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Establishing Lineage Legitimacy and Building Labrang Monastery As “The Source of Dharma”: Jikmed Wangpo (1728–1791) Taking the Helm

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Establishing Lineage Legitimacy and Building Labrang Monastery As “The Source of Dharma”: Jikmed Wangpo (1728–1791) Taking the Helm religions Article Establishing Lineage Legitimacy and Building Labrang Monastery as “the Source of Dharma”: Jikmed Wangpo (1728–1791) Taking the Helm Rinchen Dorje The Center for Research on Ethnic Minorities in Northwest China, The College of History and Culture, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China; [email protected] Abstract: The eighteenth century witnessed the continuity of Geluk growth in Amdo from the preceding century. Geluk inspiration and legacy from Central Tibet and the accompanying political patronage emanating from the Manchus, Mongols, and local Tibetans figured prominently as the engine behind the Geluk influence that swept Amdo. The Geluk rise in the region resulted from contributions made by native Geluk Buddhists. Amdo native monks are, however, rarely treated with as much attention as they deserve for cultivating extensive networks of intellectual transmission, reorienting and shaping the school’s future. I therefore propose that we approach Geluk hegemony and their broad initiatives in the region with respect to the school’s intellectual and cultural order and native Amdo Buddhist monks’ role in shaping Geluk history in Amdo and beyond in Tibet. Such a focus highlights their impact in shaping the trajectory of Geluk history in Tibet and Amdo in particular. The historical and biographical literature dealing with the life of Jikmed Wangpo affords us a rare window into the pivotal time when every effort was made to cultivate a vast network of institutions and masters across Tibet. This further spurred an institutional growth of Citation: Dorje, Rinchen. 2021. Buddhist transmission, constructing authenticity and authority thereof, as they were closely tied to Establishing Lineage Legitimacy and reincarnation lineage, intellectual traditions, and monastic institutions. In doing so, we also have Building Labrang Monastery as “the a good grasp of the creation processes of Geluk luminaries such as Jikmed Wangpo, an exemplar Source of Dharma”: Jikmed Wangpo scholar and visionary who faced great opposition from issues with his lineage legitimation at Labrang (1728–1791) Taking the Helm. and among the larger Geluk community. Religions 12: 491. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel12070491 Keywords: Jikmed Wangpo; Jamyang Zhepa; Labrang; Amdo; Geluk School; transmission; reincar- nation Academic Editor: Jeffery D. Long Received: 20 May 2021 Accepted: 28 June 2021 1. Introduction Published: 30 June 2021 Modern scholarship already addresses Geluk developments in Amdo in the eighteenth century, emphasizing the significant political patronage and Central Tibetan influence and Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral 1 with regard to jurisdictional claims in the agency of Amdo Geluk Buddhists. Still, an understanding of this era remains limited published maps and institutional affil- given that it is impossible to know exactly how Amdo’s mega-monasteries, such as Labrang, iations. fostered Buddhist intellectual and cultural heritage and growth and interacted or competed with fellow Geluk institutions and communities in the region and beyond. As part of a multifaceted relationship between Labrang and other Geluk monasteries in Amdo and elsewhere, it is important to examine the intellectual initiatives led by Konchok Jikmed Wangpo (hereafter Jikmed Wangpo), resulting in Labrang’s rise as a major center for Geluk Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. transmission in eighteenth-century Amdo. The unusual expansion of the influence of This article is an open access article Labrang and Jikmed Wangpo’s lineage in the region meant that the status quo of the distributed under the terms and religious and intellectual climate was contested, renegotiated, and reshaped. conditions of the Creative Commons Although the factionalism at Labrang was disruptive to its monastic community, ironi- Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// cally, Jikmed Wangpo’s taking of the helm at the Labrang Monastery may have inaugurated creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ the heyday of the same monastic establishment that initially resisted him. Indeed, Jikmed 4.0/). Wangpo was a Buddhist visionary credited with initiating significant developments at Religions 2021, 12, 491. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070491 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2021, 12, 491 2 of 42 Labrang Monastery though he was also instrumental in fostering institutional develop- ments in Tibet’s larger Geluk community. He embarked on a series of institutional building projects both at Labrang and in the surrounding region. Several monasteries offered Jikmed Wangpo their estates and lay communities,2 and Konchok Tenpa Rabgye would claim that Jikmed Wangpo was responsible for running a network of nearly 40 monasteries (Dkon mchog bstan pa rab rgyas 1982, p. 375). During Jikmed Wangpo’s tour to Tsayu Monastery (tsa yu dgon pa), while giving an inauguration speech to mark this occasion, he declared that “[...] although all the monasteries, large and small, in the region are not officially satellite monasteries, they are so technically as they exist in dependence on Labrang as [their] foundation [...]”.3 Moreover, he made an explicit agenda that envisioned a vast network of monastic institutions that would follow the orthodoxy of ritual pedigree emanating from Labrang (Gung thang bstan pa’i sgron me 1990, p. 390),4 of which he was the vanguard. At Labrang, he spearheaded a series of institutional initiatives throughout his eventful career. Labrang’s developments included creating strict monastic rules, a rigorous curriculum and examination system, a printery and a library holding massive textual collections, lineages of scholastic and ritual orthodoxy, and a summer retreat institution and economic support systems for monastic populations and rituals.5 In 1773, three decades after the enthronement of the young Jikmed Wangpo, monastic enrollment peaked, and the central assembly hall at Labrang (supported by 80 pillars) did not have the seating capacity for the increasing enrollment of monks. Thus, the scaled-up assembly hall commenced construction (ibid., p. 229). Also, at that time, because of Jikmed Wangpo’s scholastic focus, he ensured that most of the monks enrolled in the scholastic college. It is explicitly recorded in the biography that he limited enrollment to 211 monks at Tantric College and 151 at Kalachakra College,6 thus implying the disproportionate size of the scholastic college. Later at Labrang, Gungthang Tenpe Dronme indicates that his transmissions of most of his own collected works were attended by over a thousand monks. It does not suggest that any other monks from outside Labrang were present, and it is tempting to consider this figure as a rough measure of the monastic population at Labrang Monastery (ibid., p. 259).7 It puts into perspective the extraordinary size of Labrang as a mega-monastery, dwarfing Rongwo, another regional monastery, which had a monastic population of merely 180 monks during the abbatial office of Rongwo’s charismatic leader and Jikmed Wangpo’s tutor, Khenchen Gedun Gyatsho (mkhan chen dge ‘dun rgya mtsho, 1679–1765).8 This article will examine the significance of transmission lineage and networks for mapping out the Geluk School’s religious history of in Amdo. I endeavor to do this by fo-cusing on the life of Jikmed Wangpo; specifically, the role transmission lineage played in his upbringing as the legitimate successor to Jamyang Zhepa and in building his suc-cessful career as a model for the Buddhist scholarly community. Jikmed Wangpo’s legiti-macy seems largely dependent on his role as keeper of the transmission of teachings from Jamyang Zhepa and being as formidable a scholar as his predecessor. Other factors such as his personality, enlightened visions, magical displays, and the religious and political influences of his clan are discussed to a much lesser extent across the source materials. Within the restraints of this space, I will map out a network of Buddhist masters who were sources for these teachings passed down from Jamyang Zhepa. T his paper seeks to consult the relevant sources to reconstruct the historical contexts where Jikmed Wangpo’s receipt of lineage transmission was invaluable to his legitimacy as the rebirth of Jamyang Zhepa. Beyond concerns of legitimacy, Jikmed Wangpo embarked on a long campaign to widely seek textual and oral transmissions in Tibet so as to rebuild Labrang Monastery as a central Geluk transmission hub. The transmissions he sought were believed to be rare in Central Tibet and even more so in his native Amdo. His keen interest in a broad pursuit of transmissions and his growth as an unrivalled scholar in his own right convinced his peers that he was the legitimate reincarnation of Jamyang Zhepa. My examination of Jikmed Wangpo’s central role in the Geluk transmission lineage in Tibet and the closely related issue of his legitimation is mainly based on the study Religions 2021, 12, 491 3 of 42 of his biography (Gung thang bstan pa’i sgron me 1990) and Amdo’s religious history ( Dkon mchog bstan pa rab rgyas 1982)9 by Konchok Tenpa Rabgye (dkon mchog bstan pa ra ragys, 1801–1866). This study also benefits greatly from a thorough examination of two major unstudied textual sources: Jikmed Wangpo’s Records of Teachings Received (gsan yig)10 and the biography of his tutor Khenchen Gedun Gyatso (Ngag dbang ‘jam dbyangs dpal ldan [1764] n.d.),11 who played a significant role in Jikmed Wangpo’s scholastic career. There are a number of publications on Buddhist lineage transmission history in Tibet, most of which focus on the records of teachings received and are only useful for introducing a general audience to the formulaic text structures, genre requirements, technical lan- guage and providing overviews of well-known works in the genre.12 Additionally, there is considerable scholarship attending to the topic of legitimacy in the Nyingma and Geluk schools of Tibetan Buddhism. For example, David Germano describes the Nyingma lineage succession, proposing that lineage accounts were created to legitimize lineages within the Nyingma School, whose transmission authenticity was challenged from new translation schools (Germano 2012).
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