The Dalai Lamas and the Ganden Phodrang
With Mongol support, the Great Fifth Dalai Lama becomes ruler of Tibet in 1642, founding a government that lasts until 1959 and building the Potala Palace.
- The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
- Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
- Dalai Lama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
In the fifteenth century the followers of Tsongkhapa built the great Gelug monasteries of Ganden, Drepung and Sera near Lhasa. A line of their leading lamas came to be seen as reincarnations of one another. In 1578 the Mongol ruler Altan Khan gave the third of them, Sonam Gyatso, the title Dalai, Mongolian for “ocean”, implying an ocean of wisdom. His two predecessors were named Dalai Lamas after their deaths, and the fourth was found among Altan Khan’s own family.
- Dalai Lama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
- The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
The Great Fifth
The Gelug faced powerful rivals, especially the kings of Tsang who supported the Karma Kagyu school. Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, the 5th Dalai Lama (1617–1682), turned to Gushri Khan of the Khoshut Mongols. After a civil war, Gushri Khan defeated the king of Tsang and in 1642 presented rule over central Tibet to the Dalai Lama. The new government was called the Ganden Phodrang, after the Dalai Lamas’ residence at Drepung.
- Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
- The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
The Great Fifth, as Tibetans call him, was a scholar, poet and statesman. He built a government of monk and lay officials, recognised his teacher as the first Panchen Lama, based at Tashilhunpo, and in 1645 began building the Potala Palace on the Red Hill in Lhasa, where Songtsen Gampo’s palace was believed to have stood. He was presented as an emanation of Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion, linking the Dalai Lamas to Songtsen Gampo and the empire.
- The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
- Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
- Dalai Lama — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
- The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics — Elliot Sperling, East-West Center (2004)
A religious state
When he died in 1682, his regent kept his death secret for about fifteen years to finish the Potala. The Ganden Phodrang governed central and western Tibet for more than three centuries, though in Kham and Amdo local kings, chiefs and monasteries often held real power. Old Tibet was deeply hierarchical: aristocratic families and monasteries held most land, and many peasants were hereditarily bound to estates. How to describe that society, as “feudal serfdom” or something more complex, is itself a political argument today.
- A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State — Melvyn C. Goldstein, University of California Press (1989)
- The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
- The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics — Elliot Sperling, East-West Center (2004)
Why it matters today
The Ganden Phodrang, the Dalai Lamas' government, is the state many Tibetans think of when they speak of an independent Tibet, and the exile administration sees itself as its continuation. The Potala, rising over Lhasa, is the great symbol of the nation, now a museum, its owner in exile.