Gelug School

Timeline

1. 1409Lhasa and Wangbur Mountain · LhasaTsongkhapa held the Great Prayer Festival in Lhasa and the same year founded Ganden Monastery on Wangbur Mountain. Banners of discipline reform, Madhyamaka, and graded sutra-tantra study, the school broke away from its previous state of teaching under the patronage of other schools and formed a recognizable independent monastic organization.
2. 1416–1419Monastery district of the Lhasa River valley · LhasaJamyang Chöje founded Drepung Monastery and Shakya Yeshe founded Sera Monastery, forming with Ganden the three great monasteries of Lhasa. Each monastery established colleges (dratsang), debate, and degree systems, giving the Gelug school a scalable system for training scholastic monks that no longer depended on a single founding master's presence.
3. 1419–1440Ganden Monastery · DagzêGyaltsab Je and Khedrup Je successively served as Ganden Tripa, transforming the founding master's charisma into a transferable throne system. Under the Phagdrup regime the school expanded its estates and affiliated monasteries, and study, discipline, and ritual tended toward uniformity, forming a cross-regional monastic organization.
4. 1447Ü-Tsang and Tsang · TibetGendün Drub built Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tsang, extending the Gelug monastery network from the Lhasa River valley to Shigatse. Thereafter the school continued to expand its study system across Tibet, and in modern times established lineage centers in India, Mongolia, Europe, and America, still organized around the Ganden Tripa and the study systems of the great monasteries. This entry does not treat the late 16th-century Mongol political-religious alliance as a founding event.