412 klaus sagaster
bronze statue of the tutelary deity Mah k la, one of the most impor-
tant tutelary deities of the Mongols. The creation of the statue had
been ordered by no one less than Qubilai, and it had withstood the
turbulences of the next centuries, until it, eventually, arrived in aqar
and, from there, fell into the hands of the Manchus as war booty.
Although the Manchus had to deal with the old problem of moral
depravity of the Lamas and other abuses, and although they had to
reduce the number of monks, this did not change their fundamental
attitude towards Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism.^153
The Mongols of Outer Mongolia, the Qalqa territory, only submitted
half a century later, in 1691. Religious grounds may have involved a
secondary level only, but they did play an essential role and had to be
dealt with carefully by the Kangxi emperor.
The reasons for the association of the Qalqa were closely related to
the political developments among the Oirat, their western neighbours.
A decade after the enthronement of Kangxi a political power came to
the foreground in the Oirat territory that not only posed a serious threat
to the Qalqa Mongols, but also to the Qing. The protagonist of the
drama was Galdan (1644–1697), the sixth son of Baatur Qongtayiúi
(r. 1635–1653), the Jungar Khan. As would become habitual for later
Oirat princes, Galdan became a monk. He was seen as a reincarnation
of the Western Tibetan dBen-sa-sprul-sku Blo-bzang-bstan-’dzin-rgya-
mtsho (born 1605), who is reported to have been sent to the Oirat by
the Pa-chen Rin-po-che and the Dalai Lama to spread the doctrine
of Tsong-kha-pa there. At the age of thirteen Galdan went to Tibet
where he studied with the rst Pa-chen Rin-po-che Blo-bzang-chos-
kyi-rgyal-mtshan in the bKra-shis-lhun-po monastery, and with the
fth Dalai Lama Ngag-dbang-blo-bzang-rgya-mtsho in Lhasa. When
his older brother Sengge, the successor to Baatur Qongtayiúi was mur-
dered in 1671, Galdan returned to the life of a layman and went back
to his homeland to avenge his brother and to grasp power for himself.
In 1676 he defeated his enemies. In the following years he conquered
almost the whole of Eastern Turkestan.^154
In order to avoid an expansion of the Jungar empire into the neigh-
bouring Qalqa territory towards the east, the Tüsiyetü Khan aqun-
dorúi, the ruler of the Western Qalqa and elder brother of the rst
(^153) Úiral 1996, pp. 208–213.
(^154) imeddorúi 1991, pp. 45–50; Úiral 1996, pp. 188–192.