Tibet's part in the 'great game.' (Agvan Dorjiev)

by Hundley, Helen

History Today

Why did the visit of a Buddhist holy man to Lhasa at the turn of the century throw the British Foreign Office into a state of paranoia? Helen Hundley explores the life and times of Agvan Dorjiev and the part he played in the Asian rivalry of Britain and Russia. This announcement of the activities of a ~certain official', clipped in St Petersburg by the

British Charge d'Affaires, Charles Hardinge, and sent to the Foreign Office in London, introduced the British to a citizen of the Russian empire, the Buriat lama, doctor of Buddhist theology, Agvan Dorjiev (1853 - 1938). In the summers of 1900 and 1901 Dorjiev led embassies from the Dalai Lama to Russia expressing official greetings. His presence

at the embassies was to spark a particularly interesting example of ~The Great Game' between Great Britain and Russia. British perceptions of Dorjiev's role and connections to the Russian government eventually led to the British invasion of Tibet, the Younghusband Mission of 1904. How could such an ~innocent' visit by a Buriat lama have initiated such

havoc? What role did this enigmatic man play in the affairs of the great powers at the height of the imperialist era? In fact, the mere presence of a citizen of the Russian empire in Tibet served to alarm the British in India. At the time of the ~Great Game' none of the players could imagine that non-Europeans could have their own agendas or that a

citizen of an empire would not share the same goals as those of their mother country. It is not surprising then, that the British naturally assumed that the Russian government controlled all of Dorjiev's acts. British action at the time was based on this perception of Dorjiev and his role in Tibet. For the Tibetans, this perception of Russian support

and interest was precisely what they desired. Agvan Dorjiev, a Transbaikal Buriat, certainly came from the Russian empire, a fact his friends advertised during his visits to Russia for the Dalai Lama. His home territory in eastern Siberia, located on both sides of Lake Baikal, known as Buriatia, became the Buriat Autonomous Republic under the

Soviets and still retains their identity under the Russian Republic. When the Russians annexed the Baikal territory in the mid-seventeenth century the local population, Mongolian people known as Buriats, all practiced Shamanism. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of those Buriats who inhabited the region on the eastern side of Lake Baikal, known as the Transbaikal, practiced Mahayana Yellow Hat Buddhism, or Lamaism. The Transbaikal Buriats were well aware of their minority status both

ethnically and religiously within the Russian empire. No matter how isolated they may have been within the empire, however, they were part of a greater religious, cultural, and ethnic ~family' beyond - the Lamaist Buddhist religious family - which stretched from the Transbaikal through Khalka, or Outer Mongolia, to Inner Mongolia, to Tibet. Lhasa, Tibet, is the home for this branch of Buddhism. Thus, for any young Transbaikal Buriat wishing to perfect his religious understanding, it was necessary to study in Tibet, a

Chinese tributary. After preparation at home in the 1860s Agvan Dorjiev attended the Drepung Monastery, one of the most important theological centres for Yellow Hat Lamaism in Tibet. It was an atmosphere in which he thrived, winning the highest award for a Buddhist scholar. In the mid-1880s, soon after completing fifteen years of study and achieving

honour as a scholar, he was named as one of the new 13th Dalai Lama's (b. 1876) teachers and as his spiritual adviser. He retained this role as spiritual adviser until the late 1910s at least, when his physical absence attenuated that side of their alliance. Their relationship, however, went beyond that of student-teacher. Dorjiev most certainly played a role in saving the life of the young Dalai Lama in the mid- and late-1890s. The young man's continued survival was in itself quite unique, as his four predecessors had not lived long enough to actually rule (9th, 1805-1815.110th, 1816-1837; 11th, 1838-1855; 12th, 1856-1875). It is believed that they were not allowed to live, and that the regents,

the Demo-Khutukhtus, were the agents of these deaths, possibly at the behest of the Chinese. What is known through the Buriat scholar, Tsybikov, who was in Lhasa from 1899 to 1902, is that there was an internal struggle for the future of Tibet and Buddhism and that when it was over, Dorjiev's charge, the 13th Dalai Lama, still lived, indicating that the party that wished for more independence from China for Tibet had prevailed. Needless to say, this period must have deepened a close relationship and certainly placed Dorjiev

in the camp of those who wished to oppose destructive outside interference. The question remains, what purpose did the deaths of the earlier Dalai Lamas serve, and what greater problems did their deaths imply? In fact, the early deaths of the Dalai Lamas were just the most visible signs of Tibet's precarious situation in the nineteenth century. Throughout the century, Tibet had faced a growing challenge to her limited local autonomy under the Dalai Lamas from her Chinese overlords, who had occupied the country in the

early eighteenth century and became Tibet's official suzerains in 1792. By ensuring that the young Dalai Lamas would not live long enough to take civil control of the government, China removed a potential source of a legitimate and organised challenge to its rule. Unfortunately, Chinese interference was not the only danger that confronted

Tibet during this period. She also faced challenges to her sovereignty from her neighbour, Gurkha-dominated Nepal, as well as from the great imperial power to the south, Great Britain. Nepal had shown interest since 1791, when she invaded Tibet and annexed Shigate. As recently as 1855, Nepal had forced a 10,000-rupee tax on Tibet and continued to

exert pressure into the late nineteenth century. The British had also indicated early and persistent interest in Tibet, sending in a string of explorers while pressing for a special trading place on the border of, or inside, Tibet. The British interest had begun in the late 1700s during the tenure of India's first Governor-General, Warren Hastings. By 1817 the British had annexed Sikkim, a region that had hitherto paid special taxes to Tibet, leaving that territory to Nepalese local control. In fact, an 1886 British

Commercial Mission instigated border skirmishes that involved Tibet, India, and Sikkim and eventually led to 1890 and 1893 trade agreements between China and Britain requiring Tibet to trade with Britain, at a location chosen to serve British trade needs. At the time, the Tibetans correctly understood the British desire for increased trade, but they

also feared that the British would then annex them and totally destroy their culture. In the 1920s, the 13th Dalai Lama told Britain's representative, Sir Charles Bell, that he had genuinely feared that the British had wished to annex Tibet, and that if they had succeeded the survival of Buddhism itself would have been in doubt. Agvan Dorjiev provided a possible counterweight to dangers from both directions. Here was a citizen of a state powerful enough to provide a challenge to British aggression, and his actions from 1898

to 1904 illustrate the fact that he realised the impact he might have. For their part, the Tibetans knew little to nothing about Russia. Dorjiev was in the position to tell them. By all accounts, by the 1890s, Dorjiev began to expound the story that the mythical kingdom of Shamba-la, a kingdom to the north of Tibet whose king would save Buddhism, was actually the kingdom of Russia. Whether Dorjiev, the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama's government and advisers, or all of these men in concert, originated the plan of seeking

contact with the Russian empire, the activity was underway at least by 1898 if not sooner. Although we cannot be certain how far everyone wished this relationship to go, at the very least it is safe to assume that they sought protection from British pressure and perhaps even hoped to see a loosening of Chinese overlordship by playing Dorjiev's Russian card. The Tibetans may have had purely local interests, Dorjiev certainly had broader goals. At this time of tremendous political and social questioning in Europe, the peoples

of the Russian empire were exploring their own nationalist identities. In the Siberian regional press, Dorjiev engaged in a battle with other Buriat intelligentsia over the correct direction for Buriats. He argued for a pan-Buddhist, pan-Mongolist movement directed at merging all Buddhists, from the Baikal to perhaps even Tibet, into one state,

rather than to attempt to create an independent secular Buriat state. In order to face the political realities of the times, he recommended that this expanded Buddhist world unite under the aegis of the Russian empire. With their increased physical size and numbers, Buddhists could expect greater security in the Russian empire. Whatever the agendas, hidden or otherwise, in 1898 Dorjiev was sent to Europe by the Dalai Lama to learn more about European affairs. On this trip Dorjiev met Tsar Nicholas II for the first time,

unofficially. in the spring of 1900 Dorjiev returned with six other representatives of the Dalai Lama who travelled through India on their way to meet with the Tsar in Odessa in July at the Livadia Palace. At this point, the British government and the newspapers were blissfully unaware of the existence of Dorjiev or his mission. The following year the

pilgrimage was repeated with Dorjiev and the other representatives meeting this time with the Tsar, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Finance in St Petersburg. Probably none of these exchanges of pleasantries would have been of much interest, nor would they have had the desired effect of implying Russian support for the Dalai Lama, had they remained secret. The Russian press and especially the Tsarist official Dr Badmaev, a Buriat himself, made certain that the visits were publicised and that Dorjiev's role

and background were discussed extensively in the Russian papers. On the surface, it appeared that the information was having a subtle effect. in July and August 1901, The Times in London repeated the Russian information, from the St Petersburgskiia Vedomosti and other Russian journalistic sources, with and without editorial comment. The activities of the ~Buddhist from the Trans-Baikal Province' and his mission received several mentions at a time replete with seemingly more important news, indicating British fascination with

Dorjiev's mission. Although British initial information on Dorjiev came from the Russian's themselves, a Japanese Buddhist monk, Ekai Kawaguchi, who had visited Lhasa incognito, because of his status as a foreigner, for eighteen months, expended an enormous amount of effort telling the British about Dorjiev's activities. His account of his 1901-2 stay in Lhasa was published in Japanese in 1903-4 in 156 daily issues of an Osaka newspaper, and in English in 1909. More importantly, the indian government had access to all that

Kawaguchi saw, and all that he thought that he saw. Whilst in Tibet, and later, Kawaguchi sent reports on Dorjiev's activities to his Tibetan tutor, the Bengali, Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917), a British agent. In these letters, Kawaguchi did not make vague statements, based on a general assumption that a citizen of the Russian empire might be a source of future trouble in the region, but instead made very specific allegations. He not only reported that Dorjiev had encouraged the Dalai Lama to think of the Russian empire as

Shamba-la, that Dorjiev was Minister of War, but also that he was personally responsible for creating an arsenal in Lhasa through the importation of American guns from Mongolia. The Japanese monk also reported that Dorjiev's agitations were at odds with a general pro-British feeling among the Tibetans. His work did not remain hidden: in the account giving his own justification for going into Tibet, Sir Francis Younghusband, leader of the British expedition into Lhasa and Commissioner to Tibet (1902-4), cited these same

accusations. Kawaguchi also managed to visit Tibet's arch enemy, Nepal, on his way out of Tibet in 1902. While there he spoke to Chandra Shamsher, Nepal's prime minister, to report that the Russian citizen had gained influence over the Dalai Lama, and that ~... Tibet had taken a hard line since Tsan-ni Kembo's [[[Dorjiev's]]] return from Russia'. Nepal in turn used Kawaguchi's information to justify asking Britain for action when talking to British Resident, Colonel C.W. Ravenshaw, in October 1902, providing the Viceroy of

India, George Nathaniel Curzon, with justification for subsequent action on his part. Why had Kawaguchi taken such a negative attitude toward Dorjiev? While there is no proof that he was a Japanese spy, a spy, Navita Yasuteru, had been sent to Lhasa at about the same time. Kawaguchi may very well have been a self-appointed defender of his country's

interests in Asia. Additionally, documents in Tibet and Japan imply a pro-British attitude on his part. While we know a great deal about Kawaguchi's attempts at painting a dark picture of Dorjiev's activities before 1904, we know very little about yet another reporter of Russian intrigues - the German, Wilhelm Filchner. In 1924, he wrote a lurid account of Russian intrigue in Tibet through Dorjiev and his supposed agents. We do not know, however, if he was able to communicate his theories to the British at the turn of

the century. Was Lama Dorjiev actually an agent of the Tsar? Perhaps it is not important whether he was or not. Because of a combination of the Russian-supplied information and Kawaguchi's reports, he was certainly seen as the embodiment of evil and trouble by a number of representatives of the British government. In spite of subsequent denials of interest in Dorjiev, members of the Younghusband Expedition all relate stories of his activities in Russia, based on these accounts, as prefaces to their actions in Tibet. Thus,

his activities reached the group for which they were meant, but unfortunately resulted in an undesirable reaction. The clipped, translated articles sent back to the British Foreign Office stating the circumstances of the visit, and especially Dorjiev's presence in the entourage and his leading role in negotiations, created an explosion in the Viceroy of India's offices, and led Curzon to initiate a pre-emptive mission to Tibet. From the beginning of their awareness of his existence, Dorjiev's presence and activities

caused concern if not hysteria on the part of Britain's representatives in India. Younghusband himself specifically stated that Dorjiev's visits to Russia in 1900 and 1901 were the cause of his own mission. His vocabulary on this subject was firm but not flowery - his underlings were more poetic in their statements. While the civil servant, Charles Bell's, more seasoned and mature writings quietly held Dorjiev responsible for the Dalai Lama's actions, Edmund Candler with the 23rd Sikh Pioneers called Dorjiev an ~arch-

intriguer' and ~adventurer'. Lieutenant Colonel Waddell, the doctor on the Younghusband Mission, went even further, stating that Dojiev ~was the agent through which the Peter's pence of the Tartars of Baikal were made over to the Lhasa exchequer'. In his memoirs published the year after the mission, Waddell specifically and repeatedly blamed Dorjiev for the need for the mission. Waddell reiterated Kawaguchi's accusations saying that Dorjiev had created the Shamba-la-Russian myth, that ~he poisoned his [the young Dalai Lama's] mind against the English', and was even ~supervising the war preparations in the Lhasa Arsenal'. However bluntly they stated the case, all of these British officials firmly established Agvan Dorjiev as a source of danger, and even as a spy, in the minds of the British public. What then did the man who sent the British into Lhasa think? All evidence implies that Curzon reacted extremely to Dorjiev's visits to Russia, based on an assumption that he was a Russian agent. Curzon was not just reacting to meetings

between Dorjiev and Russian officials, however. The hyperactive rumour mill fuelled by the ~Great Game' served to provide the viceroy with ~concrete' actions on the part of the Russians. Rumours of treaties written as a result of these visits were the real source of Curzon's discomfort. Moreover, Curzon's concern about Russian designs was not based on fantasy or rumour. Russia genuinely presented a security threat to Britain's empire in Asia at the turn of the century. Russia's successful invasion and annexation of Central Asia from the 1860s to the 1880s, her annexation of the Amur and Ussuri territories in 1860, her movement into the Liaotung Peninsula in the 1890s, her activities in Manchuria where her troops lingered as a result of the Boxer Rebellion, all gave credence to an assumption of an insatiable Russian appetite for territory, and credence to British fears of encirclement of her ~jewel in the crown', India. Before he was viceroy, Curzon had travelled throughout the territories that Russia had recently annexed in Central Asia, in

order to evaluate realistically the danger Russia presented to Britain in Asia. He stated that neither the alarmists nor the apologists understood the Russian empire. Based on his personal observations, Curzon came to the conclusion that Russia was very successful at adding territory but not a good administrator after annexation. While this analysis certainly calmed some of his fears, Curzon believed that Russia would continue to expand outward unless checked. Curzon did not wish to stress or even admit his concern over

Dorjiev's activities or anxiety over Russian intrigue in his arguments with the London Foreign Office, as they were less susceptible to the rumours of the dangers Dorjiev presented. At the beginning of the mission in January 1904 he wrote to Younghusband advising him to ~Remember that in the eyes of HMG we are advancing not because of Dorjieff or the Mission to Livadia or the Russian spies in Lhasa, but because of our convention shamelessly violated ...' as London would only accept a legal concern as reason for action.

In the end, whatever Curzon's justification for his actions, a heavily armed and supported Younghusband Expedition travelled through Tibet in 1903 and entered Lhasa in August of 1904. Once in Lhasa, Younghusband was ~itching' to write an agreement with the Dalai Lama when he found to his great chagrin that the Dalai Lama and Dorjiev had fled Lhasa the

week before. Even at that juncture, as well as later, the colonel exhibited as great an interest in Dorjiev's whereabouts as in the Dalai Lama's. Younghusband's account reflects an obvious expectation of greater opposition and better armed opponents, revealing an intimate knowledge of Kawaguchi's as yet unpublished claims of Dorjiev's activities. The ease with which the British moved through Tibet, and the absence of any Russian agents or hoards of weapons all pointed to the emptiness of the claims of Dorjiev's activities.

The obvious inaccuracies of Kawaguchi's claims were ignored, however. Younghusband did finally discover someone to sign his British and Tibetan Convention of 1904. The expedition left Lhasa in September and returned to India in the autumn of 1904. After all the effort, it really is not certain how much the expedition succeeded in its goal as a pre-emptive strike to warn the Russians away from further expansion in south-central Asia. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 and the Russian Revolution of 1905 turned Russia's

attention inwards. Russian interest, if it had ever existed, had cooled so much that by 1907, Britain and Russia were able to write a Convention in which Russia essentially forswore any interest in Tibet. Interestingly enough, Dorjiev's role as a lightning rod for British panic about alleged Russian plots did not end after his flight from Lhasa, or even after the Convention of 1907. He continued to be a source of fascination because of his trips to St Petersburg to seek help for the Dalai Lama during his flights from Lhasa

to China and India. Still attempting to build his Pan-Buddhist union, Dorjiev's trip to Urga in 1912 resulted in the writing of two treaties, one between Russia and Mongolia and one between Mongolia and Tibet, neither of which had been initiated by Russia. Dorjiev's presence in Mongolia in 1911 and 1912 was enough even to fuel a rumour that the Dalai Lama was about to take Russian citizenship and live in St Petersburg in a Buddhist temple being constructed at Dorjiev's instigation. Beginning in 1901, Dorjiev served as the perfect scapegoat for Viceroy Curzon to justify his actions. While Curzon took a broad view of Russian abilities in Asia, because of his citizenship and ethnicity, Dorjiev served as a proximate cause for Curzon's actions. However sophisticated Curzon's thinking may have been, certainly those on the expedition had no doubt about who was the

villain, and that the Russian government had to be pulling his strings, as no non-European could possibly have a goal that did not serve a European power. At the time, and even now, almost everyone has been wrong about Agvan Dorjiev of the Transbaikal. He was no one's puppet. He certainly was not the ~Russian master spy' that he was depicted to be. Dorjiev may have worked for closer relations between the Russian empire and Tibet, but he was not interested in serving the Russian empire per se. Dorjiev was a pan-Mongolist

and a pan-Buddhist. His entire and lengthy career points to his dedication to these interests and his willingness to be ~flexible' in the manner in which he achieved his goals. Moreover, he was innocent of many of the activities he was accused of by both Kawaguchi and Filchner, activities that were used as justifications for British actions both prior to, and after, 1904. Finally, who then in St Petersburg bore the blame for drawing Russia into yet another dangerous game? Recent evidence of the archives supports the theory

that the Russian Foreign Ministry initiated nothing, and even important British observers of the time agreed. The British Charge d' Affaires in St Petersburg, Spring Rice, told the Foreign Office that the activity on Russia's part arose from Nicholas II's romantic fascination with the East and the possibility of his having a role in an exotic religion.

This last explanation is probably closest to the truth. There certainly is ample evidence of the Tsar's interest in ~exotic' healing and the religions that spawned it. Dorjiev used the Tsar's interests to strike up Russo-Tibetan contacts. For a brief moment Agvan Dorjiev and his Dalai Lama attempted to balance the dangers facing Tibet and Buddhism

from the European, Nepalese, and Chinese threats. The Russian card ultimately failed due to the essential peripheral interest Russia and England had in Tibet. Everything and everywhere else was more important. While the 13th Dalai Lama succeeded later in establishing a tenuous Tibetan autonomy, since 1949 Tibet has lost its battle with China, seeing

the destruction of its religion and even its people. Under the Soviets, Dorjiev continued his efforts to pull Mongols together until Stalin stopped him. After the October Revolution he worked to keep Buddhism alive, succeeding to a certain extent until Stalin took control of the government. The aged Dorjiev was put under house arrest in the 1930s

and died under uncertain circumstances, in 1938. Dorjiev's vision of a Mongol union, however, has not died. Today, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, religious-centred and secular-centred Buriats are discussing possible relationships of which Dorjiev would heartily approve.

Helen Hundley is Assistant Professor of History at Wichita State University, Kansas.

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