This is the third article in our series on Tsagaan Sar, Mongolia’s Lunar New Year. To set a reflective tone for the discussion that follows, I’ve chosen the Mongolian song “Angir Mother” as an opening thread—one that carries the atmosphere of Tsagaan Sar in its own way, through image, rhythm and feeling. It helps open a space for the notes ahead, which trace several traditional practices through which people lovingly remember those no longer with us, as part of a “good beginning” (өлзийтэй эхлэл).

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 LYRICS

(Eng. trans.)

My memories are hazy, shimmering before me—

Is my Angir Mother gone, I wonder?..

The pouring rain is drumming down

Has my mother come to me in a dream?..

 

The pouring rain is drumming down

Has my mother come to me in a dream?..

 

A distant mirage is growing clearer—

Is my dear mother gone, I wonder?..

My khatag-like heart is turning childlike again—

Has my steadfast mother come, I wonder?..

 

My khatag-like heart is turning childlike again—

Has my steadfast mother come, I wonder?..

 

My orphaned heart is longing for someone close—

Have fortune and merit sheltered me, I wonder?..

Unbidden, I keep thinking of you—

Has my noble mother come, I wonder?..

 

Unbidden, I keep thinking of you—

Has my noble…

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In loving memory of (my/our) mothers and grandmothers now passed…

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READING “ANGIR MOTHER”

“Angir Mother” in this song

“Angir Mother“ (Ангир ээж / Ангир ижий) can be heard as an intimate, poetic name for the mother as a life-giving presence that can be felt even when absent—like something seen only in glimmer, rain-sound, and dream. The repeated questions (“алга уу даа… ирэв үү дээ…”) move between doubt and consolation: the mother is “gone,” yet also “arriving” as memory, comfort, and felt protection. The imagery of mirage and rain frames grieving as a sensory experience—how love returns not as a fact, but as a nearness that briefly intersects with one’s inner world.

Nomadic symbolism of “ангир” (waterfowl)

From a Mongolian nomadic perspective, “ангир” (often glossed as a kind of duck/waterfowl) readily carries meanings of water, seasonal return, and the quiet assurance that life continues after harshness—because water and its birds are tied to survival, movement, and timing on the steppe. In wider Inner Asian bird-lore, waterfowl can be linked to origins and earth-making: a closely related tradition recorded among Buryats describes an “angir” diving into the primordial ocean to bring up earth-material for creation (Badmaev, 2020, p. 108). Read alongside this, “Angir Mother” can be felt as a mother who “brings ground” back under one’s feet—steadiness, shelter, and continuity—especially when the singer feels “өнчин” (orphaned) and unmoored.

A Buddhist Perspective

A Gelug Buddhist perspective can approach the song’s mother-visions as an interplay of compassion, karmic connection, and the mind’s dreamlike openness: the mother appears not through grasping, but through softened feeling (“Хадган сэтгэл… нялхраад байна”) and the blessing-language of “өлзий буян” (auspicious merit). The mother’s presence “in a dream” can be read as a compassionate trace that awakens gratitude and ethical resolve rather than attachment—an invitation to transform longing into virtue, remembrance into good conduct, and sorrow into a steadier care for others.

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The above is an interpretation of the original Mongolian song for readers unfamiliar with Mongolian culture and its “language” in the broader socio-cultural sense of the word. If there are any mistakes, they are all of my own making and for these I humbly apologise.

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HOUSEHOLD AND LINEAGE PRACTICES

Across Mongolian Gelugpa Buddhist–associated settings, Tsagaan Sar remembrance of loved ones who have died is usually woven into “good beginning” (өлзийтэй эхлэл) and kinship rites rather than framed as overt mourning.

Scholarship most consistently describes (1) home-altar offerings, (2) lamp/incense offerings and merit-dedication, and (3) monastery-based services and giving that can be done locally or “at a distance” by diaspora families through remittances, requests to relatives, and commissioned rituals. Studies don’t always single out mothers as a separate ritual category; instead, as far as I can work out, mothers and grandmothers are remembered as beloved senior kin/ancestors within household and lineage practices. If any of you are aware of research findings that suggest otherwise, please let me know.

Home shrine (гэрийн тахилын ширээ) and “share” (хишиг / хувь) offerings for absent kin/ancestors

Families prepare a household shrine/offering table and make food offerings that symbolically include those not physically present (including deceased loved ones as “absent” (эзгүй / байхгүй) members of the moral household). A recurring idea is that offerings are apportioned/shared—not only to guests but also as a “share” (хишиг / хувь) oriented toward ancestors/absent persons, expressed through ritualised distribution logics around Tsagaan Sar gift/food practices (Ganbaatar and Dashtseren 2025).

How this often looks in practice: Setting out the best foods (especially “white foods” (цагаан идээ)), arranging them carefully, offering the first servings, observing respectful words/silence at key moments, and sometimes keeping a small portion “set aside” (тусад нь тавьсан / хойш тавьсан) that is understood as for ancestors/“those not here” (байхгүй хүмүүс / эзгүй хүмүүст) (Ganbaatar and Dashtseren 2025; Aldrich 2018).

Lighting lamps (зул) and burning incense/juniper as offerings and as “merit for the deceased” (талийгаачдад зориулсан буян)

(i) Mongolian Buddhist death-ritual literature (and broader lay-Buddhist ethnography) repeatedly notes oil lamps (зул) plus incense (хүж) and juniper smoke offerings (арцаар утах / арцны утаалга) as core offering vehicles—understood as materially supporting blessing, protection, and the transfer/dedication of merit (Humphrey 1999).

In Ulaanbaatar-focused work, household ritual life has been described as highly material and practice-centred—offerings, shrine objects, and acts (including lighting offerings) shape how people negotiate care, uncertainty, and efficacy, including in relation to deceased kin (Abrahms-Kavunenko 2011, 2019, 2020).

In terms of relevance to mothers, in particular: In many families, a deceased mother is remembered through the same acts used for senior kin: lighting a lamp, offering incense, and mentally dedicating the act to her welfare/peace and to the family’s auspicious “new beginning.”

Visiting monasteries or commissioning rites for deceased relatives

Ethnographies of Mongolian Buddhism describe lay people visiting temples and commissioning services (sutra recitations, blessing rituals, dedicatory acts). While not always Tsagaan Sar–specific in the text, these practices commonly intensify around calendrical peaks and family gatherings and are frequently undertaken for deceased kin (Abrahms-Kavunenko 2011, 2019, 2020).

Diaspora perspective: Even when living abroad, Mongolian families often maintain Tsagaan Sar obligations by organising celebrations locally while also sponsoring or arranging rituals “back home” through relatives or monasteries—a pattern widely discussed in Eurasian Mongol/Buryat diaspora studies, even if not always framed as Gelug-only (Namsaraeva 2012; Graber 2025).

Kinship visiting, greetings, and speaking the deceased into the moral household

Tsagaan Sar’s core social work—visiting elders, greeting, exchanging gifts/khadag, and affirming generational continuity—is also a vehicle for remembrance. People often refer to “how mother used to do it,” maintain her dishes or recipes, place her in family narratives, and preserve her “proper way” as a form of living commemoration (Fox 2019; Abrahms-Kavunenko 2019; Aldrich 2018).

Place-based remembrance tied to ancestors and funerary landscapes

Research on ovoo/funerary mounds and ancestor landscapes notes that calendrical festivals (including Tsagaan Sar) can reactivate relationships between households and ancestral places—a broader frame for remembering deceased kin, especially in rural-origin families (Dal Zovo 2021).

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A Personal Note

The published research discussed above aligns closely with my own participant-observation experiences in and with the extended Mongolian Gelug Buddhist familial community of practice with which I have been associated for more than two decades.

Indeed, in terms of core social work, maintaining and reinvigorating these traditions—by involving younger generations and teaching, modelling, and transmitting cultural practices of remembering those who have passed—remains integral to “new beginnings,” and to the good, auspicious start (өлзийтэй эхлэл) that “Tsagaan Sar” seeks to cultivate.

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Further Reading

Letter from Mongolia 16: Tsagaan Sar: a seasonal threshold

Letter from Mongolia 15: Tsagaan Sar: kinship renewed

 

Abrahms-Kavunenko, S. 2011. “Improvising Tradition: Lay Buddhist Experiences in Cosmopolitan Ulaanbaatar.” PhD diss., The University of Western Australia.

Abrahms-Kavunenko, S. 2019. Enlightenment and the Gasping City: Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Disarray. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Abrahms-Kavunenko, S. 2019. “Mongolian Buddhism in the Democratic Period.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.

Abrahms-Kavunenko, S. 2020. “Tenuous Blessings: The Materiality of Doubt in a Mongolian Buddhist Wealth Calling Ceremony.” Journal of Material Culture.

Aldrich, M. A. 2018. Ulaanbaatar beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia. Bradt Travel Guides.

Badmaev, A.A. (2020). Traditional Buryat Beliefs About Birds. Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia, 48(2), 106–113.

Dal Zovo, C. 2021. “Ovoo-Cairns and Ancient Funerary Mounds in the Mongolian Landscape: Piling Up a Monumental Tradition?” Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines.

Fox, E. 2019. “Between Iron and Coal: Enacting Kinship, Bureaucracy and Infrastructure in the Ger Districts of Ulaanbaatar.” PhD diss., University College London.

Ganbaatar, N., and O. Dashtseren. 2025. “Symbolic Criteria in the Ritual of ‘Gift Giving’ by the Mongols.” Mongolian Diaspora Studies.

Graber, K. E. 2025. “When Everything Old Was New Again: Reclaiming Ethnonational Tradition in Post-Soviet Buryatia.” The Russian Review.

Humphrey, C. 1999. “Rituals of Death in Mongolia: Their Implications for Understanding the Mutual Constitution of Persons and Objects and Certain Concepts of Property.” Inner Asia 1 (1): 59–76.

Namsaraeva, S. 2012. “Ritual, Memory and the Buriad Diaspora Notion of Home.” Book chapter.

Please refer to the INDEX for other music and articles that may be of interest.

© 2013-2026. CP in Mongolia. “Letter from Mongolia 15: Tsagaan Sar: a good beginning” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ScholarGPT provided an additional channel for research. Documents and music linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions. Posted: 21 February 2026. Last updated: 21 February 2026.