A lama of the Drugpa Kagyu order

The distinctive red cap with its gold couching indicates that this lama is a member of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, based in Bhutan, one of the eight Kagyu (“oral”) lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. The lama’s left hand holds a sacred text, while his right hand is raised in the gesture of religious discussion.

From the early seventeenth century until 1907, Bhutan maintained a dual system of administration in which a spiritual leader ruled the clergy, and a temporal ruler looked after affairs of state. An inscription on an old paper tag attached to this thangka identifies the image as Shakya Gyaltsen, the thirty-fifth and thirty-eighth head abbot of Bhutan, who reigned from 1865–1869, and again in 1875.