrimage to Wutai Shan was therefore
an opportunity for major economic exchanges for both Mongolian herders and
Chinese merchants.66
The Road to Wutai Shan: Bringing a Nomad Lifestyle to the

Mountain
Wutai Shan was far less risky, dangerous and expensive for Mongols than going
to Lhasa. However, it was still a difficult adventure.67 The Mongol pilgrims spent
at least ten days crossing a part of Shanxi,68 and up to five years away from their
homes for those who advanced by doing full prostrations.69 They sometimes went
in caravans of thirty to forty pilgrims, walking or riding up to ninety li a day. They
probably visited the mountain on foot as they still do today.70 Pokotilov noticed
in 1889 that they generally traveled with their own yurts and their herds.71 Yet they
could not live completely self-sufficiently: they had to buy fodder and fuel, pay
taxes, and organize for their cattle (except for the animals destined to be offered
or sold) to be looked after at the foot of the mountain.72 Others stopped at inns
established every forty-five li and paid for room and board.73 Many Shanxi traders
and shopkeepers learned to speak Mongolian and opened shops and inns for the
Mongols, with notices written in Mongolian in front of their inns, such as: “The
men of this inn are honest and mild, everything is ready and cheap, therefore, O
ye Mongols, our brothers, you could not do better than rest here.”74 Some even
married Mongols.75
65
Valrae Reynolds, “A Sino-Mongolian-Tibetan Buddhist Appliqué in the Newark Museum,”
Orientations 21, no. 4 (April 1990): 32-38.
66
Yan (“Menggu ren ‘chao tai’”) – quoting Zhang, “Wutai Shan can fo,” and Bai, Zhonghua minguo,
92 – showed that Wutai Shan became an important center of interaction between the Mongols and the
Han. The bla mas learned to speak Chinese, and the Shanxi traders learned to speak Mongolian.
67
As do most of the Christian missionaries, James Gilmour (Among the Mongols, 149) takes the
Mongols’ defense: “There is no more severe test of the earnestness of the religious devotion of the
Mongols than their being willing thus to journey for days through the country of unsympathetic
Chinamen, whose language they do not understand, and who lie in wait for their money, ready to fleece
them at every turn…”
68
The pilgrimage road from Mongolia crosses the northern part of Shanxi: Longsheng Zhuang
(Fengzhen District [Fengzhen Xian, 豐鎮]), Datong, Ying District (Ying Xian, 應縣), Fanzhi District,
Taihuai.
69
Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, 114-55; Yan, “Menggu ren ‘chao tai’,” 42. Even the Torgut Mongols
“perform journeys occupying a whole year, and attended with immense difficulty, to visit for this
purpose [burying the bones of their deceased parents] the province of Chen-Si” (Huc, Travels in Tartary,
94).
70
In modern Mongol pilgrimages and temple fairs, dismounting one’s horse at a certain distance
from the monastery is very important and is seen as particularly praiseworthy for Mongols who hate
walking for long distances, and who wear boots unsuitable for walking.
71
Pokotilov, “Der Wu T’ai Schan und seine Klöster.”
72
73
Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, 122.
74
75
Gilmour, Among the Mongols, 149; Yan, “Menggu ren ‘chao tai.’”
Figure 10: Pilgrim in great prostrations, Wutai

Shan. Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 13. Figure 11: Pilgrim in great prostrations, 1846
Cifu Si map. Rubin Museum. Photo by Karl
Debreczeny.
Therefore, contrary to the idea of pilgrims undergoing a transformative and

equalizing experience freed from the structure of ordinary society, wearing special
clothing or other markers distinguishing them from ordinary worshipers, respecting
particular taboos and carrying out distinctive actions,76 the Mongol pilgrims who
traveled with their herds, and especially those who went every year and sold their
beasts at the market, just seem to have adopted a particular kind of nomadization
little different to their daily life. If pilgrimage was probably not a liminal experience
of the religious life releasing the devotees from mundane structure in a spirit of
“communitas” as described by Victor and Edith Turner,77 this does not mean that
the pilgrims did not enter into a deeper level of existence and, at the end of their
journey, had not been transformed through the exposure to powerful religious sacra
and the practices of circumambulating and prostrating.
The Pilgrimage Season

Western and Chinese travelers and pilgrims described the crowds of Mongol
pilgrims, who were particularly noticeable among the other visitors because of the
spectacular and sumptuous headdresses and ornaments (especially the Qalqa
headdress) the women wore, their colorful garments, and their complete devotion.
The Mongol pilgrims came continuously from the fourth to the tenth month,78 thus
the year on the mountain was divided between a winter of isolation – a period of
religious practice and contemplation for the monks, and a pilgrimage season, with
trade and fairs. The population of the mountain doubled in summer, from one to
76
Victor Turner, and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological
Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 7-9.
77
Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 7. For a discussion of Turner and Turner’s arguments:
Simon Coleman, and John Eade, eds., “Introduction,” in Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion
(London, New York: Routledge, 2004).
78
Wutai xin zhi, juan 3, 9b.
two thousand because of the Mongol, Tibetan, and Chinese pilgrims.79 The sixth
lunar month was the busiest period on the mountain: in addition to the above
mentioned horse fair, the great Tibetan festival was organized, attended by
thousands of Mongol pilgrims. The climax of the festival, which started on the
first day of the sixth month, was the ’Cham dances with 180 participants in Pusa
Ding (fourteenth day of the sixth month, Mañjuśrī’s birthday) and the Monastery
of Rāhu(la) (Luohou Si, 羅睺寺, raqu-yin süme; fifteenth day of the sixth month),
followed by a grand two-mile-long procession of the image of Mañjuśrī in a
palanquin led by dancers and musicians followed by the head ruling lama in a
sedan chair and four hundred to five hundred participants. Blofeld’s detailed
description matches well with the representation of the procession on the Cifu Si
map.80 He talked of imperial processions, with stops at small altars on the way,
triple prostrations performed by the various abbots paying their respects to the
palanquin and to the head ruling lama. At the end, the head ruling lama made full
prostrations in front of the White Pagoda, went through Xiantong Si and returned
to Pusa Ding.81
Figure 13: Spectators attending the ’Cham

ritual of the sixth month. Ono and Hibino,
Godaishan, 16.
Figure 12: Dancing monk, ’Cham ritual of the

sixth month. Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 16.
Mongol pilgrims also seem to have been numerous during the fall, when horses
were fat and healthy; and they left when snow began to fall, closing off the
79
Lao Li, “Dao Wutai Shan qu baifo,” Bao lin 1 (2004): 99, figures for the early twentieth century.
In July 2007, two thousand monks came for the sixth month festival from A mdo, Tibet, and Inner
Mongolia.
80
Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, 131-44.
81
Wei Guozuo, Wutai Shan daoyou (Beijing: Zhongguo lü you chu ban she, 1993 [1988]), 77-78;
Zhao Peicheng, “Shitan Wutai Shan Zang chuan fo jiao yu jin gang shen wu,” Xinzhou Shifan Xueyuan
xuebao 20, no. 4 (August 2004): 38-40. For a description by a Chinese eye witness in 1905, see Gao,
Ming Shan youfang, 65.
mountain.82 We can assume that the majority of pilgrims probably stayed in their
own yurts, with their sheep and cattle in the pastures of Wutai Shan such as Dailuo
Ding and the South Terrace (Nanshan, 南山). Those who did not have their own
tent could stay in inns or rented houses at or near Taihuai.83 The Tibeto-Mongol
monasteries offered a very limited number of beds, and their hostelries were often
reserved for wealthy pilgrims. Some halls of the Tayuan Si, for instance, were
reserved for Mongol princes,84 and occasionally welcomed Western travelers.85
For the Tibetan and Mongol monastic pilgrims, two main lodging centers were
founded in 1822 and 1831 respectively, Cifu Si86 and Shifang Tang, the branch
monastery of Luohou Si (and adjacent to it).87 These were apparently founded
because the monasteries could not accommodate the bla mas undertaking the
pilgrimage in ever greater numbers.
Figure 14: Procession, festival of the sixth

month. Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 22.
Figure 15: Procession, festival of the sixth

month. 1846 Cifu Si map. Rubin Museum. Photo
by Karl Debreczeny.
82
Zhang, “Wutai Shan can fo,” 24.
83
Nowadays, the monks and pilgrims who come for at least a month rent a room in the “Tibetan
suburb” north of the village. In 2007 a five-bed room in a courtyard could be rented for three hundred
yuan per month.
84
Fischer, The Sacred Wu Tai Shan.
85
Christopher Irving, “Wu-Ta’i-Shan and the Dalai Lama,” New China Review (May 1919), 157.
86
byams dge gling, built by the head ruling lama of Pusa Ding.
87
Cai Hong, “Shifang Tang,” Wutai Shan yanjiu (1999, no. 1): 23-25.
The Circuits of Mongol Pilgrims

Several oral accounts, travelogues and stone inscriptions about donations (as well
as modern practices) inform us about the most-visited places, considered most
sacred by Mongol pilgrims. These objects of worship are of three kinds: the
monasteries and the holy relics of monks and Buddha they enshrine, the living
reincarnations, and the sacred natural features of the mountain.
Figure 16: Mongol pilgrims worshipping a

statue of Mañjuśrī in a monastery, Wutai Shan.
Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 24.
Figure 17: Praying gestures and prostrations

in front of the ‘Taranatha stūpa.’ 1846 Cifu Si
map. Rubin Museum. Photo by Karl Debreczeny.
The steles tell us about the most visible objects of worship: the monasteries.
The inscriptions are mostly concentrated in Shifang Tang (182 inscriptions), Tayuan
Si (sixty-one), and Luohou Si (forty-seven), but also record donations to the other
Tibeto-Mongol monasteries (Pusa Ding, Luohou Si, Yuanzhao Si [圓照寺, kun tu
khyab pa’i lha khang, tegüs geyigülügci süme], Cifu Si, Zhenhai Si, Avalokiteśvara
Cave [Guanyin Dong, 觀音洞 qomsim bodisadua-yin aγui], and so on), and to
Chinese monasteries (Shuxiang Si, Xiantong Si, Dailuo Ding, Cave of the Mother
of Buddhas [Fomu Dong, 佛母洞 eke-yin aγui], and so on).88 The Mongol pilgrims
donated livestock and products made from livestock, but also gave gold and silver,
and the altars were covered with Mongol women’s jewelry.89 Some participated
88
Henry Payne, “Lamaism on Wutai shan,” Chinese Recorder 60, no. 8 (1929): 508, relates in 1929
that a Mongol prince visited Wutai Shan every year and brought large sums of money for the upkeep
of the monasteries, and that the three large temples under construction were all being built using funds
from votive offerings from Mongolia and Manchuria. Mongol princes also restored temples at Nārayāna
Cave (Naluoyan Ku, 那羅延窟), Lingying Si, Falei Si at the Western Terrace, and Puji Si at the Southern
Terrace (Gao, Ming Shan youfang, 115-7, 120).
89
Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, 128-129.
in person in building temples at Wutai Shan to gain merit;90 others financed the
rebuilding of ruined temples, such as Pushou Si, an old Jin dynasty monastery
rebuilt in the Guangxu period by a bla ma from Outer Mongolia, Yonden (Yundeng,
雲登, nineteenth century).91
Figure 18: Mongolian stele, Shifang Tang. Figure 19: Mongolian stele written in Tibetan
Photo by Isabelle Charleux. and Mongolian, Luohou Si. Photo by Isabelle
Charleux.
The first and most important

destination of Mongol pilgrims was the
fifty-meter-high White Pagoda of Tayuan
Si, built in 1301 by the Nepalese artist
Arniko (Anige) to enshrine Aśoka’s (ca
332-304 BCE) original stūpa that
sheltered one of the eighty-four thousand
relics of the Buddha, the holiest of Wutai
Shan’s relics.92 The White stūpa was Figure 20: The White Pagoda of Tayuan Si.
enlarged during the fifteenth century and Postcard (n. d.).
restored many times. Among the nine major restorations of the pagoda recorded
during the Qing dynasty, five were carried out by Mongols. In 1703 a Mongol
abbot of the Qaracin called Chahan Deliji (察漢得力吉, eighteenth century)
financed some restoration. In 1869 while visiting Wutai Shan, Prince Namjilvangcuγ
(Namujiliwangqingge, 納木吉力王慶哥), ruler of the Sünid Left Banner, made a
90
91
Wei, Wutai Shan daoyou, 167.
92
Anning Jing, “The Portraits of Khubilai Khan and Chabi by Anige (1245-1306), a Nepali Artist
at the Yuan Court,” Artibus Asiae 54, nos. 1-2 (1994), 55.
vow to restore the pagoda, gave two thousand taels for its restoration and then
asked all the princes (beyile), nobles, and commoners to contribute.93 In 1887, the
corji da lama (Quji da lama, 曲記大喇嘛) Γalsangdondub of the ecclesiastical
estate (šabi) of the Qalqa Jaya Bandida from Mongolia came on pilgrimage, stayed
at Tayuan Si and saw miraculous lights with five colors playing around the pagoda
at night; he gave five hundred taels of white silver, four camels, and one yurt to
restore the main hall and to add thirty prayer-wheels.94 In 1895 a Qalqa donor
named Longdanjamsu donated 1,800 taels.95 In 1905, a donor from Urga named
“Qilengbutimuji” (乞楞補踢木濟, twentieth century) gave one thousand taels of
white silver to restore the pagoda.96
Figure 22: Pilgrims and tourists turning prayer

wheels and circumambulating the White
Pagoda, July 2007. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
Figure 21: Mongol pilgrims turning prayer

wheels and circumambulating the White
Pagoda. Ono and Hibino, Godaishan, 13.
The crowds of Mongol pilgrims making numerous circumambulations and

prostrations, turning the 108 prayer wheels, touching the Buddha’s feet with their
forehead and giving offerings to the stūpa are described by all the travelers.97 It
was the “central place of worship where even the most illiterate pilgrims to this
mountain may consummate their pilgrimage.”98 The Chinese lay Buddhist Jiang
Weiqiao, famous for having popularized meditation practices, describes the great
93
“Chongxiu Tayuan Si sheli baota beiwen,” in Bei Xin, “Tayuan Si beiwen,” Wutai Shan yanjiu
(1996, no. 4): 39-40.
94
“Namo Amituofo”, in Bei, “Tayuan Si beiwen,” 40.
95
“Yongyuan liufang”, in Bei, “Tayuan Si beiwen,” 40.
96
“Chongxiu baota beiji”, in Bei, “Tayuan Si beiwen,” 42.
97
See the description of pilgrims rich and poor alike circumambulating the giant stūpa, reciting
prayers, telling their beads, turning prayer-wheels, and prostrating on a plank in the direction of the
stūpa: Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, 128-29; Payne, “Lamaism on Wutai shan,” 509; Gao, Ming shan
youfang, 109-10 (who traveled in 1912).
98
piety of Mongol pilgrims who prostrate without interruption on wooden planks,

their hands protected by rags.99
Figure 23: A mdo monk-pilgrims in prostrations Figure 24: Modern pilgrims worshipping
in front of the White Pagoda of Tayuan Si, July towards the White Pagoda, July 2007. Photo by
2007. Photo by Isabelle Charleux. Isabelle Charleux.
The pilgrims visited the central complex of monasteries located near the great
pagoda – Xiantong Si, Yuanzhao Si, Guangzong Si, and Pusa Ding. A major site
of devotion for Mongol pilgrims was the blooming lotus revealing the Buddha
(kaihua xianfo, 開花現佛) at Luohou Si,100 which was said to attract pilgrims like
a magnet.101 On each of the eight petals of the great wooden lotus a Buddha is
engraved that appears as the lotus blooms, activated by a hidden mechanism.102
The Mongols called Luohou Si the “monastery of the revolving lotus.”103 Back
home, they said they saw the Buddha appear at Wutai Shan. The pilgrims therefore
thought the lotus especially opened for them, though the monks revealed the
mechanism to learned visitors such as Gao Henian.104 Luohou Si was restored in
1658 by the First Caqar Diyanci (d. 1671) of Kökeqota who had received thirty
thousand taels of white silver from the Shunzhi emperor.105 Yuanzhao Si106 with
the stele of the begging Mañjuśrī (Wenshu taofan), also received numerous Mongol
donations.
99
100
“Monastery of Rāhu(La)” (Śākyamuni’s son), an old Tang monastery rebuilt under the Ming,
and staffed by Chinese bla mas in the Qing dynasty.
101
Wei, Wutai Shan daoyou, 61-64.
102
The lotus already existed in the seventeenth century. There was a similar lotus at Yansui Ge in
the Yonghe Gong of Beijing (now lost).
103
Delege, Nei Menggu lamajiao shi (Kökeqota: Nei Menggu ren min chu ban she, 1998), 350.
104
Gao, Ming Shan youfang, 119.
105
Delege, Nei Menggu lamajiao shi, 350.
106
Previously called Puning Si (普寧寺), rebuilt and renamed Yuanzhao Si (圓照寺, kun tu khyab
pa’i lha khang, tegüs geyigülügci süme) in the Ming dynasty to house a twenty-three meters high white
stūpa erected in 1434 to contain the ashes of an Indian monk who visited Beijing under the Yongle
emperor and received the title of Imperial Preceptor.
Figure 25: The “blooming lotus revealing the Figure 26: The statue of Mañjuśrī at Shuxiang
Buddhas” of Luohou Si. Postcard (n. d.). Si. Postcard (n. d.).
Up the hill, the pilgrims crawled on their knees up the 108 steps of Pusa Ding,
and visited the monastery which, after the decrease of Manchu patronage in the
mid-nineteenth century, was heavily dependent on Mongols’ donations.107 The
Shuxiang Si108 statue of Mañjuśrī was particularly worshipped by pilgrims from
Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, and Tibet.109
107
Fischer, The Sacred Wu Tai Shan, 10.
108
An old Chan monastery located south of Dabai Cun founded under the Tang dynasty and rebuilt
several times under the Yuan, Ming, and Qing. It sheltered the highest and most revered statue of
Mañjuśrī at Wutai Shan, said to imitate (or was sometimes mistaken for) the original statue of the
Zhenrong Yuan.
109
Lao, “Dao Wutai Shan,” 100. Song, “Mengzu renmin,” 34, records that old bla mas of the Qaracin
Banner in Inner Mongolia remember some of the highlights of Wutai Shan: they stayed in the Shifang
Tang, climbed to Pusa Ding, admired the stele of the begging Mañjuśrī at Yuanzhao Si, and saw the
portrait of Mañjuśrī with the “head made of buckwheat” at Shuxiang Si. There are several stories in
the Chinese folklore about a statue’s head (said to have been) made of a cereal. About the Shuxiang
Si statue: the sculptor who made the statue of Mañjuśrī could not make the head because nobody had
seen the true face of Mañjuśrī. The abbot and then all the monks were fighting with him because they
wanted the statue to be completed. Then a cook said it was useless to fight about that because Mañjuśrī’s
face could be done as one likes. Mañjuśrī then appeared (in the kitchen); the sculptor had no time to
find his tools and quickly made the head with buckwheat according to what he was seeing. This is just
a more detailed story of the Mañjuśrī statue located in the Zhenrong Yuan, the temple of the “True
face.” But at that time this statue had disappeared. The Shuxiang Si statue was the most important
statue of Wutai Shan; it was believed to be a “true portrait” comparable to the Sandalwood statue of
Beijing. It was this statue and this temple that Qianlong chose to copy for his Beijing and Chengde
temples.
Figure 28: Pilgrim cloth map stamped by a

resident bla ma with the seal of Zhenhai Si, July
2007. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
Figure 27: The stūpa of Rol pa’i rdo rje in

Zhenhai Si. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
The most important monastery outside

of the central complex for Mongols to
visit was the holy stūpa of Rol pa’i rdo
rje enshrined in a courtyard of Zhenhai
Si,110 the main monastery of the Zhangjia
Qutuγtu, surrounded by woods. Before
the Cultural Revolution, the stūpa of two
other reincarnations of the Zhangjia could
be seen in a courtyard above the
monastery. The Mongolian pilgrims also
Figure 29: Stūpa on the top of the Northern came to pay their respects to a stūpa
Terrace. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
allegedly enshrining the hat and robe of
’Phags pa bla ma (1235-1280) at Puen Si (also called Xitian Si), north of Taihuai.
Many of the Mongol pilgrims did the great pilgrimage (dachao, 大朝), visiting
the monasteries of the five terraces, weather permitting,111 the classic spots and
holy monasteries recorded in the gazetteers, the “ten remarkable things to see”;112
the ancient Chinese monasteries – Qingliang Si, Zhulin Si, Jin’ge Si, Mimo Cliff
(Mimo Yan, 秘魔岩), and so on. In addition to all the sacred places on the mountain,
pilgrims also came especially to visit a high reincarnation, such as Rol pa’i rdo
110
Located at Yangbaiyu Village (Yangbaiyu Cun, 楊柏峪村), south of Taihuai, it was the main
monastery of the Zhangjia Qutuγtu. The Zhenhai Si received exceptional imperial favors.
111
In the Dailuo Ding monastery the pilgrims could worship copies of the Mañjuśrī statues of the
five peaks. It was called the small pilgrimage to the terraces (xiao chaotai, 小朝臺), and was an
alternative to actually going to the peaks.
112
See the list in Wei, Wutai Shan daoyou, 188.
rje, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, or the Ninth Panchen Lama. The Commandant
d’Ollone describes many Mongol princes accompanied by their numerous retinues
visiting the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1908.113
The Natural Numinous Features of the Wutai Shan Pilgrimage
The Caves
Wutai Mountain boasts many natural
features endowed with numinous power,
especially caves, springs, ponds as well
as the five peaks, which were no doubt
as important to visit as monasteries.
Visiting the caves seems to have been
particularly important for Mongol
pilgrims. Mountain caves are an essential
component of Tibetan and Mongolian
pilgrimage.114 Of the more than fifty
natural features of Wutai Shan said to Figure 30: Cave where the Sixth Dalai Lama is
have sacred power (caves, springs, cliffs, believed to have meditated, Guanyin Dong.
peaks, curious rocks, and so forth) listed Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
in the gazetteers, about thirty are caves. The avalokiteśvara Cave (Guanyin Dong),
located high up on a hill just north of South Terrace and very difficult to reach,
was one of the favorite destinations for Mongols.115 The Sixth Dalai Lama Tshangs
dbyangs rgya mtsho (1683-1706?) is believed to have meditated for six years in
one of the Avalokiteśvara caves after his presumed death – many Mongols believed
that he did not die near Köke Naγur en route to Beijing after he was deposed by
the Qing in November 1706, but managed to give his escort the slip and started a
new life, traveling as a beggar monk throughout East and South Asia, and finally
settled in Alašan, where he stayed from 1716 and 1746 and built several
monasteries.116 It is also believed that Avalokiteśvara meditated there. A statue of
113
Commandant d’Ollone, Les Derniers barbares. Chine, Tibet, Mongolie (Paris: Pierre Lafitte &
Co., 1911), 362.
114
Robert B. Ekvall, Religious Observances in Tibet: Patterns and Functions (Chicago & London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1964), 241; Buffetrille, “Montagnes sacrées”; Caroline Humphrey,
“Chiefly and Shamanist Landscapes in Mongolia,” in The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives
on Place and Space, ed. Eric Hirsch, and Michael O’Hanlon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 135-162.
On caves in Buddhist scriptures and traditions: Rolf Stein, Grottes-matrices et lieux saints de la déesse
en Asie Orientale (Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1988); Raoul Birnbaum, “Secret Halls of
the Mountain Lords: the Caves of Wu-t’ai shan,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (Kyôto, 1989-1990):
118-20.
115
Zhao Gaiping, and Hou Huiming, “Jian lun Qing dai qian qi de Wutai Shan Zang chuan fo jiao,”
Xizang Minzu Xueyuan xuebao 1 (2006): 28-32. On this cave see also Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 134.
116
Piotr Klafkowski, ed., The Secret Deliverance of the Sixth Dalai-Lama as Narrated by Dharmatāla
(Wien: Viener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Universität Wien, 1979); Michael Aris,
Hidden Treasures and Secret Lives: A Study of Pemalingpa (1450-1521) and the Sixth Dalai Lama
(1683-1706) (London & New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989).
the Sixth Dalai Lama could be seen in the Avalokiteśvara hall located just in front
of the caves. Back home, the pilgrims would say “I meditated at the place where
the Sixth Dalai Lama meditated.” According to his biography, the Thirteenth Dalai
Lama also meditated in the cave of the Sixth Dalai Lama in 1908,117 and the small
monastery still has the room where he lived. Infertile devotees also came to the
Avalokiteśvara Cave hoping to be blessed with children, and Wutai Shan in general
seems to have been an important destination for Mongols who wanted to have
children.118 The Mongols and Tibetans also visited the ancient Sudhana’s Cave
(nor bzang, Shancai, 善財, Šuddana)119 where Rol pa’i rdo rje lived before the
construction of Zhenhai Si. The Newark Museum’s appliqué of Mañjuśrī was made
to be placed in that cave (see Figure 9).120
Figure 31: Crowds of pilgrims waiting four Figure 32: Board with diagrams and
hours to enter the Mother’s Cave, July 2007. explanations at the entrance of the Mother’s
Photo by Isabelle Charleux. Cave, July 2007. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
The most important cave for Mongol pilgrims was the Mother’s Cave (eke-yin
aγui) or Mother’s Womb (eke-yin umai), known in Chinese as the Cave of the
Mother of Buddhas (Fomu Dong), or the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas (Qianfo
Dong, 千佛洞). It is located on a cliff on the northeast side of the Southern terrace,
seven li west of the Baiyun Si. The official gazetteers say the cave was discovered
in the Jiajing (嘉靖, r. 1522-66) period of the Ming dynasty (1522-67), when a
monk named Daofang (道方, sixteenth century), walking there late at night,
followed ten thousand dots of lights into the cave where he saw rows of jade Buddha
images. Lost in the cave, he chanted the name of Guanyin, vowed to make a sacred
image and the ten thousand lamps turned into a single light that guided him out.121
117
Quoted by Wei, Wutai Shan daoyou, 117-19.
118
“Pour obtenir des enfants, les femmes qui en ont les moyens ont souvent recours à des pèlerinages,
soit au Ou t’ai chan (Chansi), soit à un autre endroit de pèlerinage renommé…” (Mostaert, “Matériaux,”
292). A famous place to ask for children in Mongolia was the shrine of Isi Qatun (d. 1252) – Esi Qatun,
the “Lady-mother,” Sorqaqtani Begi (d. 1252), Qubilai Qan’s (1215-1294) mother – in Ordos Vang
Banner (Hidehiro Okada, “The Chakhar Shrine of Eshi Khatun,” in Aspects of Altaic Civilizations 3,
ed. Denis Sinor [Bloomington: Indiana University, 1990: 176-86]).
119
See Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 134-35.
120
Reynolds, “A Sino-Mongolian,” 38.
121
Laozang Danba (老藏丹巴, blo bzang bstan pa, 1632-84), Qingliang Shan xin zhi, 1694, reprint
in 1701, 10 juan, in Qingliang Shan zhi san zhong, edited by Gugong bo wu yuan (Haikou shi: Hainan
Surpisingly, the Mongol lore and

practices concerning this cave bring to
light a lived religion that is not
documented by written sources.
Ferdinand Lessing gives a full description
of this cave according to his interviews
with a Russian missionary in 1931 and,
later, with the Mongolian Qalqa dignitary
Diluwa Qutuγtu (1884-64), and was the
first to highlight the ritual performed in
Figure 33: Pilgrim being pushed into the narrow the cave. Inside the cave is a hole, about
122
passage at the Mother’s Cave. 1846 Cifu Si map. three feet above the ground, with a
Rubin Museum. Photo by Karl Debreczeny. diameter of ten to twelve inches. The
pilgrims were advised to remove all excess clothing or even to undress
completely.123 A Chinese monk, nicknamed by the Mongols “the midwife,” assisted
the pilgrims and told them how to crawl in124 (today the hundreds of pilgrims
queuing to enter the cave have plenty of time to study the board with diagrams and
explanations on how to crawl through). The pilgrim would then find himself in a
very narrow but widening passage, some three feet long and one foot high, that
led into the inner chamber (the “matrix”), which allowed room for two people to
stand. In its center was an altar bearing a stone statue of a deity, possibly Tārā or
Guanyin, that the pilgrim had to worship. With the help of the “midwife,” the
pilgrim would come back and been informed that he was within the womb of the
Mother of Buddhas; and then that he had been reborn.125 The pilgrims had to pay
a fee in order to enter the narrow passage, and an additional “ransom” fee to leave
the grotto. The “midwife” was said sometimes to leave devotees stuck and free
them only after making a vow to make donations to the clergy. A similar description
is given by the Chinese lay pilgrim Gao Henian in 1912.126 The earliest evidence
of the womb-cave ritual can be seen on the 1846 Cifu Si map, where a man is seen
pushing the behind of a pilgrim into the cave.
chubanshe, 2001), juan 2, 2a. Half a dozen similar modern stories are told by An Jianhua, “Bei Xin
guyue du zhongsheng,” Wutai Shan yanjiu (2002, no. 2): 27; An Jianhua, “Chao bai Fomu Dong,”
Wutai Shan yanjiu (2003, no. 2): 33. Most of them embellish and develop the Qingliang Shan xin zhi
story.
122
Ferdinand D. Lessing, “The Question of Nicodemus,” in Studia Altaica: Festschrift für N. Poppe
(Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1957), 95, 97.
123
According to Lessing’s Russian informant (“The Question,” 95) and Gao (Ming Shan youfang,
119). Birnbaum (“Secret Halls,” 139, n. 71) finds this difficult to accept.
124
See also a description of the cave and its ritual in Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 137-40.
125
Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 139-40.
126
Gao, Ming Shan youfang, 119-20.
Up to now this cave has been

particularly favored by Mongols and
Tibetans: “it is said that Mongolians,
famous for their fervent piety, invariably
cry when they enter the inner chamber.”127
It is now also very popular among Han
tourists who believe they can erase their
sins, get rid of all the evils of their
previous life – get rid of the charnel
envelope and change bones (tuotai
huangu, 脫胎換骨), obtain a second life,
or even be reborn as a Buddha. They are
told that the Cave of the Mother of
Buddhas is the very body or womb of
Śākyamuni’s mother and, as with
Śākyamuni, they will be reborn out of her
armpit. The stalactites are said to be
women’s entrails.128 Modern pilgrims are
very frightened by the experience; when
they come out, exhausted and covered
with dust, they really feel like children.129 Figure 34: The Chinese monk who revived the
Pilgrims are said to be transformed and Mother’s Cave in the late 1990s. Photo by
regret their past sins. Three Chinese Corneille Jest.
monks have lived in a hermitage on the slope since the early 2000s; one of them,
Beiyue (悲月, twentieth century), has been restoring and reviving the place since
1996 and has collected one million yuan in donations to build a one-kilometer-long
stone staircase leading to the cave.130 In July 2007, the Cave of the Mother of
Buddhas was one of the most crowded places of Wutai Shan.
As stressed by Lessing131 and Stein132 the womb-cave rituals are poorly
documented in the official and clerical records, and clearly belong to popular beliefs
and practices that were not considered worthy of attention by the pilgrimage guides.
The Qingliang Shan zhi and the extended Qinding Qingliang Shan xin zhi, mention
the discovery of Wutai Shan’s Fomu Cave in the 1560s, but say nothing about the
127
Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 138, n. 70.
128
See Stein, Grottes-matrices, 10.
129
Zhang Minghui, “Fomu Dong,” Haiyan-Petrel 3 (2005): 36; An, “Chao bai”; Zhang Guixiang,
“Fomu Dong tan qi,” Wutai Shan yanjiu (1999, no. 1): 35-36; Zhang, “Fomu Dong,” and personal
observations.
130
See his biography: An, “Bei Xin.”
131
Lessing, “The Question,” 95.
132
Stein, Grottes-matrices, 5.
womb cave and its rite.133 In his pilgrimage guide, Rol pa’i rdo rje retells Daofang’s
discovery, and simply replaces Guanyin’s name by Mañjuśrī’s.134 Ono Katsutoshi
and Hibino Takao do not mention it in their remarkable study of Wutai Shan
monasteries and holy sites.135 Lessing, who bases his study of caves of initiatory
rebirth on oral sources, qualifies this religious practice as “more or less secret.”136
Lessing’s teacher, the rdo rams pa bla ma Blo bzang bzang po (twentieth century)
“pretended never having heard about such an outrageous rite.”137 The silence of
these erudite bla mas is surprising, because in other Esoteric Buddhist traditions
such as in Cambodia or Japan, the womb-cave ritual is officially interpreted by
Buddhist priests as being the womb-world maṇḑala (garbhadhātu maṇḑala) where
the practitioner can reunite himself with Vairocana138 and be reborn in the sense
of being newly endowed with esoteric knowledge and powers.139 Besides, Lessing
and Stein have shown that the Mongol monks and important religious figures who
visited Wutai Shan, such as the Diluwa Qutuγtu (1884-64) and the Fourth
Jebcündamba Qutuγtu, were well aware of this kind of popular ritual. The Fourth
Jebcündamba Qutuγtu, for instance, wrote a Tibetan inscription on a stele erected
at the entrance of the cave.140
The Womb Caves in Tibetan and Mongol Pilgrimages

Womb-caves – horizontal or vertical, natural or man-made – are a well-known
type of holy cave found in the Tibetan cultural area. Modern scholars of Tibetan
pilgrimage have described many examples of narrow caves or passages in Western
Tibet (Mount Kailash), Central Tibet (Dga’ ldan Monastery; Gter sgrom near ’Bri
gung mthil), A mdo (A myes rma chen), Nepal (Tarap in Dolpo, the
Halase-Māratika caves in Eastern Nepal), and Bhutan.141 In Tibet, they are used
133
Qinding Qingliang Shan xin zhi: expanded edition of Laozang Danba’s Qingliang Shan xin zhi,
in 22 juan, compiled by imperial order of 1785, published in the palace in 1811, ed. Gugong bowuyuan
(ed.), Qingliang Shan zhi san zhong, juan 9, 12a.
134
Rol pa’i rdo rje, Ri bo dwangs bsil dkar chag mjugs ma tshang pa, text orally transmitted by Rol
pa’i rdo rje, trans. into Chinese by Wen Jinyu, “Sheng di Qingliang Shan zhi,” Wutai Shan yanjiu
(1990, no. 2): 10.
135
Ono Katsutoshi and Hibino Takao, Godaishan (Tôkyô: Zayuhô Kankôkai, 1942).
136
Lessing, “The Question,” 95.
137
Lessing, “The Question,” 97. In Khövsgöl Aimag (Mongolia), the womb-cave ritual at Dayan
Deerkh [Dayan Degereki] cave appeared as abhorrent to the local bla mas, who tried to contain and
neutralize its power (G. P. Galdanova, L. N. Zhukovskaya, and G. N. Ochirova, “The Cult of Dayan
Derkhe in Mongolia and Buryatia,” trans. by C. Humphrey, Journal of the Anglo-Mongolian Society
9, nos. 1-2 [1984]: 1-11; Humphrey, “Chiefly and Shamanist Landscapes,” 149-150).
138
In Japan: Helen Hardacre, “The Cave and the Womb World,” Japanese Journal of Religious
Studies 10, nos. 2-3 (1983): 149-76.
139
Francois Bizot, “La grotte de la naissance: Recherches sur le Bouddhisme Khmer II,” Bulletin
de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 67 (1980): 221-69.
140
This inscription is not to be seen anymore, but a damaged Mongolian inscription still stands on
the site.
141
See Stein, Grottes-matrices, 11-15; Ekvall, Religious Observances, 241; Buffetrille, “Montagnes
sacrées,” 367-370; Huber, The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain, 19; Corneille Jest (personal
communication).
for the ritual testing of one’s positive or negative karma. If the pilgrim succeeds
in going through the narrow passage, he/she is ensured of the purification of his/her
sins and a better rebirth, and is released from the terror of the intermediate state
between death and rebirth (bar do). On the other hand, pilgrims with “bad karma”
may get stuck. It is believed that the clefts and passages change size automatically
to allow any morally suitable candidate to pass through, regardless of his or her
actual body shape and size. At the same time the pilgrim who succeeds is ensured
of having good karma, of being purified of all his/her sins, and of being reborn.
Tibetans refer to these passages as hell paths (dmyal lam), or narrow paths
(phrang lam), and also say they represent the Gates of Hell (those who pass will
escape from the hells) or the way leading to a Pure Land.142 These testing rituals
can be performed in caves, in an opening between two rocks, or on a narrow natural
stone bridge across a deep ravine.
By contrast, most of the narrow caves of Mongolia, Buryatia, and Tuva are dead
ends that closely evoke a womb. The Mongolian terminology for these caves
focuses on the Mother (womb, belly). For the Mongols, the womb-cave ritual is
obviously a form of earth worship, of rebirth and fertility ritual: the Mongols revere
Mother Earth as an important popular deity, and their word for mother (eke)
frequently appears in the names given to natural features of the landscape (mother
[eke] is homonymous with origin [eki]).143 In the Mongolian world, these caves
are especially visited by childless couples or people wishing to help others who
are childless, in order to obtain children, such as the womb-cave of the pilgrimage
site of Alkanay near Chita, in Buryatia. The Buddhist aim of this ritual – to be
reborn purified of one’s sins144 – obscures the more popular ones (obtain children,
benefit from the contact with the Earth goddess, being revitalized and healed with
the earth’s magnetic energy, augment one’s fortune – kii mori).145
142
Katia Buffetrille, “The Halase-Maratika Caves (Eastern Nepal): A Sacred Place Claimed by Both
Hindus and Buddhists,” in Pondy Papers in Social Sciences 16 (Pondichéry: Institut Français de
Pondichéry, 1994), 9-12; Stein, Grottes-matrices.
143
There is apparently no association with mother-Earth and demand for children in Tibet and the
Himalayas.
144
As shown by Lessing, sin is imagined as something material, to be scrapped off, physically
removed, by crawling through a narrow passage; a physical effort is needed to free oneself from sin.
145
For Humphrey (“Chiefly and Shamanist Landscapes,” 150), the cave ritual belongs to shamanic
spirit cults; its power deriving “from the untamed sexual drives of the female spirits within.” Now this
can also be the shamans’ interpretation of an old popular ritual.
While most of the Mongol

womb-caves are located far from
settlements, several monasteries were
established close to womb-caves.146
Among them, we find the two main
Rnying ma pa monasteries of Mongolia
and Inner Mongolia: Qamar-Un Keyid
(East Gobi) and the Monastery of
Padmasambhava,147 linked to the great
bla ma-poet Danjinrabjai (Danzan Rajvaa,
Figure 35: A Mongol pilgrim crawling in the 1803-56), the Fifth Noyan Qutuγtu.148
womb-cave of Tövgön Hiid, Bat Ölzii Sum,
Övörhangai Province, Mongolia. Photo by DonThe Mongol fertility ritual and
Croner. Earth-worship were therefore transplanted
at Wutai Shan, in an old Chinese cave
that perfectly matches the requirements of a womb and a narrow passage. Rolf
Stein, in his extensive study of womb-caves throughout the Asian world (Tibet,
Nepal, India, Cambodia, and Japan), believes that Wutai Shan’s Cave of the Mother
of Buddhas is the only known example of a cave of initiatory rebirth in Han China.
The Chinese (up until the twentieth century) did not develop rebirth symbolism
and ritual around their caves.149 The Wutai Shan Mother’s womb cave therefore
seems to be a typical Tibeto-Mongol pilgrimage characteristic transplanted upon
the Chinese mountain.
Other Features of Tibetan Pilgrimages Present at Wutai Shan

Another type of cave that seems to be an extension of womb-caves is the tunnel
cave leading to a distant place in a very short period of time. The Wutai Shan
Mother’s womb cave is also described as a tunnel cave in a popular legend150 that
also echoes that of the Jin’gang Ku, with a hidden entrance, which is regarded as
a paradise-cave where one remains inside, withdrawing completely from human
146
A famous one is Tövgön Khiid in Övörkhangai Province, the hermitage of the First Jebcündamba
Qutuγtu, built next to a womb-cave called Eke-Yin Kebeli, “the Mother’s Belly.”
147
Or the Monastery of the Caves (aγui-yin süme, Agui Miao, 阿貴廟), in Alašan Territory
(present-day Dengkou District).
148
Isabelle Charleux, “Padmasambhava’s Travel to the North: The Pilgrimage to the Monastery of
the Caves and the Old Schools of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia,” Central Asiatic Journal 46, no. 2
(2002): 168-232. In Tibet too, the ritual caves are linked with Rnying ma pa teachings and lore about
Padmasambhava (eighth century). The Alkanay womb-cave is also linked to Padmasambhava.
149
This is not completely true according to Kristopher Schipper (personal communication). There
exists for instance a Chinese womb-cave at Tianlong Shan, southwest of Taihuai, not far from Wutai
Shan (I thank Vincent Durand-Dastès for this information).
150
A twelve-year-old boy crossed the mountain by the tunnel cave daily to reach the distant place
where he studied; on a rainy night his mother went to wait for him with an umbrella, saw a strange
light on the mountain, and her son suddenly appeared in front of her, with dry clothes on. He said that
he had gone through the cave with an old woman leading travelers. The mother saw the cave and
understood that the old woman was Buddha’s mother saving people (Zhang, “Fomu Dong,” 35).
society, and attains enlightenment or obtains various spiritual powers.151 The Vajra
Cave participates in both the Tibetan and the Chinese pilgrimage traditions (see
the Chinese Taoist grotto-heaven [dongtian, 洞天]).152 It was worshipped from the
seventh century and recognized as the home of Mañjuśrī. Since the Tang or maybe
the Song dynasty, the entrance has never opened again, but pilgrims could visit a
man-made grotto as well as the Banruo Monastery (Banruo Si, 般若寺) that
protected it. The Jin’gang Ku was one of the residences of the Zhangjia Qutuγtu
before the construction of Zhenhai Si. The cave153 and the nearby ruined Pule Yuan
are still important destinations for Mongol and Tibetan pilgrims.
A particular kind of tunnel-cave, the sea’s eye (haiyan, 海眼), connects with
the sea and can cause flooding if not blocked by a stūpa. At Wutai Shan, the Zhenhai
Si, “Monastery that Subdues the Ocean” – Luus-I Daruγsan Süme, “Monastery
that Subdues the Water Spirit” in Mongolian – is said to have been built after a
sea’s eye (haiyan) connecting with the Northern Sea caused sea water to flood an
area of more than a hundred kilometers around. The hole was blocked by Mañjuśrī
with a cooking-pot, and later a stūpa was built to seal it closed.154 The sea’s eye
may reflect the complex subterranean water system under the mountain: the waters
of Sanquan Si were said to connect with the Black Dragon Pool (Heilong Chi, 黑
龍池) of the Northern Terrace;155 the water from Nārayāna Cave (Naluoyan, 那羅
延) flows to Fuping to the south and Fanzhi to the west.156 A similar story is found
in Beijing: on Qionghua Dao (Beihai Park), where the emperor Shunzhi built a
White stūpa in 1651, a well called sea’s eye was said to communicate with the
sea.157 These legends reflect the Tibetan lore about the origin of the Köke Naγur
Lake,158 as well as the Tibeto-Nepalese legend explaining the draining by Mañjuśrī
of the lake that covered the Kathmandu Valley. In the Tibetan world, some caves
151
Stein, Grottes-matrices, 6-9; Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 120.
152
Chinese grotto-heavens are celestial microcosms, places of initiation and refuge from civilization
(Franciscus Verellen, “The Beyond Within: Grotto-Heavens (dongtian) in Taoist Ritual and Cosmology,”
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 8 [1995]: 265-90). On a similar cave in A mdo: Lawrence Epstein, and Peng
Wenbin, “Ganja and Murdo: The Social Construction of Space at Two Pilgrimage Sites in Eastern
Tibet,” Tibet Journal, Special Edition: Powerful Places and Spaces in Tibetan Religious Culture, 19,
no. 2 (1994): 21-45.
153
It was destroyed by canon fire and turned into a “holiday hideaway” for Lin Biao. An artificial
corridor leading to a semi-buried stūpa has been rebuilt.
154
The dragon king of the northern or eastern sea was seduced by a pretty young girl who was
bathing in the sea’s eye (haiyan) spring; when he tried to kidnap her she asked for Mañjuśrī’s help.
The furious dragon king provoked the flooding that was stopped by the Bodhisattva (Wei, Wutai Shan
daoyou, 128-34; Zhou Zhuying, “Zhenhai Si de jianzhu yu caisu yishu,” Wutai Shan yanjiu [2003, no.
4]: 15-22).
155
156
Gao, Ming Shan youfang, 115, 117.
157
L. C. Arlington, and William Lewisohn, In Search of Old Peking (Hong Kong, Oxford & New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987 [Peking: Vetch, 1935]).
158
Katia Buffetrille, “The Blue Lake of A-mdo and its Island: Legends and Pilgrimage Guide,” in
Sacred Spaces and Powerful Places in Tibetan Culture: A Collection of Essays, edited by Toni Huber
(Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1999), 105-24.
are worshipped because their extended galleries, passages and underground rivers
suggest access to the underworld of the Nāga.159
When on a Tibetan pilgrimage to a
natural site, the five senses are all brought
into play. Tibetan pilgrimage “is about a
direct (and observable) physical, sensory
relationship of person and place through
seeing (in both the sense of direct
encounter and ‘reading’ and interpreting
the landscape, and so forth), touching (by
contacting the place), positioning (body
in relation to place), consuming/tasting
(by ingesting place substance), collecting Figure 36: Footprints of Mañjuśrī, Zaoyu Pool.
(substances of the place), exchanging Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
(place substance with personal substance/possessions), vocalizing (prayers addressed
to the place or specific formulas), and even in some cases listening (for sounds
produced by the place).”160 The womb-cave involves touching and positioning; the
prostrations connect the whole body with the sacred ground. The pilgrims touch
the stūpa and statues with their forehead, and vigorously massage with their hands
Mañjuśrī’s footprint at the Zaoyu Chi.
The pilgrims – Mongol, Tibetan, and Chinese alike – also practiced “collecting”
holy water. Wutai Shan boasts more than twenty sacred springs and ponds, such
as the tasting spring trickling from the Avalokiteśvara Cave,161 the sacred water
(foshui, 佛水) of the Pool Reflecting the Moonlight (Mingyue Chi, 明月池), or
Guanhai Si, south-east of Zhenhai Si that pilgrims came to drink and collect during
the sixth month festival,162 and the water of Baisha Quan of Zunsheng Si that cures
a hundred different illnesses. The sacred water of the Banruo Spring (Banruo Quan,
般若泉) was used to bathe the statues on the eighth day of the fourth month, the
festival of Śākyamuni’s birthday; it is said that the Manchu emperors and great
bla mas only drank this water when they stayed at Wutai Shan. Pilgrims brought
back home bottles of this water, which made a precious gift to their friends. At
Baishui Pond (Baishui Chi, 白水池), not far from Jin’gang Ku, the milky water
was used to wash one’s eyes.163 The ice of Wannian Bing (萬年冰) called by the
Mongols “the ice that never melts” was collected by Mongol pilgrims who would
take away a piece “to work cures on their sick friends at home.”164
159
See examples in Robert B. Ekvall, and James F. Downs, Tibetan Pilgrimage (Tokyo: Institute
for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1987); N. J. Allen, “‘And the Lake Drained
Away’: An Essay in Himalayan Comparative Mythology,” in Mandala and Landscape, ed. Alexander
Macdonald (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1997): 435-51.
160
Huber, The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain, 38.
161
Laozang Danba, Qingliang Shan xin zhi; Gao, Ming Shan youfang, 63.
162
163
164
Figure 37: The sacred spring of the Pool Figure 38: Monk from Bla brang Monastery (A
Reflecting the Moonlight. Photo by Isabelle mdo) giving holy water to a pilgrim from A mdo,
Charleux. Puleyuan. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
Pilgrims also collected earth and dust, for instance at the “Rock with a Bull’s
Heart” (Niuxin Shi, 牛心石): the pilgrims rubbed the stone and collected the dust
which served as a cure-all medicine;165 in a torrent above the Baiyun Si, sand found
in a stone, called “śarīra-golden sand” (jinsha shelizi, 金沙舍利子) was collected
and used as medicine.166 The bark of the sacred tree at the Wulang Miao is peeled
to serve as medicine. Everything that grew on the mountain was filled with spiritual
power, such as the miraculous grass, flowers and water of the excellent pastures
of Dailuo Ding and Southern Terrace that attracted herders who came to fatten up
or cure their animals before selling them.
Other common features of Tibetan sacred mountains found at Wutai Shan
include the footprints and handprints of deities (a footprint of Mañjuśrī at Zaoyu
Chi; Śākyamuni’s footprints at Tayuan Si; prints of Mañjuśrī’s hands and feet at
Jin’gang Ku);167 legends about the submission of local deities trapped underground
(Longquan Si, five hundred dragons subdued by Mañjuśrī on the mountain); the
presence of many medicinal plants – however these are all shared by the entire
Buddhist world.
Besides the visit to famous monasteries and bla mas, the Tibetan and Mongol
pilgrims also performed Tibetan and Mongolian rituals and practices such as the
womb cave ritual, and the collecting of natural products. They had visions of
Tibetan deities or saints and added new legends and stories to the already
many-layered past of Wutai Shan. We do not know how and when these Tibetan
and Mongolian features were brought to Wutai Shan, but we can assume that both
the bla mas, overcoming their disdain for these popular practices to please and
attract the Mongols and Tibetans, and the pilgrims themselves who already knew
and practiced them in Tibetan and Mongolian pilgrimage sites, imported them to
Wutai Shan. The high-ranking bla mas who traveled between Tibet, Wutai Shan,
165
Where a bull demon king converted to Buddhism and killed himself at this place, and was changed
into a stone (Lao, “Dao Wutai Shan,” 102).
166
167
and Inner Mongolia probably played a role in this transmission. Rolf Stein thinks
Mongolian lay people and monks who visited Wutai Shan may have imported the
rebirth ritual from Wutai Shan to Mongolia.168 But the Mongolian womb-cave may
have been used from time immemorial: the bla mas could have imported, from
Tibet or from Wutai Shan a new interpretation of this practice. On the other hand,
the transmission of this fertility ritual of Earth worship is more likely to have
occurred from Mongolia to Wutai Shan.
Mongolian Pilgrimages Related to the Wutai Shan Pilgrimage

In order to understand how Tibetan and Mongolian practices were transplanted to
Wutai Shan, it can be useful to mention some popular Mongol pilgrimages which
are related to Wutai Shan. The Monastery of Padmasambhava in Inner Mongolia
presents many of the characteristic features of Tibetan pilgrimage sites: legends
about Padmasambhava who tamed the local deity and meditated in caves, a
womb-cave, a tunnel-passage allegedly leading to Central Tibet in one day’s walk,
visions of miracles, water and earth collecting.169 In addition, the Monastery of
Padmasambhava’s womb-cave is known to be a “relative,” actually, the “daughter,”
of Wutai Shan’s Mother’s Womb. A learned Tibetan historian, Nyi ma rdo rje
(twentieth century), told Raoul Birnbaum that “it is inappropriate to enter the
mother cave [at Wutai Shan] if one previously has entered the daughter cave” [at
Monastery of the Caves (aγui-yin süme, Agui Miao, 阿貴廟)?].170 It seems to be
a question of precedence: one must visit the mother at Wutai Shan before visiting
the Mongol “daughter.”
Gilubar Juu, a renowned pilgrimage
site in Eastern Inner Mongolia during the
Qing dynasty, was called “Little Wutai
Shan.”171 Gilubar Juu was founded around
1770 by the Second ’Jam dbyangs bzhad
pa (1728-91) of Bla brang Monastery in
A mdo on the site of an old Liao dynasty
rock monastery. Besides the three caves
that still enshrine Liao dynasty images of
Figure 39: Gilubar Monastery, Baγarin Left Buddha and Bodhisattva, is an Eke-Yin
Banner, Chifeng Municipality, Inner Mongolia. Umai, a “Mother’s Womb.”
Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
Considering the success of Wutai Shan
in the Qing dynasty, these local pilgrimages probably could not replace the great
pilgrimage to Wutai Shan for Mongol laymen and monks. At present we do not
168
Stein, Grottes-matrices, 3.
169
Charleux, “Padmasambhava’s Travel to the North.”
170
Birnbaum, “Secret Halls,” 138, n. 70.
171
Or Gilubar-Un Aγui, also called Aru Juu (Houzhao Miao, 後召廟), in Baγarin Left Banner,
Chifeng Municipality (Chifeng Shi, 赤峰市). For the history of this monastery: Charleux, Temples et
monastères, CD-rom 136.
know if these local pilgrimages first developed as a surrogate pilgrimage for Wutai
Shan, or if they developed completely independently up to the time when a learned
cleric saw correspondences and asserted a connection between the two. The Gilubar
Juu could have just been called “Little Wutai Shan” because its festival attracted
almost as many pilgrims as the Chinese mountain. Similarly, the Sine Usun Juu
in Ordos (Otuγ Banner), founded in the late eighteenth century, was compared in
local songs with Wutai Shan.172 A mountain in the Left Qaγucid Banner of Inner
Mongolia was called Wutai Shan because several miracles happened there and it
was recognized as a holy place.173 This would be comparable to the title of “the
Tibet of China” given to Wutai Shan, or the “Tibet of the East” given to the Caγan
Diyanci-Yin Keyid, a major pilgrimage site in the Eastern Tümed Banner (now in
Fuxin District, Liaoning Province). If bla mas wanted to promote a local pilgrimage
and attract devout Mongols, it was in their interest to compare their monastery to
Wutai Shan. In the same way, Mongol monastic guide-books naturally emphasize
the holiness of a site by saying that worshipping this particular monastery is
equivalent to worshipping all the other places.174
Conclusion
Wutai Shan was a complete holy site, gathering together in the same place various
natural features such as caves, rocks and springs, a stūpa enshrining a relic of
Śākyamuni, prestigious monasteries, stūpa and icons, and at certain times, high
reincarnated bla mas – whereas most of the Tibetan and Mongolian pilgrimage
sites presented less variety. Its layered past and its pan-Asian character, its particular
promotion since the Yuan dynasty, and the importance of Mañjuśrī for Mongols
made Wutai Shan a unique pilgrimage site. The proximity to the Mongolian border
and the good pastures and trade opportunities also turned Wutai Shan into an
important centre in the pastoral economy of the Sino-Mongolian frontier. For
Mongols, Wutai Shan could therefore compete with the great Tibetan pilgrimage
sites, that, comparatively speaking, attracted more monks than Wutai Shan,175 yet
perhaps a smaller variety of social groups. Besides, the “national” and local
Mongolian pilgrimages – Yeke Kuriye, Erdeni Juu, important monasteries and
172
Antoine Mostaert, cicm., ed., Textes oraux ordos (Peking: Université catholique de Pékin, 1937,
Monumenta Serica, Monograph Series, 1), 141.
173
Aleksej Matveevič Pozdneev, Mongolia and the Mongols 2, trans. from Russian by W. Dougherty
(Bloomington: Mouton & Co., 1977 [Saint-Petersburg: 1896-1898]), 277.
174
Such as the guide-book of the Yeke Juu or Vang-Un Гoul-Un Juu, an important pilgrimage site
in Ordos: S. Narasun and Temürbaγatur, eds., Ordus-un süme keyid, Mongγul ündüsüten-ü süme
keyid-ün bürin ciγulγa 5 (Hailar: Öbür Mongγul-un soyul-un keblel-ün qoriya, 2000), 371-91.
175
The monasteries of Dga’ ldan, ’Bras spungs (Sgo mang college), Bla brang, Sku ’bum, Dgon
lung byams pa gling had strong links with Mongol monasteries, which was not the case for the Wutai
Shan monasteries. For traveling monks, Wutai Shan was only one stop in their pilgrimage circuits
including A mdo, Central Tibet, Urga, and sometimes India. As shown by Paul Nietupski for the monks
of Bla brang (Paul K. Nietupski, “Bla brang Monastery and Wutai Shan,” Journal of the International
Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 6 [December 2011], http://www.thlib.org?tid=T5718), the motivations
of Mongol monks in visiting Wutai Shan were probably more political than spiritual, although this
question certainly deserves further study.
reincarnations – must not be underestimated, but could not completely replace the
journey to Wutai Shan.
Among the motivations of Mongol laymen undertaking the pilgrimage, the will
to bury a relative there seems to be the main element that distinguishes the Wutai
Shan pilgrimage from other Tibetan and Mongolian pilgrimages. We have no
Mongol travelogues that could help us understand from an insider’s view what
Wutai Shan represented for ordinary Mongol pilgrims and we must content
ourselves with exterior witnesses and stone inscriptions. But the few sources I
gathered seem to show that the Mongols saw Wutai Shan as a sacred Tibetan
mountain and stressed the importance of the womb cave ritual as one of the major
moments of their journey. The will to bury a loved one, but also the desire to be
purified of their sins and be reborn in this life, made the pilgrimage to the Wutai
Shan holy land a journey between death and (a better) rebirth.
Whatever the role of the Manchu emperors and the Buddhist institution in
creating and promoting the pilgrimage to Wutai Shan among Mongols, the pilgrims
came and invented a lived pilgrimage that was in some parts adopted by the Chinese
pilgrims themselves. They linked the pratices and rituals they performed at Wutai
Shan with their local pilgrimages in Mongolia, be they Buddhist, Buddhicized, or
popular/shamanist.
Glossary
Note: The glossary is organized into sections according to the main language of
each entry. The first section contains Tibetan words organized in Tibetan
alphabetical order. Columns of information for all entries are listed in this order:
THL Extended Wylie transliteration of the term, THL Phonetic rendering of the
term, the English translation, the Sanskrit equivalent, the Chinese equivalent, other
equivalents such as Mongolian or Latin, associated dates, and the type of term.
Ka
Wylie Phonetics English Other Dates Type
kun tu khyab pa’i lha Küntu Khyappé Chi. Yuanzhao Si Monastery
khang Lhakhang Mon. Tegüs
Geyigülügci Süme
dkar chag karchak guide-book Mon. γarcaγ Term
bka’ brgyud pa Kagyüpa Organization
sku ’bum Kumbum Monastery
Ga
dga’ ldan Ganden Monastery
dge lugs pa Gelukpa Organization
dgon lung byams pa Gönlung Jampa Ling Monastery
gling
rgya mtsho Gyamtso Mon. Jiamsu nineteenth Person
century
sgo mang Gomang Monastery
Nga
ngag dbang blo bzang Ngawang Lozang Chi. Awang 1601-87 Person
Laozang
Ca
co ne Choné Place
lcang skya Changja Chi. Zhangjia Person
Cha
’cham Cham Ritual
Ja
’jam dbyangs bzhad Jamyang Zhepa 1728-91 Person
pa
Nya
nyi ma rdo rje Nyima Dorjé twentieth Person
century
rnying ma pa Nyingmapa Organization

Ta
gter sgrom Terdrom Monastery
Tha
thang ka tangka Term
Da
rdo rams pa dorampa high monastic Term
diploma
Na
nub phyogs kun ’dus Nupchok Kündü Ling Chi. Guangren Si Monastery
gling Mon. Örüsiyel-i
Badaraγuluγci
Süme
nor bzang Norzang San. Šuddana Chi. Person
Shancai
Mon. Šuhhnaa
Pha
phrang lam tranglam narrow path Term
’phags pa bla ma Pakpa Lama 1235-80 Person
Ba
bar do bardo intermediate state Term
between death and
rebirth
byams dge gling Chi. Cifu Si Monastery
Mon. Buyan
Ibegegci Süme
bla brang Labrang Monastery
bla ma lama Chi. la ma Term
Mon. blama
blo bzang bstan ’jin Lozang Tenjin Mon. Lobsang seventeenth Person
Danjin century
blo bzang bstan pa Lozang Tenpa Chi. Laozang 1632-84 Person
Danba
blo bzang bzang po Lozang Zangpo twentieth Person
century
’bri gung mthil Drigung Til Monastery
Ma
dmyal lam nyellam hell path Term
Tsa
tsong kha pa Tsongkhapa Person
Tsha
tshangs dbyangs rgya Tsangyang Gyamtso 1683-1706? Person
mtsho
Ra
ri bo dwangs bsil dkar Riwo Dangsil Text
chag Karchak Jukma
mjugs ma tshang pa Tsangpa
rol pa’i rdo rje Rölpé Dorjé 1717-86 Person
A
a mdo Amdo Place
a myes rma chen Amnyé Machen Place
Sanskrit
Wylie Phonetics English Sanskrit Dates Type
Aśoka ca. Person
332-304
BCE
Avalokiteśvara Buddhist deity
Bodhisattva Buddhist deity
Buddha Buddhist deity
Dharmapāla Buddhist deity
womb-world garbhadhātu Term
maṇḑala maṇḑala
Halase-māratika Place
Kailash Kailāsa Place
Kathmandu Kāthmāndu Place
maṇḑala Term
Mañjuśrī Buddhist deity
Nāga Buddhist deity
Nārayāna (Chi. Buddhist deity
Naluoyan)
Padmasambhava eighth Person
century
Rāhu(la) Person
Śākyamuni sixth Person
century
BCE
relic stūpa stūpa śarīra Term
siddha Term
stūpa Term
Tārā Buddhist deity
Vairocana Buddhist deity

vajra Term
Chinese
Wylie Phonetics English Chinese Dates Type
Baisha Quan Place
Baishui Pond Baishui Chi Place
Baiyun Si Monastery
Prajñāpāramitā Banruo Quan Place
Spring
Banruo Monastery Banruo Si Monastery
Baotou Place
Beihai Place
Beiyue twentieth Person
century
Chahan Deliji eighteenth Person
century
Chang’an Place
Chifeng Chifeng Shi Place
Municipality
pilgrimage to the chao jin Term
emperor
0.32 meters chi Term
Stone Inscription Chongxiu baota Text
for the Restoration beiji
of the Precious
Stūpa
Stone Inscription Chongxiu Tayuan Text
for the Restoration Si sheli baota
of the Precious beiwen
Śarīra Stūpa of
Tayuan
Si
great pilgrimage dachao Term
Da Wenshu Si Monastery
Dabai Cun Place
Datong Place
Dailuo Ding Monastery
Daizhou Place
Daofang sixteenth Person
century
Dengkou Place
grotto-heaven dongtian Term
Falei Si Monastery
foreign monk fanseng Term
Fanzhi District Fanzhi Xian Place
Fenglin Valley Fenglin Gu Valley
Fengzhen District Fengzhen Xian Place
buddha water foshui Term

Cave of the Mother Fomu Dong Place
of Buddha (Tārā) Mon. Eke-yin Aγui
Fuping Place
Fuxin Place
Guanhai Si Monastery
Guanyin Buddhist deity
Avalokiteśvara Guanyin Dong Place
Cave Mon. Qomsim
bodisadua-yin Aγui
Guangzong Si Monastery
Guo District Guo Xian Place
sea’s eye haiyan Term
Henan Place
Black Dragon Pool Heilongchi Place
monk in yellow huang yi seng Term
robe
Jiajing r. 1522-66 Person
Jiaqing r. Person
1796-1820
Vajra Cave Jingang Ku Monastery
Jin’ge Si Monastery
śarīra-golden sand jinsha shelizi Term
blooming lotus kaihua xianfo Term
revealing the
Buddha
Kangxi r. Person
1662-1722
measure of li Term
distance; one li is
seventy-five meters
Liaoning Place
Lifanyuan zeli Text
Lingying Si Monastery
Longquan Si Monastery
Longsheng Zhuang Place
Monastery of Luohou Si Monastery
Rāhu(la) Mon. Raqu-yin
Süme
great horse and luoma dahui Term
mule fair
Mimo Cliff Mimo Yan Place
Ming 1522-67 Dynasty
Pool Reflecting the Mingyue Chi Monastery
Moonlight
Nārayāna Cave Naluoyan Ku Monastery
Homage to Buddha Namo Amituofo Text
Amitābha
Southern Mountain Nanshan Si Place

Monastery
Rock with a Bull’s Niuxin Shi Place
Heart
Puen Si Monastery
Puji Si Monastery
Pule Yuan Monastery
Puning Si Monastery
Bodhisattva’s Peak Pusa Ding Monastery
Monastery Mon.
Bodisadua-yin
Orgil
Pushou Si Monastery
Qilengbutimuji twentieth Person
century
Cave of the Qianfo Dong Place
Thousand Buddhas
Qianlong r. 1736-95 Person
Qing 1644-1911 Dynasty
Veritable Records Qing shilu Text
of the Qing Dynasty
stone inscription of Qingliang Shan Text
Qingliang Shan beiji
Record of Qingliang Shan ji Text
Qingliang Shan
Qingliang Si Monastery
Qionghua Dao Place
Quji Da Lama nineteenth Person
Mon. Corji Da century
Lama
Sanquan Si Monastery
Shaanxi Place
Shancai Dong Monastery
Shandong Place
Shanxi Place
Shifang Tang Monastery
Shunzhi r. 1644-61 Person
Four Grand and Si da ming shan Place
Famous Mountains
Tayuan Si Monastery
Mon. Suburγan
Süme
Taihuai Place
Taihuai Zhen Place
Taiping Street Taiping Jie Place
Tianlong Shan Place
get rid of the tuotai huangu Term
charnel envelope
and change bones
Ten thousand-year Wannianbing Place

ice
Mañjuśrī begs for Wenshu taofan Text
food
Wudang Zhao Monastery
Wulang Miao Monastery
Wutai Shan Place
Wutai Place
Wutai District Wutai Xian Place
Xi’an Place
Xitian Si Monastery
Xiantong Si Monastery
Mon. Гayiqamsiγtu
Tegüs Süme
small pilgrimage to xiao chaotai Term
the terraces
Xinding Place
Xuanzang 602-64 Person
Yansui Ge Building
Yangbaiyu Village Yangbaiyu Cun Place
Yanglin Street Yanglin Jie Place
Yingfang Street Yingfang Jie Place
Ying District Ying Xian Place
Yonghe Gong Monastery
Yongle r. Person
1403-1424
remembered Yongyuan liufang Text
through eternity
yuan Term
Zaoyu Chi Monastery
Monastery that Zhenhai Si Monastery
subdues the Ocean Mon. Luus-i
Daruγsan Süme
Zhenrong Yuan Monastery
Zhili Place
Tibet of China Zhonghua Weizang Term
Zhulin Si Monastery
Zunsheng Si Monastery
The Imperially Qinding Lifanyuan Text
Commissioned zeli
Regulations of the
Court of Colonial
Dependencies
Other
Mon. Abaγa Place
charm San. adhiṣṭhāna Term
Mon. adis
Mon. Aγui Yeke Monastery

Onul-tu Süme
Monastery of the Chi. Agui Miao Monastery
Caves Mon. Aγui-yin
Süme
Mon. Alašan Place
Nep. Anige Person
Nep. Arniko Person
Mon. Babu twentieth Person
century
wandering monk Mon. badarci Term
blam-a
Mon. Badγar Monastery
Coyiling Süme
Mon. Baγarin Place
prince of the third Mon. beyile Term
rank
Mon. Borjigid Clan
merit San. punya Term
Mon. buyan
Mon. Caγan Person
Diyanci Qutuγtu
Mon. Caγan Monastery
Diyanci-yin Keyid
Mon. Caqar Place
Mon. Caqar d. 1671 Person
Diyanci
Mon. Coγcin Temple
Dugang
abbot Mon. da blama Term
Mon. Dalai Lama Person
Mon. Danjinrabjai 1803-56 Person
(Danzan Rajvaa)
Mon. Dariγangγa Place
Mon. Diluwa 1884-64 Person
Qutuγtu
mother Mon. eke Term
Mother’s Cave Mon. Eke-yin Aγui Place
Mother’s Belly Mon. Eke-yin Place
Kebeli
Mother’s Womb Mon. Eke-yin Umai Place
origin Mon. eki Term
Mon. Erdeni Juu Monastery
Mother Earth Mon. Etügen Eke Non-Buddhist
deity
ruling prince Mon. jasaγ Person
Mon. Gilubar Juu Monastery
Mon. Gilubar-un Monastery
Aγui
Chi. Houzhao Miao Monastery

Mon. Aru Juu
Head ruling lama Mon. jasaγ da Person
blama
Chi. Zhayin Person
Mon. Jaya Bandida
Qutu tu
Mon. Kesigten Place
Kokonor Mon. Köke Naγur Place
Mon. Kökeqota Place
Mon. Isi Qatun d. 1252 Person
Mon. Esi Qatun Person
Mon. Jebcündamba Person
Qutuγtu
Mon. Khövsgöl Place
Aimag
Monastery of Mon. Lobuncinbu Monastery
Padmasambhava Süme
Mon. nineteenth Person
Γalsangdondub century
Chi. nineteenth Person
Namujiliwangqingge century
Mon.
Namjilvangcuγ
Mon. Noyan Person
Qutuγtu
Ordos Mon. Ordus Place
Urga Mon. Örgüge Place
Mon. Otuγ Place
Mon. Övörkhangai Place
Mon. Qaγucid Name generic
Mon. Qalqa Name generic
Mon. Qamar-un Monastery
Keyid
Mon. Qaracin Name generic
Mon. Qubilai Qan 1215-94 Person
Mon. Secen Qan Place
Ayimaγ
Mon. Sine Usun Monastery
Juu
Mon. Sorqaqtani d. 1252 Person
Begi
Mon. Sünid Place
noble Mon. tayiji Term
Mon. Tövgön khiid Monastery
Torgut Mon. Torγuud Name generic
Mon. Tümed Name generic
Mon. Udan Juu Monastery
A Guide to the Five Mon. Uta-yin tabun Text

Mountains of aγulan-u orusil
Wutai: Ornament süsüg-ten-ü cikin
for the Ears of the cimeg orusiba
Devotees
Mon. Vang Person
Mon. Vang-un Monastery
Гoul-un Juu
Mon. Yeke Juu Monastery
Mon. Yeke Küriye Monastery
Chi. Yundeng nineteenth Person
Mon. Yonden century
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Journal of The International Association of Tibetan Studies: Issue 6 - December 2011

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Journal of the

Issue 6 — December 2011

An online journal published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL)

• Wutai Shan: Pilgrimage to Five-Peak Mountain (pp. 1-133)

• Of Horses and Motorbikes: Negotiating Modernities in Pastoral A mdo, Sichuan

Abstracts (pp. 472-476)

Contributors to this Issue (pp. 477-480)

Pilgrimage is one of the most important expressions of lay religiosity. Mongols

of China (Zhonghua Weizang, 中華衛藏)9 and a statute was created granting

Figure 3: A Mongol Bla ma invited to make a

Popular Wutai Shan

Travelers’ accounts also inform us about the Mongol pilgrims’ practices.11

Promoting the Mountain

monastery or of a reincarnation, organized annual collective fund-raising

The Mongolian Pilgrimages to Wutai Shan

When Did the Pilgrimage Start?

Who Were the Pilgrims?

Figure 5: Modern Mongol pilgrims from Otoγ

The Mongol noblemen and important reincarnations would take it in turns

Worship and Fairs: The Motivations of the Mongol Pilgrims

A third reason why Mongol pilgrims

Figure 9: Large appliqué of Tsong kha

The Road to Wutai Shan: Bringing a Nomad Lifestyle to the

Figure 10: Pilgrim in great prostrations, Wutai

Therefore, contrary to the idea of pilgrims undergoing a transformative and

The Pilgrimage Season

Figure 13: Spectators attending the ’Cham

Figure 12: Dancing monk, ’Cham ritual of the

Figure 14: Procession, festival of the sixth

Figure 15: Procession, festival of the sixth

The Circuits of Mongol Pilgrims

Figure 16: Mongol pilgrims worshipping a

Figure 17: Praying gestures and prostrations

The first and most important

Figure 22: Pilgrims and tourists turning prayer

Figure 21: Mongol pilgrims turning prayer

The crowds of Mongol pilgrims making numerous circumambulations and

piety of Mongol pilgrims who prostrate without interruption on wooden planks,

Figure 28: Pilgrim cloth map stamped by a

Figure 27: The stūpa of Rol pa’i rdo rje in

The most important monastery outside

The Natural Numinous Features of the Wutai Shan Pilgrimage

Surpisingly, the Mongol lore and

Up to now this cave has been

The Womb Caves in Tibetan and Mongol Pilgrimages

While most of the Mongol

Other Features of Tibetan Pilgrimages Present at Wutai Shan

Mongolian Pilgrimages Related to the Wutai Shan Pilgrimage

rnying ma pa Nyingmapa Organization

Vairocana Buddhist deity

buddha water foshui Term

Southern Mountain Nanshan Si Place

Ten thousand-year Wannianbing Place

Mon. Aγui Yeke Monastery

Chi. Houzhao Miao Monastery

A Guide to the Five Mon. Uta-yin tabun Text

Charleux, Isabelle. “Padmasambhava’s Travel to the North: The Pilgrimage to

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