CYBIKOV, Gombožab Cebekovič. Urdo-Aga, district Čita, Transbaikalia 20.4.1873 — Aginskoe, Burjatia 20.9.1930. Russian Buryat Scholar of Buddhism. Son of Cebek Montujev, a literate and well-to-do Buryat. After gymnasium in Čita (one of the first four Buryat students admitted) studies of medicine at Tomsk, but after a visit to Urga switched to Oriental studies at St.Petersburg university (under Pozdneev), graduated 1899. Declined to take Christianity. Sent by Russian Geographical Society he travelled in Mongolia and Tibet in 1899-1902, visited Lhasa in 1901 – with camera – and met Dalai Lama. From 1902 Professor at Oriental Institute in Vladivostok. Participated in the government of the Far Eastern Republic, then from 1922 in the project of the developing of the new Buryat literary language. In 1927 visited Mongolia. In 1928-30 worked in development of the new Buryat Mongol division at Irkutsk State University. In Lhasa he took 200 photos and achieved a collection of 333 Tibetan xylographs (now in St.Petersburg).
Publications: Mongol’skie oficial’nye bumagi. Učebnoe posobie dlja studentov Vostočnogo Instituta. St.P. 1898.
– “O Central’nom Tibete”, Izvestija Ross. Geografičeskogo Obščestva 39:3, 1903, 187-218, English transl. “Lhasa and Central Tibet”, Smithsonian Report for 1903. Washington DC 1904, 727-746.
– Posobie k izučeniju tibetskogo jazyka. Vladivostok 1908.
– Transl. from Tibetan into Russian and Mongolian: Lam-rin Čèn-po (Stepeni puti k blaženstvu). Soč. Czonhavy. 1-2. Vladivostok 1910-13.
– Description of his travels: Buddist palomnik u svjatyn’ Tibeta. Petrograd 1918 (1919), also in English (tr. by R. Shaw, 1970), French and several other languages.
– Izbrannye trudy. 1-2. Novosibirsk 1981; further books and articles in Mongolian and Russian.
Sources: Bongard-Levin & Vigasin 147; Snelling 1993, 51 & 74ff.; *Rossijskie mongolovedy (XVIII–načalo XX vv.). Ulan-Udè 1997, 105-110; M. Tolmacheva, Literature of Travel and Explor. 3. N.Y. & L. 2003, 1199-1201; Wikipedia as Gombojab Tsybikov with photo (more details and references in Russian version).
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