R.M. Valeyev, I.V. Kulganek.
The Diaries of a Mongolian studies scholar O.M. Kovalevskiy. 1830 – 1831.
Osip Mikhailovich Kovalevskiy (1801 – 1878) was a prominent Russian and Polish orientalist who headed Mongolian Studies school in Russia, a brilliant expert in culture, religion and history of Mongolian-language peoples, an organizer of higher education and research activities, Rector of Kazan University, Dean of the Faculty of History and Philology of Warsaw University, the Honorary Member of Paris Asian Society, full member of the Society of Northern Antiquities of Copenhagen, full member of Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities, corresponding member of the Academy of Science of St. Petersburg.
In O.M. Kovalevskiy’s research work two basic areas of focus can be distinguished. The first one is studying Oriental languages at the University, acquaintance with and studying of the history and culture of the peoples of Asia in the certain geographic territories of Volga region, Siberia, Buryatia, Mongolia and China. The second area is teaching Mongolian Philology in the Russian university center in Kazan, researching various written and material legacy of the peoples of Central Asia. Consequently, in XIX – early XX centuries, these fields of classic Oriental Studies became key areas of focus in Russian and world Oriental Studies.
Professor O.M. Kovalevskiy is the author of fundamental and famous works and reference books in the field of Mongolian Studies, Buddhism Studies and Tibetan Studies. “The Brief Grammar of Mongolian Literary Language” (1835), “The Mongolian Chrestomathy” (Vol. 1 – 2, 1835, 1837), “The Cosmology of Buddhism” (1837), “Mongolian-Russian-French Dictionary” (Vol. 1 – 3, 1844, 1846, 1849), the manuscript entitled “The History of the Mongols” and the other works of Kovalevskiy became a part of the “Golden funds” of Russian and world Mongolian Studies and Buddhism Studies.
Unfortunately, Kovalevskiy’s personal library survived only partially, several of his books and manuscripts are kept in archives and libraries of Kazan, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Irkutsk, Warsaw. His pedagogical, scholarly and epistolary legacy is of great interest to the History of Oriental Studies in Russia and Europe, as well as to present-day linguists, historians, ethnographers, art and religion researchers.
O.K. Kovalevskiy made his notable voyage to Baikal Lake region, Irkutsk oblast, Mongolia and China in 1828 – 1833.
Studying Central Asia is a relevant issue up to the present because of the unity of research aims and problems that stood before scholars who participated in research expeditionsin XVII – XIX centuries, and before scholars and travelers of XXI century. In the present-day expedition research works a certain succession of the methods of searching andexamining materials on historical-cultural legacy of Russian and Central Asian peoples can be traced out.
O.M. Kovalevskiywas not only an excellent culture and language expert, but also a collector of Mongolian, Chinese, Manchurian, Tibetan manuscripts and wood engravings. Kovalevskiy’s scholarly and educational attention to the monuments of writing, items of material culture and of cult attributes of the peoples of Central Asia found its continuation in research works of scholars and educators of XX century. Shining examples of that are expeditions of P.K. Kozlov, B.Ya. Vladimirtsov, A.M. Pozdneyev, Ts. Zhamtsarano, B. Baraydin to Mongolia, Buryatia and Kalmyk steppes. These expeditions gave brilliant scholarly and cultural results, opened new areas of research in Mongolian Studies, deepened the knowledge about all spheres of life and cultural legacy of Mongolian peoples.
Kovalevskiy made his voyage to Beijing in 1830 with XI Russian Spiritual Mission and returned to Kyakhta in 1831 with X Spiritual Mission, while being in 4-years secondment in Baykal region to study Mongolian language, culture, history and religion of Buryats, where he had been sent from Kazan University in order to prepare for the opening of the Chair of Mongolian Studies.
As his Beijing travel documents show, “the primary aim of Kovalevskiy’s trip is improvement of his Mongolian language and acquiring fundamental information in Manchurian language”.
In 1829 – 1830 the Ministries of People’s Education and Foreign Affairs make a decision about his assignment to the staff, and in August 1830 the New Mission departed from Irkutsk to the direction of Kyakhta.
The Mission entered Mongolian territory in August, 30th, 1830 and reached Urga in September, 14th. On an Autumn day of November, 18th, 1830 the travelers entered Beijing, the Russian Church-in-Town of the Spiritual Orthodox Mission. The Sergeant at Arms of the Mission was Lieutenant Colonel of the General Staff M.V. Ladyzhenskiy. O.M. Kovalevskiy was attached to him as a clerk. His responsibility was keeping the road diary and helping the interpreters. The young probationer coped with both tasks with excellence. The diaries of the journey to Beijingand back remained unpublished, contrary to those that he kept during his first stay in Transbaikalia.
Some of his letters and reports concerning the start of his journey to China, which were sent by him regularly to the curator N.M. Musin-Pushkin,were published in “Russian Academic Journal”. They contained some hard-hitting words about the Qing government, mentioning bribery, larceny of civil servants, pressure on dependent peoples, keeping people in poverty, malevolence to everything foreign.Occasionally there was also information that could compromise the Mission, for instance, the information about the topographic survey being carried out during the Mission’s progression, about the presence of several scholars in the Missionalongside with Cossacks. After some of such reports came out the Director of the Asian Department K.K. Rodofinikin wrote a letter to the Minister of Education K.A. Liven; besides,he contacted the Post-Director and Governor General of East Siberia, in order for them to take measures preventing that very issue of “Russian Academic Journal” with O.M. Kovalevskiy’s report of December, 1830 from entering Kyakhta. The worries of the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia could be explained by their fear of negative reaction of the Chinese powers to O.M. Kovalevskiy’s criticizing of their policy.
During his travel O.M. Kovalevskiy showed interest not only to the history and nature of Central Asia, but also to the culture of peoples inhabiting it. These are the writings of an attentive and observant scholar and, at the same time, a responsive person.Independence, consistency, realism, specificity and criticism – these are the mostdistinctive features of his diaries. Kovalevskiy is never absorbed in creating myths and idealizing the images of Mongolia and China, which could happen in the other, earlier and even later historiographic and source studies materials about peoples and cultures of these countries belonging to the other researchers.
The diaries of O.M. Kovalevskiy appear as a bright example of a remarkable itinerary tradition in Russian Mongolian and Chinese Studies of XIX century, embodying the enormous experience of his predecessors – travelers and researchers who left behind them numerous writings, notes, reports, articles, diaries and the so-called “descriptions” – reports about the things they had seen in the visited countries.
All these materials give coverage to the history of direct Russian-Mongolian connections and are the evidence of the continuous political, social and scholarly cognition of Chinese legacy by Russian scholars.
In all the itineraries of Russian travelers, beginning with one of the first remaining “descriptions” about the Mission of Ivan Petlin to China (1618) and up to O.M. Kovalevskiy’s diaries (1830 – 1831), unity and succession can be traced out in the approach to the material as a scholarly and educational source. In such works Russian readers of that time could find various interesting materials as well as descriptions of ethnography, history and culture of the peoples of Central and Eastern Asia. Unfortunately, most of Russian historic and cultural monuments of that kind had for a long time been published only in European languages, thus becoming available for Russian-language readers only much later.
The current edition offers two of Kovalevskiy’s diaries belonging to the time of his travels with the Russian Spiritual Mission: he kept the first one on his way to China, and the second one – on his way back – from Beijing to Kyakhta.
The first diary (October 9th – December 11th, 1931) can be found in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg (included in the collection of separate accessions, fund 100, register 2, # 612). The diary is a notebook witha grey cover, 13 22 cm in size, full of notes written in small hand. There is a large number of insertions on the margins. The diary contains 76 pages. The first page of the document has the title: “The Diary Kept During the Travel with XI Mission to China Oct. 9th – Dec. 11th, 1830. The Description of the Places Seen and of Chinese Customs”. Consequently, the diary covers only part of the Mission’s travel, namely beginning from the moment it left Ugra and headed for south.
The first record in the diary describes the arriving of the train of wagons to the Xuemeying Gashun plain, and the last one is about the Mission’s stay in Beijing. A few pages of the diary are occupied by translations of newspaper articles, retellings of conversations with the members of the previous Mission about the manners, customs, history, culture of the Chinese, stories about encounters with officials, merchants and common people of Beijing, notes about observations in the streets of the city.
O.M. Kovalevsky strictly follows the instruction composed by the Professors of Kazan University V.Ya. Bulygin and F.I. Erdman, given to him before departing for the travel. Its first part contained the indication to the necessity of keeping a detailed diary of all the Mission’s movements and activities. He had to write down everything he noticed, “both important and not important things during the day”; he was also supposed to “treat the local inhabitants gently, attentively examine the dogmatic, ethical and abstract sides of the local religion, acquire new knowledge concerning the national personality, folk tales, notions about the world order.
The diary contains entries about the political and administrative organization of Mongolia, which was a part of the Qing Empire (1644 – 1911). These entries contain the information about the amount of the cattle, ways of pasturing it, social and financial position of the population, stages of education; there are also some interesting remarks about the phonetic peculiarities of Chahar, Khalkha, Ordosdialects. There are a few indications to the fact of carrying out topographic survey;information about many facts of houselife of the Buryats, Mongols and Chinese of that time: about their hermit life, monastery education, caravan trade.
For instance, on the first few pages of the diary there is a description of an interesting sort of hermit life: the members of the Mission meet Lodon Tseden, one of the four hermits of that kind in Mongolia. For four yearshe lives in a cave, far away from all the people, lives on alms, is occupied with praying, does not have any personal property, tries to develop his gift of prophecy, prays all night long and above all virtues honours serving to Buddha. He leads an ascetic way of life and has hardened his body to such a point that in the case of lack of water and food he subsists on sand, grass and his own urine.
Having left the Khalkha nomad camps and upon entering the Sunit camps, the travelers saw large herds of Bogdo Gegen.O.M. Kovalevskiy gives a detailed description of the form of the officials’ control over the increase of cattle, the size of financial compensation and punishment of the shepherds.
Of an undoubted interest are the entries containing the information borrowed from the conversations with the local population and with the people who had been to those places before. For example, he scrupulously notes down that “at the joss houses in Urga a lot of books are published, both Tibetan and Mongolian, not only of theological content, but also of medical and narrative”; he writes down the data about the salary of the head of the Western Sunits, which amounts to 120 lans, for the shepherds it is 12 lans; he includes in the diary a story told by a nomad, that “during the war the first banner being drawn out towards the enemy is the white one, after that – the green one, then the black one, and if those are also defeated, then <…> the yellow, the bravest one”.
He also received interesting information about common law, such as: “polygamy is common”; “loss of chastity is not considered a young lady’s vice”; “larceny is not a vice in the opinion of Chahars, but arga – cunning, craft, wit”; “the Chinese court tries to attach Mongolian officials to itself by close relationship”; “they have the following: tsanchin, sonumu tsanchin, kundui, zhunda, boshko, baira”; “the Chahars are on a privileged position, and since the age of five they are equaled to privates and can receive salary”; “The clergy is under the direct supervision of the Chamber of external affairs, they are attributed to joss houses”; “Every shepherd in Zuunsunit nomad camps is given 1200 sheep, 4509 horses, 300 camels”.
Of the biggest value are the detailed descriptions of Kovalevskiy’s own observations of the people’s life, especially the education. For instance, in South Mongolia he distinguishes four stages of education: 1. the training school at the Khangir Obo joss house in the stow of Tsamein Usu, where Tibetan language is studied for seven years; 2. the training schoolat the Badagar Choilan-sume joss house in the stow of Ordos, where students study for 10 years before receiving the degree of gybshik; 3. the training school at Gombo-sume in Tibet, where the studying period is 2 – 3 years, and upon graduation the degree of rapzhamba is given, after that “one can receive the degrees of hambu or higher”; 4. the Munku Zhu monastery in Tibet at Dalai Lama’s. The studying period is 20 years. Upon the graduation one can receive the degree of saramba.
Kovalevskiy also lists some informationabout the way education is carried out in China: a Chinese person reads his first book at the age of eight, then “Qian Zi Wen”(1000 short sayings) is to be learnt by heart. Here he also speaks about the place of the universities in the system of education of China and about the principles of distribution ofjob positions.
Among the other information included in the diary are entries about the history of Christianity in China and about the role of the edict of 1786 during the reign of Tianlun, and also there is the text of the edict about the discretion of Russian Orthodox Spiritual Mission in China.
The original etymologicalhandling of the word “Japan” is quite interesting. In Chinese historiography, as O.M. Kovalevskiy writes, the historic name of the most Eastern state, or Japan, was Zhi Beng. The European people pronounce the letter zhi like yi, which is why at first they called it Yiben, then – Japan.
Occasionally various sketchy stories find their way into the diary: beginning with remarks about daily life and customs and up to linguistic observations. For example: “The Mongols use the plant of wormwood instead of fire wood here”; “On the road we could occasionally see Cambay stones, chalcedony, multicolored jasper and pieces of white marble”; “The guide… having made the camels go round him three times, took to the road”; “Sulchir (a kind of ling) is dried in the sun and used as loaves”; “…we have never seen this amount of yurts anywhere… only at the Chahars”; “Another caravan, of 100 camels, was carrying mushrooms… to Kalgan <…> and… from there to Kyakhta”; “We have seen this only at the Chahars… expensive sacrificial instruments in front of burchans, a lot of marjan and silver in women’s hair tails”; “The road is straight… as good as our expensive high roads”; “After dense and wild Mongolia it is so pleasant to look at the hard-working Chinese peasants”; “Gobi is not inhabited, but there are plants. The cattle is fed on them, and horses [here] are the best in Mongolia”; “Sunits speak fast and not so clearly and understandably as Khalkhas. They changed the pronunciation of some letters, for example, instead of “t” they often pronounce “ch” (tyime – chyime, tegeet – chegeet)”; “The Mongols try to conceal their knowledge in front of foreigners”; “On… the plain next to a tree with scraps like a burnt greater adjutant there lay the corpse of one lama, dilapidated by wild animals; his remnants were being shared by a flock of ravens. On the corpse’s head there was left a part of his skin with hair, the tip of his leg was eaten, we could not find the other leg at all. A horrible sight for a foreigner”; “The local plants are harmful for foreign horses”; “Agriculture will never naturalize here”; “Gobi is a deepened basin… its bottom is flat and covered with a web of mountains…”.
The diary gives a detailed description of the places where the Spiritual Mission found its way: nomad camps, joss houses, monasteries, towns, fortresses, stows, and it also contains the description of the visits of several Chinese high-ranking noblemento the Russian church-in-town, such as Minzhur gegen – the nephew of Khamba-lama; the visits of the missionaries; the visit of a Catholic priest from Portugal.