central and throughout his travels, he and his disciples made corrections and revisions of the Tibetan translations of . In the process of giving teachings and making revisions and corrections of already-translated texts in western and central Tibet, Atisha acquired a Tibetan disciple, Dromtonpa, who is credited with establishing the Kadam tradition of Tibetan , which Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) transformed into the school. Atisha passed away in Nyethang in central Tibet and his remains were preserved in a .

Tibet’s dismemberment into small principalities and domains during this time allowed the local rulers to inance individual Tibetan scholars to travel to in search of Buddhist knowledge. This was the case with Drokmi, (992-1072), whose journeys to Nepal and India were inanced by the Tibetan ruler of western Tsang. In Vikramashila, Drokmi studied at the feet of Santipa who initiated the Tibetan scholar to various texts, including Hevajra , which the scholar translated into Tibetan. This text became the basic focus of study of the school of which Khon Kunchog Gyalpo, a student of Drokmi, founded.

Another scholar and traveller was Marpa, (1012-1096). He had initially studied at the feet of Drokmi but decided to make his own expeditions to India and Nepal and eventually came across , with whom, according to one of Marpa’s own poems, he stayed sixteen years and seven months. He brought back with him, according to Stein, “the mystical songs (doha) of the Tantric poets of Bengal, and the doctrine called , the Great Seal, which he handed over to , his chief Tibetan disciple. The Emergence of the Four Schools of Tibetan Buddhism

These efforts by the Tibetan scholars and translators in making arduous and numerous journeys to receive the teachings enabled the succeeding generations to establish most of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism. These schools and the monasteries they spawned throughout Tibet, in the absence of a central authority,

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