Drepung

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tibetan name
Tibetan script :
འབྲས་ སྤུངས་
Wylie transliteration :
'bras spungs
Pronunciation in IPA :
[ ʈʂɛpuŋ ]
Official transcription of the PRCh :
Zhaibung
THDL transcription :
Drepung
Other spellings:
Drébung, Drebung, Dräpung
Chinese name
Traditional :
哲蚌寺
Simplified :
哲蚌寺
Pinyin :
Zhébàng Sì
Drepung Monastery University
Novices and monks debate in the monastery garden

Drepung is one of the most important monasteries of the Gelug School and was one of the three large so-called "state monasteries " of the former Tibet , not quite 10 km west of Lhasa .

history

Drepung was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Chöje Trashi Pelden ('jam dbyangs chos rje bkra shis dpal ldan) - a disciple of Tsongkhapa , the founder of the Gelug order. As the former residence of the Dalai Lamas (before they moved to the Potala Palace in Lhasa), the Abbots of Drepung always played an important role in the politics of Tibet. B. manifested in the annual takeover of the city government of Lhasa for the Mönlam festival (the Tibetan New Year festival). Drepung's abbots were always on the closest council of the Dalai Lama and often held important positions such as: B. that of the regent between the death of one Dalai Lama and the assumption of government by the next (which often meant a term of office of around 20 years).

In 1618 the king of Tsang attacked Lhasa and "littered the mountains around Drepung with the corpses of the monks." (Cf. 10th Karmapa ) The Chinese emperors set the maximum number of residents at 7,700 in the 18th century, of which only about ten were Percent educated monks, the remainder workers.

In the years from 1911 to 1913, when the 13th Dalai Lama tried to expel all Han Chinese from Tibet, the Drepung monks, especially those from the Loseling Faculty, sided with Tengyeling Monastery in Lhasa the Chinese government and against the Dalai Lama. Thousands of Drepung monks were fined by the Lhasa government, but Drepung escaped the fate of Tengyeling, whose monks were evicted, property confiscated and razed to the ground.

From 1913 to 1919 the Dalai Lama was preoccupied with the conflict in the east ( Kham / Xikang ) and the Shimla Conference, but in 1920 the dispute between Drepung and the government of the Dalai Lama came to a head again. In May 1921, the government took advantage of a dispute between the monastery and one of its former administrators over land, lured the three senior administrators of the Loseling Faculty to Zhol, had them arrested, flogged and exiled from Lhasa and confiscated their property; Thousands of monks then moved from Drepung to the Norbulingka and demanded to be admitted to the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama summoned the Tibetan army at Drepung; around 3,000 government soldiers were encamped in Lhasa in August; they faced 4,000 to 5,000 monks. Drepung gave in, around 60 monks were arrested, beaten and pilloried. The Dalai Lama dismissed all administrators of the monastery departments and appointed new ones.

The monastery had the right to collect 45 different taxes, e.g. B. per door or window per house of the backseat, haircuts, etc. During the annual three-week festival in Lhasa, taxes were forcibly collected here too, the monks were armed with lances and sabers. They had the right of jurisdiction, which, like everywhere in Tibet, provided for cruel corporal punishment. B. gouged out the eyes. Before 1959 there were over 10,000 monks in Drepung, it was the largest monastery in Tibet and owned 186 estates, had around 20,000 serfs, 300 pastures and 16,000 shepherds. In 1962, three years after the land reform, which reduced land ownership to an area necessary for self-sufficiency, 700 ordained people were counted here, including 200 child monks aged 7 to 15 who were abused as workers. In October 1975 300 monks lived here.

During the Cultural Revolution, Drepung was saved from destruction by the Red Guards; In the mid-1980s there were again twenty monks, in 2005 there were around 640. The monastery has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China since 1982 .

investment

In the course of the so-called Cultural Revolution , the monastery, as well as the nearby Sera Monastery , was hardly destroyed, while the monastery town of Ganden , located 40 km east of Lhasa on a towering mountain ridge, was more or less razed to the ground. The central assembly hall, the assembly halls of the four faculties of the monastery (Loseling, Gomang, Ngagpa and Deyang) and the former government palace of the Dalai Lama (Ganden Phodrang) have also been preserved in Drepung .

literature

Web links

Commons : Drepung  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ John Powers : Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism . Snow Lion, Ithaca / Boulder 2007, passim.
  2. ↑ MÖNLAM - Tibet
  3. ^ A. Tom Grunfeld: The Making of Modern Tibet . East Gate Book, 1996, ISBN 978-1-56324-714-9 , pp. 41f.
  4. ↑ Gelder, Stuart; Money, Roma; \ Timely rain: Travels in New Tibet; London 1964 (Hutchinson); German: Visa for Tibet; Düsseldorf 1965 (Econ); [Travel report of an English couple who visited Lhasa for several weeks in the summer of 1962.]
  5. ^ Melvyn C. Goldstein: A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951. The Demise of the Lamaist State (University of California Press 1991), pp. 63f., 109;
    A. Tom Grunfeld: The Making of Modern Tibet (East Gate 1996), p. 65;
    Melvyn C. Goldstein: Conflict in the Traditional Tibetan State  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Case, Western Reserve University).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.case.edu  
  6. ^ Melvyn C. Goldstein: A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951. The Demise of the Lamaist State (University of California Press 1991), pp. 104ff.
  7. ↑ a b Han Suyin [韓 素 音; d. i. Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow (ch. 周 光 湖, Zhōu Guānghú), 1917--2012]; Comber, Elizabeth; Lhasa, the open city; A journey to Tibet; London 1977 (Cape); P. 52.
  8. ↑ Tibet's March Toward Modernization ( China Internet Information Center , November 2001.)
  9. ^ A. Tom Grunfeld: The Making of Modern Tibet (East Gate 1996), p. 186.
  10. ^ A. Tom Grunfeld: The Making of Modern Tibet (East Gate 1996), p. 217.
  11. ↑ Anne Roth: Tibet - All we dreamed of ( Memento of the original from June 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( Shanghai Star , June 16, 2000); Georges Dreyfus: 'Bras spungs: An Introduction ( Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library , April 10, 2006) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / app1.chinadaily.com.cn

Coordinates: 29 ° 40 ′ 33 ″  N , 91 ° 2 ′ 48 ″  E