Education: Refugee from the East

After their head lama died in 1883, the monks of the Buddhist lamasery of Naribanchin Sume in Outer Mongolia went to work at once. Their most urgent task, after the ceremonies of death were carried out, was to find his successor, a hutukhtu (“Living Buddha”).

After five years, with the help of the scriptures and horoscopes, they were led to a shepherd’s family on the grassy upland meadows not far from Naribanchin itself. There they found what they had been searching for—a five-year-old boy said to have been born on the very day and at the very hour of the old hutukhtu’s death. That was the beginning of the new hutukhtu’s education and travels.

Lord of Pastures. They took him to Naribanchin, taught him Tibetan (the Latin of Buddhism), the scriptures, and the procedures of his new office. As the 19th successive reincarnation of 6th Century Buddhist Saint Dilowa, they gave him that name. When he was 18, the Dilowa Hutukhtu assumed command of the Naribanchin lamasery and two others in Chinese Inner Mongolia.

For 30 years, the Dilowa Hutukhtu lived at Naribanchin, absolute ruler of 900 lamas, and lord of miles of farm and pasture lands. Dressed in silken robes of yellow and red, he spent his days in study and prayer. Only for the year’s great festivals, such as the bemasked Devil Dance, did he vary his happy and quiet routine.

Then, in 1931, the routine was suddenly shattered. The “autonomous” government of Outer Mongolia, which was coming more & more under Soviet influence, outlawed Buddhism as the national religion, confiscated the lamasery lands. The Dilowa Hutukhtu withdrew first to Inner Mongolia, then to North China, finally (during the Japanese war) to Chungking. Cut off from his monasteries and obliged to live on a stipend from the Chinese government, he dreamed of retiring to Tibet. But last week, the long-wandering Dilowa Hutukhtu had changed his place of exile once again. He became a resident of Baltimore, U.S.A.

The man who had changed the hutukhtu’s mind and brought him to Baltimore was Owen Lattimore, director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University. Asia Specialist Lattimore had met him once in China, and had been corresponding with him ever since.

Point of Departure. Last week the Dilowa Hutukhtu, urbane, erect and 66, was a Lattimore house guest in Baltimore’s Ruxton suburb. He speaks Tibetan, Chinese, and everyday Mongol, reads the literary classical Mongol, which has changed little since the days of Genghis Khan. But since he understands no English, he will do no teaching yet. For the time being, he will be a research adviser on Mongolian culture and religion.

Lattimore hopes the hutukhtu’s presence will be “the point of departure” for expanded courses on Mongolia. If all goes well, the hutukhtu may well settle down for a while, to resume in Baltimore the private life of study and prayer he knew at Naribanchin Sume.