Exhibition "The Source of the Sacred Teaching"

About exhibition

The exhibition is dedicated to the history of the creation of the Buddhist temple in Saint Petersburg, which became the main religious and ceremonial center for Buddhists of the Northern Capital. Special attention is given to the figure of Agvan Dorzhiev (1853–1938) — a Buryat Buddhist scholar and a leading religious, political and public figure who was the founder and first abbot of the Buddhist temple in Saint Petersburg. The exhibition displays ethnographic objects from the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum (REM) related to Dorzhiev and his religious, public and political activities. A separate section of the exhibition comprises gifts to the imperial family presented by A. Dorzhiev from the 13th Dalai Lama on 26 March 1913 on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov and in honor of the first service held on that date in the Saint Petersburg Buddhist temple. These include the unique trappings of a "royal horse" used in Tibet for parades and ceremonial processions, the armor of a Tibetan warrior, and altar-complex attributes. Also on display are the costume of a Buryat lama recreating the image of Agvan Dorzhiev, a model of a Buddhist altar, and Buddhist icons and sculptures from the REM collection. A valuable contribution to the exhibition comes from the collections of the Saint Petersburg Buddhist temple "Datsan Gunzechoyney": thangkas — painted depictions of Buddhist deities, a prayer drum and other ritual attributes. The presentation of these exhibits is a vivid testament to the connection between past and present in the life and activities of the datsan, which has preserved and continues the Buddhist tradition in the Northern Capital. The exhibition is complemented by a display of historical photographs related to Agvan Dorzhiev and the founding of the Saint Petersburg datsan (from the Central State Historical Archive, the State Museum of the History of Religion, and the personal archives of A.I. Andreev and A.A. Terentyev).