The Snow Lion and the Dragon. Melvyn C. Goldstein

was at the expense of the older Karma Kargyu and the pre-Buddhist Bon sects. When he died in 1588, the Geluk-Mongol tie was intensified as his reincarnation, the fourth Dalai Lama, was discovered in Mongolia in the body of the great-grandson of none other than Altyn Khan. The fourth Dalai Lama was taken to Lhasa in 1601 accompanied by an entourage of Yellow Hat lamas and nobles who had traveled to Mongolia for this purpose. They were escorted by a contingent of armed Mongol followers. The new Yellow Hat sect, therefore, came to be closely associated with the Mongols. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this close religious/political relationship became a critical component of Sino-Tibetan relations.

      The Mongolian fourth Dalai Lama died in 1616 and was succeeded by the fifth Dalai Lama who was discovered in central Tibet, not far from Lhasa. Sectarian strife intensified in his youth, when an ally of the Tsangpa king started to persecute Geluk monks and institutions in Kham and talked of moving into central Tibet to attack the Geluk sect's main centers. The Geluk feared this was the beginning of a concerted effort to wipe out their sect and turned for help to their Mongol adherents in the person of Gushri Khan.

      Gushri Khan was the chief of the Qoshot tribe, a branch of the Western Mongols who were based in Dzungaria, in present-day northeast Xinjiang. As a follower of the Dalai Lama he answered his lama's call for help and between 1637 and 1640 defeated the anti-Geluk forces in Amdo and Kham, resettling his whole tribe in the process in Amdo. Then, at the request of Sonam Chöpel, the chief steward (administrator) of the fifth Dalai Lama, Gushri marched into Tibet where he attacked the Tsangpa king himself at his home base in Shigatse. The Geluk sect sent its own force of supporters and monks to assist him, and in 1642 they captured Shigatse. The king of Tibet (the Tsangpa king) was executed.

      Gushri Khan gave supreme authority over all of Tibet to the fifth Dalai Lama, appointing the Dalai Lama's chief steward, Sonam Chöpel, as regent to carry out the day-to-day affairs of state. The main rival of the Yellow Hat sect, the Karma Kargyu, bore the brunt of the defeat and were actively persecuted by the Geluk government. Much of their wealth and property was confiscated and many of their monasteries were forcibly converted to the Geluk sect. The Yellow Hat sect therefore quickly eclipsed all the others in size, strength, and wealth.

      Using foreign troops to seize power in one's country is dangerous; it is easier to persuade them to come than induce them to go. This is what happened in Tibet. Gushri Khan did not pick up his troops and return to Amdo after winning Tibet for his lama. Instead he took the title of king of Tibet for himself and his descendants and remained in Central Tibet, spending his summers in a pasture area north of Lhasa and his winters in Lhasa. The military power behind the new Yellow Hat government remained in his hands. The Dalai Lama and a regent administered the country, but it appears clear that they had to defer to his views to some degree.

      At the time the Geluk sect was unifying Tibet under its rule, another group with central Asian origins, the Manchu, were in the final stages of conquering China. In 1644 they established a new dynasty, the Qing, which lasted until 1911. The Geluk sect and the Manchu had only cursory contact before they both came to power, but afterward, the Qing emperor invited the fifth Dalai Lama to visit Beijing and he agreed, arriving there in 1656. The Qing emperor treated the Dalai Lama with great courtesy and respect. There was nothing in this meeting to indicate political subordination on the part of the Tibetan prelate. With his Qoshot Mongol army behind him and his broad following among other Mongol tribes, some of whom were a threat to the Qing themselves, the Dalai Lama was not someone to be trifled with.

      Stability in Tibet continued until the fifth Dalai Lama died in 1682. Then the weakness of reincarnation succession started a process of decline. Since the deceased lama can emanate only into someone born after his death, there is inevitably a period of fifteen to twenty years when the new incarnation-ruler is a minor, and a period of potential instability as others try to rule in his name. Sangye Gyatso, Tibet's regent at the death of the fifth Dalai Lama, dealt with this "crisis" by hiding the death from the nation. Whether motivated by fear that his position was in jeopardy or that general disturbances might arise, he pretended that the Dalai Lama had withdrawn for extended meditation and could not be disturbed. He maintained this hoax for fourteen years, ruling in the fifth Dalai Lama's name until 1696 when the secret became public.

      During this period, the regent also intrigued with the powerful Dzungar Mongols, whose chief, Ganden, had been a monk at the main Geluk monasteries in Lhasa. It appears that the Tibetan regent encouraged the Dzungars (in the Dalai Lama's name) to unify all Mongols under their rule. When the Dzungars attacked the Eastern (Khalkha) Mongols and won a major victory in 1682, a new unified Mongolia seemed again possible.

      One can only surmise that the regent wanted to use the might of the Dzungars to offset the military power of the Qoshot Mongols in Tibet, perhaps even to force them out of Tibet and back to Amdo. He may also have felt that the power and prestige of the Dalai Lamas would be greatly enhanced in a Mongolia united under the Dzungars, who looked to him as their main lama. But the regent was playing a high-risk game: the Dzungars were the last group strong enough to challenge the supremacy of the Qing dynasty, so siding with them meant opposing the interests of the Qing.

      The Dzungar attempt to unify all Mongols, however, failed. The defeated Eastern Mongols sought the protection of the Qing emperor, who accepted their submission and, thinking that the Dzungar's spiritual leader, the fifth Dalai Lama, was still alive, asked that he use his religious authority to persuade the Dzungars to stop their invasion. Without informing the Qing emperor that the Dalai Lama was dead, the Tibetan regent sent a lama emissary to the Dzungars ostensibly to persuade them to desist in their invasion, but he appears to have conducted rites to ensure their victory. The Dzungars continued moving south toward Inner Mongolia. At this point the Qing emperor sent a large army against them and in 1696 won a major victory at the Kalulun River in Mongolia. Ganden committed suicide. The Dzungar's threat to the Qing dynasty was over, but a dangerous message had been sent to the Qing emperor regarding the importance of Tibet's lamas and the political untrustworthiness of the Tibetan regent.

      Almost immediately, the Qing found an opportunity to meddle in Tibetan affairs. When Lhabsang Khan, Gushri Khan's grandson, assumed the title of king of Tibet in 1697, he set out to restore the political authority that his grandfather Gushri Khan had wielded. This placed him in direct conflict with the Tibetan regent, who wanted no Mongol influence in his administration.

      A bone of contention for Lhabsang Khan was the behavior of Tsayang Gyatso, the sixth Dalai Lama. This boy had been secretly identified as the new Dalai Lama soon after the death of the fifth Dalai Lama, but because the regent was keeping the fifth's death a secret, he announced only that this child was the incarnation of another lama. Thus, Tsayang Gyatso was not enthroned as the sixth Dalai Lama until 1697 when the news of the fifth's death became public.

      The sixth Dalai Lama, however, turned out to be totally deviant in attitude and values, refusing to play the role of a celibate religious practitioner. He renounced his monastic vows and became a famous libertine, writing love poems and carousing with women at night in Lhasa. Lhabsang Khan was among those who believed that the regent was remiss in not insisting the Dalai Lama act like a true lama. Whether this demand was based on sincere conviction or simply a means to attack the regent is unclear. However, relations between the regent and Lhabsang Khan steadily worsened until 1705 when Lhabsang, supported by the Qing emperor and allied with a number of aristocratic Tibetan families, attacked the regent in Lhasa, defeating his forces. The regent was executed and Lhabsang Khan become the king of Tibet in fact as well as in title.

      The emperor of China sent an envoy to Lhasa and recognized the khan as ruler of Tibet under his protection. The khan, in turn, agreed to make regular tribute payments to the Qing in return for their support. Thus Lhabsang Khan placed himself and the Tibet he now ruled in a subordinate relationship to the Qing dynasty. Lhabsang Khan also publicly announced that Tsayang Gyatso was not the true sixth Dalai Lama, and with the approval of the Qing emperor, sent him to exile in Beijing, foisting off another monk of the appropriate age as the person who should have been recognized years earlier as the real sixth Tibetan prelate. Lhabsang's military control of Tibet enabled him to impose his will, but it angered the monks and populace, who continued to consider Tsayang Gyatso as the true sixth Dalai Lama. When Tsayang Gyatso died en route to Beijing, rumors quickly arose in Tibet that he had emanated into a new body in