Samye (Tibetan: བསམ་ཡས་, Wylie: bsam yas, Chinese: 桑耶寺) was the first gompa (Buddhist monastery) built in Tibet. It was probably first constructed between 775-9 under the patronage of King Trisong Detsen of Tibet who sought to revitalize Buddhism, which had declined since its introduction by King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. The monastery is in Dranang, Lhoka. It was supposedly modeled on the design of Odantapuri in what is now Bihar, India. The 18th century Puning Temple built by the Qianlong Emperor of Qing China in Chengde, Hebei was modeled after Samye. The original buildings have long disappeared. They have been badly damaged several times — by civil war in the 11th century, fires in the mid 17th century and in 1826, an earthquake in 1816, and in the 20th century, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. As late as the late 1980s pigs and other farm animals were allowed to wander through the sacred buildings. Each time it has been rebuilt, and today, largely due to the efforts of Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama from 1986 onward, it is again an active monastery and important pilgrimage and tourist destination.
Yumbu Lakhang (Tibetan: ཡུམ་བུ་བླ་སྒང།, Wylie: yum bu bla sgang) or Yumbu Lakhang (Tibetan: །, Wylie: yum bu bla mkhar, also known as Yumbu Lakhang) is an ancient structure in the Yarlung Valley in the vicinity of Tsetang, Nêdong County, the seat of Lhoka Prefecture, in the southern Tibet Autonomous Region of China. According to legend, it was the first building in Tibet and the palace of the first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo. Yumbu Lakhang stands on a hill on the eastern bank of the Yarlung River in the Yarlung Valley of southeast Nêdong County about 192 kilometres (119 mi) southeast of Lhasa and 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) south of Tsetang. According to Bon traditions, Yumbu Lakhang was erected in the second century BCE for the first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo, who descended from the sky. During the reign of the 28th king, Thothori Nyantsen, in the fifth century CE, a golden stupa, a jewel (and/or a form to the manufacture of dough-Stupas) and a sutra that no one could read fell from the sky onto the roof of the Yumbu Lakhang; a voice from the sky announced, "In five generations one shall come that understands its meaning!" Later, Yumbu Lakhang became the summer palace of the 33rd Tibetan king, Songtsän Gampo (604-650 CE) and his Chinese princess, Wencheng. After Songtsän Gampo had transferred the seat of his temporal and spiritual authority to Lhasa, Yumbu Lakhang became a shrine. A thousand years later, during the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama (1617-82), the palace was turned into a monastery for the Gelug school. The Yumbu Lakhang was heavily damaged and reduced to a single storey during the Cultural revolution but was reconstructed in 1983.
