The Ganden Podrang: Sovereignty and Succession under the Dalai Lamas

The Ganden Podrang, founded during the lifetime of the Second Dalai Lama, Gendun Gyatso (1475–1542) as the enduring patrimonial estate of the Dalai Lama reincarnation lineage, has transformed several times several times during its long history. Originally the personal estate of the First to the Fourth Dalai Lamas, it became the foundation and seat of government from Lhasa under the Fifth Dalai Lama until 1959, whereupon it continued as the centre of the exiled administration in Dharamsala. In 2011, the resignation of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama from political activities meant that the Ganden Podrang returned to a smaller, trust-holding estate closer in nature to its original form under the Second Dalai Lama. The transformational history of the Ganden Podrang estate gives us insight into the Dalai Lama lineage as a legal and constitutional form. In particular, the historical continuity of the Ganden Podrang as an object of inheritance is centred on the Dalai Lama as a distinct and individual person rather than as an office (as applies to the American President or the British Prime Minister), but. In this regard, the Ganden Podrang estate is (and remained throughout its history) a personal possession, whose inheritance is overseen by those personally close to the Dalai Lama. In the Tibetan context, such relations are primarily understood in karmic terms spanning multiple lifetimes, including relations with other incarnate lineages such as the Panchen Lamas and deities such as Pehar and Palden Lhamo. In each of these cases, the relationship is not a formal constitutional one bound by laws, doctrinal regulations or cosmology, but by personal relations of friendship, tutelage, protection and care. Historically, it is these personal relations with the Dalai Lamas that are drawn upon to secure the reincarnation recognition process, rather than principles of state authority, bureaucratic administration or ecclesiastical authority.