Mongolian Nazis

Travelers tend to fall into different stereotypes. The Ugly American is alive and well, I'm sad to report. But there's a certain traveler who tends to be young, earnest, idealistic, and not terribly well-informed.

My favorite story of the trip thus far concerns such a person, a young lady I met in Russia. She was horrified when I told her I was traveling to Mongolia next.

You don't want to go there. I just came from there. They're all racists!

I had done quite a bit of research about Mongolia, so this caught me by surprise. There are less than three million people in Mongolia, and, aside from a small Kazakh enclave in the far west, virtually everyone in Mongolia is a Mongol. It seemed unlikely to encounter racism in a country with essentially no minority population.

And the country is Buddhist, a religion or system of thought that stresses tolerance.

I took pictures because I knew my friends back home wouldn't believe it. I saw SWASTIKAS everywhere! They're all Nazis!

As gently as I could I said that I was pretty sure the swastika was a Buddhist symbol and that I found it unlikely that Mongolia was a bastion of Nazism.

Oh no! I saw them EVERYWHERE! You don't want to go there!

I thanked her for her kind warning and exited the conversation as smoothly as I could.

I did some research and found that "swastika" is derived from the Sanskrit word svastik, which can be translated as "that which is associated with well-being". Or, to put it more simply, the word for the symbol associated with hate and fear in the Western world means "lucky charm"!

Sanskrit is, of course, the language the Buddha spoke. But the swastika actually predates Buddhism. In fact, the symbol was used at least 10,000 years before the birth of Christ and exists in cultures all around the world. One easy explanation is that it is a pattern which naturally occurs in woven goods.

Here it is in a detail from the rafters of a temple at the Erdelene Zuu monastery in Kharkorin, Mongolia, home of the ancient capital of the Mongol Empire.



And here it is branded on the flank of the horse our guide rode when we were horseback riding in the Eight Lakes region.



And for good measure here it is on a door at the Summer Palace in Beijing.



However, while it is commonplace on buildings and in traditional art, and while you can buy souvenirs with other Buddhist symbols, souvenirs with swastikas are hard to find, even in Buddhist countries. (I looked.)