The ''dpon-chen'' or ''pönchen'' (), literally the "great authority" or "great administrator", was the chief administrator or governor of

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

based at the Sakya Monastery during the

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...

. The office was established in the 1260s and functioned as the Tibetan local government serving the Yuan emperors, unlike the Sakya

Imperial Preceptor The Imperial Preceptor, or Dishi (; ), was a high title and powerful post in the Yuan dynasty. It was created by Kublai Khan as part of Mongol patronage of Tibetan Buddhism and the Yuan administrative rule of Tibet. The title was originally cre ...

s (''Dishi'') who were active in the Yuan imperial court. The Yuan dynasty set up a government agency and top-level administrative department known as the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs in Dadu (modern-day

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

) that supervised

Buddhist monks A ''bhikkhu'' (, ) is an ordained male in Buddhist monasticism. Male, and female monastics (''bhikkhunī''), are members of the Sangha (Buddhist community). The lives of all Buddhist monastics are governed by a set of rules called the prātimo ...

in addition to managing the territory of Tibet; one of the department's purposes was to select a dpon-chen to govern Tibet when the Sakya Lama (e.g. Drogön Chögyal Phagpa) was away. The Dpon-Chen was invariably a Tibetan nominated by the ruling Sakya Lama and approved by the reigning emperor. His function was, apart from being the chief executive head of the Sakya Government, to appoint a ''tripön'' for each of the 13 myriarchies, and to act as liaison between the Yuan government and Tibet.China's Tibet Policy, by Dawa Norbu, p55-56 Nevertheless, this system also led to conflicts between the Sakya leaders and the dpon-chens. While dpon-chens had a small army in Sakya itself, their major military support came from the Yuan imperial court when an internal rebellion or external invasion occurred. As the Yuan dynasty declined in the mid-14th century however, in Tibet, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen toppled the Sakya and founded the Phagmodrupa dynasty, marking the end of the dpon-chen system.

References

Government of the Yuan dynasty 13th century in Tibet Sakya Titles {{asia-hist-stub

See also

References