Mongol Religions

Mongol Religions

MONGOL RELIGIONS. If stereotypical reports from early times are taken into account, the religious forms of the Mongols have been influenced by the religions professed by all ethnic groups who have lived in what later was to become Mongolian territory prior to the emergence of the Mongols. The oldest of these religious forms was shamanism, which was the religion of the Liao empire of the Kitan (907–1125) and their usurping successors, the Jurchen (1115–1234). There have been accounts of Buddhist influences in the steppes since the Chinese Han period (206 BCE–220 CE), while Iranian influences are attested among the Turkic peoples of the region. Nestorian Christianity is reported as early as the twelfth century among the Turkic neighbors and later compatriots of the Mongols, the Kereit, Naiman, and Önggüt. This nourished contemporary Western beliefs that located the realm of the fabulous Prester John in their territory. Later conversions of Mongols by Catholics even led to the foundation of a bishopric in Khanbaliq (Beijing), but this development was short-lived. Renewed Christian missionary attempts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have again failed to leave recognizable traces in Mongol popular religions.

In addition to the influences of Nestorianism, Manichaeism, with its dualistic ideas of light and darkness and good and evil, also played a role in the religious history of the region.

Mongol Religions article

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