Ngawang Namgyal

Ngawang Namgyal (Tibetan: ཞབས་དྲུང་ངག་དབང་རྣམ་རྒྱལ་, Wylie: zhabs drung ngag dbang rnam rgyal; alternative spellings include Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyel; 1594–1651), known colloquially as The Bearded Lama, was a Tibetan Buddhist Drukpa Kagyu school Rinpoche, and the unifier of Bhutan as a nation-state. He was later granted the honorific title Zhabdrung Rinpoche, approximately "at whose feet one submits". 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.

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