Tib., Sa-skya-pa: Grey Earth
One of the eight practice lineages of Tibetan Vajrayana, the Sakya school traces its lineage back to Virupa, one of the Mahasiddhas. The school was named after the monastery Grey Earth in Southern Tibet, founded in 1073 by Khon Konchog Gyalpo (1034-1102), a student of Brogmi.
The Sakyapa regard the Hevajra Tantra as most precious, and many of their teachings are based on this text. Other important adepts of this lineage were Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyeltsen (1182-1251), 'Phags-pa (1235-1280) and Buston (1290-1364), the well-known scholar and founder of the later Zhalupa.
The Sakyapa, besides giving rise to two sub-schools, have influenced other schools by way of
educating their foremost individual masters: Taranatha of the
Jonangpa and Tsongkapa of the later Gelugpa.
Before the rise of the Gelugpa, the Sakyapa (and the connected Khon clan) had long been
the actual rulers of Tibet, and they often clashed with and fought opponents such as the
Kagyudpa. Around 1350, the Sakyapa lost much of their power and
simultaneously developed two sub-schools, the Zhalupa and
the Ngorpa.
The Sakya-monks were especially involved with preparing a systematic collection of Buddhist and Tantric texts. Their scientific objectivity, however, was less than perfect and their main encyclopedist Buston excluded most Nyingma and Dzogchen texts from the official canon.