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Bhutan Rivalry among the Sects
By the tenth century, Bhutan's political development
was
heavily influenced by its religious history. Following a
period in
which Buddhism was in decline in Tibet in the eleventh
century,
contention among a number of subsects emerged. The Mongol
overlords
of Tibet and Bhutan patronized a sequence of subsects
until their
own political decline in the fourteenth century. By that
time, the
Gelugpa or Yellow Hat school had, after a period of
anarchy in
Tibet, become a powerful force resulting in the flight to
Bhutan of
numerous monks of various minor opposing sects. Among
these monks
was the founder of the Lhapa subsect of the Kargyupa
school, to
whom is attributed the introduction of strategically built
dzong
(fortified monasteries--see Glossary).
Although the
Lhapa subsect had been successfully challenged in the
twelfth
century by another Kargyupa subsect--the Drukpa--led by
Tibetan
monk Phajo Drugom Shigpo, it continued to proselytize
until the
seventeenth century. The Drukpa subsect, an unreformed
Nyingmapa
group in Tibet, spread throughout Bhutan and eventually
became a
dominant form of religious practice. Between the twelfth
century
and the seventeenth century, the two Kargyupa subsects
vied with
one another from their respective dzong as the
older form of
Nyingmapa Buddhism was eclipsed.
Data as of September 1991
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