[1] Banzarov was born to a Buryat Cossack [ru] peasant family in Dede-Ichyotuy in March 1822[2] in the modern-day Dzhidinsky District.

Besides his native Buryat and Russian languages, he was reported to have studied Manchu, Kalmyk, Tibetan, Sanskrit and Turkish, and to have a good understanding of English, Latin, French and German.

"[8] In Black Faith, Banzarov brought forth the idea that Mongolian shamanism was a sophisticated belief system with unique origins, and not an offshoot of Buddhism, Christianity, or any other major religion.

Supposedly, he had been suffering from poor health for some time, and when a colleague came to visit him in late February 1855, he found Banzarov dead.

[11] During his lifetime and after his death, Banzarov was praised and admired by other cultural figures and intellectuals of Russia such as Nikolay Nekrasov, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov, and Alexander Veselovsky; he remains the subject of scholarly interest in Russia, despite his relatively small scholarly output.

[14] He is an important figure for the Buryat people[2][15] as one of the first Buryat intellectuals to gain mass acclaim in Russia and for building the academic field of Mongolian studies in Russia,[6][16] and for being amongst the first members of the colonized peoples of Siberia to rise to the level of an academic career.