About the Central Asian Expedition

This strange circle made by the expedition route on the map of the Planet, might have made someone wonder. However, many people had no idea about the gist of the undertaking. Wasn’t it just an ordinary expedition? Collecting materials on the route, studying countries crossed by the caravan, inevitable adventures, and, finally, overcoming different obstacles of which there are many in the way of any such expedition.

However, there was a mysterious mechanism with strange and inexplicable patterns. It was acting in an unknown way; thus, it seemed that the expedition was not over but continued its route around the Planet, continued to live and spin the thread known to it alone. L. Shaposhnikova “Message to the Upcoming Evolution”

According to the outstanding Roerich scholar Lyudmila Shaposhnikova, the Central Asian expedition (CAE) 1924—1928, led by world-renowned artist, scientist and philosopher Nicholas Roerich, constituted his main achievement. His wife and friend, philosopher Helena Roerich, and elder son, orientalist George Roerich, participated in the expedition. Their younger son, artist Svetoslav Roerich only took part in the Indian part of the route. Later, he went to the USA to help get funding for the expedition.

The great journey began when the Roerichs arrived in India on the steamship Macedonia from Marseilles. From early December 1923, the Roerichs travelled across India, visiting Rajasthan, Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Varanasi, Sarnath, Gaya and Calcutta. In late December 2023, they arrived in Sikkim, where they stayed to study the area and prepare for the main part of the expedition route.

The Central Asian Expedition started in 1924 in Sikkim, a small kingdom not far from British India. It then moved to the Indian Princely State of Kashmir. From Kashmir it followed the route to Ladakh, from where it moved across Karakorum to Chinese Xinjiang. Here, it crossed the border into Soviet Central Asia and finally arrived in Moscow.

From Moscow the travelers headed to Siberia. From there they moved to Altai and entered Mongolia through Buryatia. From Mongolia they went to Tibet, and then, through the unexplored Trans Himalaya, they headed for Sikkim and later arrived in Darjeeling. The expedition lasted four years (1924-1928). Its route described a grand circle unlike any other expedition of the 20th century. Lyudmila Shaposhnikova “Roerich as a Thinker and Cultural Historian”

The expedition covered more than 25 thousand kilometers, overcame 35 high-mountain passes, and two large deserts – the Taklamakan and Gobi. Dozens of mountain peaks and passes were marked on the map and specified for the first time. Geographical, historical and archaeological research conducted along the expedition’s route enriched science with new discoveries.

Nicholas Roerich’s scientific and artistic expedition to Central Asia holds a special place in the history of expeditions in Russian Central Asia. The journey crossed the high-altitude part of the Tibetan Plateau and the adjacent Himalayan highland to the south.

For the first time the artist was able depict the landscapes of Central Asia’s inaccessible and unknown regions, reflecting the unique views of the mountainous countries, and embodying their folk legends in his paintings. At the same time scientific observations were made, and collections and materials for the future study of either the nature of those regions or the inhabitants in their socioeconomic and geographical environment were gathered¹. George Roerich “Expedition of Academician Nicholas Roerich to Central Asia”

In addition, the expedition members’ attention was focused on the specificity of local cultures in the context of the history and geography of the Migration Period.

Later Nicholas Roerich pointed out that besides artistic goals, “in our expedition we aimed to explore the state of the ancient monuments of Central Asia, observe the current state of religion, customs and mark the traces of the Migration Period. The latter task has always fascinated me².” Lyudmila Shaposhnikova “From Altai to the Himalayas”

(This journey) can justly claim a special place among the expeditions of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seems that none of the expeditions, known to have taken place, enjoyed and benefitted from such an abundance of high-quality artistic material as Roerich’s expedition. Unlike the sketches and photographs of other expeditions, the paintings created by the outstanding artist during and after the Central Asian Expedition were not images that precisely reflected the route covered. Roerich’s paintings complemented the expedition’s materials but they were also a separate part of it. Otherwise, it would seem unfinished and incomplete. The brush that painted these canvases was guided not only by the hand of an artist, giving free reign to flights of the imagination and inspiration, but also by the precise hand of a scientist. Both seemed to be united in one person. The painter reflected scientific information in his paintings while the scientist benefitted from artistic insight and intuition³. Lyudmila Shaposhnikova “From Altai to the Himalayas”

During the expedition Nicholas Roerich painted a series of paintings: “His Country” (1924); “Banners of the East” (1924-1925); “Maitreya” (1925), and he made a start on the “The Himalayas” series. Landscape studies complemented Nicholas Roerich’s ethnographic, cultural and philosophical essays, which raised questions regarding the unity of the origins of Eastern and Western cultures, and the point of their spiritual gravitation. Nicholas Roerich, taking into account the richest empiric material including history, ethnography and folklore, addressed the issue of the common cultural space of Eurasia.

The material gathered during the Central Asian Expedition was vast and demanded profound scientific interpretation. According to George Roerich “approximately 500 paintings and studies by Nicholas Roerich, a large collection of Tibetan art (painting and sculptural images), and ethnographic collections”⁴ constituted the scientific and artistic results of the expedition.

Ancient Tibetan manuscripts discovered during the expedition, including the unique Kanjur and Tanjur from Nartang, were transferred to the Library of the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York. The collection of ancient thangkas was assembled and described⁵. During the expedition, historic, archeological, ethnographic and geographic research, including research on the history of philosophy, art and religions, was carried out. Rich linguistic material that would lay the basis for the unique Tibetan-Russian-English dictionary was gathered⁶. The journey resulted in philosophical works by Helena Roerich, and numerous scientific works by George Roerich including his classic, “The Animal Style Among the Nomads of Northern Tibet”⁷ , “Tibetan Paintings”⁸ (1925), and “Trails to Inmost Asia”⁹ (1931) .

We should mention that “the expedition studied not only the monuments of material culture, but also gathered many legends and tales reflecting local dreams and aspirations towards justice, a better future and the triumph of good over evil. The Maitreya legends, the great deeds of the outstanding hero King Gesar, and stories about unexplored Shambala and Belovodye (rus. "Land of White Water") preserved the profound philosophic idea of the great unity of man, the planet and the cosmos” (source: ICR website).

In order to study the collected material and to carry out research on Central Asia, the Roerichs established the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute in India. Their comprehensive research approach, advanced for the time, was the hallmark of this broad interdisciplinary project, which unfortunately was frozen before the Second World War.

Besides the goals and objectives mentioned above, the expedition had an evolutionary dimension, significant for the future of our planet. In her numerous articles, scientific reports and lectures Lyudmila Shaposhnikova revealed the sense of this complicated process:

However strange this statement might sound the route of the Central Asian Expedition was laid along the corridor of the cosmic evolution of mankind. As though Earthly and cosmic met there… The expedition created an energy field for the future centers of culture within the space covered by it. It laid the energy magnets of the future and the New World. Lyudmila Shaposhnikova “The Terrestrial Route of Cosmic Evolution”

Route of the expedition

The first part of the Central Asian Expedition’s route followed paths already travelled by Russian explorers, namely from Darjeeling through Kashmir, Ladakh, Karakorum, Kunlun, Kashgar, through Ürümqi and Dzungaria to Lake Zaisan. Once on the territory of the Soviet Union, the expedition travelled to Moscow and from Moscow to Altai. The second part of the expedition wrote a new page in Central Asian studies: it followed an untravelled route from Urga (Ulaanbaatar) through the south-western Gobi, Nanshan, Tsaidam, and Eastern and Central Tibet.

"He was the first Russian who made the old dream of all Russian explorers come true. He accomplished something that neither Przhevalsky, nor Roborovsky, nor Potanin, nor Kozlov could do: he crossed the entire Tibetan Plateau, the Trans Himalaya and the Himalayas from north to south, with access to India"¹⁰.

This part of the route was rich in archeological and ethnographic discoveries and it was where the expedition was exposed to the greatest dangers.

Leaving Urga (Ulaanbaatar), the expedition travelled through Mongolia along the Tola River valley, the southern border of the Khangai mountain range and the Gobi Desert (through Yum-Beise, Shara Khulusun tract). Then, passing through Anxi (modern Guazhou), the expedition reached the Nanshan Mountains and from June to August 1927 camped on the bank of the Shara-gol. During this stay, several radial routes across northern Tsaidam were traced. They collected “linguistic material on the dialect of the Ded Mongols (Khoshut), Tangut-Amdos both sedentary and nomadic, their neighbours the Banak [Black-Tent People, sBra-nag-pa] and even the Golok”¹¹.

The Roerichs crossed Tsaidam taking a new route past Lake Dabasun Nor (modern Dabusun) and along the Naichi-gol River.

Having crossed Tsaidam, the expedition’s caravan reached the Tibetan border (modern Golmud). From here, the expedition approached the Tangla pass (4993 m) — residence of 33 gods and spirits. After the expedition, Nicholas Roerich would often depict the silhouette of the shining Tangla Mountain range. A beautiful mountain range (Xiemyushan), which one can see in “The Greatest and the Holiest of Tangla”, while the “Song of Shambala” is also highly remarkable. The shining curve of the river seen on the left in these paintings originating from the north of these mountains is the Nug River (Dam), a tributary of the Akdam River, which flows into the Tuotuo River.

In October 1927, on the Changtang high altitude plateau, Tibetan officials stopped the caravan and, in fact, doomed the expedition. During the longest and the coldest months in this region, the Roerichs faced extreme conditions. They had to stay in summer tents at an altitude of more than 4000 m while the temperature went down to minus 60 °C. They spent two months in the valley of the Chu-Na-Khe River and one month near Sharugen monastery. During this time, almost all the caravan’s animals and a number of men died.

However, the ignorance of the Tibetans could not overshadow the beauty of the highlands and break the spirit of the travelers. Nicholas Roerich painted landscapes during the winter stay in Nagchu. Later, in the 1940s, he made several studies on paperboard: he drew black tents against the background of Chantang’s snowy mountains. At that time, George Roerich was gathering information on the Khorpa nomads. A collection of writings of pre-Buddhist shamanism (Bon) was discovered in the Sharugen monastery. Besides, the “expedition managed to discover significant monuments of nomadic Tibet:

• Entombments (stone graves, kurgans)
• Megalithic monuments (menhirs, cromlechs, rows of menhirs)
• Items with patterns in animal style, found in the graves, also used in the contemporary life of the nomads”¹².

“Many years later, it was revealed who doomed the expedition and who did not want Roerich to return to India. The documents found in the archives of independent India prove the intrigues of Indian colonial authorities and the British secret service”. Lyudmila Shaposhnikova “Central Asian Expedition”

When the detention ended, the expedition was ordered to return to India, bypassing Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The Roerichs' route lay through the region of the Great Tibetan Lakes (modern names Neri-Puntso, Pengtso, Namtso [Tengri-nor, off the route], Bam Tso, Serling, Pangong [off the route], Gomang, Kyaring, Marjyar, Ngangtse, Tangra Yumco, Jari [Teri] Namtso) and the Trans Himalaya.

...The governors of Nagchu were satisfied with the gifts and after informing us that we had run out of money, decided to send us on a circuitous route through Changtang to Namru Dzong and Shenza-Dzong, over passes not shown on maps at 20,600 feet (6,300 m.), to Saga-dzong, across the Brahmaputra, to Tingri Dzong, to Shekar Dzong, to Kampa Dzong and through Sepo La to Sikkim. Obviously, they wanted to show us all the areas of Tibet so that we were left in no doubt about this country. Although not an easy way, no one has ever travelled from Ulan Bator-Hoto to Sikkim¹³. Nicholas Roerich. Altai—Himalaya

It was almost virgin, unexplored territory, with undisturbed entombments and interesting archeological finds. In the Doring area, south of Pangong Lake, the expedition discovered and described a group of megalithic objects and cromlech, which included two concentric circles of stones¹⁴.

The expedition crossed the Trans Himalaya through the Sangmo-Bertik pass, (5700 m.). From the pass they glimpsed the long-awaited Himalayas. Then, moving along the Brahmaputra to the east, the expedition reached Tingri Dzong, Shekar Dzong and, finally, the border Kampa Dzong (modern Kamba). Crossing the Sikkim border at the Sepo La pass, the expedition moved along the Tista River and reached Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and after 26 May 1928, it arrived in Darjeeling, where the expedition was officially completed.

To conclude, we would like to point out that the Central Asian Expedition undertaken by Nicholas Roerich, as a unique phenomenon of the 20th century, is still little studied and its specific evolutionary meaning is yet to be realized. On 24 July 1928, Nicholas Roerich founded the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute based on the richest materials and unique collections gathered during the expedition. It was located at the Roerichs’ estate in Kullu valley, in Naggar. The Institute operated from 1928 to 1940.

George Roerich was the director of the Institute and the entire Roerich family participated in its activities. Its main objective was to conduct research in line with the new science, based on the Teaching of the Living Ethics. Within the framework of the Institute, the Roerichs aimed to implement the synthesis of natural science and humanities as well as ancient and modern knowledge. The most prominent scientists from different countries, such as А. Einstein, R. Millikan, L. Broglie, R. Magoffin, N.I. Vavilov, Sven Gedin etc. cooperated with the Institute. Today, museum exhibitions are open at the Himalayan estate of the Roerichs, including those at the Urusvati Institute dedicated to its history and activity.

References

Footnotes

1. Rerikh G. N. Ekspediciya akademika N.K. Rerikha v Centralnuyu Aziyu (1925–1928) // Voprosy geografii. – №50, 1960. – P. 257–262. P. 257. ↩

2. Shaposhnikova L.V. Ot Altaya do Gimalaev. – M.: MCR, Master-bank, 1998. – 336 p. P.13. ↩

3. Shaposhnikova L.V. Ot Altaya do Gimalaev. – M.: MCR, Master-bank, 1998. – 336 p. P.20. ↩

4. Rerikh G. N. Ekspediciya akademika N.K. Rerikha v Central'nuyu Aziyu (1925–1928) // Voprosy geografii. – №50, 1960. – P. 257–262. P. 262. ↩

5. Part of the collection of Tibetan paintings now can be found in the collection of the International Centre of the Roerichs. ↩

6. Rerikh G. Tibetsko-russko-anglijskij slovar' s sanskritskimi parallelyami. – Vyp.1 – 11 / Red. Yu. Parfionovich i V. Dylykova. – M.: Nauka, 1983 – 1993. – (AN SSSR. In-t vostokovedeniya). ↩

7. Roerich G. Animal stile among the nomad tribes of Nothern Tibet. Prague: Seminarium Kondakovianum, 1930. 41 p. – Zverinyj stil' u kochevnikov Severnogo Tibeta. – S. 26–41; Rerih Yu.N. Zverinyj stil' u kochevnikov Severnogo Tibeta. – M.: MCR, 1992. ↩

8. Roerich G. Tibetian paintings. Paris: Geuthner, 1925. 95 p ↩

9. Roerich G. Trails to Inmost Asia: Five years of exploration with Roerich Central Asian Expedition / Preface L. Marin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931. 504 p. ↩

10. Rerih G. N. Ekspediciya akademika N.K. Reriha v Central'nuyu Aziyu (1925–1928) // Voprosy geografii. – №50, 1960. – P. 257–262. P. 257. ↩

11. Rerih G. N. Ekspediciya akademika N.K. Rerikha v Central'nuyu Aziyu (1925–1928) // Voprosy geografii. №50, 1960. – P. 260. ↩

12. Rerikh G. N. Ekspediciya akademika N.K. Rerikha v Central'nuyu Aziyu (1925–1928) // Voprosy geografii. №50, 1960. – P. 260. ↩

13. Rerikh N.K. Altaj—Gimalai. Riga: Vieda, 1992. P. 309. ↩

14. Further reading: Rerikh G. N. Po tropam Sredinnoj Azii. – Samara: izd-vo «Agni», b/g. – P. 385. ↩