Peter Badmayev

The Tibetan doctor Piotr Badmaev

Peter Badmayev (Russian: Пётр Александрович Бадмаев: Pyotr Aleksandrovich Badmayev) (born ca. 1850 as Zhamsaran,[1] died 1920[2][3] or 1923 [4]) was an ethnic Buryat Mongol who was a Russian doctor active in the Asian politics of his country around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

Early life

Badmayev's older brother Sultim had a pharmacy in St. Petersburg and invited the younger man to the city after his graduation from the Russian Gymnasium in Irkutsk. In St. Petersburg, he studied at the Military Academy and the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, without graduating from either one. Instead, he began cutting a figure in the city's upper social classes. [1] He married a wealthy woman, Nadezhda Vassilyevna around 1872 and set up a very successful clinic. [5] Mysticism and Tibetan weltanschauung were all the rage in the upper reaches of Russian society at that time, and Badmayev translated the Tibetan Gyushi.[6]

He served as an adviser on the Russian Foreign Ministry's Asian desk [7] in 1873 and became a well-known figure in Russia's hand in the Great Game. He established a trading house in Chita as a cover for spies. [8] He proposed arming the Mongols as a prelude for a Russian conquest of Mongolia, Tibet and China.[7]

His plan was not well received by Czar Alexander, but Badmayev persisted, visiting Mongolia and Tibet and peddling his ideas to various people of power in Russia, e.g., Prince Uhtomskii.[9]

Badmayev put out the first newspaper printed in Mongolian, a Russian-Mongolian affair called Light in the Far East in translation. [10] He started a school at the end of the century. One of his pupils was Gombojab Tsybikov.

In 1912 the monk Iliodor hid in his house for one week. One of his patients was Alexander Protopopov, the last minister of interior before the fall of the Romanov's in 1917. Grigori Rasputin is said to have used drugs, supplied by Badmayev.[11]

Selected publications by Badmayev

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Saxer, Martin, 2004, Journeys with Tibetan Medicine: How Tibetan Medicine Came to the West. The Story of the Badmayev Family. M.A. thesis in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. http://anyma.ch/journeys/doc/thesis.pdf. Retrieved 2012.03.27. P. 25.
  2. ↑ http://www.petersburg-mystic-history.info/people-bad_1.html
  3. ↑ http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ruwiki/1112315
  4. ↑ http://www.fabri-antiquariat.de/public_html/tib-med/index.html
  5. ↑ Saxer, Martin, 2004, Journeys with Tibetan Medicine: How Tibetan Medicine Came to the West. The Story of the Badmayev Family. M.A. thesis in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. http://anyma.ch/journeys/doc/thesis.pdf. Retrieved 2012.03.27. P. 26.
  6. ↑ Saxer, Martin, 2004, Journeys with Tibetan Medicine: How Tibetan Medicine Came to the West. The Story of the Badmayev Family. M.A. thesis in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. . Retrieved 2012.03.27. P. 29.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Baabar, 1999, From World Power to Soviet Satellite: History of Mongolia edited by C. Kaplonski. University of Cambridge. P. 116.
  8. ↑ Saxer, Martin, 2004, Journeys with Tibetan Medicine: How Tibetan Medicine Came to the West. The Story of the Badmayev Family. M.A. thesis in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich. Retrieved 2012.03.27. Pp. 32-34.
  9. ↑ Baabar, 1999, From World Power to Soviet Satellite: History of Mongolia edited by C. Kaplonski. University of Cambridge. P. 118.
  10. ↑ Baabar, 1999, From World Power to Soviet Satellite: History of Mongolia edited by C. Kaplonski. University of Cambridge. P. 117, citing Delleg, G., 1978, Compilation of Mongolian Press [Ulaanbaata[r], vol. II, p.3.
  11. ↑ Bernard Pares (1939) The Fall of the Russian Monarchy. A Study of the Evidence, p. 138. Jonathan Cape. London.

Sources