Sagaan Ubgen (White Old Man)

Sources indicate Sagaan Ubgen originated in Mongolian cultural-religious contexts as a pre-Buddhist figure associated with longevity, wealth, and fertility. With the spread of Buddhism, narratives were appended to explain his continued veneration within Buddhist practice — for example, stories in which he meets the Buddha and is declared a saint, or appears as one of two hunters who encounter the Tibetan yogin Milarepa and are converted to Buddhist teachings. Scholarly descriptions frame his cult as part of so-called 'white shamanism,' a label used to describe Buryat shamanic practice that incorporates Buddhist rituals and beliefs.

Conventional iconography presents him as a bald old man with a white beard, dressed in white in cham/tsam performance. Attributes and accompaniments reported in the sources include a dragon-headed staff, a book (described in sources as a book of destiny in some accounts), a deer and a peach tree, and in cham performance a snuff bottle attached to his girdle. In ritual enactments he may at first appear weak or staggering and later be renewed.

Traditional belief locates him as a guardian of life and longevity and a patronal figure for family longevity, fertility, health, and prosperity. Within Buddhistized narratives he is reframed by hagiographic episodes that legitimize his cult in monastic contexts while preserving earlier worldly functions. In the tsam/cham Tiger Dance he symbolically overcomes a dangerous force: he enters feigning weakness, strikes a tiger skin with a stick (symbolically 'killing' the tiger), and is thereby renewed; he then passes among the audience soliciting donations and offering snuff, enacting blessing, renewal, and social exchange.