This monastery was built for the memory of Bogd Zanabazar‘s
skills, wisdom, intellect, accomplishment, talent, artistic skill and a wisdom,
by the order Manchu Emperor, Enkh-Amgalan khaan in 1725. Bogd Zanabazar was a
great leader of Mongolians. Amarbayasgalant means “peaceful happiness”. When
looking for a site to build the temple, the exploratory group met a boy and a
girl named Amar and Bayasgalant, respectively. So these children were playing
in a steppe, due to their nature that it was decided that a future monastery at
that site would be built and named after those children. When Buddhism was
flourishing in Mongolia, the monastery consisted over 50 temples and 6.000 monks.
Today, 28 temples of them still stand. During the anti buddhist purges in
1937-1938, hundreds of monks were repressed; their rare deities, artifacts, thangka, statues, and manuscripts were looted without rebuilding or
compensation. Later in 1943, The Amarbayasgalant monastery was taken under
state protection and reconstructed. The temple has kept the ashes from the
burials of III, IV Bogd, leader of Mongolian buddism, they have become
religious artifacts.The
monastery keeps many important original scripts of cultural heritage including:
the 108 volumes of Ganjuur, and the 226 volumes of Danjuur. The original script
of these volumes were written in 1628 and they contain 1260 parts including
ancient philosophy, medicine, geography, art, science, music and astronomy.
Next to the
Amarbayasgalant monastery, there is a stupa called “Jarun hashor” or “lost the
promise”. The legend of this stupa is that, in order to accumulate merit a good
hearted old lady wished to build a stupa. To accomplish this she first asked
permission from the king. The kings reply stated that she could do what she
wished. The old lady started building the stupa with the help of 4 boys and 1
servant. The local ministries refused it and pleaded to the king that a poor
lady building a stupa would be harmful to the king’s reputation and the
ministries. The king replied that he had already given permission to her so he
would not break the promise. That is why the stupa is called “Jarun hashor” or
“lost the promise”. Also, it is called the “Eye stupa”, because if the prayers
look at the eye on the stupa, all their sin goes away. There is also a 13 m
tall Bogd Zonkhoba image with his 2 disciples and 108 stairs.
