Place · high-altitude Memba valley · India
Mechuka Valley
Also known as Menchuka
Mechuka in the Shi-Yomi district on the Yargyap Chu river sits at 1,890 metres in a wide glacial valley twenty-nine kilometres from the Line of Actual Control with Tibet. It is the ancestral home of the Memba, a Monpa-related Tibetan-speaking Buddhist people who migrated from the Tsangpo basin in the 17th century following Lama Lhatsang Tenpai Gyaltsen and preserve the Pemako hidden-land tradition. The 400-year-old Samten Yongcha monastery of the Mahayana Nyingma school sits on a knoll above the village. Mechuka was closed to non-Arunachalis until 2003 and remains an Inner Line Permit area; it was briefly occupied by the Chinese PLA in the 1962 war.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 28.611, 94.125
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyTawang
Mechuka in the Shi-Yomi district and the Tawang monastery in Tawang district are the two Nyingma Pemako-tradition and Gelug-tradition anchors of Arunachal's Tibetan Buddhist landscape — Mechuka's 400-year-old Samten Yongcha monastery was founded by Lama Lhatsang Tenpai Gyaltsen in the 17th century as a Memba station in the Pemako hidden-land tradition, while Tawang is the second-largest Gelug monastery in the world after Lhasa's Drepung. Both lie within thirty kilometres of the Line of Actual Control with Tibet and both were briefly occupied by the Chinese PLA in the 1962 war.
Sources
Standard reference.
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