Damba
Basic information
Interviewee ID: 990385
Name: Damba
Parent's name: Dorj
Ovog: Arvai
Sex: m
Year of Birth: 1941
Ethnicity: Halh
Additional Information
Education: higher
Notes on education:
Work: retired, Mongolian language teacher / researcher
Belief: Buddhist
Born in: Taragt sum, Övörhangai aimag
Lives in: Bayangol sum (or part of UB), Ulaanbaatar aimag
Mother's profession: herder
Father's profession: herder
Themes for this interview are:
(Please click on a theme to see more interviews on that topic)
childhood
education / cultural production
literature
repressions
belief
Alternative keywords suggested by readers for this interview are: (Please click on a keyword to see more interviews, if any, on that topic)
To read a full interview with Damba please click on the Interview ID below.
Summary of Interview 091101A with Damba
Dorjiin Damba was born in 1942 in Taragt sum in Övörhangai. He graduated from the historical and philosophy faculty of the University, where he trained as a Mongolian language and literature teacher. He has worked as a research worker at the Institute of Philology, the headmaster of a religious school and from 1991 has been working as a teacher at the National University of Mongolia.
During the socialist period, there was a flourishing atmosphere of world-wide peace among the socialist countries. In 1969 Hamba Gombojav guai and the Buryat Hamba Gomboyev guai went to Moscow to participate in a meeting there, and they greatly supported the call to respect the friendly co-existence of the Asian Buddhist religions. As it is noted in the books, the history of the Mongolian Buddhist religion is divided into three stages. In 1970 the Party Central Committee issued a special decree, and a young generation of successors to the old lamas began to be trained in a newly established religious school. The Buriad and Kalmyk lamas came to study. During the socialist period there used to be great atheist propaganda both in the Soviet Union and in our country. When we were small it was prohibited to openly display Buddhas in the ails, therefore we used to put them and sutras on the top of a mountain. Families used to put images of Buddha on the back of picture frames.
Damba had heard about the repressions from the old lamas. It is written in various ways in the history books. In some places it is written that religion is brutal and it fools people and that it was the state policy of that time to wipe out the monasteries. And in some places it blamed them for the fact that many lamas had been imprisoned and exterminated.
