Drepung, which means rice heap in Tibetan language, lies 8 kilometers west of Mt. Gambo Utse. The monastery covers more than 200 thousand square meters. Once the largest monastery in the world, it was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Chojey, a leading disciple of Tsongkhapa. It was an immediate success and a year after opening there were already two thousand monks in residence and ten thousand by the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-82).