This Grand Lama died at the age of forty-seven, and it is significant that the next incarnation appeared in the Mongol royal house, being a great-grandson of Altan Khagan.  Until he was fourteen he lived in Mongolia and when he moved to Lhasa a Lama was appointed to be his vicar and Primate of all Mongolia with residence at Kuren or Urga.[959] The prelates of this line are considered as incarnations of the historian Taranatha.[960] In common language they bear the name of rJe-btsun-dam-pa but are also called Maidari Khutuktu, that is incarnation of Maitreya.  About this time the Emperor of China issued a decree, which has since been respected, that these hierarchs must be reborn in Tibet, or in other words that they must not reappear in a Mongol family for fear of uniting religion and patriotism too closely.

Lozang,[961] the fifth Grand Lama, is by common consent the most remarkable of the pontifical line.  He established the right of himself and his successors—­or, as he might have said, of himself in his successive births—­to the temporal and ecclesiastical sovereignty of Tibet:  he built the Potala and his dealings with the Mongols and the Emperor of China are of importance for general Asiatic history.

From the seventeenth century onwards there were four factors in Tibetan politics.

1.  The Gelugpa or Yellow Church, very strong but anxious to become stronger both by increasing its temporal power and by suppressing other sects.  Its attitude towards Chinese and Mongols showed no prejudice and was dictated by policy.

2.  The Tibetan chiefs and people, on the whole respectful to the Yellow Church but not single-hearted nor forgetful of older sects:  averse to Chinese and prone to side with Mongols.

3.  The Mongols, conscious of their imperfect civilization and anxious to improve themselves by contact with the Lamas.  As a nation they wished to repeat their past victories over China, and individual chiefs wished to make themselves the head of the nation.  People and princes alike respected all Lamas.

4.  The Chinese, apprehensive of the Mongols and desirous to keep them tranquil, caring little for Lamaism in itself but patiently determined to have a decisive voice in ecclesiastical matters, since the Church of Lhasa had become a political power in their border lands.

Lo-zang was born as the son of a high Tibetan official about 1616 and was educated in the Depung monastery under the supervision of Chos-kyi-Gyal-tsan, abbot of Tashilhunpo and a man of political weight.  The country was then divided into Khamdo, Wu and Tsang, or Eastern, Central and Western Tibet, and in each province there ruled a king of the Phagmodu dynasty.  In Central Tibet, and specially at Lhasa, the Gelugpa was the established church and accepted by the king but in the other provinces there was much religious strife and the older sects were still predominant.  About 1630 the regent of Tsang captured Lhasa and