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northern spring night the fantastic forms of the Shaman
Mountains, the principal sanctuary of the Buriats, while in
the clear sky the “tengerin-oedol”, i.e. “the road of the
gods”, (the milky way) glittered over our heads.
Until the beginning of the 18th century the Buriats, like
all the peoples of northern Asia belonging to the eastern
branches of the Ural-Altaic group (i.e. all the Tungus,
Mongol, and Turki tribes), were members of the so-called
lhòro religion, or what we generally call Shamanism. At
the time of the advent of the Dai-Tsin dynasty to the
throne of the Chinese Empire, Shamanism was introduced
in China under the name of Tjao-Shen, but the new
religion did not meet with any success there. The fact,
however, deserves to be mentioned, because in China was
published in 1747, in the Manchu language, a description
of the ceremonies of Shamanism, which is the only printed
account existing of the ancient religion of the Mongols.
In 1727 Buddhist missionaries came to Mongolia and
converted the Transbaikalian Buriats and the inhabitants
of the Tungkin valley to Buddhism, which, however, became
very much mixed up with Shamanism. At one time the
Buddhist monasteries in Transbaikalia and the southern
parts of Irkutsk were counted by hundreds. At present
their number is much smaller. These Buddhist missionaries
exerted a great civilising influence on the Buriats by
introducing the art of writing among them, and by
translating several Tibetan religious books into the Mongolian
language. At the present time the Buddhist monastery at
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