Mongolian Monasteries Documentation Project: Providing an archival and other relevant sources database and a website

Grantee: Arts Council of Mongolia

Period: 09/30/2006- 01/25/2008

About the project

From the sixteenth century, when the Mongolians readopted Tibetan Buddhism, Mongolia’s Buddhist monasteries have been at the center of Mongolian cultural tradition.  Similar to the role played by the great monasteries of China, Tibet, Bhutan, and the Russian republics of Tuva and Buryatia, Mongolian monasteries became places of fixed settlement for an otherwise largely nomadic population and provided cultural leadership to Mongolian society. By the time the Soviet Union first called for the liquidation of Mongolian monks and monastery sites in the 1920s, there were no fewer than 100,000 lamas in a population that numbered approximately 700,000 people.  As an extension of the Soviet Great Purge under Stalin, between 1937 and 1939, Soviet and Mongolian authorities executed thousands of lamas and destroyed more than 1,000 priceless Buddhist temples and monasteries in actions that constituted the most violent extension of the Great Purge beyond the official borders of the Soviet Union. 

Following the democratic revolution in 1990, in one of the most dramatic signs of the recovery of cultural and ethic identity in the post-Soviet “transition” period, Mongolian cultural leaders are seeking to identify and document the remains of these magnificent wood and stone structures that for more than four centuries served as center of Mongolian Buddhist culture. 

In order to provide access to the complex documentation of heritage sites for the preservation purposes Mongolian Monasteries Documentation project aims to compile a systematic and comprehensive database about heritage sites and relevant oral history.