Person
Ngawang Namgyal
Tibetan Buddhist lama and the unifier of Bhutan
Ngawang Namgyal (later granted the honorific Zhabdrung Rinpoche, approximately at whose feet one submits) (1594–1651) was a Tibetan Buddhist lama and the unifier of Bhutan as a nation-state. In addition to unifying the various warring fiefdoms for the first time in the 1630s, he also sought to create a distinct Bhutanese cultural identity separate from the Tibetan culture from which it was derived.