Place · cliff Buddhist monastery · India
Dhankar Monastery, Spiti
Also known as Dhankar Gompa, Dhankar Monastery, Lahaul, Spiti, Spiti, Lahaul-Spiti
The Dhankar Monastery at Dhankar in Lahaul and Spiti district, Himachal Pradesh, at 3,894 metres — a 12-century cliff monastery once the political seat of the Nono (feudal lord) of Spiti valley. The monastery is dramatically perched on a 300-metre vertical cliff above the Spiti river at the confluence with the Pin river. The gompa belongs to the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism and houses about 150 monks. The monastery's distinctive feature is its position as both political citadel (fort) and religious centre — the Nono administered Spiti from Dhankar until the 1846 British absorption of Spiti into the Jammu-Kashmir state. The monastery is on the World Monuments Fund's Watch List since 2006 due to the cliff's instability. The 2015 restoration project stabilised the central temple. The Dhankar Lake (hike from the monastery) is a sacred alpine lake.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.068, 78.201
Connections (2)
- Companion in the same setKi Monastery, Spiti
Dhankar and Ki are both Spiti cliff monasteries and both are structurally precarious — Dhankar stands on eroding conglomerate above the Spiti and Pin confluence and is on the endangered list, its community largely moved to a new building below. It was the fort and seat of the Nono, Spiti's ruler.
- Site adjacencyTabo Monastery, Spiti
Dhankar is a cliff-top Gelug gompa above the Spiti-Pin confluence; Tabo is the great mud-brick monastery of Spiti's lower valley about 30 kilometres further down. They are neighbouring houses of Spiti's monastic landscape, not one inside the other.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Dhankar Gompa”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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