Rölpai Dorje (Rol pa'i rDo rje, "The Playful Vajra") was for half a century during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor the principal authority of Tibetan Buddhism at the Chinese court. This was a period when not less than 959 Tibetan and Mongolian monks stayed in the Qing capital (1736). Also known under the Mongolian hereditary title of Changkya Huthugtu (1), Dragpa Sonam (Grags pa bSod nams) — his personal name — was born in 1717 in a prominent Tibetanized Mongol family near Tsongkha in modern Gansu-Qinghai border area. Having been recognised as the reincarnation of the First Changkya Huthugtu, Ngawang Losang Chöden (Ngag dbang bLo bzang Chos ldan, 1642-1714), the spiritual mentor of the Kangxi and Yongzheng Emperor, Rolpai Dorje entered the nearby Gönlung monastery (dGon lung, Chin. Youning si "Temple of the Protecting Peace") (2) at the age of three (3). More...
The Manchu emperor's role as Manjushri incarnate followed the Yuan pattern of the Mongol rulers when Khubilai Khan — like his predecessors — was regarded as an incarnation of the bodhisattva Manjushri. In an inscription at the famous Juyong Guan ('Cloud Terrace') north of Beijing, one of the foremost decorated Buddhist monuments of the Yuan period of 1342/45, the Mongol ruler Toghon Temur (r. 1333-68) is named the 'Emperor Bodhisattva', and in a colophon to a Buddhist text translation a 'reincarnation of the teacher Buddha'. A similarly unusual epithet for a Chinese ruler has been written by the Qianlong emperor in the Yonghegong temple at Beijing in honour of his father Yongzheng who as 'King Shakyamuni... has manifested himself in his real shape'. More...