Baldan Bereeven Monastery
Baldan Bereeven Monastery belongs to the Buddhist sect monastery Gelugpa. It’s located in the valley of the Baruun Jargalant River, in the sum of Omnodelger, province of Khentii. Its name is the translation of the Tibetan word “drepung” meaning “pile of rice”. Originally, its architecture was the same as the Drepung monasteries’ one in India and Tibet.
The site has also an esthetic value, since the monastery is surrounded by the picturesque, sacred mountains of the Khentii range : Munkh Ulziit, Arvan Gurvan Sansar, Bayan Baraat, and Bayan Khangai. The locals think that these four mountains have animal shapes : a lion at East, a dragon at South, a tiger at West, a garuda at North.
History
The lama Tsevendorj studied with Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia, in Tibet. He wanted to create a monastery with a similar architecture to that of Lumbini, Buddha’s birth place, in order to house the Mongolian pilgrims who couldn’t travel so far. Originally, Baldan Bereeven had about 1500 lamas in its community.
The construction of the main temple, called Dash Tsepel Ling, began in the mid-1700’s and finished in 1776.The temple Tsogchin Dugan, “large room”, was achieved in 1813 ; it was a reproduction of the famous Tibetan Utai Gumbun. The Tsogchin Dugan was one of the largest buildings of whole Mongolia. It was 30 metres (98,43 feet) long, 30 metres (98,43 feet) wide, and nearly 12 metres (39,37 feet) high.
In 1850, once the renovation of the main temple completed, Baldan Bereeven, as a cloistered school, reached its peak. It housed four different schools and more than twenty temples, and almost 8000 lamas lived and studied here. At the beginning of the 20th century, an epidemic decimated more than half the community.
The Baldan Bereeven Monastery includes now three restored temples and nearly 50 remains of temples, stupas and other religious structures. There are also many cliff carvings, stone carvings with different images of Buddhist gods, inscriptions of religious mantras and Mongolian symbol ‘’Soyombo’’, stone sculptures of gods, and other religious and art works along the over 1000 m of pilgrimage route. They provide invaluable physical and historical materials for the research of spread of Tibetan Buddhism into Mongolia. They not only form a major religious and sacred landscape but also provide the vivid evidence of traditional affection of Mongolian people for the sacred mountain. Eastern tour
