The Fourth Dalai Lama

Yonten Gyatso, the Fourth Dalai Lama (1589-1617), was the great grandson of Altan Khan, the Mongolian tribal chieftain who first bestowed the title of Dalai Lama on Sonam Gyatsu, the Third Dalai Lama. Yonten Gyatso was also the only non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, first recognized as the reincarnation of Sonam Gyatso by Mongol leaders. However, because they had no authority to do so, it was only after much debate among the three great monasteries of Tibet, that Yonten Gyatso was declared the Fourth Dalai Lama.

For his early education, the Gelukpa leaders sent religious teachers from Drepung to Kokonor in Mongolia. Yonten Gyatso was later escorted to Tibet by an entourage of Mongol supporters, where he ascended the throne as the Fourth Dalai Lama at Drepung in 1601. He made his pilgrimage to Chhokhorgyal in 1606. In 1615, Chinese Emperor Wan-Li, who had invited the Third Dalai Lama Sonam Gyatso, also invited Dalai Lama Yonten Gyatso to visit China. And like his predecessor, he declined the invitation as well. He did however, send a Tibetan delegation to the Manchurian court at the invitation of Emperor Tai-tsung.

Because of the controversy surrounding his legitimacy as a true Dalai Lama, during the reign of Sonam Gyatso, Tibetan Buddhism was divided into conflicting factions that resulted in the persecution of Gelugpa followers by the Kagyupa (Red Hat) Order, and may even have resulted in the assassination of the Fourth Dalai Lama. Sonam Gyatso died mysteriously at the young age of 28 at the Ganden Phodang, the Palace of Joy, in 1617.