The electrical properties, clamping voltage characteristics, and stability of dysprosia-doped ZnO-P $r_{6}$ $O_{11}$-based varistors were investigated with different dysprosia contents from 0 to 2.0 mol%. The incorporation of dysprosia in varistor ceramics greatly increased the varistor voltage from 50 to 481.0 V/mm. It was found that the dysprosia is good additive improving a nonlinearity, in which the nonlinear exponent is above or near 50, and the leakage current is below 1.0 $mu$A. The dysprosia-doped varistors exhibited superior clamping voltage characetristics, in which clamping voltage ratio is above or neat 2 at surge current of 50 A. The 0.5 mol% dysprosia-doped varistors only exhibited high stability, with the rate of varistor voltage of -0.9%, under DC acceleraetd aging stress, 0.95 $V_{lmA}$/15$0^{circ}C$/24 h.h.h.h.