Chote Chaba


Chote Chaba was a Tibetan lama. He was the 18th king of Muli, which at the time was a small princely state on the border between Tibetan and Han Chinese civilisation, and now forms the Muli Tibetan Autonomous County in southwestern Sichuan province. He was also recognized as the 12th incarnation of the Migyur Khutughtu.

Title and reincarnation

The title of khutughtu, which is the Mongolian term for a reincarnate lama was granted to Chote Chamba's predecessor, the 10th Migyur, by the Qianlong Emperor of Qing China in 1751. The 10th Migyur also received the title of Nomun Khan.
Chote Chamba's reincarnation, the 13th Migyur Khutughtu, was born in Lithang in the year on July 4, 1935. He was recognized by Ngawang Legpa Rinpoche at the age of one, and was given the name Ngawang Tenzin Migyur. After the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the 13th Mingyur Rinpoche relocated to Taiwan at the invitation of the Kuomintang Intelligence Bureau, along with a members group led by Jama Samphe. He was as a member of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission and taught at the National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan.

Death

Chote Chamba was killed in September 1934.

Records

Joseph Rock, an Austrian-American botanist, travelled to Muli in the 1930s and befriended Chote Chamba. Rock recorded this in his diary, which is now collected in the Harvard University library.