Early life Sakya Pandita was born as Palden Dondup at
Sakya in the noble family of Jamyanggön (Khön). This lineage had held the abbotship of Sakya on a hereditary basis since 1073. His father was Palchen Öpoche (1150–1203) and his mother Machig Nyitri Cham. Sakya Pandita was the nephew of
Jetsun Dragpa Gyaltsen (1147–1216), and became the principal disciple of this prominent scholar. He was instructed in the
sutras and
tantras by Dragpa Gyaltsen and mastered Sanskrit and three Inner Asian languages. Eventually he was initiated as a
śrāmaṇera by his master and given the religious name Künga Gyeltsen. As a young monk, he visited the prominent
Kashmiri scholar
Śākyaśribhadra, who ordained him as a
bhikśu in 1208, and taught him sutras and mantras. Legend has it that he visited
Kyirong on his way back, and there defeated a
brahman Shastri in a debate on logic. He then overcome his opponent in a contest of supernatural powers. As he wanted to show his fellow Tibetans the peculiar dress of
Indian Brahmin priests, he brought the Shastri to Tibet where he was killed by the protective deities of the land. The Shastri's head was then tied to a pillar of the great temple in Sakya which remained until modern times. The experience of Sakya Pandita with Indian learning provided a notably
Indian influence to his scholarship later on. His ordination as bhikśu marked the inception of Sakya as a proper monastic order. He acceded as
dansa chenpo or abbot-ruler of Sakya upon the death of his uncle Dragpa Gyaltsen in 1216.
Mongol invasion , one of the five founders of the
Sakya school of
Tibetan Buddhism, first vice-king of
Tibet. In 1253
Kublai Khan invited Sakya Pandita's Nephew
Chogyal Phagpa to court. As a result, Buddhism was declared the state religion and Phagpa was given authority over three of Tibet's provinces. According to later Tibetan historiography,
Genghis Khan subjugated a king of Tibet in 1206 and then sent a letter to the Sakya abbot. After the death of Genghis Khan in 1227, the Tibetans stopped sending tribute. This is, however, a legend without historical foundation. It is known, however, that the grandson of Genghis Khan and second son of
Ögedei Khan,
Godan Khan was granted an appanage at Liangzhou (present-day
Wuwei, Gansu) in 1239. In 1240 he sent an invasion force under Dorta into Tibet. The
Mongols reached the Phanyul Valley north of
Lhasa, killing some 500 monks and destroying and looting monasteries, villages and towns. The Gyal Lhakhang Monastery went up in flames and many monks of the
Reting Monastery were slaughtered by the horsemen. The
Drigung Monastery was saved, ostensibly since the Mongols believed that a sudden avalanche of stones could be attributed to the supernatural powers of the lamas. According to
L. Petech, the
Reting Monastery itself escaped destruction when Dorta reached
Dam, and its abbot suggested the Mongols to contact Sakya Paṇḍita, who was a famous author and religious figure and could represent the Tibetans vis-à-vis the Mongols. According to J.Y. Chang, it was rather the Drigung abbot who made the proposal. Later chronicles assert that Dorta sent message to Prince Godan and enumerated the four foremost sects and lamas of Tibet:
Kadam,
Taklung,
Drigung, and Sakya. Godan drew the conclusion that Sakya Pandita was an important and wise lama who could show the road to salvation, and ordered to send a letter of "invitation" and presents to him. The actual reason for selecting the Sakya might have been that the sect was specialized in magic rituals that resonated with Mongol beliefs, and was prominent in spreading Buddhist morality. It was also important that Sakya Paṇḍita was a religious hierarch by birth, and thus represented a dynastic continuity useful for the Mongol aim to rule via respected intermediaries.
The stay at the Mongol court In fact, recent research has shown that the letter of summons sent by Godan is a later fabrication. He gave religious instruction to the prince and greatly impressed the court with his personality and powerful teachings. He is also said to have cured Prince Godan of a serious illness, probably
leprosy. In return, he was allegedly given "temporal authority over the 13 myriarchies [
Trikor Chuksum] of Central Tibet." Since the myriarchies were not yet constituted by this time the story is not entirely correct. It should be understood in the sense that Sakya Paṇḍita was used as the main agent of the Mongols in Tibetan affairs. Tibetan historians quote a long letter by his hand to the various clerical and temporal lords in Tibet in 1249. In order to spare Tibet from devastating invasions, he wrote, it was necessary that the local regimes unconditionally accepted Mongol overlordship. A census was to be taken, and the lords must henceforth carry out the administration in consultation with envoys dispatched by Sakya and in accordance with Mongol law. However, the sources keep silent about the actual imposition of Mongol rule in these years. The death of Güyük Khan in 1248 led to internal rivalries in the dynasty of Genghis Khan until the enthronement of
Möngke Khan in 1251. This left Tibetan affairs in a state of limbo for the time being.
Death and inheritance Sakya Pandita died on 28 November 1251, at the age of seventy, in the Trulpaide temple in Liangzhou. He chose his brother's son Chogyal Phagpa as his heir, and nominated him before his death as the successor to his religious authority by giving him his conch shell and begging bowl. After his death Phagpa continued his mission. The conch is one of the
Ashtamangala and the begging bowl was a particular symbol of
Gautama Buddha and the
śramaṇas. After Sakya Pandita's death, the new Mongol ruler
Möngke Khan chose to patronize the
Drikung Kagyu while the other main schools were put under the protection of various Mongol princes. Nevertheless, a decree from 1252 stated that the Sakya precepts should be followed in the main. Meanwhile, Phagpa won a position in the court of Möngke's brother
Kublai Khan and became the tantric guru of the prince in 1258. When Kublai came to power in 1260 he appointed Phagpa
guoshi "preceptor of the kingdom". Thus began a strong Sakya-Mongol alliance, and the seat or
densa () of Sakya became the administrative capital of Tibet in 1264. This lasted until about the middle of the 14th century. During the reign of the 14th
Sakya Trizin,
Lama Dampa Sonam Gyaltsen, the myriarch
Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen of the
Phagmodrupa dynasty began to subordinate the Central Tibetan province
Ü, marking the "beginning of the end of the period of Sakya power in Central Tibet." In the lineage of the
Tibetan
Panchen Lamas there were considered to be four Indian and three Tibetan
tulkus of
Amitābha before
Khedrup Gelek Pelzang, 1st Panchen Lama. The lineage starts with
Subhuti, one of the original disciples of
Gautama Buddha. Sakya Paṇḍita is considered to be the second Tibetan emanation of Amitābha in this line. ==Work==