replacing the post of prime minister with a council of
ministers call the Bka’ shag (Kashag), Skal bzang rgya
mtsho devoted himself to Buddhist studies and gained
some fame as a writer of religious books. The Bka’ shag
met in Lhasa and was answerable only to the Dalai
Lamas or, when the Chinese presence was powerful, to
the Chinese representatives (ambans).
For nearly 150 years from the death of Skal bzang
rgya mtsho until the twelfth Dalai Lama ’Phrin las
(Trinlay) rgya mtsho, effective political power was in
the hands of regents appointed from among the pow-
erful Dge lugs pa lamas, monks, and nobility. The
eighth Dalai Lama, ’Jam dpal (Jampel) rgya mtsho
(1758–1804), remained detached from political affairs.
The ninth through the twelfth Dalai Lamas all died
young: the ninth—Lung rtogs (Lungtok) rgya mtsho
(1805–1815); the tenth—Tshul khrims (Tsultrim) rgya
mtsho (1816–1837); the eleventh—Mkhas grub (Khe-
drub) rgya mtsho (born 1855 and died within a year
of birth); and the twelfth—’Phrin las rgya mtsho
(1856–1875).
The procedure for choosing Dalai Lamas evolved
over time. Dreams of respected religious figures and
visions of oracles have always been important. Since
the time of the third Dalai Lama, Bsod nams rgya mt-
sho, in the sixteenth century, visions appearing on the
surface of a sacred lake near Chos ’khas rgyal (Chökhar
Gyal) in south central Tibet have been considered sig-
nificant. In the case of the seventh Dalai Lama, lines
from Tshe dbyangs rgya mtsho’s poem—“I will not fly
far. I will come back from Li thang”—were considered
an important clue by those charged with locating the
place of rebirth. Such seemingly innocuous statements,
or in some cases actual letters detailing a birthplace,
remain an important part of the selection process, as
does the ability of the child candidate to differentiate
items belonging to the earlier Dalai Lama when they
are placed alongside similar items.
The influence of China on the selection of Dalai
Lamas stems from the turbulent years after the death
of the sixth Dalai Lama and the Manchu intervention
in the early eighteenth century. The Manchu general
Fu Kang’an delivered a golden urn from the Manchu
emperor to be used for the selections of high lamas.
The Manchu representatives (ambans), who remained
in Tibet after the Chinese army returned to Tibet, wit-
nessed the procedure of choosing a name from the
golden urn. From this period also comes the schism
between the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, as the Manchus
exploited the traditional rivalry between central Tibet
and western Gtsang to counterbalance the power of the
Dge lugs pa sect. The Manchus backed the Gtsang-
based Panchen Lamas strongly.Thirteenth and fourteenth Dalai Lamas
The thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thub bstan (Tubten)
rgya mtsho (1876–1933), who, like the fifth, is called
the “Great,” overcame entrenched Dge lugs pa
monastic power and reasserted the authority of the
Dalai Lama as a political institution. After surviving
an attempted assassination, Thub bstan rgya mtsho
introduced reforms, first in the large Dge lugs pa
monasteries and then in the government ministries
led by members of the Bka’ shag. According to
Melvyn Goldstein in A History of Modern Tibet
(1989), the thirteenth Dalai Lama attempted two re-
forms of Tibetan society in particular that would have
better prepared Tibet for the difficulties of the mod-
ern world: modernization of the army and introduc-
tion of a democratically elected assembly. He failed
in both reform efforts because of entrenched conser-
vatism and vested interests.
The thirteenth Dalai Lama skillfully governed Tibet
during the time of the “Great Game,” the rivalry for
control of the Central Asian regions that lay between
the empires of czarist Russia and British India. Fearful
of Russian influence, the viceroy of British India, Lord
Minto, sent out an army under Colonel Francis Ed-
ward Younghusband that invaded Tibet in 1904. The
Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia and then to China. When
the Chinese invaded Tibet five years later the Dalai
Lama in turn fled to British India, making his way to
Darjeeling. He was hosted there by Sir Charles Bell, a
British political officer, whose book A Portrait of the
Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth
(1946) introduced the Dalai Lama to the English-
speaking world.
Before his death in 1933 the Great Thirteenth Dalai
Lama wrote a letter, now viewed as his political testa-
ment, in which he foresaw great change and suffering
for the Tibetan people if they did not adapt quickly to
the modern world. Unfortunately the leaders of Tibet
during the regency period were unable to rise to this
difficult task, and the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Bstan
’dzin rgya mtsho (Tenzin Gyatso), was destined to per-
form the nearly impossible task of leading a people
clinging to a country disintegrating before their eyes
into an uncertain future.
Born Hla mo don grub (Lhamo Dhundup) to an
ordinary farming family in 1935, the fourteenth DalaiDALAILAMA