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'Drepung Monastery' (); literally 'Rice Heap' monastery'^[1], located at the foot of Mount Gephel, is one of the "great three" Gelukpa university monasteries of Tibet.
The other two are Ganden and Sera.
Drepung is the largest of all Tibetan monasteries, and indeed at its peak was the largest monastery of any religion in the world. It was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Chojey, a direct disciple of Je Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelukpa school. It is located on the Gambo Utse mountain, 5 kilometers from the western suburb of Lhasa.
At its largest, before the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, the monastery housed fifteen thousand celibate monks. It was known for the high standards of its academic study, and was called the "Nalanda" of Tibet, a reference to the great Buddhist monastic university of Nalanda.

Drepung is divided into what are known as the seven great colleges - Gomang (sGo-mang), Loseling (Blo-gsal gling), Deyang (bDe-dbyangs), Shagkor (Shag-skor), Gyelwa (rGyal-ba) or Tosamling (Thos-bsam gling), Dulwa (‘Dul-ba), and Ngagpa (sNgags-pa). It can be a somewhat useful analogy to think of Drepung as a university along the lines of Oxford or the Sorbonne in the Middle Ages, the various colleges having different emphases, teaching lineages, or traditional geographical affiliations.

Today the population at the monastery located in Tibet is much smaller with merely a few hundred monks, due to population capping enforced by the Chinese government. However the institution has continued its tradition in exile within South India, relocated to land in Karnataka given to the Tibetan community in exile by Prime Minister Nehru. The monastery in India today houses over five thousand celibate monks, with around 3,000 at Drepung Loseling and some 2,000 at Drepung Gomang. Hundreds of new monks are admitted each year, many of them refugees from Tibet.

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References

1. ''Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land''. Patrick French. (2003) Alfred A. Knopf. New York City, p.240 (in quote from 13th Dalai Lama). ISBN 1-4000-4100-7


★ Dowman, Keith. 1988. ''The Power-places of Central Tibet: The Pilgrim's Guide''. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London and New York. ISBN 0-7102-1370-0

See also

★ An multimedia guide to Drepung

★ Drepung Loseling Institute in North America

★ A Brief History of Drepung Monastery

★ The Gomang College home page