Walking to Sacred Sites Mongols’ Long-Distance Pilgrimages in the Qing Period
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Abstract
In the Manchu period, Mongol herders were attached to their ‘banner’—the basic territorial, administrative and military unit of Qing Mongolia. Their circuits of nomadization were reduced, and they were fined when found to cross its frontiers. While princes, great reincarnate lamas and long-distance traders (as well as some marginal categories such as badarchi/itinerant lamas and bandits) had many opportunities to travel within Mongolia and even abroad, it is generally assumed that commoners had no choice but stay in their pastures. Yet they had a main reason for undertaking long-distance travel: pilgrimage. This paper investigates the various modes of travel of these pilgrims, their equipment, organization and funding, and highlights the importance of a mode of locomotion which is rarely seen in Mongolia nowadays: walking.
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