This article is part of a larger study on the representation of power in Mongolia.
There, as in other cultures, images of power produced by a power-holding authority
may vary with the context, with the addressee, or with a specific operation. A new
government will either ensure the continuity of power by using traditional
representations so as to root its legitimacy in as ancient times as possible, thus make
itself more familiar to people and affirm itself as well-established. On the contrary, it
can also create completely new representations in order to make it obvious that the
power represented is a new, regenerated one. Keeping subjects obedient (for a political
power) or converted (for a religious power) may involve a re-shaping of the old
representations. From the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Chinggis Khan’s
effigies were created by his descendants, reshaped under the Qing dynasty,
appropriated by the Buddhist authorities,3 then hijacked by the Nationalist Chinese and
Japanese governments in the first half of the twentieth century, and they are now
reinvested by Buddhists and neo-shamans. Several questions arise for each of these
appropriations: