Sonam Rapten
Despite this, under Sonam Rapten's leadership, and thanks to both Mongol military assistance and the pre-eminence of his Ruler the Fifth Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader, the Gelugpa rose to govern most of Greater Tibet by the time he reached 47 years old (1642).
[8] Due to old political rivalry between the Tsangpa regime (and before them the Rinpungpa) and the Phagmodrupa dynasty in Ü which had come to support the Gelug,[9] the 1617 death of the Fourth Dalai Lama emboldened the King of Tsang, Karma Tenkyong, to raise a large army and march from Shigatse to attack Lhasa by early 1618, when Sonam Rapten was just 22.
[10] Many civilians were also slaughtered; all the local, Gelugpa-sympathetic Kyishö nobility's estates were captured; the Lhasa valley governor and his son had to flee to Tsokha; and many Gelugpa monasteries were forcibly converted into Kagyü institutions.
[11] When the Tsang regime crowned the Tenth Karmapa as spiritual leader of all Tibet later that year, religious consolidation under the leadership of the Karma Kagyü order together with suppression of the Gelug became established Tsangpa policy.
[18] The Gelugpa did not renounce the search, however; in defiance of the ban, Sonam Rapten and his team after covertly consulting two oracles for pointers secretly identified the probable reincarnation, a boy who had been born late in 1617 at Chonggyé in the Yarlung Valley.
[4] After Sonam Rapten's secret visit to Kokonor, Mongol soldiers had filtered back into Tibet and eventually succeeded in making a surprise attack on the Tsangpa's military camps in Lhasa.
[15][26] From that time on, Sonam Rapten, 22 years his senior, was his chagdzo (guardian, manager and chief attendant) and eventually, from 1642, his viceroy or prime minister - the Desi, de facto ruler of Tibet.
[34] Rapten was a dynamic character and in practice, on a day-to-day basis more powerful than his master, dealing with nobles, royalty and political leaders including foreign ones and routinely making critical decisions in all matters without reference to the Dalai Lama.
[37] After the 1641-42 Civil War, the Mongol Gushri Khan (with whose military assistance the Gelugpa had by then defeated the Tsangpa) was content to act as head of security, ready to protect the new regime as and when requested, while Sonam Rapten was responsible for the conduct of secular business.
[49] To ensure ultimate victory, in 1632 he started assembling 'an army from the thirteen myriarchies [of Tibet]' and eventually enlisted Choghtu Khong Tayiji and Ligden Khan, leaders of the fierce, anti-Gelugpa Chahar and Khalkha Mongol tribes, as allies.
He was now determined to launch the victorious ally Gushri and his Mongol army against the burgeoning Lhasa Gelugpa's two main deadly political and religious rivals and enemies: Donyo Dorje, Bonpo King of Beri in Do Kham in the east, and then the Tsangpa regime to the west.
In the summer of 1639, Sonam Rapten, in front of the Dalai Lama and without consulting him, told Kachu Genyen Dondrub to go to Güshri Khan with clear instructions to destroy Beri and then return to his base in Amdo, adding ‘no further conflicts would interest us’.
Sonam Rapten, however, had already deceived the Dalai Lama by covertly sending to Güshri Khan additional verbal instructions with Kachu Genyen Dondrub to go and destroy the Tsangpa and Kagyu establishment after dealing with the Beri King.
[71][74] At this point the Dalai Lama was invited to come for the inauguration of his rule over Tibet in the great assembly hall of Samdruptse castle and the victorious Gushri and Rapten rode out to meet him, two days journey from Shigatse.
[76] Thus, the people experienced peace at last[79] and after a long campaign the Karma Kagyud and the Tsangpa met the end of their rule of Central Tibet at the hands of Sonam Rapten,[81] who "manipulated and blended with such subtlety, skill and intricacy the charisma of the Dalai Lama with the military might of the Mongols".
[82] Following this total elimination of regional rival powers by the Lhasa Gelugpa aided by their Mongol warriors, the administration of the entire country was fundamentally re-organised by "the brilliant trio" of the "Great Fifth" Dalai Lama, Sonam Rapten and Gushri Khan.
Sonam Rapten "assumed the leadership of the government as the regent under the Dalai Lama" as soon as the latter had been commonly acknowledged as titular head of state by the assembled Tibetan and Mongolian leaders and masses in a solemn ceremony held at Samdruptse (Shigatse) castle in April, 1642.
[94] On the contrary, having returned to Ü the Dalai Lama describes how Rapten exhorted him strongly to stay in Lhasa now (rather than at Drepung) and take over more political responsibilities from him, whilst still offering to continue to serve him and 'not do less than before'.
"[91] Modern Bhutan was founded by Ngawang Namgyal of the Drukpa Kagyu school who fled Tibet in 1616 when faced with arrest by the Tsangpa King over a dispute about the authenticity of his claimed status as the incarnation of the Fourth Drukchen.
[106][107] The hostages were sent back "with gifts" in 1647, as agreed, but early in 1648 Sonam Rapten broke the 1646 treaty by ordering a new, three-pronged invasion of Bhutan with his brother Depa Norbu in command of the main army.
[107][109][110] In Dukula the Dalai Lama notes that the invasion plan was proceeding well when Norbu "precipitously deserted and ran away, losing his saddle and most of his armaments" and necessitating a difficult withdrawal to be made by the other two armies.
Ngawang Namgyal's success and his decisive victories over the Tibetan attempts to subdue Bhutan in 1644 and 1648 [he died in 1651][111] were attributed to his effective use of occult powers, rather than to superior Bhutanese prowess in battle alone.
[115][116] Again, in 1650 or 1651, Sonam Rapten requested Zur to arrange just such an occult rite against Bhutan at Phagri (near the border), a ritual which was said to have soon caused the death of his arch-enemy, the master of magic, Drukpa Kagyu chieftain Ngawang Namgyal.
[119] Although during his youth the Dalai Lama was consistently friendly and conciliatory towards the Tsangpa King, sectarian friction between the Kagyupa in Tsang and the Gelugpa in Ü under Sonam Rapten nevertheless continued to simmer until it boiled over into the civil war of 1641–42.
[143] Four days earlier, at Gekya-ngo, he had given a list of parting instructions to Sonam Rapten, described in Dukula as follows: “Around this time, the adepts of the Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma schools were not allowed to wear hats in their own way, and it was intended that their religious affinities would gradually be converted to the Gelug.
In addition, as mentioned in the Karmapa's biography, following a petition by Gyaltsab Rinpoche the twenty-one most important Kagyu monasteries that had been seized by the Geluk in 1648, including Tsurphu and Yangpachen, were given back to the school soon after Lobzang Gyatso's return.
[91] Sonam Rabten's last invasion of Bhutan was explained, according to Shakabpa, as follows: “[In 1657] A Bhutanese chieftain, Chosje Namkha Rinchen, who had close contacts with Tibet, was killed, along with 20 members of his family, by his enemies.
[155] Depa Norbu became ‘involved in a secret plot’ which indicates he was working as a Bhutanese agent or mole, and he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Fifth Dalai Lama to make Rabten delay or canel the attack.
[158] Sonam Rapten, being Norbu's elder brother, pretended not to hear about his probable heir's many failings but eventually he was compelled to react and censure him due to "the proliferation of negative reports about (his) deceptive behaviour".
When the death was announced publicly some 13 months later he ordered and oversaw many more weeks of intensive funerary rituals in his honour, making extensive offerings to over 125,000 monks to the cumulative value of no less than 14,000 tons of barley grain.
