Before 1580, Muli was a colony of the Naxi kingdom and dominated by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. After 1640, it became a stronghold of the Tibetan Buddhist Geluk school and was deeply involved in the power struggles between the Geluk and Kakyu schools as well as the Tibetans and Mongols. Until 1950, Muli was a semi-independent theocratic kingdom ruled by a series of hereditary
lama kings based at the trio of
Gelug Buddhist monasteries at old Muli, Kulu and Waerdje. These lamaseries were overthrown by the new Communist government of China in the 1950s and destroyed during the
Cultural Revolution. The monastery at old Muli, north of the county seat, once housed more than 700 monks. It was originally built in the early
Qing dynasty, took 12 years to build and was completed in the 17th year of the reign of the
Shunzhi Emperor, around 1600. It was modelled on important lamaseries in
Tibet and is said to have contained an impressive golden statue of
Maitreya over 10 metres high. Since 1987, Muli Monastery has been partly restored and now has about eighty young monks in residence. It is near a modern small town called
Wachang, located high up on the western edge of the Litang River Valley at about 3000 metres altitude. The other monasteries are Kulu (now known as
Kangwu), which has been partially rebuilt, and
Waerdje (now
Wa’erzhai) which is still in ruins. Muli was visited by the botanist and explorer
Joseph Rock in the 1920s and 1930s. He befriended the then
lama king,
Chote Chaba, and used the monastery as a base for exploring and plant collecting in the then unvisited regions of
Mount Gongga and
Yading. Joseph Rock wrote colourful accounts of his encounters with the eccentric lama ruler of Muli in
National Geographic. These are said to have been the inspiration for the writer
James Hilton and his novel
Lost Horizon, about a remote monastery in the
Himalayas. ==Geography==