Yeshe-Ö ( 959–1040; Tibetan: ཡེ་ཤེས་འོད་, Wylie: ye shes 'od; spiritual names Lha bLama Yeshes 'Od, Byang Chub Ye Shes 'Od, Lha Bla Ma, Lalama Yixiwo, also Dharmaraja – 'Noble King') was the first notable

lama Lama () is a title bestowed to a realized practitioner of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. Not all monks are lamas, while nuns and female practitioners can be recognized and entitled as lamas. The Tibetan word ''la-ma'' means "high mother", ...

-king in

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 ...

. Born as Khor-re, he is better known as Lhachen Yeshe-Ö, his spiritual name. Yeshe-Ö was the second king in the succession of the kingdom of

Guge Guge () was an ancient dynastic kingdom in Western Tibet. The kingdom was centered in present-day Zanda County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. At various points in history after the 10th century AD, the kingdom held sway over a vast a ...

in the southwestern

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or Qingzang Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of H ...

. Yeshe-Ö abdicated the throne in 975 to become a

. In classical

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

, the restoration of an organized and monastic tradition of

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, D ...

is attributed to him. He built Tholing Monastery in 997 when Tholing was the capital of Guge. Yeshe-Ö' sponsored

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

s, including the great translator Rinchen Zangpo.

Early life and rule

From a young age, Yeshe-Ö was interested in religious matters. He was the son of king Tashi-gon (bKra-shis-mgon), and ruled the merged kingdoms of Tashigon and Detsugon, covering the regions of Purang and

and Zanskar, Spiti and Lahaul and Upper Kinnaur. He ruled over the combined Purang-Guge Kingdom from 967. Yeshe-Ö', better known by his spiritual name, Lhachen Yeshe-Ö, was the first notable

-king in

. His first act as king was to issue commands decreed under the title ''bka’ shog chen mo'' ('Great Dictums'), which reflected his primary aim of ruling his kingdom theocratically: it was the reason that he came to be known as 'a king and monk'. This orientation was to ensure propagation of

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

throughout

. He commanded farmers and nomads to pay an endowment fee towards the maintenance of the monastery. The 'second diffusion of Buddhism' in Tibet is solely attributed to Yeshe-Ö. He believed in reforming his kingdom under the ethos of three "R"s namely, religious education, religious architecture, and religious reform, during a time when the Indian Buddhist religious, artistic, architectural, scriptural and philosophical traditions permeated all the Tibetan world through Guge. Based on the practices followed in

Kashmir Kashmir ( or ) is the Northwestern Indian subcontinent, northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term ''Kashmir'' denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir P ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, Yeshe-Ö deputed twenty-one specially chosen young novitiates to be trained as monks in

and other Buddhist learning centres. They were to study under Buddhist Gurus in renowned institutions, and to translate Buddhist scriptures from the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

to Tibetan. Of the novitiates, only two survived, Rinchen Zangpo and Lekpai Sherap. The others succumbed to the extreme weather conditions of northern India. Rinchen Zangpo was such an impressive student that Yeshe-Ö made him responsible for the translation of other Sanskrit scriptures, as well as the building of

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which m ...

in Tibet. The first one in western Tibet, Tholing, was built in 997, after Yeshe-Ö had been king for thirty years. The other main monasteries built under the king's initiative were Tabo Monastery in

Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory and constitutes an eastern portion of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a Kashmir#Kashmir dispute, dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 and India an ...

, and the Khochar monastery. He ruled, along with his brother, the entire Western Himalayan region. He founded temples and encouraged the nobility of Tibet. He opposed the esoteric forms of tantric practices (mostly by non-organised groups) which were prevalent in Tibet, and felt revulsion about the introduction of

Tantrism Tantra (; ) is an esoteric yogic tradition that developed on the Indian subcontinent beginning in the middle of the 1st millennium CE, first within Shaivism and later in Buddhism. The term ''tantra'', in the Indian traditions, also means ...

into Tibet's new culture of Buddhism. His wish was to maintain a purer and more rationalistic form of religion in Tibet, and his views were quoted in the '' Blue Annals'', written in the fifteenth century. The large number of bronze works of art made of are credited to Nagaraja, one of his two sons.

Legacy

The tenth century Yeshe-Ö temple is currently under reconstruction after the

Red Guards The Red Guards () were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a ...

damaged it during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

in 1967. In the Lotsava Lakhang in Riba, in

Ngari Prefecture Ngari Prefecture () or Ali Prefecture ( zh, s=阿里地区 , t=阿里地區 , p=Ālǐ Dìqū) is a prefecture of China's Tibet Autonomous Region covering Western Tibet, whose traditional name is Ngari Khorsum. Its administrative centre and large ...

field research Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct fi ...

revealed a painting of eight monks, including Rinchen Zangpo, sent to

by Yeshe-Ö to bring texts of scriptures of

Mahayana Buddhism Mahāyāna ( ; , , ; ) is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices developed in ancient India ( onwards). It is considered one of the three main existing branches of Buddhism, the others being Thera ...

from there to western Tibet.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Yeshe-O 950s births 1036 deaths Tibetan Buddhists Buddhist monarchs Lamas from Tibet Tibetan kings 10th-century Tibetan people 11th-century Tibetan people 10th-century lamas 11th-century lamas People related to Lahaul and Spiti district