 Tibetan (Mahayana) Buddhism has long been the religion of the Mongols. Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan (1216-94), selected Buddhism from all the religions represented in his empire to be adopted by his imperial court in Beijing. However it was several centuries before Buddhism really took hold in Mongolia. In 1578 the country reconverted to Tibetan Buddhism when a Tibetan monk, Sonam Gyatsho, recognised as a reincarnation of Kublai Khan, received the title, Dalai Lama, from the Mongol Altan Khan.
 It was also in the 16th century that the magnificent Erdene Zuu
monastery was built at Karakorum, using the materials remaining from
Genghis Khan’s capital. During the centuries that followed, Mongolia
was largely under Chinese domination, but following the fall of Qing
China in 1911 the ruling “Living Buddha”, the Bogd Khan, held spiritual
and secular power over the newly-independent Mongolia. At the beginning
of the 20th century, Mongolia had 583 monasteries, but the Communist
revolution of 1921 was the beginning of the decline in religious power.
During the Stalinist purges of the 1930s thousands of monks were killed
or “disappeared” and monasteries were destroyed. However the democracy
movement that began in the early 1990s has brought religious freedom
and the faith has been revived. Many monasteries have been restored and
are again active, notably Ganden Hid in Ulaanbaatar and Erdene Zuu at
Karakorum. The other major religion is Mongolian Shamanism, linked with
a worship of nature, with the earth considered as “Mother Earth” and
the sky “The Father.” The shaman acts as an intermediary between Man
and the spirits. Shamanism determines the behaviour of nomads towards
nature and is still practised especially in the northern region around
Lake Hovsgol.
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