Editing Mongolia (section)

=== The campaign for the Ninth Bogd Gegeen ===

The death of the Eighth Bogd Gegeen in 1924 opened a protracted contest over whether a ninth reincarnation would be recognized. According to Bawden, a child candidate was found in north Mongolia almost immediately, and lamas of the late Khutuktu's own household began instructing the boy's mother in the details of the previous incarnation's life so that the child could pass the traditional tests; wary of a Mongolian-born rallying point for restorationist sentiment, the party's Central Committee ruled in July 1925 that there were insufficient grounds to accept the candidacy and dispatched a special commission to close the matter down.<ref>Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', pp. 261–262.</ref> Popular agitation for a search continued, and by the summer of 1926 word had spread of a new candidate near the Iroi monastery, with the campaign in his favor gaining considerable support; Prime Minister Ts. Dambadorj opposed recognition, while Amar held that the government could not refuse it outright, since the people would not tolerate a denial.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", pp. 50–51.</ref> The compromise reached at a July 1926 MPRP Central Committee session referred the question to the Dalai Lama, a solution Dambadorj privately welcomed because he expected the resulting delay to give the government time to implement its program of splitting the clergy and conducting antireligious agitation.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", pp. 50–51.</ref> When the Fifth MPRP Congress and the National Assembly took up the matter that autumn, they cited a supposed prophetic tradition holding that the Eighth Khutuktu would not be reincarnated but reborn instead as a general of the mythical realm of Shambala, a notable instance of a Soviet-aligned body deploying Buddhist doctrinal argument, embedded in an official resolution, to settle a political question.<ref>Sinitsyn (2013), "Положение буддийской конфессии", p. 51; Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', pp. 262–263.</ref> Bawden notes that no such tradition appears anywhere in the Church's own official biographies of the Khutuktus, and suggests the party was instead exploiting a folk anxiety, already visible after the death of the sixth incarnation in 1848, that each new death might mark the end of the line.<ref>Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', p. 263.</ref> The question was formally shelved rather than settled, and sources differ slightly on when it was finally closed by decree: Morozova dates the outright ban on seeking reincarnations to 1928, while Bawden places the categorical prohibition in February 1929, after the Seventh Party Congress had expelled the party's right wing.<ref>Morozova (2003), "Revolutionary Mongols", p. 24; Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', p. 263.</ref> Rumors of new candidates recurred even after this, and in 1930 a group of lamas and nobles were convicted in a major treason trial for having pursued the search in league with Japanese agents and the exiled Panchen Lama.<ref>Bawden (1968), ''The Modern History of Mongolia'', p. 264.</ref>