Description:
This 400 year old monastery is one of the ancient monasteries of India and also one of the biggest in India. The Tawang Monastery or the Galden Namgyel Lhatse means celestial paradise. According to a legend the founder of the Monastery dreamt about a celestial horse rubbing its paw on the ground and that is supposed to be the place where the monastery was built. It is one of the largest Lamaseries of the Mahayana sect of Buddhism in the whole of Asia. The Lamaseries comprise of several sections dating back to four hundred years and devoted to Love, Learning and Purity of life. The monastery stands on a hill nearly 10,000 feet above the sea level and offers great panoramic views of the place and around. Founded by a monk Mera Lama in the 17th century, this place houses rare scripts. The nine meter tall Buddha statue and gold lettered copies of sacred Buddhist script are other attractions of this place. More than 500 lamas live here to learn and take training in the Buddhist ideology.
Th Urgelling Monastery is believed to be the actual birth place of the sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso later renamed as Ngawang Gyamtso. The monastery stands on place where the young boy was playing and was suddenly summoned. He wrote by his fingers on a stone slab the words God Knows and they got permanently embossed on it. They still remain though the monastery was destroyed in later periods by various Mughal and Mongoloid rulers. The other important monastery in the area is the Taktsang Monastery.
