Sekhar Guthok Monastery 赛卡古托寺

About Sekhar Guthok Monastery

The Shannan Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism gives the monastery a site of more than 4,700 square metres, facing west, with more than 900 years of history, and says it was a Kagyu house before changing to the Gelug school; its principal images are Shakyamuni and Marpa the great translator. In 2001 the State Council published it in the fifth batch of national key cultural relics protection units. The bureau parses the name from its landmark building — a square-plan palace nine storeys high — as 赛 for a young lord, 卡 for a fort and 古托 for nine storeys, whence the alternative name 九层公子堡.

The two narrative sources cited here disagree about how the tower came to be built. A 2019 China Tibet News report by staff journalists Ma Jing and Liu Feng dates the construction to 1078 and says Milarepa built it single-handed over six years; a 2013 Tibet News Network account carried by the Shannan municipal news portal puts it at about 1080, with Marpa paying for it and directing his disciple Milarepa to raise a tower for Marpa's son 达玛多德, together with the twelve-pillar 噶哇久尼殿 below it, again over six years. The two also differ on the building itself: China Tibet News describes a nine-storey tower reaching 28 metres with a gilded roof, while the 2013 account gives a seven-storey main body with stone walls to the top and steep internal stairs, then counts nine storeys inside — first and second basement and storage, third to seventh the original fabric, eighth and ninth rebuilt in 1985. Both sources liken the exterior to an old blockhouse and to Yumbulagang (雍布拉康), and both call the monastery the place where the White sect (白教) originated. Neither disagreement is resolved here.

The 2013 account traces later work on the building: a large repair and enlargement by the Kagyu scholar Pawo Tsuglag Trengwa (巴俄·祖拉陈哇) in the first half of the sixteenth century, which it says produced the present scale and whose Dukang hall murals he is said to have painted himself; a rule under the Fifth Dalai Lama that the Kashag government repair the monastery once in every rabjung cycle; and a last repair in 1944 presided over by the incumbent lama of Sangzhu monastery, after which religious practice there followed mainly Gelug teaching. It sets out the Dukang great hall on the west side of the fort, with a two-pillar verandah, a thirty-pillar assembly hall painted on all four walls, a four-pillar Buddha hall behind it and, west of that, a two-pillar tantric hall whose images stand about 2.4 metres high.

Both the bureau and China Tibet News single out, among the murals, those by 门拉顿珠嘉措 (Menla Dondrup Gyatso), founder of the 门当 (Menthang) painting school and one of the four great painters of Tibet, showing Marpa the translator and Milarepa. The murals are of varying dates and are held mainly in the Saikagutuo fort, the assembly and Buddha halls of the Dukang hall, the tantric hall and the halls named 江久拉康 and 拉玛拉康. During the repair reported in 2019, Qiangba Ciren, deputy director of the Shannan Municipal Culture (Cultural Relics) Bureau, explained the 阿嘎 flooring being beaten on the roof as a building material peculiar to Tibetan areas, a powder of weathered limestone or sandy argillaceous rock whose use he traced back to the Tang dynasty. No cited source states which halls or storeys of the monastery visitors may enter.

The bureau also lists the monastery's movable holdings: Tubo-period handwritten scriptures; a stone butter lamp called 多供, said to have been worn on the head by Milarepa while meditating; a Vajrapani father-and-son image unearthed by Pema Lingpa (白玛林巴); thangkas on Milarepa's life; and sculptures of Marpa, Milarepa and other Kagyu masters together with ritual implements they used.

What to look for

• The nine-storey tower that gives the monastery its name, square in plan and likened by two sources to Yumbulagang
• The murals attributed to 门拉顿珠嘉措, founder of the 门当 painting school, depicting Marpa the translator and Milarepa
• The Dukang great hall on the west side of the fort — a thirty-pillar assembly hall painted on all four walls, with a four-pillar Buddha hall behind it
• The two-pillar tantric hall west of the Buddha hall, whose images stand about 2.4 metres high
• The stone butter lamp called 多供, associated by the culture bureau with Milarepa's meditation, among the monastery's Tubo-period manuscripts and Kagyu sculptures

Location & getting there

Getting to Sekhar Guthok Monastery

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 赛卡古托寺 with 山南市 and 洛扎县.