Introduction

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Kalmyks living on the steppes of Southern Russia broadly consisted of two groups: the majority Dörböd, Torghūd, and Khoshūd, who were under the control of Astrakhan province, and the minority Don Kalmyks (Buzāva), a distinct group of people from Torghūd and Dörböd origins who migrated to the Don region in the eighteenth century. In 1806 the Don Kalmyks were officially incorporated into the Province of the Don Cossack Host, where they served in the military with the Cossack soldiers.

The Russian authorities established an administrative district for the Don Kalmyks called the Kalmyk district (Kalmytskii okrug). This administrative district was divided into three units (ulus): Upper (Verkhnyi ulus), Middle (Srednii ulus), and Lower (Nizhnii ulus). The Upper unit consisted of four squadrons (sotnia), the Middle—two, the Lower—four, and the other three squadrons moved separately. A squadron had a chief (sotnik), chosen by squadron members themselves. Two judges, also elected, assisted the chief. Eight out of the thirteen Buzāva squadrons were primarily of Dörböd extraction while the remaining five were primarily of Torghūd origins.

The Don Kalmyks had at least one Buddhist temple (khurul) in each squadron, and in each temple there was a bagsha. The temples were portable tents (khurla ger). In 1806, while not banning Buddhism outright, the Russian authorities tried to both reduce the number of Kalmyk temples from twenty to thirteen and limit the number of monks attached to these temples. Galina Dordzhieva's survey of the attempts of the Russian administration to limit and control the number of Don Kalmyk Buddhist temples and monks points out that “This [the limit of thirteen temples] began the Tsarist government's intervention in the spiritual affairs of the Don Kalmyks.”