Institutional Networks

Chapter 6 offers a discussion of the several monasteries and chapels that have strong connections to Nechung Monastery, and which form a larger ritual hegemony that reinforces the dominance of the Dalai Lamas’ state cult. These centers predominantly include institutions that have ties to other monasteries or are older than Nechung yet were brought into its liturgical and iconographic orbit, such as Meru Nyingpa, Gadong Monastery, Tsel Yangön, and Karmasha Chapel. Smaller chapels like Banakzhöl have more direct influence, but all of them evince an increase in ritual ties to the Five King Spirits, their retinue, and to the cult of Nechung more explicitly. This connection began in the seventeenth century and expanded in the following centuries under the administration of later Dalai Lamas.