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Damascus-barreled ocher shotgun
Art & Culture
Khentii /MONTSAME/ This Damascus-barreled ocher shotgun is kept at the Museum of Khentii aimag.
The gun barrel was forged by heating narrow strips of iron and steel and shaping them around a mandrel in a process referred to as ‘laminating’ or ‘Damascus’. The shotgun is one of the three Damascus-barreled dappled, red, and ocher shotguns which the first Bogd Undur Gegeen Zanabazar had made by smiths while writing Javlavtsogzol in 1696, when Mongolians were divided and war-affected. From their creation until the 1930s, the shotguns were kept at Baldan Vraibun Monastery and the dappled shotgun was used as protection against war, red shotgun as protection for Buddhist reincarnations, and the ocher shotgun as protection for the monastery.
At the time, the Damascus-barreled ocher shotgun was kept in the Bileg-Ulziit building of Baldan Vraibun Monastery and it was used in a religious ceremony held annually on the 29th of the last winter month. After Baldan Vraibun Monastery was closed due to a miscarriage of justice, native of Binder soum of Khentii aimag B.Dovchin kept the intact ocher shotgun for some time until passing it to the Museum of Khentii aimag in 1969. The more than 300-year-old flintlock shotgun was loaded with 5 qian (1 qian = 3.73 grams) leaden bullets.
The shotgun, 200 cm in length, 6.2 cm in width, and 4.880 grams in weight, received gold medal from the ‘Expo-81’ international expo in 1981.
