Ngawang Lopsang Gyatso, chösi nyitrel, and the Unification of Tibet in 1642.

This paper explores some of the Tibetan sources related to the enthronement of the Fifth Dalai Lama and the unification of Tibet in 1642. A Tibetan reading of this period of history has argued consistently that the Fifth Dalai became the absolute power in Tibet after the military campaign by the Mongol Güüsh [Gushri] Khan and that this event created the unifiation of the Tibetan state. This paper argues that a different reading of the historial sources point to the possibility that the Fifth Dalai Lama did not have absolute political power in 1642 but his sucessors did after the death of Lhazang Khan's death in 1717. However, the Fifth Dalai Lama consolidated national festivals of unity created previously by Tsong Khapa, founder of the Gelugpa, and exercised an absolute power over the centrality of his own monastic order over other forms of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet during the seventeenth century by advocating a principle of unity between religion and politics (chösi nyitrel). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]