The Treasury of Lives

The Shatra manor house, located south of the Jokhang, was built in the nineteenth century by Shatra Dondrub Dorje. It was home to the Shatra aristocratic family, whose members included Prime Minister Lochen Shatra Peljor Dorje (1860-1919). The family was active in Lhasa as early as the fifteenth century. The house itself is one of the finest preserved, if not the finest, mansions in Lhasa and contains all of the major features of the traditional Tibetan residential building. In 2010, residents were evicted so the property could be developed into a hotel. 

The Shatra Wokpa (bshad sgra 'og pa) family traces its history back at least to the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama. The name, which was originally Shara Worpa (sha ra 'or pa), taken from a a reliquary of the eleventh-century Kadampa master Shara Yonten Drak, was the name of an estate at the foot of the hill on which Ganden Monastery sits. It appears that the influence, if not the family line, died out duing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was founded anew in 1751 during a land redistribution. The first prominent member was Shatra Wokpa Kinga Peljor, who served in the military during the Gorkha War and rose to the rank of kalon. The family's manor in Lhasa was converted to a hotel in 2010.