ETHNIC MINORITIES

8. ALTAI: WHAT WAS AND IS BURKHANISM? - RAS 13, JRL 6571

SOURCE. Sergei Filatov, "Altaiskii burkhanizm" in Religiia i obshchestvo: ocherki religioznoi zhizni sovremennoi Rossii [Religion and Society: Essays on the Religious Life of Contemporary Russia] (Moscow: Letnii Sad, 2002), pp. 233-246.

The Altai territory is a mountainous area in southern Siberia bordering on eastern Kazakhstan, China's Xinjiang province, and Mongolia. The native ethnic group of the territory, the Altaians, descend from the Jungars, a fusion of various Turkic tribes with the west Mongolian Oirots. From the 14th to the 16th century the Jungars had a great empire, the khanate of Jungaria, based in present-day Xinjiang. From there they streamed through the mountain pass that later came to be called the Jungarian Gates into the lands of the Kazakhs, who sought protection against them from the Russian tsar.

Following the decline of Jungaria and especially the gradual conquest of their homeland by China in the first half of the 18th century, many Jungars migrated westward. Some ventured as far as the lower Volga and the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea, where their descendants now live and are known as Kalmyks. Others took refuge in the Altai Mountains, both in the present-day Altai territory and in neighboring parts of eastern Kazakhstan. The Altaians are their descendants.

The original religion of the Altaians was a shamanistic polytheism. One of their deities was Yerlik, god of the underworld, to whom blood sacrifices had to be made. Another was the heroic, wise, and good Oirot-Khan, a composite figure constructed from memories of the Jungarian khans. His rule had been a Golden Age of justice and happiness. He did not die but went off to the east after promising to return one day with the sun and restore his kingdom.

The Jungars/Altaians have come into contact with three major world religions -- Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. (1) They resisted the expansion of all three. In Jungaria the most influential outside religion was lamaist Buddhism, which began to penetrate from Tibet around 1600. However, the migrants who moved to the Altai Mountains lost contact with the Tibetan lamas and reverted to pagan beliefs.

The first Christians encountered by the Altaians were Old Believers who in the 18th century sought refuge in their mountains from persecution by the Russian government. (2) The Old Believers did not proselytize, and lived in peace with their Altaian neighbors.

In 1756 the Altaians entered the Russian empire for the sake of protection against Chinese and Kazakh attack (just as the Kazakhs had done for the sake of protection against the Altaians' Jungar ancestors!). This led to the establishment in 1829 of an Orthodox mission in the Altai. At first, under the leadership of Archimandrite Makary, the missionaries pursued enlightened policies, opening schools and respecting the native people and their language and customs. But later the mission was taken over by Russifiers, confirming the Altaians in their rejection of Christianity as a "Russian" religion. (3)

By the beginning of the 20th century Russian rule had become harder and harder to bear. The Altaians chafed both at the harsh Russification policy of state and church and at the loss of land to the endless stream of Russian peasant migrants that followed the abolition of serfdom in Russia. And now there arose a new Altaian religion -- Burkhanism, named after Ak-Burkhan, which it recognized as the sole god. ("Ak" means "white.") The new religion was hostile both to the Russians and to the shamans, who were forced to seek protection from the Russian authorities.

Burkhanism was born in May 1904, when an Altaian shepherd by the name of Chet-Chelpan revealed that there had appeared before him a man dressed in white upon a white horse. Two more horsemen soon rode up. The first horseman began to speak to Chet in an unknown language, and the other two translated his words:

"I was and shall be for evermore. I am the chief of the Oirots, which I declare to you, for the time is near. You, Chet, are a sinful man, but your daughter is sinless. Through her I shall convey my commandments to all the Altaians."

The horseman issued 20 commandments, and then rode off with his companions into the mountains. Chet lost no time in recounting his mysterious meeting to his relatives and acquaintances. He sent out messengers to invite all Altaians to gather in the Tereng Valley by Mount Kyrlyk to worship Ak-Burkhan. Within eight days about 4,000 people had gathered.

For three days they prayed. Every day Chet's 14-year-old daughter climbed the mountain to converse with Ak-Burkhan, returning in the evening to transmit new teachings and prophecies. Finally a strange young man appeared, accompanied by a beautiful young maiden, loudly greeted the crowd three times, and began to preach:

"Who believes, let him look at the sun and moon. Revere Oirot! He was, is, and will be; he is immortal. Oirot will soon come to you if you believe in him and do what I now tell you…"

The commandments can be divided into three groups serving distinct purposes (4):

(A) To suppress the old shamanistic cult, e.g.:

* Do not eat the blood of animals.

* Burn the shamans' tambourines: they are from Yerlik, not from God.

* High northern white mountain! You have long bent your heads before it. But the time has come when the white mountain is no longer our master.

(B) To eliminate Russian influence, e.g.:

* Do not smoke tobacco.

* Kill all cats and never again allow them into your yurts.

* Do not eat together with Christians [i.e., converts].

* Do not make friends with Russians.

* We shall look on Russians as our enemies. Their end will soon come: the earth will not tolerate them, it will open up, and they will all fall under the earth. We shall look on the sun and moon as our brothers.

(C) To establish new customs and symbols, e.g.:

* Your main banner is the white and yellow colors. Wear these colors on your hats.

* If you have Russian money, spend it and bring any left over to me. Do not hide a single kopek from me, or else you will fall [into the earth] with the Russians.

Messianic fervor was heightened in 1905 by Russia's defeat in the war with Japan. The Altaians identified Japan with the Oirot kingdom, and the Japanese emperor with Oirot-Khan!

The revolutions of 1917 enabled Altai to claim a measure of independence. At the beginning of 1918, the Karakorum-Altai Province [okrug] was established with its administration in the village of Ulala (now the town of Gorno-Altaisk). The leading figure was "the noted artist Grigory Gurkin, by faith a Burkhanist, by political conviction an SR" (member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party). A strategic goal of the administration was restoration of the Jungarian khanate within its ancient borders.

In the civil war Gurkin supported the White Admiral Kolchak. (5) In 1922 the victorious Soviet regime created the Oirot Autonomous Province. Burkhanist partisans fought on in the mountains well into the 1920s.

The Bolsheviks waged a harsh campaign against all religions in Altai. Only the old polytheistic beliefs survived, passed on orally from generation to generation. No Burkhanist texts seem to have survived at all. Information about Burkhanism has to be gleaned from the papers of Russian ethnographers who visited Altai and the diaries of Russian missionaries and later commissars who came to extirpate the new faith.

The 1990s have witnessed a revival (in new forms) both of the old religion and of Burkhanism. A polytheistic shamanist movement was founded by the artist Vladimir Chekuyev, with four supreme gods: Altai-Kutai , god of the Altai Mountains; the earth god Dver-Suu; the god of fertility Umai-Eme; and Tengre, the sky god. "Tengre" suggests a link with Tengrianism, the pre-Islamic sky-god religion of the Kazakhs, Kumyks, and some other formerly nomadic Turkic peoples.

Interest in Burkhanism was revived by Altaian students who had gone for their higher education to Moscow or Leningrad and there met Russian intellectuals belonging to the religious movement established by the Silver Age occult philosopher Nikolai Rerikh (1874-1947). (6)

Now while the religion that had most influence on Rerikh was Buddhism he knew about Burkhanism and was well disposed toward it. He even drew a picture of "Oirot -- messenger of the White Burkhan" which had a big impression on the Altaian students. He also taught that the mysterious sacred shrine of Shambala was in Altai.

So Rerikh's doctrine naturally appealed to the Altaian students who encountered it. On their return home they established a new Burkhanist movement in Altai, which also drew sustenance from the numerous Russian adepts of Rerikh who came as pilgrims to Altai at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s.

So the Burkhanism that now exists in Altai is not the same faith that inspired Chet-Chelpan back in 1904. It is a new Burkhanism that has been mediated through the Russian Rerikh movement. For that reason and also under the influence of Mongolian Buddhism, neo-Burkhanism incorporates a strong Buddhist component that was completely absent from the original form of the religion. As for when Oirot-Khan will finally return and restore the Jungarian khanate, your guess is as good as mine.

NOTES

(1) They also came under the influence of a few not so major religions such as Nestorianism and Manicheanism.

(2) The Old Believers were people who refused to accept the church reforms imposed by Peter the Great. See RAS No. 12 item 6.

(3) Similarly, they rejected Islam as a "Kazakh" religion.

(4) This is a provisional classification. It may not be adequate. I am not sure about the purpose of some of the commandments, e.g.: Do not chop damp wood.

(5) This strikes me as odd. How was restoration of the Jungarian khanate supposed to be reconciled with "Russia one and indivisible"? But no doubt the Whites seemed a lesser evil than the Reds. Or did the Japanese intervention in the Russian Far East help win the Burkhanists to the White cause? Surely by this time they realized that the Japanese emperor was not the Oirot-Khan…

(6) The Keston Institute book [see source for this piece] contains a chapter on the Rerikh movement (pp. 450-469). Perhaps I'll write something about it for a future issue of RAS.