Drogön Chögyal Phagpa
Encyclopedia
Zhogön Qögyä Pagba, Zhogoin Qoigyai Phagspa or Drogön Chögyal Phagpa , born Lochö Gyäcän or Lochoi Gyaicain (1235–1280), was the fifth leader of the Sakya
Sakya
The Sakya school is one of four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the others being the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Gelug...
school of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
. He became the first vice-king of Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
and played an important political role. He was also the guru and spiritual advisor to Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan , born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China...
, ruler of the Mongol Empire
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...
and the Yuan Dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...
.
Biography
In 1244, Sakya Pandita left for Prince Godan's royal camp with two of his young nephews, the ten year-old Phagpa and six year-old Chhana, who later published a collection of Sakya Pandita's writings. On the way, they stopped in LhasaLhasa
Lhasa is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China and the second most populous city on the Tibetan Plateau, after Xining. At an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world...
, where Phagpa took the vows of a young Buddhist monk at the Jokhang
Jokhang
The Jokhang, , also called the Qokang Monastery, Jokang, Jokhang Temple, Jokhang Monastery or Zuglagkang , is located on Barkhor Square in Lhasa. For most Tibetans it is the most sacred and important temple in Tibet. It is in some regards pan-sectarian, but is presently controlled by the Gelug school...
monastery in front of the statue of the Jowo offered by the Princess Wencheng
Princess Wencheng
Princess Wencheng was a niece of the powerful Emperor Taizong of China's Tang Dynasty, who left China in 640, according to records, arriving the next year in Tibet to marry the thirty-seven year old Songtsän Gampo the thirty-third king of the Yarlung Dynasty of Tibet, in a marriage of...
, the Chinese wife of Songsten Gampo. Sakya Pandita preached sermons along his way and arrived at Prince Godan's camp in 1247 in Lanzhou
Lanzhou
Lanzhou is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. A prefecture-level city, it is a key regional transportation hub, allowing areas further west to maintain railroad connections to the eastern half of the country....
in the current province of Gansu
Gansu
' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...
, where the Mongol troops were exterminating Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
by throwing them in a river. Sakya Pandita, horrified, gave religious instructions, and in particular that killing a sentient being is one of the worst acts according to Buddha Dharma. He gave religious instruction to the prince and greatly impressed the court with his personality and powerful teachings. He is also said to have cured Prince Godan of a serious illness and, with the help of his nephew, Phagpa, he adapted the Uighur script so that the Buddhist Scriptures could be translated into Mongolian. In return, was given "temporal authority over the 13 myriarchies [Trikor Chuksum] of Central Tibet."
After the death of Sakya Pandita, Phagpa remained at the camp of Prince Godan and learned Mongolian language. Five years later Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan , born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China...
asked Godan to give him Chögyal Phagpa, who was then 23, and converted him to Buddhism. Shortly after, Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan , born Kublai and also known by the temple name Shizu , was the fifth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire from 1260 to 1294 and the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China...
in a succession fight, took over his brother, Möngke
Mongke
Mongke means "eternal" in Mongolian language and may refer to:-Medieval:* Möngke Khan , Great khan of the Mongol Empire* Yesü Möngke, khan of Chagatai khanate, 1247-1252* Mengu-Timur Mongke (also Mönkh, Monkh, Munkh) means "eternal" in Mongolian language and may refer to:-Medieval:* Möngke Khan...
, and became the khan
Khan (title)
Khan is an originally Altaic and subsequently Central Asian title for a sovereign or military ruler, widely used by medieval nomadic Turko-Mongol tribes living to the north of China. 'Khan' is also seen as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289...
, the ruler of the Mongols and even later on became Emperor of China
Emperor of China
The Emperor of China refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning between the founding of Qin Dynasty of China, united by the King of Qin in 221 BCE, and the fall of Yuan Shikai's Empire of China in 1916. When referred to as the Son of Heaven , a title that predates the Qin unification, the...
. Kublai Khan in turn appointed Chögyal Phagpa as his Imperial Preceptor in 1260 the year when he was proclaimed emperor of Mongolia
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire , initially named as Greater Mongol State was a great empire during the 13th and 14th centuries...
. According to Mongol sources, Phagpa was the first one "to initiate the political theology politics of the relationship between state and religion in the Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist world" - that is to say, he developed the concept of the priest-patron relationship. With the support of Kublai Khan, Chögyal Phagpa established himself and his sect as the preeminent political power in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
.
Kublai Khan commissioned Chögyal Phagpa to design a new writing system
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
to unify the writing of his multilingual Yuan Dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...
. Chögyal Phagpa in turn modified the traditional Tibetan script
Tibetan script
The Tibetan alphabet is an abugida of Indic origin used to write the Tibetan language as well as the Dzongkha language, Denzongkha, Ladakhi language and sometimes the Balti language. The printed form of the alphabet is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday...
and gave birth to a new set of characters called 'Phags-pa script which was completed in 1268. Kublai Khan decided to use the 'Phags-pa script as the official writing system of the empire, including when he became Emperor of China
Emperor of China
The Emperor of China refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning between the founding of Qin Dynasty of China, united by the King of Qin in 221 BCE, and the fall of Yuan Shikai's Empire of China in 1916. When referred to as the Son of Heaven , a title that predates the Qin unification, the...
in 1271, instead of the Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
ideogrammes and the Uyghur script. However, he encountered major resistances and difficulties when trying to promote this script and never achieved his original goal. As a result, only a small amount of texts were written in this script, and the majority (including most official documents) were still written in Chinese ideograms or the Uyghur alphabet. The script fell into disuse after the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...
in 1368. The script was, though never widely, used for about a century and is thought to have influenced the development of modern Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
script.
Pagspa's diaries for 1271 mention a foreign friend of Kublai Khan, who was quite possibly one of the elder Polos or even Marco Polo
Marco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
, although, unfortunately, no name is given.
Thus began a strong alliance and the capital of Sakya, gDan-sa, became the capital of Tibet. This lasted until about the middle of the 14th century. During the reign of the 14th Sakya Trizin
Sakya Trizin
Sakya Trizin or Sa'gya Gongma Rinboqê is the traditional title of the head of the Sakya Order of Tibetan Buddhism.The Sakya Order of Tibetan Buddhism was founded in 1073, when Khon Konchog Gyalpo , a member of Tibet’s noble Khön family, established a monastery in the region of Sakya, Tibet,...
, Sonam Gylatsen, the Central Tibetan province of U was taken by the Myriarch, marking the "beginning of the end of the period of Sakya power in Central Tibet."