It was founded in 1647 by Zanabazar, the first Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, or spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism for the Khalkha in Outer Mongolia, around the same time as the establishment of the nearby Tövkhön Monastery.

According to the Russian ethnographer Aleksei M. Pozdneev, who visited the monastery in 1892, in addition to the main temple, built between 1710 and 1790, it consisted of five large beautifully decorated gers that could accommodate nearly 200 people.

[4] At its height the monastery included several schools that practiced Tantric rituals, especially Kalachakra, Buddhist philosophy and astrology.

[5] Like most of Mongolia's religious centers, Shankh Monastery was closed down in 1937 and most of its standing structures destroyed by the country's communist regime as part of violent Stalinist purges.

[7] After the 1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia, the surviving novices returned to Shankh and began restoration efforts on the main temple.