Dalai Lama

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Dalai Lama (Grand Lama) Supreme head of the Yellow Hat Buddhist monastery at Lhasa, Tibet. The title was bestowed upon the third Grand Lama by the Mongol ruler Altan Khan (d.1583). In 1642, the Mongols installed Ngawang Lopsang Gyatso (1617–82), fifth Dalai Lama, as political and spiritual ruler of Tibet. Dalai Lamas thereafter retained political leadership, but spiritual supremacy was later shared with the Panchen Lama. In 1950–51, Tenzin Gyatso (1935– ), 14th Dalai Lama, temporarily fled Tibet after it was annexed by the People's Republic of China. Following a brutally suppressed Tibetan uprising (1959), he went into exile in India. In Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is revered as the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. When a Dalai Lama dies, his soul is believed to pass into the body of an infant, born 49 days later.

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