The 9th Jebtsundamba Khutughtu (6 January 1933 – 1 March 2012) was recognized as the ninth reincarnation of the Jebtsundamba Khutughtu (Mongolian: “Holy Precious Master"), the third highest lama in the Tibetan Buddhism hierarchy and the spiritual leader of the Gelug lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia.
He was born as Jampal Namdröl Chökyi Gyaltsen on 6 January 1933 in Lhasa, Tibet. Six months after his birth, his parents separated and his mother left him in the care of his uncle who was a bodyguard of the thirteenth Dalai Lama. The thirteenth Dalai Lama died in December 1933, and the fifth Reting Rinpoche (the abbot of Reting Monastery), Jamphel Yeshe Gyaltsen, became Regent of Tibet until a new Dalai Lama was discovered and crowned.
As a result of the Mongolian Revolutionary government’s atheistic policies, the Mongolian lamas were unable to proclaim the discovery of the ninth Jebtsundamba Khutughtu, so Gyaltsen recognised the boy, then age four, as the reincarnation of the eighth Jebtsundamba Khutughtu (who had briefly ruled Mongolia as the Bogd Khan), after he had passed three sets of tests in 1936.
At the age of seven, he entered the Drepung Monastery, but because his identity was kept secret, he could not enter the Khalkha Mitsen, but had to follow the life of a common monk. At age 25, he renounced his monastic vows and became a householder, took a wife and had two children. When the fourteenth Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet in 1959, the Jebtsundamba Khutughtu did also, fearing that his identity would be revealed and he would be killed or used by the Communists for propaganda.
The 14th Dalai Lama flees to India, 17 March 1959
In exile in India, he worked at various jobs, including in the Tibetan language section of All India Radio, and at Tibet House in New Delhi. His first wife died, and he remarried. In 1975, his family (now including seven children), moved to Karnataka. In 1984, Jampal Namdol visited Lhasa, and in 1990 the Dalai Lama issued a statement revealing the identity of the ninth Khutughtu.
In 1991 the Dalai Lama performed an installation ceremony in Madhya Pradesh and in 1992 an enthronement ceremony in Dharmshala for the ninth Bogd Gegeen. In 2010 he came to Mongolia at the invitation of the Gandantegchinlin Monastery and received Mongolian citizenship, and in November 2011 was enthroned as the head of Buddhism in Mongolia.
The 9th Jebtsundamba Khutughtu enthroned
The ninth Jebtsundamba Khutughtu died on 1 March 2012 in the Mongol capital of Ulaanbaatar after a prolonged illness.
On 23 November 2016, during a visit to Mongolia, the Dalai Lama announced his belief that the 10th Jebtsundamba Khutughtu had been reborn in Mongolia and that a process for identifying him had begun.
Altar of the 9th Jebtsundamba Khutughtu in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
