Viktoria Mukobenova, Gandzhur and Dandzhur in Chilgir

Abstract

Viktoria relays a story about Gandzhur and Dandzhur texts that were kept in a temple in Chilgir. She says that the ancestors of the people who live today in Tsatkhl used to move from one place to another. At one point in time they stayed in Chilgir where the majority of the population were Russians. There was an Orthodox church there. Before World War Two in the vicinity of Chilgir there was also a Buddhist temple that housed Gandzhur and Dandzhur texts. These sacred texts were taken out of the temple once a year and carried around the settlement three times to protect the land from wars and misfortunes. But when the war broke out the texts were put into a chest and buried. Later when the Kalmyks returned from Siberia, they tried to locate the place but could not. Some people even used machinery to find the chest, but to no avail. The old people say that the time has probably not arrived for the chest to be found.