Druk
creature in Tibetan and Bhutanese mythology; a Bhutanese national symbol
The Druk (Standard Tibetan: འབྲུག, Dzongkha: འབྲུག་) is the "thunder dragon" of Tibetan and Bhutanese mythology and a Bhutanese national symbol. A druk appears on the flag of Bhutan, holding jewels to represent wealth. In Dzongkha, Bhutan is called Druk Yul "Land of Druk", and Bhutanese leaders are called Druk Gyalpo, "Thunder Dragon Kings". During the Bhutanese mock election in 2007, all four mock parties were called the Druk [colour] Party. The national anthem of Bhutan, Druk tsendhen, translates into English as "Kingdom of Druk".
The druk (also known as a "duk" or "dug") was adopted as an emblem by the Drukpa Lineage, which originated in Tibet and spread to Bhutan. According to traditional accounts, when the sect's founder, Tsangpa Gyare, 1st Gyalwang Drukpa, began to build Ralung Monastery, there was a violent storm. Thunder, or the "Cloud-Voice", is seen as the roar of the dragon. Deciding that this was an omen, he named the monastery Drug-Ralung, adding the word "thunder dragon" to the name. The disciples at the monastery were known as Drugpa, or "Those of the Thunder." As of the 1900s, the Grand Lama of Bhutan wore a hat with thunder dragons on it to signify the origins of the sect.
“Druk” enters the record as creature in Tibetan and Bhutanese mythology; a Bhutanese national symbol. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Druk, creature and Tibetan can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Druk” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Druk, creature and Tibetan provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2344734. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Druk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.