Dorži Banzarov

Dorzhi Banzarov (; , c. 1822–1855) was a Buryat Orientalist and linguist. He is generally considered to be the first Buryat academic.

Biography

Banzarov was born to a peasant family in Dede-Ichyotuy in March 1822 in the modern-day Dzhidinsky District. Besides Dorzhi, there were four other sons in the family — Lochon, Badma, Dzonduy, and Kharagshan The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary records him as a member of the Uriankhai peoples.

In 1833 he was sent to the in Troitskosavsk, where he studied under Józef Kowalewski

In Black Faith, Banzarov brought forth the idea that Mongolian shamanism was a sophisticated belief system with unique origins, and not an offshoot of Buddhism, Christianity, or any other major religion.

Later life Due to his Cossack origins, however, he was obligated to begin service to the nation for 25 years as soon as he graduated.

In the meantime, Banzarov spent 1847-1849 working in the Asiatic Museum of St Petersburg. One of his prominent works at the Museum was to translate the writing on the Stele of Genghis Khan. His efforts were praised by those such as Otto von Böhtlingk and . He found his life in Irkutsk to be difficult, but continued to write papers and conduct scientific studies nevertheless.

He died in 1855. Supposedly, he had been suffering from poor health for some time, and when a colleague came to visit him in late February 1855, he found Banzarov dead. He was buried according to Buddhist tradition.

Legacy During his lifetime and after his death, Banzarov was praised and admired by other cultural figures and intellectuals of Russia such as Nikolay Nekrasov, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov, and Alexander Veselovsky; he remains the subject of scholarly interest in Russia, despite his relatively small scholarly output.

In 1947, the Buryat State University was named after him, in honor of the 125th year of his birth. A street in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia, was also renamed from "Buryatskaya Street" to "Dorzhi Banzarov Street." in 2019 it was renamed "Dorzhi Banzarov Buryat State University".

He is an important figure for the Buryat people as one of the first Buryat intellectuals to gain mass acclaim in Russia and for building the academic field of Mongolian studies in Russia, and for being amongst the first members of the colonized peoples of Siberia to rise to the level of an academic career. The beginnings of the Buryat intelligentsia are said to begin with him and another Buryat academic.

A statue of him was installed in June 2010 in Dzhidinsky District to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the district. The sculptor was Buryat . There is also a statue of him in Ulan-Ude, and a memorial to him at Kazan University, installed in October 2020.