ABSTRACT
The Buddha had exhorted his monks to go forth and teach “for the benefit of gods and humans,” and Buddhism spread throughout most of the Indian subcontinent in the centuries after his death, an expansion supported by the patronage of the Emperor Asoka of the Mauryan dynasty, who ruled India from 269 to 232 bce. Based on their readings of Buddhist texts, and their own enlightenment sensibilities, they painted a portrait of the Buddha whose image would be reproduced around the world and up to the present day. In Tibet, 1900 was the Iron Mouse year of the fifteenth cycle. The thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thupten Gyatso. The institution of the Dalai Lama presented a unique model of political succession. From one perspective, it provided a kind of supernatural continuity, as the same enlightened being returned to the throne from generation to generation over the centuries, invested with a level of charisma exceeding that of more ordinary kings.
