Kagyu
A living tradition within Vajrayāna.
Kagyu is a living tradition within Vajrayāna. Also written Bka' brgyud pa, Kagyupa.
Origin
Founder named in the sources: Marpa Lotsāwa (1012–c. 1098). No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions names Marpa (1012–c. 1098) as founder and places the Kagyupa among the three lineages of the Later Transmission (Sarma); Calkowski gives 11th–12th century and derivation from Indian Tantric doctrines; the Encyclopedia.com entry gives Marpa Lotsawa, 11th century. No founding year is given by any source.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Kagyu.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-kagyu.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-kagyu-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Kagyu},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-kagyu},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.