81 
1901.] Sarat Chandra Das —The Hierarchy of the Dalai Lama. 
In 1408, shortly after establishing the grand annual congregational 
assembly called Monlam chenpo 1 at Lhasa, Tsongkhapa founded the 
great monastery of Gahdan 3 with 3,300 monks at a place some 20 miles 
to the East of Lhasa, and presided over it as the minister of the 
reformed Church till his death. He laid down the rule that his suc¬ 
cessors in the ministerial chair of Gahdan should be elected from among 
the most pious and learned of the brotherhood irrespective of their 
position in birth. Constitutionally, therefore, the Gahdan Thipa s be¬ 
came as his successor in the ministry, the hierarch of the Yellow-cap 
Church.* 
From that time Gahdan became the chief seat of the reformed 
Church, the monks of which put on the yellow-cap to distinguish 
themselves from the followers of the older sects who generally wore the 
red-cap 4 (shwa-mar) and were, therefore, called Shwa-ser Ge-lug.?-pa, 5 
i.e.,h he order of which the religious badge was the yellow-cap. They 
were also called Gahdan-pa from the name of their monastery. 
In 1415, one of Tsongkhapa’s disciples named Jam-yang Choije 6 
founded Dapung- now the premier monastery of Tibet with 7,700 monks 
under the patronage of Namkha Zangpo, 7 the then ruler of Tibet. 
In the year of the foundation of the monastery of Sera, the great 
reformer, whose real name was Lozang Tagpa 9 but who is better 
known as T&owjkhapa from the name of his birthplace Tnunyhha (onion 
bank), in Amdo, passed away from mundane existence. 
In 1416, Gadun dub 9 one of the later disciples of Tsogkhapa 
founded the grind monastery of Tashilhunpo 10 in Tsang. The es¬ 
tablishment of these four great monasteries,—first Gahdan, then 
Dapung and Sera, and, lastly, Tashilhunpo,—which have played such 
an important part in the political administration of the country, made 
* In the recent negotiations with the British Government at Lhasa the Regent 
who signed the Treaty with Colonel Younghusband, was Gahdan T’hipa (incorrect¬ 
ly named as Te-lama) in whose hands the Dalai Lama, at the time of his flight from 
Lhasa, had left the keys of the palace of Potala. 
literally, the great prayer nr eting. 
3 cv ^ 4 
chair, °ne of, i.e., chairman. (q yN ^ 
(Sj'^-s:q|-apjsrc| 6 7 
< 
J. 1. 11. 
