Shankh Monastery ( mn, Шанх хийд, ''Shankh Khiid'') located in

Övörkhangai Province Övörkhangai ( mn, Өвөрхангай, ''Öwörhangai''; "southern Khangai") is one of the 21 aimags (provinces) of Mongolia, located in the south of the country. Its capital is Arvaikheer. The Shankh Monastery, one of the oldest and most i ...

, Central

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

, 25 kilometers South East of Kharkhorin city, is one of Mongolia’s oldest and most historically significant monasteries. It was founded in 1647 by

Zanabazar Öndör Gegeen Zanabazar, , , "High Saint Zanabazar"; 1635–1723 (born Eshidorji) was the sixteenth '' Jebtsundamba Khutuktu'' and the first ''Bogd Gegeen'' or supreme spiritual authority, of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) lineage of Tibetan Buddhism ...

, the first

Jebtsundamba Khutuktu The Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, , ; zh, c=哲布尊丹巴呼圖克圖, p=Zhébùzūn Dānbā Hūtúkètú; bo, རྗེ་བཙུན་དམ་པ་ཧུ་ཐུག་ཐུ་, Jetsün Dampa Hutuktu; "Venerable Excellent incarnate lama" ar ...

, or spiritual head of

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...

for the

Khalkha The Khalkha (Mongolian script, Mongolian: mn, Халх, Halh, , zh, 喀爾喀) have been the largest subgroup of Mongols, Mongol people in modern Mongolia since the 15th century. The Khalkha, together with Chahars, Ordos Mongols, Ordos and Tum ...

in Outer Mongolia, around the same time as the establishment of the nearby Tövkhön Monastery. The monastery belongs to the Gelupa, or Yellow Hat Sect, school of Tibetan Buddhism. Its main temple is famous for its seven

Kalachakra ''Kālacakra'' () is a polysemic term in Vajrayana Buddhism that means " wheel of time" or "time cycles". "''Kālacakra''" is also the name of a series of Buddhist texts and a major practice lineage in Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. The ...

Mandalas A mandala ( sa, मण्डल, maṇḍala, circle, ) is a geometric configuration of symbols. In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of practitioners and adepts, as a spiritual guidance tool, for e ...

which portray all 722 Kalachakra deities, the only ones of their kind in Mongolia. The meaning of the word ''shankh'' is unclear, with some speculating it refers to the small mountain range between the monastery and

Erdene Zuu Monastery The Erdene Zuu Monastery ( mn, Эрдэнэ Зуу хийд , Chinese:光顯寺, Tibetan:ལྷུན་གྲུབ་བདེ་ཆེན་གླིང་) is probably the earliest surviving Buddhist monastery in Mongolia. Located in Övörkh ...

, while others claim it refers to “a group of objects arranged in a particular order”.

History

Zanabazar founded Shankh Monastery in 1647 when he was just 12 years old. For many years it was known as the “Monastery of the West” (''Baruun Khüree''). It began as a ger monastery, and moved several times before settling in its current location in 1787 and taking on its current name. Nevertheless, a large number of monks continued to maintain the traveling camp until the late 19th century. According to the Russian ethnographer Aleksei M. Pozdneev, who visited the monastery in 1892, in addition to the main temple, built between 1710 and 1790, it consisted of five large beautifully decorated gers that could accommodate nearly 200 people. It is said that the black military banner of Genghis Khan was housed at the monastery for a time, although the current whereabouts of the banner are unknown. At its height the monastery included several schools that practiced Tantric rituals, especially

Buddhist philosophy Buddhist philosophy refers to the philosophical investigations and systems of inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in India following the parinirvana of The Buddha and later spread throughout Asia. The Buddhist path combin ...

and

astrology Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Di ...

. By 1921, the year of the Mongolian People's Revolution, it consisted of some 20 buildings and housed over 1500 monks. Like most of Mongolia's religious centers, Shankh Monastery was closed down in 1937 and most of its standing structures destroyed by the country's communist regime as part of violent

Stalinist purges The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...

. Many of its monks were executed or sent to labor camps in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

while 5 young novices were permitted to return to their families. The main temple, which had escaped major damage, was later used as a warehouse. Fortunately, most of the monastery's precious relics were removed and hidden away by one of the young novices, Gombo, and thus survived the destruction of the monastery.

Restoration

After the

1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia The Mongolian Revolution of 1990, known in Mongolia as the 1990 Democratic Revolution ( mn, 1990 оны ардчилсан хувьсгал, ), was a peaceful democratic revolution which led to the country's transition to a multi-party syst ...

, the surviving novices returned to Shankh and began restoration efforts on the main temple. In 1993, the 14th Dalai Lama sent three monks to Shankh as part of efforts to agton cultivate Buddhism to the country.

Notes

{{Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia 1647 establishments in Asia Religious organizations established in the 1640s Gelug monasteries and temples Buddhist monasteries in Mongolia Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia