Yeshe Gyatso

Yeshe Gyatso (Wylie: Ye shes rgya mts'o) (1686-1725) was a pretender for the position of the 6th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Declared by Lha-bzang Khan of the Khoshut Khanate on June 28, 1707, he was the only unofficial Dalai Lama. While praised for his personal moral qualities, he was not recognized by the bulk of the Tibetans and Mongols and is not counted in the official list of the Dalai Lamas.

Pekar Dzinpa, later known as Yeshe Gyatso, was born in 1686 near the banks of Dzun Khulkhawa Karpo in Kham. He may have been the natural son of the Khoshut prince Lha-bzang Khan. He entered the Drepung Monastery at a young age in 1699 and later moved to the Chakpori Hill in Lhasa, where he stayed at the medical college. The Khoshut rulers were protector-kings of Tibet from 1642 to 1717, but had a limited political role since the Dalai Lama or his desi (regent) held most of the authority. The ambitious Lha-bzang Khan succeeded to the royal dignity in 1703 and set out to change this. In 1705 he eliminated the powerful desi Sangye Gyatso and then moved against the young 6th Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, whose libertine conduct he resented. Tsangyang Gyatso was arrested and declared deposed. The king, collaborating with the imperial Chinese authorities, dispatched the prisoner towards the Qing Dynasty court in Beijing. However, Tsangyang Gyatso died on the way in November 1706, either murdered or succumbing to illness. At this time Pekar Dzinpa was still a lama at the Chakpori medical college. Now Lha-bzang Khan pointed out the young man as the real 6th Dalai Lama. He officially proclaimed his supposed son in 1707 under the pretext that Tsangyang Gyatso had been erroneously initiated as the reincarnation of the 5th Dalai Lama (d. 1682). The Panchen Lama gave him both novice vows and the vows of full ordination at a grand ceremony before the Jowo image in Lhasa. As Dalai Lama he received the name Ngawang Yeshe Gyatso, or Yeshe Gyatso for short. In Beijing the Kangxi Emperor initially supported the claim and issued an official recognition on 10 April 1710, thus dunning the Tibetans to recognize him and obey Lha-bzang Khan.

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