The spiritual and temporal Head of Tibet. Regarded as the earthly manifestation of Chenresi, the ‘Precious Protector’, the Tibetan term for Avalokiteshvara. The word Dalai, ‘great Ocean’ (pronounced Dāté, to rhyme with barley) is Mongolian, and was a title granted to the third Grand Lama of the Gelugpa School in 1587 by Gusri Kham, a Mongol prince whom the Lama had called into Tibet to help him quash rival attempts for supreme power. There have been fourteen Dalai Lamas, of whom the fifth and thirteenth are most famous. The Fifth (1615–1680), a great administrator and reformer, was the first to gain full temporal power of all Tibet in addition to being Grand Lama of its leading School. the Gelugpa.
For Life of the Thirteenth (1876–1933) see Bell, Portrait of the Dalai Lama (1946). For method of choosing successor seeTulku. The present, Fourteenth, Dalai Lama was born in Amdo on 6 June 1935, and was approved, brought to Lhasa and enthroned in 1940. For his early life see his My Land and my People (1962). He visited India in 1956 for India’s Buddha Jayanti (q.v.) celebrations, and then returned to Tibet. In 1959 he was forced into exile by Chinese Communists. Pending his return he lives at Dharmsala in the Punjab.
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