19 Facts About Byambyn Rinchen

Byambyn Rinchen, known as Rinchen Bimbayev, was a Mongolian scholar and writer.

Byambyn Rinchen was a researcher of Mongolia's language, literature, and history, and a recorder and preserver of the country's cultural heritage, publishing many shamanist and folklore texts.

Byambyn Rinchen was often criticized by the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party for his "nationalism", but was spared in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.

Byambyn Rinchen was born on 21 November 1905 in Mongolian Kyakhta, just across the border from Troitskosavsk in the Russian Empire.

Byambyn Rinchen's mother was a descendant of the famous Khalkha prince Choghtu Khong Tayiji, whose poetry Byambyn Rinchen later studied.

Byambyn Rinchen learned Mongolian and Manchu before attending a Russian school in Kyakhta from 1914 to 1920, and in 1921 was employed as a scribe in the Bogd Khan government's Border Ministry.

Between 1923 and 1927, Byambyn Rinchen studied at Leningrad's Institute of Oriental Languages with Russian Mongolist Boris Vladimirtsov, and after his return worked with Tsyben Zhamtsarano at the Institute of Scriptures and Manuscripts and was director of an Ulaanbaatar middle school.

On 10 September 1937, Byambyn Rinchen was arrested during the Stalinist purges in Mongolia as a "pan-Mongolist Japanese spy" and a counter-revolutionary.

Byambyn Rinchen was named as a ringleader by Khorloogiin Choibalsan and sentenced to death in April 1939, but in December 1941 had his sentence reduced to 10 years' imprisonment.

From 1944, Byambyn Rinchen worked at the Mongolian State University and State Publishing House.

Byambyn Rinchen obtained a doctorate in philology in 1956 from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for his study of Mongolian grammar.

In December 1956, Byambyn Rinchen wrote a letter to Nikita Khrushchev stating that the Cyrillic script was unsuitable for Mongolian; in March 1958, he wrote another to Mao Zedong asking him to not allow introduction of Cyrillic in Inner Mongolia.

In 1959, Byambyn Rinchen organized the First International Congress of Mongolists, the first Mongolian forum to invite scholars from outside the Eastern Bloc.

Byambyn Rinchen was removed as the director of the Institute of Language and Literature, though in 1961 he was a founding member of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences.

Byambyn Rinchen was a poet, essayist, short story writer, and novelist.

Byambyn Rinchen later managed to publish abroad Zhamtsarano's Russian translation of the Khalkha legal code.

Byambyn Rinchen published shamanist and folklore texts, which he had been collecting since 1928; they were criticized for their content and publication in West Germany.

Byambyn Rinchen was known for his wit and practical jokes, as well as his flowing white hair and beard and the colorful deel which he wore at the university and at conferences.

In May 2005, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, a monument to Byambyn Rinchen was erected outside of the Mongolian National Library building in central Ulaanbaatar, where he had worked for many years, in a spot previously occupied by a statue of Joseph Stalin.