Ashi Phuntsho Choden (Royal Grandmother)

Ashi Phuntsho Choden Wangchuck (1911 - 24 August 2003) was the queen consort of the second Druk Gyalpo Jigme Wangchuck, the mother of the third king Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, and the paternal grandmother of the fourth king Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Across three reigns she held the position of senior royal woman in the Wangchuck household, and from 1972 onwards she carried the title Gyalyum Chenmo, conventionally rendered in English as the Royal Grandmother.

Her life spanned the formative decades of the Bhutanese monarchy, from its consolidation under the first king to the modernisation programmes of the third and the early years of the fourth. She is most widely remembered for commissioning the National Memorial Chorten in Thimphu in 1974 in memory of her son the third king, and for her religious patronage of monasteries in Bumthang, the region from which her family originated.

Family and early life

Phuntsho Choden was born in 1911 at Wangducholing Palace in Bumthang. Her father was Dasho Jamyang of the Tamzhing Choeje, the family of religious aristocracy descended from the treasure-revealer Pema Lingpa, a lineage with deep roots in the Bumthang valleys. Her mother, Ashi Decho, was a daughter of Ashi Yeshey Choden, a sister of the first king Ugyen Wangchuck. Through this matrilineal connection Phuntsho Choden was a kinswoman of the founder of the Wangchuck dynasty, and her marriage to his son was a union between two branches of the same extended family.^[1]

The marriage took place in 1923 at Thinley Rabten Palace in Phodrang, when Phuntsho Choden was twelve years old and Jigme Wangchuck still crown prince. He acceded to the throne in 1926 on the death of his father, and Phuntsho Choden became queen consort.

Queen consort, 1926-1952

As queen consort during the reign of the second king, Phuntsho Choden maintained the household courts at Wangducholing and Kuenga Rabten, which functioned as the dual seats of the dynasty in the Bumthang and Trongsa regions. She is reported to have insisted that her son, the future third king, be tutored in English and Hindi from an early age, in anticipation of the foreign-policy demands that British India and later independent India would place on the kingdom.^[2]

She was a major religious patron during this period. While still in her twenties she funded the renovation of Kurje Lhakhang in Bumthang, the temple complex containing the rock-imprint of Guru Padmasambhava. She continued to sponsor restorations and rituals at Tamzhing, Kunzangdrak and other Bumthang sites associated with the Pema Lingpa tradition throughout her life.^[3]

Queen Mother and Royal Grandmother

The second king died in March 1952 while Phuntsho Choden was on pilgrimage in India. Her son acceded as the third king and she became queen mother. After his own early death from a heart attack in Nairobi in July 1972, she became Royal Grandmother under the fourth king, who was her grandson.

It was during the early reign of the fourth king that her best-known public undertaking was completed. In 1974 she commissioned the National Memorial Chorten in Thimphu as a stupa in memory of her son the third king and as a national monument for the welfare of all sentient beings. The chorten, in the Tibetan style with three storeys of esoteric paintings and statuary, was consecrated in 1974 and has since become one of the most visited religious sites in the capital.^[4]

She continued to receive teachings from senior masters across multiple Buddhist traditions and to support spiritual learning centres in Bhutan and India. The Karmapa office, on her death, recorded her long association with the Karma Kagyu lineage and her devotional ties to Rumtek monastery.^[4]

Death

Ashi Phuntsho Choden died at Dechencholing Palace in Thimphu on 24 August 2003 at the age of 92. Her body was placed in state for the customary forty-nine days of post-mortem rituals before cremation. Tributes were issued by the Tibetan government-in-exile and by senior heads of the Drukpa Kagyu, Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages with which she had been associated.^[5]

Sources differ on a small number of biographical particulars. Some accounts place her birth a year or two before or after 1911, and some omit the matrilineal link to Ashi Yeshey Choden, instead describing the connection through Ugyen Wangchuck more loosely. The dates of major rituals at Kurje and the precise commissioning year of the National Memorial Chorten (variously given as 1972, 1974 or 1975 across secondary sources) are likewise occasionally inconsistent. The 1974 consecration is the date most often used in official accounts.

References

1. Phuntsho Choden — Wikipedia
2. Her Majesty Ashi Phuntsho Choden Wangchuck — Khyentse Foundation
3. Bhutan's Royal Family: Late Gyalyum Ashi Phuntsho Choden — RAOnline Bhutan
4. The Passing of Her Majesty Ashi Phuntsho Choden — Karmapa Office
5. Central Tibetan Administration mourns the demise of Bhutanese Gayum Phuntsho Choden — tibet.net
6. Karma Phuntsho, The History of Bhutan, Random House India, 2013.