Desi Sangye Gyatso
Tibetan regent
Kalon Sangye Gyatso (1653–1705) was the sixth regent of the 5th Dalai Lama (1617–1682), in the Ganden Phodrang government. He founded the Chagpori College of Medicine in 1694, a Traditional Tibetan medicine school for monks which grew in 1916 under the 13th Dalai Lama to include Astrology and Astronomy departments collectively called the Men-Tsee-Khang. He wrote the Blue Beryl (Blue Sapphire) medical treatise, and illustrated medical thankas. His name is sometimes written as Sangye Gyamtso and Sans-rGyas rGya-mTsho
In some accounts, Sangye Gyatso is believed to be the son of the "Great Fifth", but he was born near Lhasa in September 1653, when the Dalai Lama had been absent on his trip to China for the preceding sixteen months. He ruled as the Kalon (regent) of the Dalai Lama and under his instructions hid the death of the Dalai Lama for 15 to 16 years while the infant 6th Dalai Lama was growing up. During this period, he oversaw the completion of the Potala Palace, and warded off Chinese politicking.
He is also known for harboring disdain for Tulku Dragpa Gyaltsen, although this monk died in 1656 when Sangye Gyatso was only three years old. According to Lindsay G. McCune in her 2007 thesis, Sangye Gyatso refers in his Vaidurya Serpo to the monk as the "pot-bellied official" (nang so grod lhug) and states that following his death, he had an inauspicious rebirth.
Chagpori College of Medicine
Sangye Gyatso founded the Chagpori College of Medicine in 1694, under the commission of the 5th Dalai Lama. The college was designed for monastic scholars who would, after learning esoteric arts of medicine and tantrism serve the public as would other monk scholars and lamas.
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