Polhané Sönam Topgyé (Tibetan: ཕོ་ལྷ་ནས་བསོད་ནམས་སྟོབས་རྒྱས, Wylie: Pho lha nas bsod nams stobs rgyas; Chinese: 頗羅鼐) (1689 – 12 March 1747) was one of the most important political personalities of Tibet in the first half of the 18th century.
After the troubled years under the reign of Lhazang Khan, the bloody invasion of Tsering Dhondup and the civil war, his government ushered in a relatively long period of stability and internal and external peace for Tibet.
Polhané Sönam Topgyé was born in 1689 in Polha (Pho-lha) as the son of the general Pema Gyalpo and his wife Drolma Butri.
His forefathers were local officials in Tsang in the 17th century; his grandfather Asum was endowed with the estate Polha, south of Gyangtse, by the Khoshut king Tenzin Dalai Khan for his services.
In his young years he received teachings in the Mindroling Monastery which belonged to the Nyingma school, and also by the Panchen Lama.
Here he began to collaborate with Khangchenné Sönam Gyalpo who had been appointed governor of Ngari by Lhabzang Khan and continued to rule there in spite of the Dzungars.
They organized resistance against the invaders until the grand Chinese army sent by the Kangxi Emperor marched into Lhasa in September 1720.
Immediately after their arrival to Lhasa, the representatives of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty organized a provisional military government under the general Yansin.
The basic principle of this new administrative structure of Tibet was, that the members of the cabinet acted as ruling princes over the regions standing under them (Ü, Kongpo, Tsang, and Ngari), having their particular military resources and means of income.
This certainly weakened the position of Tibet vis-à-vis its neighbours, but also raised the danger of inner dissent, if the leading politicians could not agree.
[7] Immediately after Khangchenné's assassination, Ngaphöpa, Lumpané and Charaba took over power in Lhasa, supported by the father of the Dalai Lama, Sönam Dargye.
Polhané marched towards Lhasa with 9,000 troops, occupied the city and laid siege to the Potala Palace where his opponents and the ambans had taken refuge.
The exiled Tibetans were enslaved and given as slaves to soldiers in Ching-chou (Jingzhou), K'ang-zhou (Kangzhou) and Chiang-ning (Jiangning) in the marshall-residences there.
The Tibetan rNam-rgyal-grva-ts'an college administrator (gner-adsin) and sKyor'lun Lama were tied together with Lum-pa-nas and Na-p'od-pa on 4 scaffolds (k'rims-sin) to be sliced.
All relatives of the Tibetan rebels including little children were executed by the Qing Manchus except the exiled and deported family of sByar-ra-ba which was condemned to be slaves.
The Panchen Lama, Lobsang Yeshe (d. 1737), was given great authority which de facto made him the ruler of western Tsang.
The borders in East Tibet (1724, Amdo, 1727, Kham) were much altered, and Lhasa was permanently occupied by imperial troops, plus 2,000 men who supported the ambans.
As time passed Polhané became ever more independent and posed as a king or ruling prince of sorts (honorary royal titles bestowed by the emperor in 1731 and 1739).
The deed provoked some unrest among the population under the leadership of the chief groom of the murdered leader, Lobsang Tashi.