Tibetan Buddhism

King Trisong Detsen made Buddhism the state religion of Tibet in the eighth century, inviting Padmasambhava and Śāntarakṣita, the founders of the Nyingma school, and Samye became its first monastery. In the eleventh century the Kagyu and Sakya schools arose from newer translations from India.

The Mongols took Tibet in the thirteenth century and made Sakya Paṇḍita their viceroy in 1249, and Buddhism became the de facto state religion of the Yuan dynasty. Bön, the older native faith, borrowed heavily from it and stands closest to the Nyingma school.

After the Yuan fell in 1368, rival noble families ruled Tibet. Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) founded the Gelug school, whose Dalai Lamas gained the Mongol title in 1578 from Altan Khan; the Fifth Dalai Lama set up the Ganden Phodrang government in the 1640s.