Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is a religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism. He is its highest spiritual teacher of the Gelugpa school. A new Dalai Lama is said to be the reborn old Dalai Lama. This line goes back to 1391. The 14th and current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso.

Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama was the head of the Tibetan government. During the winter, the Dalai Lamas stayed in the Potala palace. In the summer they lived in the Norbulingka palace. These two palaces are both in Lhasa, Tibet. In 1959, the Dalai Lama had to escape from Tibet to Dharamsala, India. This is still his base to this day.

Dalai Lama is the title of the Tibetan Buddhism leader. "Dalai" is originally from Mongolian which means "ocean" and "Lama" is original from Tibetan which means "the highest principle". In 1653, during the Qing Dynasty, this title was authorized to Dalai Lama V by the Chinese Emperor for the first time.

Modern history

The 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, expelled all Chinese civilians from the country, and instituted many measures to modernise Tibet. These included rules to curb excessive demands on peasants and tax evasion by the nobles. He set up an independent police force, abolished the death penalty, extended secular education, and brought electricity tto the city of Lhasa in the 1920s. Thubten Gyatso died in 1933.