ABSTRACT
The highest ranking religious and political figure of Tibetan Buddhism. Tenzin Gyatso (1935- ), the fourteenth Dalai Lama, was born in northeastern Tibet and now lives in exile in northern India. As a small boy he was recognized as the rebirth of the thirteenth Dalai Lama and was enthroned as the secular and spiritual ruler of Tibet. Like all Dalai Lamas (a title first bestowed by the Mongolian ruler Altan Khan in 1578), he is also believed to be an emanation of Tibet's patron deity, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In 1950, when the fourteenth Dalai Lama was fifteen, Chinese troops entered Tibet and soon incorporated it as a province into the newly formed People's Republic of China. In 1959 he escaped to India, where he reestablished his government in exile.
