Dondup Tseten Dorje

Dondup Tseten Dorje (Tibetan: ཌོན་གྲུབ་ཙའེ་བརྟན་རྡོ་རྗེ, Wylie: Don grub ts'e brtan rdo rje) (d. 1620) was the penultimate prince of the Rinpungpa Dynasty which held power in Tsang (West Central Tibet) between 1435 and 1565.

Dondup Tseten Dorje was the second son of the Rinpungpa lord Ngawang Namgyal. He succeeded his father as the prince of Tsang at an uncertain date in the mid-sixteenth century, probably in 1544, since his elder brother Padma Karpo had died young. He was reputedly a valiant warrior. Like his predecessors he was a patron of the Karmapa sect of Buddhism. He assisted the Karmapa hierarch Mikyö Dorje (1507–54) to build the Sungrap Ling monastery. He also established a preceptor-patron relationship with the lama Kunkhyen Pema Karpo (1527–92) of the Drukpa Kagyu sect, who visited Dondup Tseten Dorje in his castle in 1549. The prince had good religious knowledge and received instruction in Vajrayanasikhara mysticism in the school of the lama Tashi Palzang. Even before the death of his father he expanded Rinpungpa territory by gaining possession of the fief Lhundrubtse in the Nam region. The dynasty tried unsuccessfully to continue the westward expansion initiated by Ngawang Namgyal. Dondup Tseten Dorje or his brother Ngawang Jigme Drakpa suffered a notable defeat in 1555 when the Rinpungpa vainly attacked the Mangyül Gungthang kingdom in western Tibet. The prince himself is not known for political activity after the mid-sixteenth century, although he lived a long life and died in 1620. His junior brother Ngawang Jigme Drakpa is referred as the ruler of the Rinpungpa in the 1560s when the power of the dynasty was decisively broken by the new Tsangpa Dynasty.

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