Skip to content
Wellsprings
The Fourth Dalai Lama (Yönten Gyatso)

The Fourth Dalai Lama (Yönten Gyatso)

1589 CE–1617 CE · Modern · Tümed Mongol lands (Mongolia)

1589–1617 CE

Yönten Gyatso (1589–1617 CE) is the only Dalai Lama born outside Tibet: he was born in Mongol territory as a great-grandson of Altan Khan, the very ruler who had conferred the title on his predecessor, a recognition that further bound the Mongol leadership to the Gelug school. Brought to Tibet around 1601 for his monastic education, he became abbot of Drepung and Sera but played little political role and died at Drepung at about twenty-seven. His Mongol origin is historically significant; his life is otherwise sparsely documented and his dates are securely attested.

See The Fourth Dalai Lama (Yönten Gyatso)’s journey on the map →

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →

Stop 1 of 2Born

Tümed Mongol lands (Mongolia)

What they did here

DOCUMENTED ORIGIN: born into Mongol nobility as a great-grandson of Altan Khan and recognized as the reincarnation of Sönam Gyatso; the only Dalai Lama born outside Tibet.

About Tümed Mongol lands (Mongolia)

The lands of the Tümed Mongols, in what is now the Inner Mongolia / Mongolia region, were brought into the Gelug Buddhist fold in the late sixteenth century under Altan Khan. The Fourth Dalai Lama, Yönten Gyatso (born 1589), was a great-grandson of Altan Khan and the only Mongol ever recognised as a Dalai Lama.

See other sages who lived in Tümed Mongol lands (Mongolia)→

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with The Fourth Dalai Lama (Yönten Gyatso)’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

No works attributed in the corpus yet.