The Treasures of the Desert

Stupas on the Steppe Series: Views on Buddhism and Mongolia

Mongol Messenger

The Treasures of the Desert

By Guido Verboom

It is a bright day of winter and I am swaying across a white lunar landscape. A local train is bringing me to Sainshand, the “Good Springs”. Sainshand is a town located on the Trans-Mongolian Railway, halfway between Ulaanbaatar and the Chinese border.
On the platform I am welcomed by Mr. Altangerel, the director of the local museum. Later, at the dinner table, he begins telling me his interesting family history. Altangerel’s grandfather was a special man – the fifth in a line of treasure keepers. The treasures guarded by his family belonged to the Holy Ferocious Saint of the Gobi: Danzanravjaa. This saint, born in the early 19th century, was raised in great poverty by his father. But soon he was recognized as a specially gifted boy, and at the age of eight he was declared the fifth incarnation of the Holy Saint of the Gobi. What followed was a turbulent life. Apart from being a great religious leader he appears to have been a very socially engaged person. He was devoted to the common people and their problems, and was an advocate for women’s rights. On the other side he was notorious for his love of the bottle and other pleasures. But he was probably most renowned for his cultural activities. He was an esteemed poet who wrote several religious as well as worldly plays. Close to Sainshand he even built the first theater in Mongolia, and a still-popular Mongolian song was penned by his hand.
Almost all the treasures were safeguarded well into the 20th century, but in the 1930’s Altangerel’s grandfather saw the storm coming. The government became more and more aggressive towards the Buddhist communities and monasteries.
So he started putting treasures into boxes and hiding them in several places in the Gobi desert. He was able to smuggle in total sixty boxes out of the monastery before Russian and Mongolian militaries destroyed it completely in 1937. The boxes remained there buried in the desert for many years to come.
Than at a certain day Mr. Altangerel was born in Ulaanbaatar. When his grandfather, still living in the desert, received the news he dropped everything he was doing. He took his horse and galloped to the train station to take the first train to the capital. There, in the hospital, he discovered that the baby had the special c-shaped birthmark on his skin, the sign of the generations of treasure keepers. He tolled the astounded parents that this was his boy.
Later he teaches his grandchild in extreme secrecy the places where the treasures are hidden. In many nightly sessions he explains the use and meaning of all of the objects. Only after the death of his grandfather comes the opportunity to bring out some of the treasures. In the early nineties, when Mongolia enters a period of transition to a democratic political system, he establishes the Danzanravjaa Museum in Sainshand. Here the content of twenty of these boxes is displayed and it is said that there are still boxes hidden in the patient sand of the Gobi.