A Kalmyk Pilgrim in the Biography of the Dalai Lama: Baaza Bagshi’s Journey to Tibet as Seen from Both Sides

Alongside historical narratives, there exists, in Old Kalmyk literature, a lesser-known corpus of travel writing that documents pilgrimages to major religious and political centers such as China, Tibet, and Mongolia. One notable and extant example of this genre is the travel account of Baaza Menkedjuev, a Gelung from the Maloderbetovskiy Ulus, more widely known as Baaza Bagshi. His first-person narrative was translated into Russian by A. M. Pozdneev in 1897 under the name “Skazanie o khozhdenii v Tibetskuiu stranu malo-dörbötskago Baaza Bagshi” Narrative of the travel to Tibet by the Maloderbet Baaza Bagshi and offers valuable ethnographic insights into a Kalmyk pilgrim’s journey to Tibet in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Until recently, scholarship on Baaza Bagshi’s Tibetan sojourn has been confined to his own account, with no corroborating evidence found in Tibetan-language sources. This study addresses that lacuna by examining references to Baaza Bagshi in the Tibetan-language biography (Tib. rnam thar) of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (Tib. thub bstan rgya mtsho, 1876–1933). The significance of these references lies not only in the information provided about the number of audiences with the Dalai Lama Baaza Bagshi received, the dates of his visits, and the content of their meetings, but also in the fact that they demonstrate how the Kalmyks—despite living in the European part of Russia, the furthest from the Mongolian Buddhist world—did not lose their religious ties with Tibet. The corroboration of Baaza Bagshi’s visit in both Kalmyk and Tibetan sources allows for a more integrated understanding of Kalmyk–Tibetan relations and contributes to the study of interregional Buddhist networks. Methods of historical contextualization, historiographical critique, and comparative source analysis were used for this research.