Shalu Monastery

Shalu Monastery
Tibetan transcription(s)
Tibetan	ཞྭ་ལུ།
Wylie transliteration	Zhwa-lu
Official transcription (China)	Xalu
THL	Zhalu
Other transcriptions	Shalu
Chinese transcription(s)
Traditional	夏魯寺
Simplified	夏鲁寺
Pinyin	Xiàlǔ Sì
Monastery information
Location	Shigatse Prefecture, Tibet, China
Founded by	Chetsun Sherab Jungnay
Founded	1040
Date renovated	1333 (rebuilt) 2009- (undergoing restoration)
Type	Tibetan Buddhist
Sect	Sakya

Shalu Monastery (Tibetan: ཞྭ་ལུ།, Wylie: zhwa lu) is small monastery 22 kilometres (14 mi) south of Shigatse in Tibet. Founded in 1040 by Chetsun Sherab Jungnay, for centuries it was renowned as a centre of scholarly learning and psychic training and its mural paintings were considered to be the most ancient and beautiful in Tibet. Shalu was the first of the major monasteries to be built by noble families of the Tsangpa during Tibet's great revival of Buddhism, and was an important center of the Sakya tradition.

In 1329 a devastating earthquake demolished the temple of Shalu but was later rebuilt in 1333 by local lords under the command of Toghon Temür, last Khagan of the Mongol Empire. The new architectural framework of the monastery was dominated by Mongolian styles, with massive inward-sloping walls around a main courtyard and strong woodwork and glazed roof tiles from Qinghai.

At the time of the new establishment in the 1330s, Shalu Temple was under the command of the 11th Abbot, Buton Rinchen Drub, who lived 1290–1364. Buton was not merely a capable administrator but he is still remembered to this very day as a prodigious scholar and writer of the Sakya school and is Tibet's most celebrated historian. Buton catalogued all of the Buddhist texts at Shalu, some 4569 religious and philosophical works, and formatted them in a logical, coherent order. He also wrote the famous History of Buddhism in India and Tibet there, which many Tibetan scholars use in their study today.

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