abstract
| - Lungtok Gyatso (1805–1815), also spelled Lungtog Gyatso and Luntok Gyatso, was the 9th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Lungtok Gyatso was born in 1805 near Choekor Monastery in Dan Chokhor, a small village in the historical region of Kham to Tenzin Choekyong and Dhondup Dolma. In 1807, he was recognized as the reincarnation of the Eighth Dalai Lama and was escorted to Lhasa with great ceremony. In 1810, he was enthroned at the Potala Palace on the Golden Throne of the Ganden Po-drang Government. He took his novice vows from the Panchen Lama, who gave him the name Lungtok Gyatso. This same year the elderly Regent, Ta-task Nga-wang Gon-po died and the De-mo Tul-ku Nga-wang Lo-zang Tub-ten Jig-me Gya-tso (d. 1819) was appointed to replace him. "The English explorer Thomas Manning, who reached Lhasa in 1812, described his meeting with the 9th Dalai Lama, who was seven years old at the time, in rhapsodic terms. 'The lama's beautiful and interesting face engrossed all my attention,' Manning wrote. 'He had the simple, unaffected manners of a well-educated princely child. His face was, I thought, affectingly beautiful. He was of a gay and cheerful disposition. I was extremely affected by this interview with the lama. I could have wept through strangeness of sensation.'" He served only briefly owing to his death at the age of 9 in 1815. "The entire nation was plunged into sorrow", which lasted until the recognition of the new reincarnation eight years later. "During the period of the short-lived Dalai Lamas—from the Ninth to the Twelfth incarnations—the Panchen was the lama of the hour, filling the void left by the four Dalai Lamas who died in their youth."
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