So I said that I wouldn't do this again, but here we are.

Because these videos are taking a lot of time to make, I'm going to do another two-in-one

kind of lecture, but I'm falling behind in my lecturing.

This is weeks nine and ten, but the content is really going to cover weeks eight and nine.

So consider this week eight, part two, and part one of week nine.

That means that we're going to cover the government of the Dalai Lamas, starting with the first

Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, who's actually considered to be the third Dalai Lama by Tibetans.

It's a bit complicated.

I'll get to that in a moment.

Then we'll cover the rise of the Galukpa sect and their hegemony.

This will lead us up to the fall of the Ming, and in the second part of the lecture I'll

get into Sino-Tibetan relations under the Qing.

This is a point, honestly, where things get very complicated, as there are kind of three

distinct phases in the relationship between the Qing and the dominant political factions

in Tibetan-speaking territories.

I'm only going to cover the first of those stages in this lecture, but it's still a lot

to squeeze into one talk.

Once again, this is a section where my lecture should be considered a supplement to the readings

and not the other way around.

In particular, the readings from Warren Smith in week eight provide a pretty good survey

of Tibetan political and administrative changes during the early Qing period.

But we are going to start at the beginning of the 15th century with the emergence of

the Galuk sect.

Now the Galukpa were founded by Je Tsongkhapa, a conservatively-minded monastic figure who

was particularly fond of the Kadam school of Tibetan Buddhism, which was in decline

by the end of the 14th century.

The Kadam practiced very much a form of high monasticism.

It was an intellectualist tradition that focused on philosophy and Buddhist traditions of logic

and debate, as opposed to the more esoterically-oriented sects, which prioritized, in effect, magical

or quasi-magical practices.

Now because Tsongkhapa drew so much influence from the Kadam, the Galukpa, the followers

of the Galuk sect, were also sometimes called the New Kadam or the New Kadampas.

In many respects, the early Galuk sect represented a desire to reform the older sects, the so-called

Red Hat sects, to get rid of their esoteric practices and focus on a rigid form of monasticism

and the study of philosophy, as well as highly structured meditation practices as the legitimate

route to enlightenment.

Of course, that's simplifying things pretty considerably, but I think it's a constructive

way to think of the Galukpa.

In any case, the Galuk movement caught on really quickly, and within the space of a

few decades, they became a major monastic faction in central Tibet, which is particularly

surprising because they had very little support from the aristocracy.

Now the Galuk really began to rise to power in the late 16th and 17th centuries, but the

first question you might have is why would the Galuk school gain such a large following

in central Tibet?

In a nutshell, the answer is that by the 15th century, I think that there was a sentiment

that the Red Hat sects were in need of reformation, systemic reformation, that they had become

somewhat hedonistic and corrupt, which led to more conservative leaning factions supporting

the Galuk at an early stage.

The Galuk built three major monastic centers, Ganden, Drepung, and Seram monasteries, some

of the largest in Tibet, all in the decade between 1409 and 1419, during the height of