Drukpa Kagyu
Drukpa Kargyud Rinpoches
The Drukpa or Drukpa Kagyu (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་པ་བཀའ་བརྒྱུད) lineage, sometimes called Dugpa in older sources, is a branch of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Kagyu school is one of the Sarma or "New Translation" schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The Drukpa lineage was founded in the Tsang region of Tibet by Tsangpa Gyare (1161–1211), and later became influential in Ladakh and Bhutan. It is one of several lineages known as "Red Hat sects".
Within the Drukpa lineage, there are further sub-schools, most notably the eastern Kham tradition and middle Drukpa school which prospered in Ladakh and surrounding areas. In Bhutan the Drukpa lineage is the dominant school and state religion.
The Gyalwang Drukpa (Dzongkha: རྒྱལ་དབང་འབྲུག་པ་) is the honorific title of the head of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage. The first Gyalwang Drukpa and founder of the school was Tsangpa Gyare. The 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigme Pema Wangchen, is the current lineage holder.
History
The Drukpa Lineage was founded in the Tsang region of Tibet by Tsangpa Gyare (1161–1211), a disciple of Ling Repa.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Drukpa Kagyu” as drukpa Kargyud Rinpoches. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q784270. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1161 and 1211.
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This entry incorporates text from “Drukpa Kagyu” 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.