A Historical Atlas of Tibet 9780226243948
Cradled among the world’s highest mountains—and sheltering one of its most devout religious communities—Tibet is, for ma
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Polecaj historie
![Historical dictionary of Tibet [Second ed.]
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A Historical Atlas of Tibet
A Historical Atlas of
tibet ka rl e. ryav e c
The University of Chicago Press :: Chicago and London
Karl E. Ryavec is associate professor of world heritage at the University of California, Merced. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by The University of Chicago All maps © 2015 Karl E. Ryavec All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in Canada 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73244-2 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24394-8 (e-book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226243948.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ryavec, Karl E., author. A historical atlas of Tibet / Karl E. Ryavec. pages cm © 2015 by The University of Chicago. All maps © by Karl E. Ryavec. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-226-73244-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-24394-8 (e-book) 1. Tibet Autonomous Region (China)—Historical geography—Maps. 2. Tibet Autonomous Region (China)—History—Maps. I. Title G2308.T5R9 2015 911'.515—dc23 2014038399 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To my parents
co n t e n ts
Preface xiii Notes on Gazetteer: Phonetic and Literary Romanization xv A Note on Sources xvii
in t rod u ct io n Map 1
Tibet and the Tibetan culture region 3
Map 2
Tibet and surrounding civilizations 4
Map 3
Major regions and natural features of Tibet 6
Map 4
Tibetan macroregions 11
Map 5
The structure of Tibetan history: Core regions, peripheries, and trade networks circa 1900 12 Graph of the growth of Buddhist temples and monasteries in core regions ca. 600–1950
Map 6
The historical Tibetan world: Travel time and main trade patterns circa 1900 18 Table 1. Long-distance trade items listed in the Yushu Diaocha Ji (Yushu investigation record), 1919 A brief overview of the use and production of money in Tibet
Map 7
The Tibetic languages 26 Table 2. The Tibetic languages
Map 8
How to use this atlas: Map coverage and cartographic conventions 30
pa rt 1 The prehistorical and ancient periods, circa 30,000 BCE to 600 CE Map 9
Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures on the Tibetan Plateau, circa 30,000–2000 BCE 34
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Map 10
The ancient Tibetan world, circa 2000 BCE to 600 CE 38 Forts and royal residences listed in Bonpo literary sources Ancient principalities (rGyal phran) according to circa 9th-century Dunhuang documents
pa rt 2 The Imperial Period, circa 600–900 Map 11
Territorial administration system and important religious sites of the Imperial Period, circa 600–842 44 Territories of the administrative chiefs (mKhos dpon) Garrisons (Khrom chen po) The one thousand household districts (sTong sde) of Upper Zhangzhung, Lower Zhangzhung, and Sumpa Horn The Horn (Ru), Border Subduing (mTha’ ’dul), and Frontier (Yang ’dul) Temples
Map 12
Central Tibet circa 600–842: The imperial territorial administration system 46 The Eighteen Shares of Power (dBang ris bco brgyad) The Four Horns of Tibet (Bod ru bzhi) The one thousand household districts (sTong sde) and administrative districts (Yul dpon tshan / Yul sde) of Central Horn, Right Horn, Left Horn, and Branch Horn
Map 13
Central Tibet circa 600–900: Religious and cultural sites of the Imperial Period 52 Lhasa town plan The thirty-seven holy/assembly places of the Bonpo
Map 14
Central Tibet 650–764: Annual sites of the royal court and council 56 Annual sites of the Tibetan Royal Court (Pho brang) and council (’Dun ma) Chronology of the Tibetan emperors (bTsan po)
pa rt 3 The Period of Disunion, circa 900–1642 Map 15
Major polities and important religious sites during the aftermath of empire and the Second Diffusion of Buddhism, circa 842–1240 60 The Kagyu schools
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cont en ts
Map 16
Central Tibet circa 900–1240: Aftermath of empire and religious sites founded during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism 68 Lhasa Valley plan Lhasa town plan The regional principalities (rJe dpon tshan)
Map 17
Ngari circa 900–1100: The kingdoms of Ngari Khorsum 72
Map 18
Religious and cultural sites founded in the core region of the Guge Kingdom, circa 10th–14th centuries 75 The twenty-one minor foundations of Rinchen Zangpo Chronology of the kings of Guge, part 1
Map 19
Religious and cultural sites founded in Purang and the Kailash region, circa 10th–17th centuries 78
Map 20
Ngari circa 1100–1250: Guge divided and the rise of Yatse 80
Map 21
Amdo circa 900–1240: The Tsongkha Kingdom, and religious sites founded during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism 83
Map 22
Major polities and important religious sites of the Mongol Empire Period, circa 1240–1354 86 Mongol administrative system for Tibet
Map 23
Central Tibet circa 1240–1354: Symbolic Sakya rule and religious sites founded during the Mongol Empire Period 92 The ten thousand household districts (Khri skor / Wanhu)
Map 24
Ngari circa 1250–1365: Yatse-Gungtang rivalry during the Mongol Empire Period 96
Map 25
Amdo circa 1240–1368: The Mongol conquest, and religious sites founded during the Mongol Empire Period 99
Map 26
Important Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries founded during the 12th to 16th centuries 102
Map 27
Important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Beijing founded during the Yuan and Ming Periods, circa 13th–16th centuries 105
Map 28
Major polities and important religious sites of the Pakmodrupa Period, circa 1354–1642 110 Chinese Ming Dynasty titles bestowed on important Tibetan religious hierarchs Birthplaces of the First through Fifth Dalai Lamas Birthplaces of the First through Fourth Panchen Lamas
con ten ts
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Map 29
Central Tibet circa 1354–1642: Rival powers and religious sites founded during the Pakmodrupa Period 114 Lhasa Valley plan Lhasa town plan Fortresses (rDzong) established circa 1350–60 by the Pakmodrupa Principal fiefs and estates of the Pakmodrupa, circa 1300s
Map 30
Ngari circa 1365–1630: The resurgence of Guge 118
Map 31
Religious and cultural sites in the core region of the Guge Kingdom, circa 15th–17th centuries 119 Tsaparang Fort plan Toling Monastery plan Chronology of the kings of Guge, part 2
Map 32
Amdo circa 1368–1644: Local monastic powers in relation to China’s Ming Dynasty 123
pa rt 4 The Ganden Podrang Period (Kingdom of the Dalai Lamas) Map 33
Major polities of the Ganden Podrang Period, circa 1642–1900 128
Map 34
Important religious and cultural sites of the Ganden Podrang Period, circa 1642–1951 132 Main annual Tibetan trade fairs Birthplaces of the Sixth through Fourteenth Dalai Lamas Birthplaces of the Fifth through Eleventh Panchen Lamas
Map 35
Central Tibet circa 1642–1951: Religious and cultural sites of the Ganden Podrang Period 134 Lhasa Valley plan Lhasa town plan Fortresses (rDzong) of the Ganden Podrang government’s territorial administration system circa 1830 Fortresses and estates supervised by the Tashi Lhunpo Monastic Corporation (bLa brang) until 1923
Map 36
Frontiers and forts of the Ganden Podrang Period, circa 1900–1951 138 Fortresses (rDzong) and estates (gZhis ka) staffed by lay or ecclesiastic governors Boundaries of the Simla Convention signed by Great Britain and Tibet in 1914
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cont en ts
Map 37
Central Tibet circa 1912–1951: The territorial administration system of the Ganden Podrang government 140 Fortresses (rDzong) and estates (gZhis ka) staffed by lay or ecclesiastic governors
Map 38
Ngari circa 1630–1959: Incorporation into Tibet’s Ganden Podrang administrative system 144
Map 39
Amdo circa 1644–1911: Local monastic powers in relation to China’s Qing Dynasty 147
Map 40
Kham circa 1642–1911: The Khampa polities in relation to Central Tibet and China 150 Main polities of Eastern Kham and Gyelrong The Thirty-Nine Hor Tribes
Map 41
The Derge Kingdom: Territorial administration system, circa 1630–1909 154 Forts and palaces of the Derge Kingdom
Map 42
The Nangchen Kingdom: Territorial administration system, circa 1725–1951 157 The one hundred household districts (Be hu / Baihu) The twenty-five tribes of Yushu Major annual trade fairs frequented by long-distance traders
Map 43
Important Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries founded during the Qing Period, 1644–1911 161
Map 44
Important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Beijing during the Qing Period, 1644–1911 164
Map 45
Important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of the Greater Beijing area during the Qing Period, 1644–1911 165
con cl u sio n Map 46
Natural resources of the Tibetan Plateau 170
Map 47
Main land cover patterns of the Tibetan Plateau, circa 2000 174
Map 48
The Tibetan population, circa 2000 178
Map 49
Tibet in the People’s Republic of China, circa 2000: The territorial administration system 182 Acknowledgments 187 Historical Photograph Sources 193 Index 195
con ten ts
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p r e fac e
T
his is the first historical atlas of Tibet to be made. Though there have been some good cartographic surveys of cultural and religious sites across the Tibetan Plateau and a wealth of studies on historical Tibetan texts, a basic reference work like this atlas has long been needed by students and scholars interested in learning about Tibet. Peter Kessler’s historical cultural atlases of some of the eastern Tibetan polities were the first true historical atlases of specific small parts of Tibet. And limited historical coverage of Tibet was provided in Albert Hermann’s seminal Historical and Commercial Atlas of China published in 1935, in Tan Qixiang’s Zhongguo Lishi Dituji (China historical atlas, 8 volumes, 1982), and in Joseph Schwartzberg’s A Historical Atlas of South Asia (1978). But in these works Tibet is mapped as merely peripheral to Asia’s large sedentary agricultural civilizations and not from its own central position and perspective as a civilization in its own right. Thus I drew the maps and wrote the text of this atlas to help meet the need for a comprehensive series of maps showing the growth and spread of Tibetan civilization in its entirety in relation to important places, events, and connections between regions. I remember precisely how my idea to make this historical atlas of Tibet first arose. It did so spontaneously when I was at the Chicago 2005 annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies talking with scholars working on the China historical geographic infor-
mation system. This project was based on the above- mentioned Zhongguo Lishi Dituji of Tan Qixiang, which provided a template to copy from. But Tibet lacked any such comprehensive historical atlas, so I decided then and there that I was going to provide a clear set of summary maps of the general course of Tibetan history. This sudden decision, coupled with the feeling that there was no time to waste, partly explains why this historical atlas of Tibet is an independent work of one scholar and not a large project with an editorial board and armies of cartographers. Making a historical atlas of a civilization for the first time has presented some advantages amidst several disadvantages. On the bright side, each map I made was often valued by those colleagues I shared it with as a new resource, and there was usually no similarly detailed map to compare the accuracies or errors against. But at the same time, I had little cartographic material to study. Fortunately, as far back as 1993 when I first embarked on doctoral research in geography, I began to build up various spatial databases of cultural and religious sites across Tibet. The results of the subsequent twelve years of research and eight years of mapmaking, combined with still more research and database construction, are now finally presented in this modest atlas. In retrospect, I wish I had another twenty years to refine and improve this historical atlas, but I believe it is now sufficient and hope others will find it of some value.
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n ot es o n g a z e t t e er Phonetic and Literary Romanization
T
ibetan place-names on the maps in this atlas, particularly those of Buddhist temples and monasteries, may be searched for online at the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC.org) to obtain the Tibetan orthography and related information about historical persons and texts associated with the sites. The Tibetan words and place-names in this atlas are rendered phonetically according to the general rules proposed by the TBRC and the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL). However, I have retained some of the more well-known phonetic transcriptions of important places in Tibet used by the British and American mapmaking authorities of the late nineteenth to mid- twentieth centuries, such as Shigatse for Shikatse (gZhis ka rtse), and Gyangtse for Gyantse (rGyal rtse), for the sake of conventional cross-referencing with other historical maps and atlases. Mention should also be made of the official Romanization system promulgated by the People’s Republic
of China for phonetically transcribing Tibetan place- names (NSM 1986). According to this system, Shigatse is romanized as Xigaze, and Gyangtse as Gyangze, for example. When Tibetan words and place-names are listed in literary transliteration preserving the original orthography of the Tibetan spellings, I have followed the full rules of the Wylie system (1959) and capitalized the radical letter to indicate the pronunciation. Chinese words and place-names are transcribed according to the Pinyin system and are phonetically rendered based on standard Mandarin pronunciation.
Literature Cited National Survey Ministry (NSM). 1986. Zangyu Lhasa Hua Diming Yiyin Guize (Tibetan Lhasa dialect place-name transcription rules). Beijing: Survey Press. Wylie, Turrell Verl. 1959. “A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 22:261–67.
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a n ot e o n s o u rc es
P
rimary Tibetan sources are listed on the maps themselves so that readers can more clearly relate mapped features to the historical texts they were recorded in. Secondary sources, primarily Chinese and Western contemporary scholarly works, are listed in the bibliography for each map. Mainland Chinese works published after 1949 are listed in Pinyin, but older works cataloged in the West in the Wade-Giles system have not been converted.
The only exception to this plan are the approximately twenty contemporary Tibetan and Chinese-text survey volumes of Bonpo and Buddhist temples and monasteries listed in the bibliography of map 5, “The Structure of Tibetan History.” Given the large number of these detailed volumes and that the sites they document are shown on almost all of the maps in this atlas, they are listed only in this specific map’s bibliography.
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INTRODUCTIO N
Tibet and the Tibetan culture region
map
Tibet and the Tibetan culture region
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Tibet and surrounding civilizations
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Tibet and surrounding civilizations Me
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he Tibetan culture region is vast, extending approximately two thousand miles from west to east and one thousand miles from north to south. Tibetans call Tibet Po (spelled Bod in Tibetan, and pronounced in English like “Poe”). A popular Tibetan name for Tibet in the sense of a people’s homeland is Gangs ljongs (Snowland). This atlas attempts to map the historical growth and spread of Tibetan civilization across the Tibetan Plateau and bordering hill regions, from prehistorical times to the annexation of the last Tibetan state by China in the 1950s. The Tibet Autonomous Region is a legacy of this last Lhasa-based Tibetan political system. Its geographical extent roughly corresponds to the lands that were under both the direct and the indirect rule of the former Ganden Podrang government, which can be described as the Kingdom of the Dalai Lamas. But a view of this central Tibetan political system as part of a larger civilization is complicated by the fact that bordering Himalayan kingdoms, which arose out of political and religious traditions developed under the Tibetan Empire of the seventh to ninth centuries and the later development of the various sects of Tibetan Buddhism in tandem with political patronage during the tenth to seventeenth centuries, did not always refer
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to themselves as Tibetan. Some common characteristics of Tibetan culture include shared origin myths, language, and religion. Although common Tibetan cultural practices helped to characterize these disparate centers of political authority, long-term patterns of regional development promoted the manifestation of different national and ethnic identities in modern times. For these reasons, most people who now identify as Tibetan largely compose the Tibetic-speaking populations in China. Tibetic language speakers and adherents of Tibetan Buddhism in Ladakh or Bhutan, for example, may identify themselves as Ladakhis or Bhutanese, respectively. In fact, a Ladakhi could also choose to identify as Indian, just as a Tibetan may identify as Chinese. Given the historical-geographical complexity of this situation, the purpose of this atlas is partly to allow readers to view for themselves where and when key facets of Tibetan culture developed and in what sorts of regional and political contexts. Tibetan civilization did not develop in isolation. It was influenced to varying degrees by the major surrounding civilizations of Persia, India, and China. At the same time, the rugged mountainous terrain ringing the pastoral grasslands of the plateau proper, and the high elevations, limited the cultural and demographic
diffusion of neighboring lowland societies on the Tibetan Plateau until well into the twentieth century. To help clarify these complex relationships between long- distance cultural, political, and economic connections and local subsistence-oriented ways of life across Tibet, this atlas is designed to allow readers to study and compare for themselves the spatial and historical patterns of political authority, trade networks, and core areas of agriculture and human settlement.
m ap s 1 an d 2 . ti b et an d s u r rou n d i n g c i v i l i z ations
5
Major regions and natural features of Tibet
map
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Major regions and natural features of Tibet
T
he history of Tibet is largely the history of localities. Given the rugged terrain, high elevations, and local-based agricultural subsistence economies of Tibetan communities historically, the study of empires, kingdoms, and famous people cannot adequately encompass the social and environmental history of Tibet. The purpose of this map is to show the main macro-and meso-scale folk regions and areas frequently mentioned in historical Tibetan literature, and also foreign travelogues, which became increasingly common by the early twentieth century. In making this map, I paid particular attention to how the regions and places that composed Tibet were described in a text about the geography of the world (’Dzam gling rgyas bshad ) by Jampel Chokyi Tenzin Trinle (1789–1839). This is one of the rare historical Tibetan texts to deal with the entire geographical extent of Tibet. As such, this map largely names regions and natural features according to conventions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For insights into what these regions and areas were called in Tibetan, and to a lesser extent Chinese, during earlier times, primarily during the Imperial, Second Diffusion of Buddhism, and Mongol Empire Periods, readers should refer to the appropriate historical maps in this atlas. The most common Tibetan name for the Lhasa- based government of Tibet during the period 1642– 1951 was Depa Zhung (sDe pa gzhung; authority center). Its formal name Ganden Podrang, taken from the name of an earlier palace in the great monastery of Drepung in the Lhasa Valley, is used in this atlas to indicate what became generally construed as “political Tibet” during the colonial period, especially after the fall of China’s Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the rise of a de facto independent Tibetan state. Despite contemporary political debates over these earlier statuses of Tibet, traditional geographical descriptions of the Tibetan culture region do not place much emphasis on this last indigenous Lhasa-based government. Instead, the entire plateau-wide “Snowland” (Gangs ljongs) tends to be perceived as Tibet with its own distinctive places and ways of life. For reference purposes, I have indicated the approximate boundaries and frontiers of Ganden Podrang on this map in the sense of a polity with its own patently territory-based forms of political administration. Most historical Tibetan texts with significant geographical relevance to particular places and regions are
8 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
devoted to the description of individual Buddhist monasteries, temples, statues, and the like and are usually called catalogs (dKar chag). In addition, there is a rich travel genre (gNas yig) including route descriptions and pilgrimage itineraries to sacred sites across Tibet and beyond to foreign lands, primarily India and China. These sorts of works are far too numerous to address in this map, except in cases where the name of a particularly famous monastery and nearby town came over time to be commonly used as the name for the larger locale or region, such as with Riwoche and Chamdo in Central Kham and Labrang and Chone in Amdo. For this reason I include most of the larger and historically important monasteries, as well as certain towns, on this map, and they should generally be understood to indicate popular names for the surrounding areas. Traditional Tibetan spatial concepts treat the geography of Tibet as consisting of a western “upper” region of Ngari, a central “middle” region of U-Tsang, and eastern “lower” regions of Kham and Amdo. These four macroregions are often further divided by Tibetan writers into additional upper and lower regions, such as Tsang To (gTsang sTod; upper Tsang) and Tsang Me (gTsang sMad; lower Tsang), and a wide assortment of smaller areas and locales primarily consisting of agricultural valleys (Yul, gRong) and pastoral highlands (sGang, ’Brog). Geographers term these sorts of intellectual constructs perceptual regions (also folk or vernacular regions). Unlike formal regions based on the distribution of a specific cultural trait or functional regions defined by networks of social interaction, perceptual regions are believed to exist. For this reason, it is not possible to map specific areas and boundaries of perceptual regions. In this atlas I indicate the approximate core areas and general extents of Tibet’s main folk or perceptual regions by placing each region’s name across the relevant map areas. Ngari, at its greatest extent, stretches from the Gungtang and Saga areas as far west as Ladakh. In ancient times this region was called Zhangzhung. But over time Ngari came to be considered the western part of the Tibetan Plateau proper, centered on the sacred mountain Gang Rinpoche (Kailash) and excluding bordering Himalayan and Karakoram regions from Mustang and Dolpo in the east and Ladakh and Baltistan in the west. One way to visualize specific areas and boundaries of broadly defined folk regions is by mapping related cultural variables and social networks of
either formal or functional regions. For example, map 7 of the Tibetic languages shows the distribution of the Ngari (i.e., To Ngari) dialect of the U-Tsang Tibetic language, and this particular mapping may be understood as one of many possible interpretations of Ngari’s western geographic extent. Interestingly, both the Ngari and U-Tsang macroregions share the same prestige U-Tsang language within the geolinguistic continuum of Tibet’s central language section, unlike the much clearer regional divides from, and between, the Amdo and Kham languages. U-Tsang, or Central Tibet, is centered on Tibet’s main city of Lhasa and mostly lies in the watershed of the great Yarlung Tsangpo. The name U-Tsang is a combination of U, denoting the Lhasa region, and Tsang based on the towns of Gyangtse and Shigatse. Core agricultural valleys, such as that of the Nyang in Tsang and the Kyi Chu in U, are clearly understood as part of U-Tsang proper, but many surrounding Himalayan
regions like Lhodrak and Dingri are more loosely tied to spatial definitions of Central Tibet. And stretching northward, the Jangtang (i.e., Chang thang; northern grassy plain) formed a vaguely defined and sparsely populated zone between the core areas of Central and Western Tibet. The eastern Tibetan regions may also be understood as consisting of fairly well defined historical core areas, such as Chamdo and Derge in Kham and Tsongkha in Amdo, while similarly vast and vaguely defined folk regions historically separated these core areas from one another. The Hor and Powo regions separated Kham from U-Tsang, while the Golok and Gyelrong regions separated Kham from Amdo. Below the vast scale of regions, Tibetan writers often employ the term sDe (pronounced like “day”) for a local group such as a tribe, district, or community, or even a group of religious practitioners. Among agricultural communities the term rong (gRong) is frequently
Figure 3.1 Drawings of local products from different regions of Tibet published in Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892 by William Woodville Rockhill. 1. Butter box from the Kokonor region 2. Butter box of bamboo from the Kongpo region 3. Butter box from Lhasa 4. Birch bark cup from Batang in Kham 5. Milk pail from the Namru region 6. Birch bark pail from Guide in Amdo Figure 3.2 A Western Tibetan landscape in Ngari. Note the arid “badlands” canyon country typical of the farming valleys in Western Tibet. View northward from Tsaparang Fort in the upper Sutlej River Valley, 2004.
m ap 3 . m ajor r eg i on s an d n atu r al f eatu r es of t ib et
9
Figure 3.3 A Central Tibetan landscape in U-Tsang. Note the semi-arid broad U-shaped valley typical of the farming valleys in Central Tibet. View northwest over the Gyama Valley, birthplace of Emperor Songtsen Gampo, 1999.
Figure 3.4 An Eastern Tibetan landscape. Note the forested deep V-shaped valley typical of the farming valleys in Kham and southern Amdo. View of a valley in western Sichuan Province. Photo by Daniel Winkler.
used for a wide variety of places—towns, villages, hamlets, and even individual houses. Farmers are called shingpa, from the Tibetan word zhing meaning field, soil, or cultivation. Nomads are called drokpa, from the word drok (’Brog) for highland pastures and also nomad camps. Religious and cultural centers are also key places noted in historical Tibetan texts, with Buddhist monasteries (dGon pa), shrines (Lha khang), and stupas (mChor rten) being frequently mentioned, along with the agricultural estates (gZhis ka) of religious, noble, and government elites. The following maps 4 and 5 focus on how the physical and cultural geography of the Tibetan Plateau promoted the development of four Tibetan macroregions, while map 6 illustrates how these core regions and peripheries were connected by long-distance trade networks in terms of the main routes followed and historical travel times. Map 7 concludes these introductory maps of the Tibetan culture region by showing the distributions of the Tibetic languages. And language, perhaps better than any other variable, reveals the regional bounds of long-term social interaction.
10 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
Sources consulted in making these maps Carrasco, Pedro. 1959. Land and Polity in Tibet. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Samuel, Geoffrey. 1993. Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Vostrikov, Andrei Ivanovich. 1970. Tibetan Historical Literature. Translated from the Russian by Harish Chandra Gupta. Calcutta: K. L. Mukhopadhyay. Wylie, Turrell Verl. 1962. The Geography of Tibet According to the “’Dzam-gling-rgyas-bshad.” Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. ———. 1965. “The Tibetan Tradition of Geography.” Bulletin of Tibetology 1:17–25.
Tibetan macroregions
Tibetan macroregions
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4
The structure of Tibetan history
map
5
The structure of Tibetan history: Core regions, peripheries, and trade networks circa 1900
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T
hese maps show how the geographic basis of Tibetan civilization consists of four core macroregions where population and agricultural resources historically concentrated in river valleys due to the physical geography of the plateau. Specifically, map 5 illustrates the spatial variation in local densities of Buddhist and Bonpo monasteries. In a country of few cities and towns, the monasteries historically functioned as important centers of political and economic activity. Their historical constructions across Tibet from about 600 to 1950 may be studied as one key measure of local economic development. In contrast, most studies of Tibetan history base generalizations about regional and national development on historical periods, not as this map attempts to do by placing relevant disaggregated data in a fine-grained spatial framework that reflects the actual macroregional structure of Tibet’s economies and societies in the past. To some extent these regional patterns were altered by increased population growth and migration across China since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949; thus modern Chinese census data cannot be trusted to differentiate between the historical core areas of Tibetan settlement and the peripheries. It is estimated that prior to the 1950s, approximately one-quarter of Tibet’s male population consisted of Buddhist monks. The locations of 2,925 Buddhist and Bonpo temples and monasteries were mapped to model these spatial and temporal patterns of Tibet’s historical macroregional structure. In order for the densities of these religious sites to be calculated within 1,962 contemporary
Figure 5.1 Ganden Monastery, Central Tibet. Large crowds gather for a religious festival, July 1998.
14 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
Chinese township-level administrative divisions covering the Tibetan culture region in China, ecumen areas were measured based on land cover types in the digital version of the 1:1 Million Land-Use Map of China. These land use/cover data can be seen in map 47, “Main Land Cover Patterns of the Tibetan Plateau.” Areas of water, bare rock, and snow or ice were excluded from the final calculations so that the results would most accurately reflect the densities of temples and monasteries in relation to actual forms of land use based on such economically important land cover types as grasslands, cultivated lands, and forests. The approximately three thousand Buddhist sites georeferenced to make this map derive from twenty years of research by numerous scholars working from many different sources. To some extent, all the maps in this atlas, starting from map 11 of the Tibetan Empire through to the last historical period view presented in map 45 of the greater Beijing area, show the growth and spread of these Buddhist sites. As stated in the acknowledgments section in reference to regional systems theory, developed by the late George William Skinner, I realized in 2005 that I could make a series of time period maps from these religious site databases to form the skeletal framework for a historical atlas of Tibet. For this reason, the bibliography for this map of the core regions of Tibet’s historical development is very detailed and extensive in covering mainly Tibetan- and Chinese-language survey volumes that document Tibetan Buddhist and Bonpo temples and monasteries across the different counties, prefectures, and provinces that today cover the Tibetan culture region in China. Readers should refer to these nineteen key sources for information about specific religious sites. As noted earlier, historical Tibetan texts often describe the geography of Tibet in terms of a western “upper” region of Ngari, a central “middle” region of U- Tsang, and eastern “lower” regions of Dokham, which in recent centuries have come to be called Amdo and Kham. These literary accounts can be verified in the core-periphery patterns on this map. Ngari includes sacred Mt. Kailash and the source of the Indus and Ganga (Ganges) Rivers. U-Tsang includes the holy city of Lhasa and is watered by Tibet’s great river the Yarlung Tsangpo. The name U-Tsang is a combination of U, denoting the eastern Lhasa region, and Tsang, covering the western part based on the towns of Gyangtse and Shigatse. Eastern Tibet or Kham is a vast region cover-
ing the upper watersheds of the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze Rivers, from high plateau grasslands to where they merge into bamboo forests along the foothills of Sichuan and Yunnan. Northeastern Tibet, or Amdo, is based on the farming valleys in the upper Yellow River watershed bordering the deserts and loess regions of Gansu. In fact, Amdo is noteworthy as the only Tibetan macroregion with a core zone that merges into the core zone of a neighboring civilization, in this case that of Northwest China. The topography along this part of the Tibetan Plateau is less rugged than that of the southern Himalayan frontier, and it slowly merges into valleys and desert plains through which the Silk Road passes. Historically these factors led a number of different cultural groups to settle along the Amdo-Gansu frontier, and an understanding of how Amdo’s core region functioned economically in relation to Northwest China requires further research. At first glance, only U-Tsang appears to be a macroregion itself, given that it is completely surrounded by a periphery. In contrast, the outer macroregions of Ngari, Kham, and Amdo merge into core lowland regions of East, Southeast, and South Asian civilizations along the descending river valleys. It is also important to point out that comparable data for Ladakh, considered part of Ngari in ancient times, were not available when I made this atlas, and so the full extent of this macroregion’s core is not discernible but must be estimated. I also estimated the southern extent of Amdo in light of linguistic data pertaining to the geographical distribution of the Amdowa Tibetic languages (see map 7, “The Tibetic Languages”) in addition to the Buddhist temple densities. This approach was necessary due to the high densities in the Gyelrong valleys that appear, at first glance, to be part of the Kham macroregion. But linguistic patterns tentatively support placing at least the northern part of Gyelrong within the Amdo macroregion. A shared language, perhaps better than any other variable, points toward historical social interaction among communities. Though it is reasonable to speculate that there in recent centuries was greater economic interaction between communities in Gyelrong and the Sichuan Basin than with Amdo. Further research is required to better delineate the extent of Amdo in regard to Gyelrong. Prior to the 1950s, travel up the river valleys onto the plateau proper was often not easy owing to steep
gorges, subtropical jungles, and isolated independent tribes. And, although the core regions of Western and Eastern Tibet were at times politically independent, they always produced their own staple food items like butter, meat, and barley. Long-distance trade in items like tea and salt was important to the economies of both Tibet and neighboring countries, but the caravans often avoided the river valleys and instead went over high mountain passes where the routes were generally more suited to pack animals, being wider and less steep and offering pasturage. Also, many passes along the southern Himalayan frontier were impassible except for a few months each summer, due to the high snowfalls triggered by India’s monsoon climate. Travel from China and the Silk Road south to Tibet, though longer, was often easier than from India because the Himalayas created a dry rain shadow across the plateau, which tended to keep the interior passes open year round. In this way we can see how Tibetan civilization, though spread over four core regions, still functioned relatively independently of surrounding political and economic systems throughout most of its history and was integrated between its cores, peripheries, and bordering cultures mainly by long-distance trade in some staples and luxury items. It is also possible to model the comparative growth of Buddhist temple and monastery constructions in the core areas of all four macroregions (but with the Ladakh part of Ngari missing, as mentioned above), because the year or approximate century of founding is known for most sites (see figure 5.2). Starting with the Imperial Period in the seventh century, under which Buddhism was introduced mainly as a court religion, we can see how most of the early growth in temple constructions was in U-Tsang. With the fall of the Tibetan Empire in the ninth century, constructions completely stopped in U-Tsang, but temple and monastery building continued in Kham and Amdo. In fact, Tibetan historians traditionally lauded the survival of monasticism in Kham and Amdo because it led monks from these regions to return to U-Tsang in the tenth century to restore the transmissions of monastic ordination that had been interrupted. In contrast, no temples or monasteries were constructed in Ngari until the tenth century, according to the available records. By the eleventh century and the so-called Second Diffusion of Buddhism, a more vigorous spreading of monasticism, characterized by the growth of different schools of Tibetan Buddhism,
m a p s 4 an d 5 . ti b etan m ac ror eg i on s an d th e str u ctu r e of ti b etan h i story
15
Figure 5.2 Tibet: Growth of Buddhist temples and monasteries in core regions, circa 600–1950.
was well under way in all four core regions. But for several reasons constructions declined in U-Tsang after about 1200 compared to Kham and Amdo, while stopping completely in Ngari. It was not until circa 1300, roughly midway in the century of Mongol hegemony over Tibet, that monastery constructions accelerated in all four regions. Then, starting about 1400, a century of overall decline prevailed, perhaps triggered by a megadrought recorded for Monsoon Asia and the Tibetan Plateau during this time. And although constructions increased across Kham and Amdo from around 1500 into the twentieth century, U-Tsang lagged significantly behind, while Ngari never again saw a monastery constructed in its core region.
16 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
Sources consulted in making these maps (by region) Central Tibet (U-Tsang) Andre, Claude. 2008. Atlas de la Region Autonome du Tibet. Èze, France: Tibet Map Institute. Chophel. 2002. Gnas tsan ljongs kyi gnas bshad lam yig gsar ma: Lo kha sa khul kyi gnas yig [New guide to temples in the Land of Snow: Lokha region guide]. Beijing: Nationality Press. ———. 2004. Gnas tsan bod kyi gnas bshad lam yig gsar ma: Lha sa sa khul kyi gnas yig [New guide to temples in the Land of Snow: Lhasa municipality region guide]. Beijing: Nationality Press. Karmay, Samten G., and Yasuhiko Nagano. 2003. A Survey of Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibet and the Himalaya. Bon Studies 7; Senri Ethnological Reports 38. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. (Note: this source was also utilized for Kham and Amdo.)
Wangdu, Sonam, et al. 1992. Xizang Difang Wenwu Zhi Congshu [Tibet regional cultural relics gazetteer series]. 5 volumes. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press.
Ngari Guge Tsering Gyalpo (Tshe ring rgyal po). 2006. mNga’ ris chos ’byung gnas ljongs mdzis rgyan zhis bya ba bzhugs so [A cultural and religious history of Ngari]. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press.
Kham and Amdo Bai Gengdeng and Nian Zhihai, eds. 1993. Qinghai Zangchuan Fojiao Siyuan Mingjian [Compendium of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Qinghai]. Lanzhou: Gansu Nationality Press. Bstan ’dzin, ed. ca. 2000. Rnga khul nang bstan grub mtha’ ris med dgon sde’i mtshams sbyor snyan pa’i dung sgra / Aba zhou Zangchuan fojiao simiao gaikuang. Sichuan. Pu Wencheng, ed. 1990. Ganqing Zangchuan Fojiao Siyuan [Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Qinghai and Gansu]. Xining: Qinghai People’s Press. Tibet Religious Affairs Bureau. List of 568 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the Chamdo, Linzhi, and Nakchu administrative regions. Chinese name, sect, and township locations given. Unpublished document. Yan Songbo and Qudan. 1993. Aba Diqu Zhongjiao Shiyao [Religious history survey of the Aba region]. Chengdu: Chengdu Cartographic Press. Zhongguo renmin zhengzhixie shanghuiyi Gannan Zangzu zizhizhou weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui [Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Cultural Historical Materials Committee]. 1991–95. Kan lho’i Bod brgyud Nang bstan sde so so’i lo rgyus mdor bsdus / Gannan Zangzhuan Fojiao siyuan gaikuang [Guide to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Gannan]. 3 vols. Kan lho’i lo rgyus Gannan wenshi ziliao 9, 10, 12. Gannan baoshe yinshuachang.
Zhongguo renmin zhengzhixie shanghuiyi Tianzhu Zangzu zizhixian weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui [Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County Cultural Historical Materials Committee]. 2000. dPa’ ris kyi Bod brgyud Nang bstan sde lo rgyus mdor bsdus / Tianzhu Zangzhuan Fojiao siyuan gaikuang (Guide to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Tianzhu). Tianzhu Zangzu zizhixian minzu yinzhuachang. Zhonghua Remin Gonheguo Difang Zhi Cong Shu. 1995. Muli Zangzu Zizhixian Zhi (Muli Tibetan Autonomous County gazetteer). Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe. Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Difang Zhi Cong Shu. 1997. Zhongdian Xian Zhi (Zhongdian County gazetteer). Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe. Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Difang Zhi Cong Shu. 1999. Weixi Lisuzu Zizhixian Zhi (Weixi Lisu Autonomous County gazetteer). Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe. Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Difang Zhi Cong Shu. 1997. Deqin Xian Zhi (Deqin County gazetteer). Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe. Zhongguo Zang xue yanjiu zhongxin. 1995. Khams phyogs dkar mdzes khul gyi dgon sde so so’i lo rgyus gsal bar bsad pa nan bstan gsal ba’i me lon zes bya ba bzugs [History of Buddhist monasteries in dKar mdzes / Kanze Prefecture in Eastern Tibet]. 3 vols. Lhasa: Krung go’i Bod kyi shes rig dpe skrun khang. Zhou Yiying and Ran Guangrong. eds. 1989. Zangchuan Fojiao Siyuan Ziliao Xuanbian [Compilation of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Sichuan]. Chengdu: Sichuan Nationalities Affairs Committee.
m a p s 4 an d 5 . ti b etan m ac ror eg i on s an d th e str u ctu r e of ti b etan h i story
17
The historical Tibetan world
map
6
The historical Tibetan world: Travel time and main trade patterns circa 1900
T
his map shows the distances that travelers, such as traders and pilgrims, covered in weekly increments by either walking or riding along routes radiating outward from Lhasa to an outer mapped limit of three months. Traditional forms of travel persisted in Tibet well into the mid-twentieth century, because the first roads for motorized vehicles were not built until the 1950s. Previously it had taken about three months for travelers from outlying parts of the Tibetan Plateau, such as the Amdo frontier in Gansu Province, the foothills along the Sichuan Basin, and Ladakh in western Tibet, to reach Lhasa. It is important to realize, however, that elite travelers such as government officials and couriers often made much better time due to the fresh horses and supplies they could obtain at official stations along the main routes. Without such support, the average traveler made about twelve miles a day, whether walking or riding, because the pack animals needed to spend roughly half of each day grazing
Figure 6.1 The market at Shigatse, in foreground, lower left, before the wall of the Chinese barracks, 1904. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 6.2 Traveler crossing a rope bridge in the foothills of Eastern Tibet near the Sichuan Basin. Woodblock print in a Qing Period edition of the Beichuan County Gazetteer (Beichuan Xianzhi).
20
i ntroduct i o n
to meet their nutritional requirements if grain was not directly fed to them. And in the eastern Himalayas, in parts of Powo and Zayul, and all through the jungle regions bordering on the plains of Assam, many routes were not passable by pack animals, and porters often made five miles a day at best. The most common pack animals were horses, mules, and yaks, with the mules favored due to their ability to go farther on smaller amounts of food. Indeed, much of the bulk tea carried to Tibet from China on yaks was frequently transferred among the herds of different nomadic groups so the animals would not tire and become useless after about one week when used in this manner. Bactrian camels were sometimes used too in the northern Tibetan regions of Amdo and Ladakh, which are closer to the Central Asian Silk Road routes, where camels are still widely used as pack animals. Over thousands of years, well before Tibetan written records first appeared during the Tibetan Imperi-
al Period of the seventh to ninth centuries, the flow of people, goods, and ideas along long-distance trade routes connected locales with each other and neighboring civilizations. Trade and pilgrimage often went hand in hand. Pilgrims might attach themselves to a trading caravan for protection or conduct some business of their own along the way to support their religious endeavors. The vast Tibetan countryside was full of seasonal trade fairs, many held in or adjacent to the Buddhist monasteries, often in conjunction with religious festivals. Because of the climate and topography of the plateau, combined with the clustering of most of the population in four core regions, only five key routes developed into the main historical long-distance trade routes of Tibet. First, if routes are listed clockwise from north to west, there was the main route from Lhasa to China via Xining and Lanzhou in Gansu. This route was considered the high road during ancient times, and it first went directly north from Lhasa to the Dang la (i.e., Dang pass) and thence northeastward to China, always keeping to the edge of the purely pastoral regions, where grazing was good and steep gorges with river crossings could be avoided. The upper Dri chu (Yangtze River) was crossed via a ford. Second, there was the Tibet-Sichuan route via Shopamdo and Chamdo. This route passed through areas to the south of the Salween, which became more firmly controlled by Lhasa over time. A northern branch of this route went via Nakchu and Sok through a Hor- speaking Bonpo stronghold that did not fall under firm Lhasa control until the early 1900s. From Chamdo the routes again bifurcated, with a northern route going through Derge and Kanze to Dartsedo (Chinese: Tachienlu), and a southern route via Batang and Litang. This southern route developed in the eighteenth century into the main route of official contact between Qing China and Tibet and even saw Manchu garrisons established in the main towns. Nineteenth-century Western accounts, however, describe the small detachments of soldiers as unarmed and paid exclusively in tea. Third, there was the Yunnan route via Dechen and Tsakhalho (Yanjing), but it joined the main Tibet- Sichuan routes at either Chamdo or Lho dzong depending on the specific route taken. Fourth, there was the main Lhasa to India route over the Himalaya into Sikkim. This was Tibet’s shortest route to the outside world, so to speak, taking only
two to three weeks. In the early 1900s, during Tibet’s period of de facto independence, Tibetan officials took this route to China by boarding steamers in the Indian Ocean and still reached Nanjing or Beijing months sooner than by going overland through Kham. Fifth, there was the Lhasa to Leh route, which continued on to Kashmir, though all along the way various southern routes branched off over Himalayan passes to important places in Nepal and India, such as Kathmandu and Simla (now Shimla). At some key transport nodes, a few permanent bazaars even developed due to the almost constant procession of long-distance travelers coming through. The largest collection of open-air markets and shops was in Lhasa, with smaller numbers in the other Central Tibetan towns of Shigatse, Gyangtse, and Tsetang. Several of the more important and better known markets in Eastern Tibet were in or next to the towns of Chamdo and Jyekundo, located roughly halfway between Central Tibet and China. Table 1 presents a list of the main products for trade or sale in Jyekundo during the early 1900s. This list is useful because the Chinese who engaged in the original survey divided the products into three main groups according to regions of production. First listed are those products native to Tibet or imported from India and beyond that found their way to this market. The second group consists of the items brought from Sichuan via the main eastern Tibetan frontier town of Dartsedo (Tachienlu). And the third group consists of the items brought from Northwest China via the frontier towns of Xining and Taozhou. Many Chinese and Hui Muslim merchants traveled to the periodic fairs and permanent markets to sell items from China and also to acquire Tibetan products to bring back with them. The main currency used in Jyekundo, and across much of Tibet, by the nineteenth century was the British Indian rupee. As there was no fractional currency, people would cut these rupees into a half, a third, or a quarter to use as change. When trading, people would count the unit of currency instead of the unit of goods. For example, they would say “one rupee for eight pieces of mulberry paper” instead of “one piece of mulberry paper for [a certain amount of money],” because it was difficult to make these sorts of calculations without fractional currency. Given the importance of money in relation to the development of Tibet’s economy and trading relations m ap 6 . th e h i stor i c al ti b etan wor ld
21
Table 1. Long-distance trade items sold at seasonal fairs in the Jyekundo area listed in the Yushu Diaocha Ji (Yushu Investigation Record), 1919 Main products of Tibet, and
Main products brought from
Main products brought from
other items imported from India
Sichuan via Dartsedo (Tachienlu)
Gansu via Xining and Taozhou
carpets
tea
copper and iron pots
saffron (for medicine)
Western fabric
shovels
indigo
silk
rice
spices
satin
wheat noodles
deer antlers
paper
fabric
musk
khata (white silk scarves)
fried dried noodles
madder (a vegetable red dye)
soy sauce pickles
grapes
wild animal skins
seaweed
jujube (Chinese dates)
sheepskin
sugar
persimmon cakes
lambskin
porcelain
bean and sweet potato noodles
Tibetan sugar
rice
porcelain bowls
borax
cow skins
birch wood bowls
paper cigarettes
Tibetan jujube (wild fruit)
malachite (a mineral)
frankincense Tibetan incense snow lotus (flower for medicine) amber coral copper wire copper/iron pieces copper cooking pots copper teapots color pigments Tibetan medicinal products knives alkali powder mulberry paper Western porcelain Western fabric Western satin Western thread fish oil waxed paper wool fabric cotton fabric lead realgar (a mineral) jade stone coal gypsum plantain seeds salt wild garlic
22 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
with neighboring regions, a brief outline of the historical development of money in Tibet is given below according to the late Nicholas Rhodes, who was an expert on Tibetan coins.
A brief overview of the use and production of money in Tibet In the seventh and eighth centuries various coins were used on the borders of Tibet, and in modern times some have been found in Tibetan regions: 1. Copies of Byzantine gold coins found in at least one tomb in Northeast Tibet (Dulan) 2. Lichhavi copper coins struck in Nepal, found only rarely in Southern Tibet 3. Chinese copper cash found in the garrison towns of Central Asia, such as Kucha and Yarkand, which were controlled by Tibetans in the late eighth century (the use of money is occasionally listed in Tibetan-language documents from this period)
In the twelfth century, silver and gold coins were struck in Nepal, but rarely if ever have they been found in Tibet, even though trade clearly existed between Tibet and Nepal.
Figure 6.3 The only known rupee of Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor (1618–1707), with the mint name Tibet-i-Kalan (Great Tibet) in Persian, obverse. From the collection of the late Nicholas Rhodes.
During the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) silver ingots and paper money were sent from China to Sakya Monastery in Central Tibet. It is not clear whether such Chinese currency was ever actually used as such in Tibet, but it certainly found its way there. Some coins, perhaps of the Chaghadai Khanate (ca. thirteenth–fourteenth centuries) in Central Asia, issued with Tibetan script as well as Arabic, have been found in Khazakstan and the Khotan area, but not much is known about them. In the mid-sixteenth century, but mainly from about 1640 to 1750, Malla silver coinage was used extensively in Tibet. The earliest Nepalese principality to strike such silver coins was Dolakha, around 1645; they were clearly struck with silver obtained from trans- Himalayan trade, but only for a short time. Sometimes the coinage was debased, and some types were specifically struck for export to Tibet. And on some occasions silver bullion was sent to Nepal for striking into coins that were then returned to Tibet. Around 1648 an Assamese coin was struck with an inscription, “Bao Zang,” in Chinese, which was probably intended as a Tibet trade coin. Only two examples are known; the sparsity indicates that the experiment was not very successful. During the same period, Cooch Behar silver coins were circulated in Bhutan, perhaps starting slightly earlier in 1555 and continuing until at
Figure 6.4 Reverse of rupee of Aurangzeb.
m ap 6 . th e h i stor i c al ti b etan wor ld
23
least around 1800. And again silver was sent to Cooch Behar for return as coins to Bhutan. Such coins are sometimes found in Tibet. In the eighth year of Aurangzeb (1666), the sixth Mughal emperor, gold and silver coins were struck with the mint name Tibet-i-Kalan (Great Tibet) to celebrate his conquest of Ladakh. But these coins are rarely found; the only known example is shown here (figs. 6.3 and 6.4). From the early eighteenth century until 1813, silver coinage struck in Garhwal was used in the Western Tibetan wool trade. Coins of similar standard, and initially of similar design, were struck from circa 1770 until 1842 in Ladakh and were similarly used in Western Tibet. Such coins—both Ladakhi and Garhwali—are found as far east as Kalimpong. The first coins of Tibet itself were silver tangkas struck by the regent, the Demo Tulku, in 1763. These were followed by rare gold and silver coins in 1785 by the eighth Dalai Lama. The Tibetan government continued to mint silver coins in 1791–93 and on various occasions in the nineteenth century. Most coins were struck in Lhasa, but some in Kongpo to the east. Production of such silver coins (debased) increased substantially around 1875; they were struck in large numbers in Lhasa from then until 1921, and again in 1925 and 1929–30. The first experimental silver coins in the name of Emperor Qianlong were struck in 1792, but in the Tibetan script only. These were followed by coins with bilingual inscriptions (Chinese and Tibetan) in 1792– 1801, 1819–24, and 1835–36. In 1801 a few coins were also struck with Manchu writing. After 1836, no more such Sino-Tibetan coins were struck until 1910. British Indian rupees found their way into Tibet after about 1840 and were used in large numbers from the 1880s on to buy tea from China. These rupees became widely used as a main form of currency across Kham. When the supply of rupees was reduced after 1902, copies of Victorian rupees were made in the mints of Sichuan for circulation in Kham until the 1930s, though they were increasingly debased after 1912. In early 1910, when the thirteenth Dalai Lama returned from China, the first silver and copper coins with a snow lion design were struck in Tibet in Tibetan script only. These coins continued in the name of the Chinese emperor Xuantong (Puyi; the last emperor) in
24 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
1910 after the Chinese military takeover of the country. More silver and copper coins, initially with Tibetan motifs and script, were struck from 1913 on, and then with Chinese dragon types and in both Chinese and Tibetan script. The snow lion coins in silver were struck in 1913–19, 1922, and 1924–27, and in copper in 1913– 28, 1932–38, and 1946–53. Silver coins with increased denominations were struck in 1933–38 and 1946. Very debased silver coins were struck from 1947 to 1952. The first Tibetan banknotes were printed in Lhasa after the return of the thirteenth Dalai Lama from India in 1912. These notes initially had fixed dates of 1912 and 1913, were single color, and were issued until 1926 in limited numbers. Then multicolored notes were printed from 1926 until 1941 to make forgery harder. Further types and denominations of paper money were issued by the Tibetan government until 1959, when the fourteenth Dalai Lama fled to India. Some paper money in the Tibetan script was issued in Chinese-controlled parts of Kham incorporated into the short-lived Xikang Province from the 1920s to the 1940s for use by Tibetan speakers. Chinese silver coins were particularly used in ethnic Tibetan parts of Yunnan Province. Yuan Shikai silver dollars were restruck by the Chinese in the 1950s to pay Tibetan road builders. After 1959, only the Chinese renminbi currency was used (both paper and aluminum). And with goods extensively rationed during the early PRC period, Chinese paper ration coupons were often the only useful currency.
Sources consulted in making this map Chokyi Gyasto, Katok Situ III (1880–1925). 1972. Dbus gtsang gi gnas yig: An Account of a Pilgrimage to Central Tibet during the Years 1918 to 1920, Being the text Gangs ljongs dbus gtsang gnas bskor lam yig nor bu zla shel gyi se mo do. TBRC W9668. Palampur, India: Sungrab Nyamso Gyunphel Parkhang. Rhodes, Nicholas. 2000. “The Monetisation of Bhutan.” Journal of Bhutan Studies 2(2):79–95. Teichman, Eric. 1922. Travels of a Consular Officer in Eastern Tibet: Together with a History of the Relations between China, Tibet and India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Route itinerary with distances and dates listed in appendix. Tucci, Giuseppe. 1935. Secrets of Tibet: Being the Chronicle of the Tucci Scientific Expedition to Western Tibet (1933) by Dr. Giuseppe Tucci and Captain E. Ghersi. Translated from Italian by Mary A. Johnstone. London: Blackie & Son.
Walsh, Ernest Herbert Cooper. 1907. The Coinage of Tibet. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press. Younghusband, Francis Edward. 1926. Peking to Lhasa: The Narrative of journeys in the Chinese Empire Made by the Late Brigadier-General George Pereira. Compiled from notes and diaries supplied by Major-General Sir Cecil Pereira. Boston: Houghton. Zhou, Xiwu. Yushu diao cha ji. Original Yushu tu si diao cha ji, 1919; repr. Taibei: Cheng wen chu ban she, 1968.
m ap 6 . th e h i stor i c al ti b etan wor ld
25
The Tibetic languages
map
7
The Tibetic languages nicolas tournadre and karl ryavec
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T
he “Tibetic” languages belong to the Sino- Tibetan macrofamily. They correspond to a well-defined family of languages derived from Old Tibetan, although in some rare cases such as Baima or Khalong, a Qiangic substratum is a very probable hypothesis. The language called Old Tibetan was spoken at the time of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth centuries). Old Tibetan is very similar to the classical literary language, which has preserved a very archaic orthography. And indeed, all the modern languages not only have regular reflexes of Classical Literary Tibetan but also share a core vocabulary and grammar. The Tibetic linguistic family is comparable in size and diversity to the Romance and Germanic families. The diversity is due to many factors—geographic, sociolinguistic, religious, and political. The Tibetic family includes languages from five countries—China, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, and Nepal. Additionally, Sangdam, a Khams dialect, is spoken in the Kachin state of Myanmar (Burma). The total number of Tibetic-language speakers is roughly six million; this figure is approximate since there is no precise and reliable census.
Figure 7.1 The Tibetan minister Thonmi Sambhota (ཐོན་མི་སམ་ བྷོ་ཊ་ ་ Thon mi sam b+ho ta), credited by tradition with inventing the Tibetan alphabet in the seventh century. Circa seventeenth- century mural in the Potala Palace in Lhasa.
Table 2. The Tibetic Languages
Table 2. The Tibetic Languages
China
U-Tsang (ད�ས་གཙང་�ད་), Khams (ཁམས་�ད་), Hor (ཧོར་�ད་), Amdo (ཨ་མདོའི་�ད་དམ་ཨམ་�ད་), Kyirong (�ིད་རོང་་�ད་), Zhongu (ཞོ་�་�ད་), Khalong (ཁ་ལོང་�ད་), gSerpa (གསེར་པ་�ད་), Zitsadegu (གཟི་�་�ེ་ད�་), dPalskyid (དཔལ་�ིད་) / Chos-rje (ཆོས་�ེ་) 1, Sharkhok (ཤར་ཁོག་), Thewo (ཐེ་བོ་�ད་), Chone (ཅོ་ནེ་�ད་), Drugchu (འ�ག་�འི་�ད་), Baima (བོད་དམག་�ད་).
Pakistan Balti (བལ་ཏིའི་�ད་) 2 India Purik (�་རིག་�ད་) and Ladakhi (ལ་�གས་�ད་), Zangskari (ཟངས་དཀར་�ད་), Spiti (�ི་ཏིའི་�ད་) and Lahuli or Gharsha (གར་�འི་�ད་), Nyamkat (ཉམ་�ད་) and Jad or Dzad (འཇད་�ད་), Drengjong language (འ�ས་�ོངས་�ད་) often locally called Lhoke (�ོ་�ད་). Nepal Humla (�མ་ལའི་�ད་), Mugu (�་�འི་�ད་), Dolpo (དོལ་པོའི་�ད་), Loke or Mustang (�ོ་�ད་དམ་�ོ་�ོན་ཐང་གི་�ད་), Nubri (�བ་རིའི་�ད་), Tsum (�མ་�ད་), Langtang (ལང་ཐང་�ད་), Yolmo (ཡོལ་མོའི�ད་), Gyalsumdo (�ལ་ག�མ་མདོ་), Jirel (ཇི་རེལ་�ད་), Sherpa (ཤར་བའི་�ད་) also locally called Sharwi Tamnye (ཤར་བའི་གཏམ་�ད་), Kagate also called Shupa (ཤོག་པའི་�ད་), Lhomi (�ོ་མིའི་�ད་), Walung (ཝ་�ང་�ང་�ོ་ལའི་�ད་དམ་ཝ་�ང་�ད), and Tokpe Gola (�ོག་པོ་�ོ་ལའི་�ད་དམ་�ོག་པའོ་�ད་). Bhutan Dzongkha (�ོང་ཁ་), Tsamang (�་མང་ཁ་) or Ch’ocha-ngacha (�ོད་ཅ་ང་ཅ་ཁ་), Lakha (ལ་ཁ་) also called Tshangkha (ཚང་ཁ་), Dur Brokkat (�ར་�ི་འ�ོག་�ད་) also called Bjokha in Dzongkha, Mera Sakteng Brokpa-ke (མེ་རག་སག་�ེང་�ད་). 1. Sun (2003) uses Chos-rje, but according to Suzuki (p.c.), dPalskyid is better suited to refer to a group of four dialects that include Chos-rje. 2. Balti is traditionally written sbal-ti in Tibetan, but Balti people write it and pronounce it bal-ti.
28 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
Table 2 lists nearly fifty Tibetic languages, all derived from Old Tibetan. The dialects and varieties certainly number more than two hundred. The languages listed can be grouped together at a higher level into eight major sections, which appear on the map: North- Western, Western, Central, South-Western, Southern, South-Eastern, Eastern, and North-Eastern. Each section constitutes a geolinguistic continuum. The data presented here will appear in a forthcoming book, The Tibetic Languages, by Nicolas Tournadre and Hiroyuki Suzuki (with the collaboration of Konchok Gyatso and Xavier Becker). The classification reflected in the map is essentially based on a genetic approach, but it also includes geographical parameters, migration, and language contact factors. Non-Tibetic languages such as Gyalrongic, Qiangic, Mongolic, Turkic, Chinese, et cetera do not appear on the map.
m ap 7. th e ti b eti c l an g uag es
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How to use this atlas
map
How to use this atlas: Map coverage and cartographic conventions
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series of standardized cartographic symbols and fonts are used in this atlas (refer to this map’s legend), such as circles for religious sites and set ranges of colored elevation zones, so that historical, social, and cultural patterns can be made as clear as possible across the maps. This map itself presents the way the entire Tibetan culture region is depicted on the main historical period maps throughout this atlas. Also shown are the map footprints of the regional-scale maps of Tibet’s four macroregions of Ngari, U-Tsang (Central Tibet), Kham, and Amdo, included after each main historical period’s introduction. In addition, some area maps are included of the western Tibetan kingdoms of Guge and Purang, the city of Lhasa and the Lhasa Valley, and the eastern Tibetan kingdoms of Derge and Nangchen. Not depicted on this map are some additional maps showing the main historical diffusions of Tibetan Buddhism across Mongolia and North China as far as Siberia, as well as some detailed maps of sites in the old walled city of Beijing and surrounding areas. Fortunately, owing to my academic training in applying geographic information science to research problems in the humanities and social sciences, I possessed sufficient skills to make all of the digital maps needed for this atlas project. The foundational data for representing physical terrain derive from a global 1 km resolution digital elevation model (DEM) developed during the 1990s by the US Geological Survey. I used these data to depict a specific set of colored elevation zones on most maps, including a rich green for Tibet’s lowland bordering regions and a lighter green up to 4,400 m to show the approximate limits of cultivation above the agrarian valleys where most of Tibet’s population still lives. Above this, the vast and wholly pastoral zone is shown in an earthy orange hue. For representing terrain on the regional-scale U-Tsang map and some of the more detailed area maps, I used available 90 m resolution NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data. The original SRTM data was actually created at a higher resolution of 30 m and then intentionally downgraded to 90 m for non-US territories and possessions. Glaciers and snowfields are based on the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Glacier Database created by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. Major rivers and lakes were edited from global hydrography data provided in the US government’s 1992 Digital Chart of the
32 introduction i n t ro d uct i o n
World (DCW). Tibetan cultural and religious sites shown in this atlas mostly derive from various spatial databases that I and others compiled over practically two decades, beginning around 1990. The accuracy of the locations of thousands of primarily Buddhist religious sites, however, rests with the source data consulted. Often the specific sites of temples and monasteries could not be ascertained, and the locations of nearby towns and villages were used instead as proxy locations. In recent years, as more and more high-resolution satellite imagery of Tibet became freely available on Google Earth, it became possible to correlate textual descriptions, as well as personal knowledge in some cases, of site locations with actual structures observed on the ground. Yet in most cases, owing to the small geographic scales of the maps in this atlas, more accurate site locations would not change their representation noticeably. One way to better understand this problem is to take into consideration that the symbols representing most of the cultural and religious sites on the maps are drawn as if they were many miles in diameter themselves so as not to appear too small to the naked eye. It was also necessary to choose some standard method of naming historical Tibetan polities in a way that could be distinguished from the non-Tibetic names of neighboring polities of the lowland agrarian cultures surrounding Tibet, mainly Chinese and South Asian. I choose to accomplish this by mostly showing Tibetan polity names in black, while showing most of the non-Tibetan polities in the same green color across the maps. Finally, all of these physical and cultural data variables are cartographically presented in the same Albers equal area cartographic projection, and based on the 1984 World Geodetic System (WGS 84) for defining a spherical earth. The Central Meridians, however, are not the same on all maps. For the main Tibet-wide maps and the Central Tibet maps, a Central Meridian of 90 degrees east is employed so that map viewers perceive that they are centrally located above the Lhasa area. On the Ngari maps, 80 degrees is employed for the Central Meridian, while 98 degrees is used on the Kham maps, and 102 degrees on the Amdo maps. But the same standard parallels of 30 and 36 degrees north and a latitude of projection origin of 33 degrees are used on all the maps.
part 1
th e p rehisto rica l a nd a ncien t p eriods , circa 30,000 BCE to 600 CE
Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures on the Tibetan Plateau
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Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures on the Tibetan Plateau, circa 30,000–2000 BCE
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ost of the evidence for the initial human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau during the Paleolithic consists of numerous scattered assemblages of stone tools. It is estimated that nomadic hunters were drawn to the wild hooved animals of the plateau grasslands beginning about thirty thousand years ago. The earliest evidence of human activity is hand and foot prints impressed into a now-calcified surface layer from about 20,000 BCE at Chusang in Central Tibet. These prints date from a time of rising temperatures and increasing precipitation after the so- called Ice Age, though this earliest period of recorded human activity occurred during the Last Glacial Maximum circa 20,000–16,000 BCE. It is assumed that the permanent snowline was about 1,000 m lower than it is now, but precise levels are not clear. On this map an approximate permanent snowline of 5,000 m above sea level, compared with a level around 5,900 m today in Central Tibet, is shown to provide some visualization of what the plateau may have looked like during this time. The advent of the Neolithic, during which time plants and animals were domesticated, leading to the later social and political complexity of ancient civilizations, is not clearly distinguished from the end of the Paleolithic on the Tibetan Plateau. Early evidence of domesticated barley dates from circa 2000 BCE in Central Tibet, probably later than its first cultivation. It is clear, however, that only the broad valleys of the Yarlung Tsangpo and the upper Indus and Sutlej Rivers in Western Tibet offer a moderate climate conducive to human settlement compared to the cold, alpine environment that prevails across most of the plateau, though sections of the deeply incised valleys of the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze Rivers in Eastern Tibet are also moderate. As can be seen on the next map of the ancient Tibetan world around 2000 BCE to 600 CE, the Iron and Bronze Age societies, of which we know a little bit prior to the first written Tibetan histories of the Imperial Period, developed across the Jangtang grasslands region of Upper or Western Tibet and in the broad, warm valleys of Central Tibet. Interestingly, the Jangtang region was likely composed mainly of grasslands favored by nomadic hunters during the Paleolithic to Neolithic transition, while much of Southern and Eastern Tibet was still largely covered by virgin forests. And when large-scale human-induced conversions of forests to grassland and farmland started during the
36
t he preh i sto r i c a l a n d a n c i e n t p e r i o ds
Neolithic, the western and central Tibetan valleys generally offered broader, well-watered bottomland for extensive human settlement compared to the deep and narrow eastern Tibetan valleys. The two most important Neolithic sites in Tibet studied so far by archaeologists are Karu, near Chamdo in Kham, and Chugong, on the outskirts of Lhasa. But, similar to the unclear Paleolithic to Neolithic transition, the next major transition from the Neolithic to a patently ancient Tibetan civilization in its own right is not clear, as evidenced in the finding of a bronze mirror at the Chugong site. Given the importance of environmental change factors in the long-term development of Tibetan civilization, the approximate areas of potential forest across the plateau prior to human-induced land-cover change are shown. Tibetans historically transformed their environment to optimize grazing for their livestock. Forests were continuously grazed or simply repeatedly burned to create and improve pastures. In addition, timber and fuel extraction have reduced forest areas continuously and significantly pushed back treelines. Deforestation is most striking in Central Tibet, where only a few sacred stands or individual junipers in cliffs document the potential of forest growth. Historic deforestation is also documented by pollen analyses showing ancient
Figure 9.1 Traditional account of the origin of the Tibetan people from the mating of an ape and an ogress in the Yarlung Valley of Central Tibet. Mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, circa seventeenth century.
forest soils under pastures and relic stands. Pastoral activities led to the development of many forest-free south-facing slopes compared to forested north slopes apparent today. In this map, altitude and precipitation levels were used as the determining factors for potential historic forest distribution. Treelines are based on published data and mapped according to contemporary Chinese prefectural-level administrative divisions, so that the overall plateau-wide pattern of potential forest cover is more accurate than it would be if only one treeline level were used.
Sources consulted in making this map Aldenderfer, Mark, and Zhang Yinong. 2004. “The Prehistory of the Tibetan Plateau to the Seventh Century A.D.: Perspectives and Research from China and the West since 1950.” Journal of World Prehistory 18:1–55. Brantingham, P. Jeffrey, John W. Olsen, and George B. Schaller. 2001. “Lithic Assemblages from the Chang Tang Region, Northern Tibet.” Antiquity 75(288):319–27. Frenzel, B. 1994. “Forschungen zur Geographie und Geschichte des Eiszeitalters (Pleistozän) und der Nacheiszeit (Holozän) [in Tibet].” In Jahrbuch der Akad. Wiss. u. Lit., 178–89. Mainz: Kommission Erdwissenschaftliche Forschung, 1994. ———. 1998. “History of Flora and Vegetation during the Quaternary [in East High Asia].” Progress in Botany 59:599– 633. Frenzel, B., Jian Li, and Shijian Liu. 1995. “On the Upper Quaternary Paleoecology of Eastern Tibet: Preliminary Results of an Expedition to the Eastern Tibetan Plateau.” Science in China, ser. B, 38(4):485–94. Li, Bosheng. 1993. “The Alpine Timberline of Tibet.” In Forest Development in Cold Climates: Proceedings of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Laugarvatn, Iceland, June 1991, edited by J. Alden, J. L. Mastrantonio, and S. Odum, 511–27. New York: Plenum Press.
Miehe, S., et al. 2000. “Sacred Forests of South Central Xizang and Their Importance for the Restoration of Forest Resources.” In “Environmental Change in High Asia,” edited by G. Miehe and Zhang Yili, special issue, Marburger Geographische Schriften 135:228–49. Winkler, D. 1998. “Deforestation in Eastern Tibet: Human Impact—Past and Present.” In Development, Society and Environment in Tibet, edited by G. E. Clarke, 79–96. Proc. 7th Seminar IATS in Graz 1995, vol. 5. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 79–96. ———. 2000. “Patterns of Forest Distribution and the Impact of Fire and Pastoralism in the Forest Region of the Tibetan Plateau.” In “Environmental Change in High Asia,” edited by G. Miehe and Zhang Yili, special issue, Marburger Geographische Schriften 135:201–227. ———. 2003. “Forest Use and Implications of the 1998 Logging Ban in the Tibetan Prefectures of Sichuan: Case Study on Forestry, Reforestation and NTFP in Litang County, Ganzi TAP, China.” In “The Ecological Basis and Sustainable Management of Forest Resources,” edited by Z. Jianget al., special issue of Informatore Botanico Italiano 35, supp. 1: 116–25. Wissmann, H. v. 1960. “Stufen und Gürtel der Vegetation und des Klimas in Hochasien und seinen Randgebieten, A: Hygrische Raumgliederung und Exposition.” Erdkunde 14:249–72. Zhang, David D., and S. H. Li. 2002. “Optical Dating of Tibetan Human Hand-and Footprints: An Implication for the Palaeoenvironment of the Last Glaciation of the Tibetan Plateau.” Geophysical Research Letters 29(5):1,072.
Map photo/drawing credits Line drawings of stone tools courtesy of John W. Olsen and P. Jeffrey Brantingham. Photos of Chusang and footprint by John W. Olsen, 2007. Drawings of Karu houses and pottery from Changdu Karou [Chamdo Karu: A Neolithic site in Tibet]. 1985. Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe [Cultural Relics Publishing House]. Photos of pottery and bronze mirror by Karl E. Ryavec, 2004.
m ap 9 . pal eol i th i c an d n eol i th i c c u ltu r es on th e ti b etan p l ateau
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The ancient Tibetan world
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The ancient Tibetan world, circa 2000 BCE to 600 CE
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he advent of the first Iron and Bronze Age societies on the Tibetan Plateau, distinct from earlier Neolithic cultures, is poorly understood. Detailed archaeological surveys have been conducted only since the 1970s. But what little is known does make it clear that after about 2000 BCE, social complexity led to the construction of stone forts and cemetery complexes and the rise of societies with chiefs and forms of territorial control. Crop cultivation and animal husbandry constituted the economic basis of these polities. Shamanistic and animistic religions were widely practiced. Later written records claim that Bon was the main religion of this period and Zhangzhung in Western Tibet was the main political authority, though it is not clear whether this early form of Bon was based on Buddhism, another foreign religion, a uniquely indigenous religion, or some combination. We do know that some of these religious beliefs survived by being later incorporated into the new Bon religion that became formalized, along with other Tibetan Buddhist traditions, after about 900 CE. One of the main hurdles to better understanding this initial development of civilization and religion in ancient Tibet is the absence of a written script until the Tibetan alphabet was devised during the Imperial Period around 600 CE—Tibet’s first historical period. Given these limitations, this map attempts to show what little is known or conjectured about prehistorical Tibetan civilization based on patterns of extant surface archaeological sites and later
Tibetan written documents that purport to document important polities and places from this period. The distribution of stone megaliths from this period demonstrates that Western or Upper Tibet was a core region of early cultural activity. As seen on map 9 of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Periods, Western Tibet was the only large contiguous grassland region during the Neolithic transition to ancient Tibet’s agrarian civilization. This vast open, nonforested region would have been conducive to the hunting of large animals and thus the development of early hunting societies. Later, with the domestication of highland barley in the valleys and the domestication of yaks to graze on the alpine grasslands, even greater densities of human settlement arose, and more cultural exchanges took place. Tibet’s prestige U-Tsang language came to be spoken across Western and Central Tibet. A shared language, perhaps better than any other variable, points toward social and historical interaction among communities. Of all the Tibetic languages, U-Tsang exhibits the greatest geographic extent, from the To Ngari dialect of Western Tibet to the Kongpo dialect in the easternmost part of Central Tibet (see map 7, “The Tibetic Languages”). Early Tibetan documents found at the Dunhuang Silk Road Buddhist cave complex list approximately twenty early polities (rGyal phran), with Zhangzhung in the west, Sumpa in the north, and a clustering of all the others in Central Tibet. Zhangzhung appears to have been the largest in size, with a vast array of forts
Figure 10.1 Part of the Khyunglung monastery-fort complex showing numerous caves that characterized the ancient troglodytic settlements of Zhangzhung prior to the introduction of Buddhist monasticism in the tenth century CE. View toward the south over the Sutlej River, 2004.
Figure 10.2 Walled pillars demarcating burial enclosures at Dzapung, a possible Zhangzhung royal cemetery. This large burial complex extends approximately 700 m from north to south and is up to 300 m wide. Looking south toward the Khardong mesa with the Chunag floodplain to the left. Photo by John V. Bellezza, 2002.
t he preh i sto r i c a l a n d a n c i e n t p e r i o ds
and elite residences controlling the trade routes to India, Kashmir, Gandhara, the Tarim Basin, and beyond to Persia and the Hellenistic world. Its reputed capital was at Khyunglung Ngulmo Khar, though it is not clear whether this fort was at the Khardong mesa site closer to Mt. Kailash, indicated on this map, or at the other fort of the same name lower down the Sutlej River Valley, where an early Buddhist monastery was built on the acropolis in the eleventh century. A large cemetery complex lies approximately four km north of the mesa site at Dzapung (rDza spungs), lending credence to claims that Khardong was the main seat of power, though just what sorts of political systems characterized Zhangzhung at different times is not clear. Much of what little is known comes from Imperial Tibetan sources compiled after the early Yarlung Dynasty incorporated all of Central Tibet under its jurisdiction and then annexed Zhangzhung in the 640s. At this time Zhangzhung had a king and an extensive network of forts controlling trade and taxation. But it was the fort of Tsaparang, even lower down the Sutlej Valley from the Khyunglung sites, that was mentioned by Herodotus as Caspatyrum when Western Tibet was known to the classical world as a source of gold. Later, Tsaparang continued to offer the best relative location in terms of trade and defense because in the 900s it became the capital of the powerful Guge Kingdom, which spearheaded the reintroduction of Buddhism across Tibet. And Guge maintained the name of Zhangzhung, by
which it was called well into the historical period until its fall in 1630.
Sources consulted in making this map Bellezza, John Vincent. 2008. Zhang Zhung: Foundations of Civilization in Tibet; A Historical and Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Monuments, Rock Art, Texts, and Oral Tradition of the Ancient Tibetan Upland. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. dKar ru grub dbang btsan ’dzin (born 1801). ’Dzam gling gangs rgyal ti se’i dkar chag tshangs dbyangs yid phrog, in mDzod phug rtsa ba dang spyi don dang gangs ti se’i dkar chag volume, nos. 491–657. Dolanji: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre, 1973. Hazod, Guntram. 2009. “Imperial Central Tibet: An Annotated Cartographical Survey of Its Territorial Divisions and Key Political Sites.” In Brandon Dotson, The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History, 161–232. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Tenzin Namdak (bsTan ’dzin rnam dag). “g.Yung drung bon gyi bstan pa’i byung khungs nyung bsdus zhes bya ba bzhugs so,” in New Collection of Bon bka’-brten, vol. 270, nos. 553–670. Lhasa: dKar ru bstan pa’i nyi ma, 1998. Vernier, Martin. 2007. Exploration et documentation des pétroglyphes du Ladakh: 1996–2006. Sierre, Switzerland: Fondation Carlo Leone et Mariena Montandon.
Map photo/drawing credits Photos and drawings of ancient rock art by Martin Vernier. Photos of ancient pillars and fortress by John Bellezza. Photos of Bonpo tsakli and manuscript fragment by Karl E. Ryavec.
Figure 10.3 Traditional account of the sacred origin of kingship in Tibet showing the Yarlung Dynasty’s first king, Nyatri Tsenpo, descending to earth via a sky rope and being greeted by herders. Mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, circa seventeenth century.
m ap 1 0 . th e an c i en t ti b etan wo r ld
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part 2
t he imp eria l p eriod , circa 600–900
Territorial administration and important religious sites
Territorial administration system and important religious sites of the Imperial Period, circa 600–842
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Central Tibet: imperial territorial administration
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Central Tibet circa 600–842: The imperial territorial administration system
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he Yarlung Kingdom of Central Tibet expanded territorially by military conquests and marriage alliances to become an empire by the mid-630s. Songtsen Gampo, though technically the second or third emperor depending on how the position of Tsenpo (bTsan po) is defined, is largely credited with expanding the empire beyond Central Tibet and is often even considered to have been the first emperor, so great was his reputation. But it was his father, Namri Lontshan, who initially integrated the territories of Central Tibet’s clans under a larger political organization in the early 600s and then annexed the northern region of Sumpa toward the end of his reign, around 630. One reason Songtsen Gampo became better known was his annexation of Zhangzhung in Western Tibet and bringing war to the Azha (Tuyuhun) and the Turks. By the time of his death around 650, a strong political tradition had united the Tibetic-speaking peoples across the entire Tibetan Plateau, laying the foundation for imperial wars and conquests of bordering lowland regions, from the Silk Road oases of Central Asia to China and India. Before we examine how different forms of territorial administration facilitated the growth and expansion of the Tibetan Empire, it is important to consider two key historical events, the formal introduction of Buddhism and the invention of Tibetan writing, which occurred during the Imperial Period. Starting in the 600s, Buddhist temples were constructed on ancient plans that were patently Indian; some of these temples still survive intact in Tibet today. But there does not seem to have been a mass conversion to Buddhism until well after the fall of the empire in the ninth century. Buddhism under the empire appears to have been more of a court religion that benefited from the patronage of specific emperors and their wives, especially the Chinese Tang Dynasty princesses. The spatial pattern of imperial temple construction shows a clustering only in Central Tibet and the southern Himalayas. A few temples were also constructed along the main trade routes in Eastern Tibet, and otherwise there is no evidence of Imperial Period Buddhist temples constructed elsewhere on the Tibetan Plateau. But along the Silk Road oases in the Gansu Corridor and neighboring low-altitude valleys of the Yellow River watershed of the Tsongkha region in Northeastern Tibet, some earlier Chinese temples and new Tibetan constructions formed a core region of Buddhist activity. The main ev-
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idence for the early spread of Tibetan Buddhism across the plateau beyond Central Tibet consists of Buddhist images carved on stones and cliffs. Map 13 depicts most of the documented Imperial Period religious and cultural sites in Central Tibet. After the Imperial Period many of these early temples came to be credited to geomantic efforts of the emperor Songtsen Gampo to subdue indigenous Tibetan earthly spirits and forces and tame them in the face of the arrival of Buddhism, though this concept seems to be largely a postimperial invention of tradition. One of the better-known mappings of these so-called Songtsen Gampo temples is detailed on this map according to a Tibetan text from circa 1200. In general, during the centuries following the fall of the empire, as Tibetan Buddhism continued to spread, Tibetan writers often assigned important religious developments to various actions of the emperors, who came to be referred to as religious kings, regardless of whether there was any evidence for such characterizations. An example that shows how the political and economic concerns of the emperors later became viewed largely in religious terms is the South Asian figure of Padmasambhava (called Guru Rinpoche in Tibetan). The various schools of Tibetan Buddhism that developed in the post-Imperial Period treat Padmasambhava as one of the most important Indians to have first visited and brought Buddhist teachings to Tibet. Specifically, his home was in Uddiyana, somewhere in the greater Gandhara region of ancient India. If one reads, though, of his visit in the Testament of Ba (dBa’ bzhed or sBa bzhed ), a unique postimperial Tibetan text with surviving fragments dated to the Imperial Period, Padmasambhava advised an emperor on agricultural irrigation and the bringing of new lands under cultivation. These problems were probably of greater economic importance to the court than religious matters. The development of Tibetan writing partly arose out of needs for taxation and recordkeeping once the new imperial bureaucracy began to administer the sedentary parts of Tibet, in addition to translating Indian Buddhist texts to facilitate the spread of Buddhism. It is possible that one reason the development of Tibetan writing occurred relatively late, when compared to the previous centuries of cultural developments across Zhangzhung in ancient times, was that the physical geography of Western Tibet presented fewer areas for the cultivation of crops and the growth of large pop-
ulation centers than the wide valleys of Central Tibet that imperial rule united under a single political organization. Regardless of the exact reasons, Old Tibetan, as the language spoken at the time of the Tibetan Empire is known, encompasses a well-defined family of Tibetic languages across the plateau and bordering foothills that share a core vocabulary and grammar. The written form of Old Tibetan is termed Classical Literary Tibetan. After being first committed to writing in the 600s, it became the liturgical language of Bon and Vajrayana Buddhism. Over the next thousand years, as Tibetan Buddhism spread across Tibet and beyond to Central Asia and parts of China, it came to occupy a position similar to Latin in the historical development of Western civilization. Indeed, the Tibetic language family belongs to a very small circle of language families throughout the world that each derive from a common language which is identical or closely related to an old literary language, such as the Romance languages and Latin, and the modern Indic languages and Sanskrit. The territorial administration of the Tibetan Empire was based on the creation of new territorial units in the seventh century. Initially Tibet’s territories, along with Central Tibet itself, were ruled by administrative chiefs (Khos dpon) as of the mid-630s. There were at least six important administrative chiefs in Bod, Sumpa, Zhangzhung, Chibs, mThong khyab, and Mon. These political institutions marked the beginning of a process by which new imperial territories replaced the borders drawn by earlier kingdoms and local clans. One of the first attempts to institute imperial territorial control was the Eighteen Shares of Power (dBang ris bco brgyad), or Administrative Arrangement of Territories (Yul gyi khod bshams pa), mainly based in Central Tibet. This system formally assigned territories to specific clans, though it probably merely formalized the de facto situation. Map 12 (“Central Tibet circa 600–842: The Imperial Territorial Administration System”) depicts these units in detail. By the mid-600s, the divisions of “one thousand household districts” (sTong sde; hereafter Tongde) replaced the traditional clan areas. Entries in the Old Tibetan Annals mention the legislative classification of Tibet’s population into military and civilian categories within regions termed “horns” (Ru). There were four horns in Central Tibet, often referred to as simply the Four Horns of Central Tibet (Bod khams ru bzhi), and the Horn of Sumpa was legislated in 702. Zhangzhung
was brought under administration and divided into Tongde, but was not referred to as a horn. The horns were named according to a south-facing orientation; thus the Right Horn is west of the Left Horn. All of Central Tibet, Sumpa, and Zhangzhung contained Tongde, in addition to similar districts in the vaguely defined Dome (mDo smad) and Dokham (mDo khams) regions of Eastern and Northeastern Tibet. Most of the Tongde in Central Tibet, and parts of Zhangzhung, have been located. But most of these districts in Sumpa and other regions are still not clear. The horns also contained “administrative districts” (Yul dpon tshan / Yul sde), which were either units of five hundred households subordinate to the Tongde or parallel divisions of territory. All of these types of districts were located in agricultural and not pastoral areas, and the “administrative districts” were administered by local officials (Yul dpon) and interior ministers (Nang blon). Specifically, each horn was divided into two administrative halves. The upper half contained four Tongde, each of which was governed by an official called a tongpon (sTong dpon). These leaders were identified only by their clan names, indicating the hereditary nature of the post. They were subordinate to the general of the upper half, called either “horn chief ” / “horn official” (Ru dpon) or “general” (dMag dpon). The lower half of each horn mirrored the upper half, with the addition of a “sub-thousand district” (sTong bu chung). Each half had its own chain of command, emblematic horse, flag, insignia of rank, and subcommander. In addition to these nine districts in each horn, there was a tenth unit called a “royal guard one thousand household district” (sKu srung stong sde) with a geographic directional designation. Some scholars speculate that the four royal guard one thousand household districts guarded the Tibetan emperor and traveled with his court. Certainly the inclusion of flags and posts of general indicate a distinctly martial element in the districts, and it is possible that each was in fact a regiment of one thousand soldiers. This line of speculation is supported by the Old Tibetan Chronicle, which states that three Tongde of the Central Horn were honored for their help in sacking the Chinese capital of Chang’an in 763. This deployment of Tibetan militias across the greater plateau region, even for founding military colonies, helps to show how the empire administered such a vast region and also how Classical Literary Tibetan came to be used so widely. m ap s 1 1 an d 1 2 . i m p er i al ter r i tor i al ad m i n i str ation
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Figure 11.1 Tibetan cavalry soldier of Central Tibet in medieval armor, 1904. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 11.2 Tibetan infantry soldiers of Central Tibet in medieval armor, 1904. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 11.3 Buddhist deities being carved in rock. These sorts of carvings are often the only evidence for the spread of Buddhism to different parts of Tibet during the Imperial Period. Mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, circa seventeenth century.
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The Tibetan Empire extended its control over territory beyond Central Tibet, Sumpa, Zhangzhung, and Dome and Dokhams through military garrisons (Khrom). These were established in frontier regions in the wake of military victories and served to consolidate newly conquered areas through direct Tibetan rule. At least eight such military governments existed, stretching along Tibet’s northern frontier from the Karakorum-Pamir region in the west through the Silk Road oases of the Tarim Basin to the Yellow River region in the east. Much of what we now know about the Tibetan Empire comes from the Old Tibetan Annals and other ancient texts preserved in the Dunhuang caves along the Silk Road, as well as civil and military records lost and buried in the desert sands of this arid region as a result of the Tibetan occupation of the Tarim Basin during the seventh and eighth centuries.
Sources consulted in making these maps Alexander, Andre, ed. 2008. “Empire Road: Design and Positioning of Cultural Monuments of the Early Tibetan Empire.” Unpublished research report. Dotson, Brandon. 2009. The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hazod, Guntram. 2009. “Imperial Central Tibet: An Annotated Cartographical Survey of Its Territorial Divisions and Key Political Sites.” In Brandon Dotson, The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History, 161–232. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Richardson, Hugh. 1985. A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions. James G. Forlong Series 29. Hertford, UK: Royal Asiatic Society. Tan, Qixiang, ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 5, The Sui Dynasty Period, The Tang Dynasty Period, The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. Beijing: China Cartographic Publishing House. Wangdu, Pasang, and Hildegard Diemberger. 2000. dBa’ bzhed: The Royal Narrative concerning the Bringing of the Buddha’s Doctrine to Tibet. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Zhu, Shikui, and Qijun Cheng. 2010. “A New Investigation of the Geographic Position of the Bailan Capital of the Tuyuhun.” Asian Highlands Perspectives 6:99–150. Zhongguo Wenwu Dituji [China cultural relics atlas]. 2009. Sichuan Fence [Sichuan part,] 3 vols. Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe.
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Central Tibet: Religious and cultural sites
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Central Tibet circa 600–900: Religious and cultural sites of the Imperial Period
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he Buddhist religious sites of Central Tibet founded during the Imperial Period mostly consist of temples, rock carvings, and a few chorten (stupa). Imperial Period temples were almost all built on the Indian vihara model characterized by a walled courtyard flanked by many cell-like rooms. Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple is probably the most well-known example due to its early political significance in the seventh century, and also because over time it became Tibet’s holiest shrine and one of the main destinations for pilgrims from all over the Buddhist world. The use of caves for shrines and monks’ cells also diffused to Tibet from earlier South and Central Asian traditions. An Imperial Period date for some of the temples and cave shrines depicted on this map is clear based on surviving structural remains. The imperial foundations of other sites, however, rest on postdynastic written sources and local tradition. In addition to temples and shrines, some Buddhist images and inscriptions carved on cliff sides have been located in parts of Central Tibet, though scholars do not always agree on whether the iconography or calligraphic style warrants an imperial period date. The often politically significant Tibetan inscriptions on stone columns (rDo ring), by contrast, tend to be more clearly assignable to this period. While it is clear that Buddhist temples were built in different places under the empire, it is not clear to what extent Buddhist monkhood and monasticism became an integral part of Tibetan society during this period. Postimperial Tibetan Buddhist writings credit Samye as being Tibet’s first monastery with ordained
monks. Complicating matters is the fact that Samye was rebuilt and restored at different times in the postimperial period, and thus we don’t really know what it looked like when it was first built in the later half of the eighth century. The traditional plan of Samye as a mandalalike model of the universe with a central building surrounded by stupas is similar to earlier Chinese three-story religious structures termed Mingtang (i.e., bright hall), built in relation to circular spaces and designed to integrate imperial rule with the pacifying and harmonizing of natural forces. Though postimperial Tibetan tradition places the original model for Samye in ancient India, no Buddhist monastic structures similar to the circular mandalalike plan of Samye have been identified there. The other main types of religious and cultural sites in Central Tibet during the Imperial Period, burial mounds and sacred places of the Bonpo, further indicate a less than complete Buddhist transformation of Tibet during these times. Most elite burials continued to be within tumuli, and most, if not all, of the large, significant sites are shown on this map. The burial mounds of the emperors at Chongye in the Yarlung Valley are the best known, and the site is often referred to as the Valley of the Kings. But there are many more sites with extremely large mounds indicating the burials of powerful members of society, plus numerous sites consisting of many small mounds together. Ancient references from Imperial Period Tibetan texts, and also Tang Period Chinese texts, indicate that these burials were not part of Buddhist ritual practice but
Figure 13.1 Tandruk (Khra ’drug), founded in the seventh century: one of the first Buddhist temples built in Tibet. Photo by Guntram Hazod, 1999.
Figure 13.2 Samye Monastery, traditionally considered to be Tibet’s first Buddhist monastery, built in the eighth century. Photo by Guntram Hazod, 2010.
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rather the conservative cultural continuation of native prehistorical funerary traditions. And while some specific burial mounds may be identified with members of the imperial royal family, many of the sites had started to be used for burials prior to the Imperial Period. There is also some evidence that ritual specialists called bonpo (possibly “reciters”) presided over funerals and tomb sites, though how these early bonpo relate to the postimperial Bon religious tradition is not clear. The postimperial Bon religious tradition claims continuity with a series of thirty-seven holy (’Du gnas) or assembly (’Du ’chogs gnas) places, mostly located in Central Tibet. The textual evidence for these places is attributed to the eighth century, as indicated by the organization of the sites according to the Four Horns of Central Tibet (Bod khams ru bzhi). Many of these sites also became sacred to the Buddhists during the Imperial Period, such as the caves at Drak Yerpa near Lhasa and at Chimphu near Samye. Given that many of the sites are caves or other unique natural features, such as oddly shaped rock formations, it is reasonable to speculate that people had been considering them significant since prehistorical times.
Sources consulted in making this map Those listed for map 5 were also consulted. Richardson, Hugh E. 1985. A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions. Hertford, UK: Stephen Austin and Sons. Uebach, H. 1999. “On the Thirty-Seven Holy Places of the Bon-pos in the Tibetan Empire.” In Indica et Tibetica: Studia Tibetica et Mongolica (Festschrift Manfred Taube), eds. H. Eimer, M. Hahn, M. Schetelich, and P. Wyzlic, 34:261–77. Swisttal-Odendorf, Germany: Indica et Tibetica Verlag. Zhongguo Wenwu Dituji [China cultural relics atlas]. 2010. Xizang Zizhichu Fence [Tibet Autonomous Region part]. Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe.
Map photo credits Photos of the Jokhang, and the Jowo Rinpoche, are from Laurence Austine Waddell’s Lhasa and Its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903–1904 (London: John Murray, 1905). Photos of the Lhayul cave tombs, Gyalkhartang tombs, and Lishan tombs were taken by Guntram Hazod in 2005–7.
Figure 13.3 Worshipers at the front entrance to the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, 1998. This important Imperial Period temple continues to be one of the most popular pilgrimage places in Tibet. Figure 13.4 View south over the main valley of the Kyi Chu from Drak Yerpa, an early complex of cave shrines sacred to both the Bonpo and the Buddhists. Figure 13.5 The Nam Tso doring, a natural rock formation on the southern shore of Nam Tso Lake, one of the thirty-seven holy places of the Bonpo. Photo by John Bellezza, 2007.
m ap 1 3. c en tr al ti b et: r el i g i ou s an d c u ltu r al s ites
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Central Tibet: royal court and council annual sites
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Central Tibet, 650–764: Annual sites of the royal court and council
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m ap 1 4 . c en tr al ti b et: royal cou rt
an d cou n c i l an n ual sites 57
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he Old Tibetan Annals record that the capital of the Tibetan Empire was actually based in an encampment that generally moved twice each year between summer and winter sites. This movable court (Pho brang) included attendants, officials, ritual specialists, and soldiers. Counted among the officials was the Central Judiciary (Pho brang ’khor gyi zhal ce pa), while the soldiers likely made up the royal guard thousand household districts (sKu srung stong sde) of the four directions. After the introduction of Buddhism, the emperor’s personal assembly of monks or sangha (Pho- brang ’khor gyi dge ’dun) resided at the court too. This type of court encampment indicates that Tibet was still a largely pastoral society during the Imperial Period, with greater physical contact between the emperor and his subjects than in lowland agrarian-based political systems. In fact, aristocratic clans gained prestige by inviting the Tibetan court to stay on their lands. Most of the court sites were in Central Tibet, though trips to distant parts of the empire are recorded in some years. But many of the Central Tibet sites, and excursions to distant places, have not been located based on the now often unclear ancient place-names recorded in the Annals. A passage in the New Tang Annals (Xin Tangshu) pertaining to the Sino-Tibetan treaty of 821–23 describes the Tibetan emperor’s court encampment in fascinating detail: The northern valley of the Tsang River is the summer residence of the tsanp’u (i.e. Tsanpo). His tent was surrounded by a fence of spears; and a hundred halberds, with long handles and hooked heads, stood upright, with an interval of some ten paces between them; while in the middle large flags were erected. There were three gates, each a hundred paces distant from the other. Armed warriors guarded these gates, and sorcerers recited prayers, with bird-shaped hats and tiger-girdles, beating drums the while. All comers were searched before they were allowed to enter. In the center there was a high platform, surrounded by a circle of jeweled balusters. The tsanp’u was seated in the center of the tent, which was ornamented with gold figures of dragons, lizards, tigers, and leopards. He was dressed in a plain cloth costume, his head enveloped in the folds of bright red-colored silk, and he was girt with a sword inlaid with gold. (Bushell 1880:521)
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The central political council (‘Dun ma) was similar to the royal court in that it also met in the summer and winter at various sites throughout central Tibet, sometimes at the same place though not at the same time. This council was headed by a group of ministers, with the prime minister chief among them. They made the main political and administrative decisions in Central Tibet. The Old Tibetan Annals records these decisions, most of which had to do with land legislation, taxation, and the promotion or replacement of officials. In addition to the central political council, some imperial political power devolved to an eastern Tibetan council in Dome (mDosmad), and there were also councils in the regional military governments (Khrom) along Tibet’s frontier.
Sources consulted in making this map Bushell, Stephen Wootton. 1880. “The Early History of Tibet. From Chinese Sources.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 12:435–541. Dotson, Brandon. 2007a. “Administration and Law in the Tibetan Empire: The Section on Law and State and Its Old Tibetan Antecedents.” DPhil thesis, Oxford University. ———. 2007b. “Divination and Law in the Tibetan Empire: The Role of Dice in the Legislation of Loans, Interest, Marital Law and Troop Conscription.” In Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet, edited by M. T. Kapstein and B. Dotson, 3–80. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2009. The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hazod, Guntram. 2009. “Imperial Central Tibet: An Annotated Cartographical Survey of Its Territorial Divisions and Key Political Sites.” In Brandon Dotson, The Old Tibetan Annals: an Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History, 161–232. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
part 3
th e p eriod o f d isu nio n , circa 900–1642
Major polities and religious sites ca. 842–1240
map
15
Major polities and important religious sites during the aftermath of empire and the Second Diffusion of Buddhism, circa 842–1240
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wo intertwined histories, one concerning the founding of new kingdoms, especially in Ngari (Western Tibet) and Tsongkha (Northeastern Tibet), and another concerning the rise of great monastic schools, mostly in U-Tsang (Central Tibet), dominate the places and events depicted on this map. A largely secular history saw descendants of Yarlung Dynasty rulers migrate across Tibet after the collapse of the empire to found the great western Tibetan kingdom of Ngari Khorsum, which soon dissolved into the kingdoms of Guge-Purang, Ladakh, and Zanskar. Some smaller kingdoms or principalities were founded in Eastern Tibet and also in peripheral areas of U-Tsang. The greatest eastern Tibetan kingdom of the tenth and eleventh centuries was that of Tsongkha, although the imperial genealogy of its rulers is not clear. For the most part, this map is designed to show the major spatial patterns of the great Tibetan Buddhist sects that arose during this period. As a result of political disunion, there were no major Tibet-wide political patterns to speak of, only regional or local polities or the lack thereof. Tibet was not to be ruled from Lhasa again until the seventeenth century, and then only in a decentralized manner. In light of this situation, I have attempted to indicate only the general domains of the main kingdoms and principalities known to have flourished from about the tenth century onward, after the subsidence of initial civil war and chaos associated with the aftermath of the Tibetan Empire during the ninth century. Detailed maps of changes in the extents of kingdoms, principalities, and monastic estates are shown on maps of U-Tsang, Ngari, and Tsongkha during this period. The situation in Eastern Tibet (sometimes referred to as Dokham and later as Kham), however, is largely unclear. There were numerous local chieftains, new monastic estates, and autonomous areas where the importance of clan identity prevailed, but few detailed studies about the early historical geography of these polities are available. For this reason, I did not possess sufficient information to justify making a detailed map of Eastern Tibet until the Ganden Podrang or Kingdom of the Dalai Lamas Period of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. For U-Tsang, I have focused the detailed map on the key religious sites according to the availability of sources. In fact, U-Tsang at this time did not possess any clear form of centralized political control beyond some sort of meeting of chiefs called by a Tibetan word akin to festival (dGa’ ston), of
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which little is known as to its forms and functions. The religious history during these centuries is far better understood. It involved a second, more vigorous diffusion of Buddhism (called the Phyi dar in Tibetan) from its source in India across the Himalaya into Tibet by both Indian masters and their Tibetan students. Some of these exchanges were designed and fostered by Tibetan rulers, the most notable example being the support shown by the kings of Guge and Purang for new forms of Buddhist art and literature in Western Tibet. In view of these developments, the period is cherished in memory today as a time when many of the important schools of Tibetan Buddhism developed their distinctive cults and built major monastic centers. Adherents of the Bon religion also founded monastic centers and developed a distinctive genre of sacred literature during this period. Though some scholars consider Bon to be a form of Buddhism according to its beliefs and ritual practices, it has often been viewed as an indigenous, pre-Buddhist Tibetan ethnic religion.
Monasteries and Sects The Tibetan word luk (Lugs), roughly translated into English as “sect” or “tradition,” is actually closer in meaning to “method” in the sense of the Tibetan Buddhist way to attain enlightenment. Except for the Nyingmapa, or “ancients,” who claim their sect was founded during the Imperial Period, all major sects of Tibetan Buddhism developed during this Second Diffusion. They usually acknowledge an Indian master, and a subsequent Tibetan master who inherited the specific method of practice and brought it to Tibet. After the collapse of empire, some Buddhists stayed in U-Tsang, while others traveled to the eastern regions of Dokham and Tsongkha to renew their faith and be ordained at surviving monastic centers there, such as Dentik. Returning to U-Tsang, these few but influential teachers managed to restore monastic ordinations, which had been interrupted by civil war and anarchy during the late ninth and early tenth centuries. The sources even describe a famine around Lhasa during the tenth century that hindered travel. This was a time when there were no political centers represented by religious authority in U-Tsang, and family-based lineages of the Bonpo and Nyingmapa persisted at the local level. There also arose an emphasis on traveling to India for “purer” Buddhist texts and teachings, though the
Nyingmapa are known for welcoming the native animistic deities into their pantheons more than the other sects. But after several centuries of religious exchange between Tibet and India, the Muslim invasions into Northern India and Kashmir would bring to an end the great centers of Buddhist scholarship and learning there. As a result, Tibetan Buddhism became important for translating, and thus preserving, early Buddhist texts and knowledge that had been lost in India. Most Buddhist sites founded in U-Tsang during the previous Imperial Period consisted of small nonsectarian shrines and temples called lhakhang. With the founding of new sects, and increasing numbers of Buddhist adherents, monasteries started to be built to house the larger numbers of monks. Perhaps for the first time in Tibet’s history, monastic estates started to collect mainly taxes-in-kind from the farmers and herders of local fields and pastures in order to provide material support for the monks. Some monasteries even maintained far-flung networks of these agricultural and pastoral estates across Tibet. Many of the monasteries resembled fortresses, as political disunion had left U-Tsang without any clear center of authority amidst numerous local hegemons. There was a clear tendency to build defensive monastic structures on mountainsides, or with ramparts as walls if built on the valley floors. The noble houses that survived the fall of empire often allied themselves with these new social institutions, thus giving rise to political rivalries between sects, probably due to territorial disputes involving the securing and taxation of feudal lands. What is striking about the spatial pattern of the founding of these new schools of Tibetan Buddhism is the mingling of sects in U-Tsang and Eastern Tibet compared to the paramount position of the New Tantra Tradition school in Ngari. Before I discuss these sects and patterns in detail, it is important to emphasize that only the main seats of sects and other important sites are shown. To compensate for the limitation of scale posed by these Tibet-wide maps, most of the known early sites are depicted on regional period maps, local area maps, and city plans when needed. On this main map I endeavored to show all monasteries that had at one time at least five hundred monks and were major centers of learning, and often too of political power. But some sites in Western Tibet, such as Alchi and Tabo, are shown due to their artistic significance, because many of the major Buddhist monasteries in this region
never supported more than about a hundred monks, due in large part to the drier environment and correspondingly scarcer agrarian and pastoral resources there. The Bonpo centers also tended to house smaller numbers of monks, generally on the order of several hundred at most, probably owing to the conversion of the majority of Tibetans to Buddhism and the survival of Bon mostly in peripheral areas. The larger and important Bonpo monasteries founded during this period were mainly on the northern bank of the Tsangpo in the Tsang region of Central Tibet, along the long-distance trade routes through Dokham, in the agricultural valleys where the eastern Tibetan Plateau merges into the Sichuan Basin, and along the Yellow River Valley in Tsongkha. The oral histories of many Bonpo monasteries in Dokham recount being founded by refugees fleeing the persecution of Bon at times under the empire. But it is not always clear whether the Bonpo driven out of U-Tsang fled to ancient Bon strongholds or founded new communities. To some extent, the Bonpo were clearly influenced by Buddhism. To a casual outside observer their religious art and temple architecture is indistinguishable from that of the Buddhists. Yet the spatial clustering of these new Bonpo monasteries may indicate some cultural affiliations with Tibet’s earlier shamanistic and animistic traditions that survived among communities in areas that resisted the diffusion of Buddhism. Notable sites include Sok Yungdrungling. Founded in the twelfth century, it housed several thousand monks before its destruction by Mongols in the eighteenth century. To this day the northernmost cultivated valleys and vast grasslands to the north of the upper Salween remain a principal region of the Bonpo. The local Bonpo chieftains of this region were not fully brought under later Central Tibet–based territorial administration systems until after 1912. Another key Bonpo region lies in the deep farming valleys of Gyelrong near the Sichuan Basin, where Tshoteng and Yungdrung Lhading were founded in the eleventh century. They housed approximately eight hundred and two thousand monks respectively and were connected to local Bonpo rulers hostile to Lhasa. The Nyingma monasteries appear to have found local areas of support mostly in Central Tibet and the Himalayas and in some core farming valleys of Dokham. Though most of the large U-Tsang sites were later converted by the Kadampa and Gelukpa, the Eastern Tim ap 1 5 . m ajor p ol i ti es an d r el i g i ou s s i tes c a. 84 2 –1 2 40
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betan sites remained key centers of Nyingma learning. Many of these early monastic expansions of the Nyingmapa were also important in converting some ruling families of local principalities from Bon to Buddhism. One of the first important new Tibetan Buddhist sects to develop during the Second Diffusion Period was the so-called New Tantra Tradition school (gSang sngags gsar ma) founded by the famous Tibetan translator Rinchen Zangpo (957–1055) in Ngari. The tantras, esoteric Indian religious practices, had earlier been made part of Nyingma rituals across Tibet. In the late tenth century, King Songne of Guge sent Rinchen Zangpo and other youths to the city of Srinagar, in Kashmir, to study Buddhism. At that time the city had not yet fallen to the Muslims. King Songne subsequently abdicated to become a monk, and he is best remembered by his new literary name, Yeshe Od. Legend credits him with serving as the first abbot of Toling Monastery (built in 996), clearly the main center of learning in Guge. From then on the kings of Guge were always chosen from the monk side of the family when no royal heir was apparent. When Rinchen Zangpo came back to Guge from Kashmir with new knowledge of Indian Buddhist literature, he embarked on translating important Buddhist texts into Tibetan. This great effort continued to receive royal patronage, and the early history of the kingdoms of Guge and Purang has been mostly studied in the context of these new religious developments, owing to their immense importance in the rediffusion of Buddhism eastward into Central Tibet during this period. Rinchen Zangpo also received lands for the construction of many small monasteries across Ngari, with most clustering in Guge and a few sites in Purang and Ladakh. See map 18 for a list and the locations of most of these so-called minor foundations of Rinchen Zangpo. The next main historical event in the Guge Kingdom after the life and work of Rinchen Zangpo was the visit in 1042 of the renowned Bengali Buddhist master Atisha (982–1054). He spent one year in Guge before traveling on to U-Tsang to give more teachings before passing away there. Atisha is credited with spearheading this rediffusion of Buddhism from Ngari into U-Tsang. His students then founded the Kadampa sect, which alongside the new Kagyu sects was one of the most influential and powerful sects of the time. Rinchen Zangpo’s New Tantra Tradition school, however, never diffused outside of the greater Ngari region
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where it received royal patronage. The Sakya sect took its name from its main monastery built in the Tsang region of Central Tibet by its nominal founder, Khon Konchog Gyalpo (1034–1102) in 1073. The heads of the sect married and ruled a sizable hereditary territory that was never incorporated into the later Kingdom of the Dalai Lamas. During this early period, in addition to the main Sakya monasteries in U-Tsang, they founded centers in the greater Tsongkha Kingdom region along the Silk Road. Interestingly, some Sakya lamas became connected to the court of the Xixia (also known as the Western Xia Dynasty or the Tangut Empire), which may account for the fact that Sakya monks were of great renown and sought after for advice and leadership on the eve of the Mongol invasion of Central Tibet in the early thirteenth century. By the 1260s the Sakya served as vice regents of Tibet under the Mongol Empire. During the height of Mongol supremacy and afterward, the Sakya administered a vast network of monasteries and estates across Tibet from their main seat of power and ritual in Tsang. The most complex group of sects to develop during the Second Diffusion Period belong to the Kagyu, or oral transmission school, founded by Marpa Chokyi Lodro, the Translator (1012–96), which dominated the religious and political landscape of U-Tsang at this time. The Four Great Kagyu Schools were in turn founded by the four chief disciples of Dakpo Lhaje Sonam Rinchen (1079–1153), more commonly known as Gampopa. The mother monastery of these new Dakpo Kagyu sects, as they were called, was Dakla Gampo, built in 1121 in the Dakpo region of Central Tibet. It was founded by Gampopa, who met and studied with Tibet’s famous poet-saint Milarepa (1052–1135), widely considered the totemic figure of Kagyu mysticism. Densatil was the seat of the Phagmo Drupa, who effectively took over U-Tsang for several centuries after the fall of the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth century. Tsal Gungtang, the seat of the Tsalpa, was an important center of political power in and around Lhasa at this time. The Karmapa’s main seat was in the mountains northwest of Lhasa at Tsurphu. It was built in 1189 by the first Karmapa Dusum Khyenpa (1110–93), shortly after the initial main Karma Kagyu monastery of Karma Densa was built in Eastern Tibet in 1184. The Karmapa lamas were the first leaders of a Tibetan sect to develop the practice of recognizing subsequent leaders by reincarnation. The Barompa, based at Barom
Monastery, were not as active in Tibetan politics during this period, though many Barompa monasteries survive across Northern Kham today. Densatil Monastery became the spiritual fountainhead of the Eight Lesser Kagyu Schools. Those sects still surviving today are the Taklung, Yazang, Drigung (at Drigung Til), Drukpa (at Ralung), and Yelpa (at Tana Sengge Nam Dzong in Dokham). By the eve of the Mongol invasion, the Taklung, Yazang, and Drigung sects functioned as local monastic principalities in parts of U and received patents as “ten thousand household districts,” or Trikhor, from the Mongol Empire. The Drukpa developed extensive networks south into Bhutan and later became the state church of this Himalayan kingdom. But little is known about the sit-
uation of the Yelpa sect in Eastern Tibet during this period. The Tropu, Shukseb, and Martsangpa (at Shopamdo in Dokham) died out over the course of time. Although the Tropu and Shukseb appear to have restricted their activities to parts of U and Tsang, the Martsangpa controlled some key areas in Eastern Tibet along the southern trade route to China at Shopamdo and Shok. Eventually they were driven out of Shok by the rising new Gelukpa estate of Drayab in the seventeenth century. The Martsangpa monks fled to the great Nyingma monastery of Katok, where they were given refuge. There were even more minor Kagyu sects than these so-called Eight Lesser Kagyu Schools, but they did not play any major role in Tibet’s political history.
Figure 15.1 Circa eighteenth-century Tibetan thangka of Padmasambhava (center), a South Asian figure active during the First Diffusion of Buddhism to Tibet in the ninth century. He became revered as one of the most important deities of Tibetan Buddhism starting in the Second Diffusion of Buddhism. This painting depicts his eight manifestations according to later religious traditions. Private collection. Figure 15.2 Circa nineteenth-century Tibetan thangka of Machik Lapdron (1055–1153), founder of the Cho tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and considered by some to have been Tibet’s first feminist. Private collection.
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Figure 15.3 Circa nineteenth-century Tibetan thangka of Marpa Chokyi Lodro (1012–96), known as the Translator, founder of the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. At the lower left is Milarepa (1052–135), considered Marpa’s most famous student. Private collection. Figure 15.4 Detail from a circa thirteenth-century Tibetan thangka of Pakmo Drupa (Phag mo gru pa rdo rje rgyal po; 1110–70), founder of Densatil Monastery and the Pakmodrupa sect of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Shangpa Kagyu are not part of the traditional Four Great and Eight Lesser Kagyu Schools framework still popularly spoken of in Tibet. They appear, though, to have functioned as an important local power in part of Tsang during this period and into Mongol times, when their main seat at Zhangzhong became one of the Trikhor in the Mongol-Sakya territorial administration of U-Tsang. Zhangzhong Monastery occupied an unusual location for a major Buddhist establishment: an area of traditional Bonpo strength on the north bank of the Tsangpo. The fact that the founder, Shangs Khyungpo Nalbyor (born in the late tenth century), came from a Bonpo family may help to explain this site preference.
Sources consulted in making this map These are in addition to those listed for map 5. Chan, Victor. 1994. Tibet Handbook: A Pilgrimage Guide. San Francisco: Moon Publications.
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Chen Qingying, ed. 1990. Zhongguo Zangzu Buluo [Tibetan tribes of China]. Beijing: China Tibetology Press. Dhungel, Ramesh K. 2002. The Kingdom of Lo (Mustang): A Historical Study. Nepal: Jigme SP Bista for Tashi Gephel Foundation. Dorje, Gyurme. 1996. Tibet Handbook with Bhutan. Chicago: Passport Books. Everding, Karl-Heinz. 2000. Das Konigreich Mang yul Gung thang: Konigtum und Herrschaftsgewalt im Tibet des 13.-17. Jahrhunderts. Bonn: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH. Petech, Luciano. The Kingdom of Ladakh c. 950–1842 A.D., vol. 51, Serie Orientale Roma. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1977. ———. 1997. “Western Tibet: Historical Introduction.” In Tabo: a Lamp for the Kingdom, edited by Deborah Kimgburg- Salter, 229–55. New York: Thames and Hudson. Gruschke, Andreas. 2004. The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces, vol. 1, The TAR Part of Kham. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Gyalbo, Tsering, Guntram Hazod, and Per K. Sorensen. 2000. Civilization at the Foot of Mount Sham-po: The Royal House of lHa Bug-pa-can and the History of g. Ya’-bzang; Historical
Texts from the Monastery of g.Ya’-bzang in Yar-stod [Central Tibet]. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hermann, Albert. 1966. An Historical Atlas of China. New ed. Edited by Norton Ginsburg. Chicago: Aldine. Horlemann, Bianca. 2004. Aufstieg und Niedergang der Tsong- kha-Stammeskonfoederation im 11./12. Jahrhundert an der Schnittstelle von Tibet, China und Zentralasien [The rise and fall of the Tsong-kha tribal confederation in the 11th/12th centuries at the crossroad of Tibet, China, and Central Asia]. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Kessler, Peter. 1983. Die Historischen Konigreiche von Ling und Derge. EAT 40. Rikon, Zurich: Tibet Institute.
Rock, Joseph F. 1948. The Ancient Nakhi Kingdom of Southwest China. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 8 and 9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schwartzberg, Joseph. 1978. A Historical Atlas of South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tan, Qixiang, ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China]. 8 vols. Beijing: China Cartographic Publishing House. Tucci, Guiseppe. 1949. Tibetan Painted Scrolls. Rome: La Liberia Dello Stato. Ug, ed. 1988. Spo bo’i lo rgyus [The history of Powo]. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press.
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Central Tibet: Second Diffusion of Buddhism
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Central Tibet circa 900–1240: Aftermath of empire and religious sites founded during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism
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he history of Central Tibet, like that of most of Tibet after the fall of the empire, has long been viewed by Tibetan historians as a sort of dark ages due to the lack of textual records about the religious life of the country during the late ninth century and most of the tenth century. It was not until the eleventh century that key religious developments among the new schools and sects of Tibetan Buddhism led to the compilation of more detailed written records; these were of a largely doctrinal religious nature, though they included some information about the construction of key temples, lines of abbots, and the activities of important teachers. Traditional accounts of Tibetan history emphasize a persecution of Buddhists by Emperor Langdarma (U’i dum brtan) and then his assassination by a monk in 841. Regardless of the precise details, there was an overall dissolution of the Tibetan Empire at this time, when Central Tibet became divided between the competing rules of two heirs, Osung (’Od srung) and Yumten (Yum brtan), until a popular revolt (Kheng log) circa 904–910 finally split most of Central Tibet into various small areas of local rule. Some scholars maintain that Yumten finally won the civil war and gained control over the main U region of Central Tibet, forcing the descendants of Osung to migrate westward, leading to the founding of the great Western Tibetan kingdom of Ngari Khorsum in the early tenth century. Why some large kingdoms subsequently arose in Western and also Northeastern Tibet is not entirely clear. But, interestingly, these kingdoms emerged along major trade routes of the Silk Road networks. Perhaps the collapse of political authority in Central Tibet and the related social chaos led to a decrease in long-distance trade there, and with it a loss of the associated prestige and revenue conducive to maintaining a centralized political administration. Refer to maps 17 to 20 for details about the Western Tibetan kingdom of Ngari Khorsum during this period. It initially included the divisions of Guge-Purang, Ladakh, and Zanskar. And refer to map 21 for details of the Northeastern Tsongkha Kingdom. Available textual records describing the political landscape of Central Tibet after the civil war and revolt triggered by the collapse of empire list a series of “regional principalities” (rJe dpon tshan). Seven of these polities are depicted on this map, in accordance with a sixteenth-century Tibetan text considered to provide the most accurate listing. All of the surviving records, however, link the legitimization of these polities to
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local mountain deities. The ministers are always designated only by clan names, indicating some continuation in the importance of local clan-based rule, similar to the way in which the “one thousand household districts” (sTong sde) of the empire were based on clan organizations. But these postimperial territorial catalogs preserved in later Tibetan texts offer little if any concrete information about how different areas were administered, guarded, and possibly taxed. Instead, we are left mainly with a list of regional names that were somehow tied to centers of political authority. Also, it is apparent that the political landscape of Central Tibet was more complex during this period than these catalogs suggest, because other regional political organizations based on clans or religious schools are known to have controlled some areas too, such as E Yul (more commonly known by its later name Lhagyari), Lhato Jang (i.e., Northern Lhato), and Lhato Lho (Southern Lhato). Certainly the relationships between local powers and religious schools led to various political outcomes over time, in the rise of both different Tibetan Buddhist sects and certain clans and families. In this sense it is interesting that no local polity is recorded along the north bank of the Tsangpo in Tsang when
Figure 16.1 Main entrance to Shalu Monastery, 1904. This monastery was initially founded as a Kadampa establishment in the Tsang region of Central Tibet in 1027. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 16.2 Part of Lhalung Monastery, 1906. This monastery in the Lhodrak region of Central Tibet; though possibly based on an earlier Imperial Period foundation, became an important Nyingmapa establishment during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism. Photo by Jean Claude White.
this region became the main center for the construction of Bonpo temples and monasteries during the postimperial period. The religious landscape of Central Tibet is far better understood for this period; it saw a rich mosaic of monasteries constructed by the newly developing schools and sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The Kadampa and the Kagyupa appear to have been the most active in building temples across this region, while the Sakyapa, the Nyingmapa, and the Bonpo all tended to localize their building activities in certain areas. The Nyingmapa found their greatest sources of support along the main valley of the Tsangpo in U, while the Bonpo, as mentioned above, favored the main valley of the Tsangpo in Tsang. Interestingly, the Sakyapa, despite developing a far-flung network of monasteries in the Tsongkha and Xixia Kingdoms to the northeast, appear to have been mainly localized in Central Tibet, around their main seat in Tsang. A few monasteries of the minor Shije (gZhi byed) and Cho (gCod) traditions were also founded in different parts of Central Tibet during this period.
Sources consulted in making this map Dotson, Brandon. 2012. “At the Behest of the Mountain: Gods, Clans and Political Topography in Post-imperial Tibet.” In Old Tibetan Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Professor Ronald E. Emmerick (1937–2001): Proceedings of the 10th Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Oxford 2003, edited by C. A. Scherrer-Schaub. Leiden: Brill. Ferrari, Alfonsa. 1958. Mk’yen Brtse’s Guide to the Holy Places of Central Tibet. Serie Orientale Roma 16. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Sorensen, Per K., and Guntram Hazod. 2007. Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet; A Study of Tshal Gung-Thang. Vienna: Verlag Der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Zhongguo Wenwu Dituji [China cultural relics atlas]. 2010. Xizang Zizhichu Fence [Tibet Autonomous Region part]. Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe.
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Kingdoms of Ngari Khorsum, ca. 900–1100
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Ngari circa 900–1100: The Kingdoms of Ngari Khorsum
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fter Central Tibet was engulfed in civil war in the ninth century between followers of Emperor Langdarma’s rival heirs Yumten and Osung, descendants of Osung migrated to western regions, where they possibly still held some power. These actions led to the formal founding of the great Kingdom of Ngari Khorsum (i.e., The Three Divisions of Ngari) in about 925 by Osung’s grandson Kyide Nyigon (sKyid lde nyi ma mgon), often referred to as King Nyimagon. It is unclear whether this vast region then functioned as a centralized kingdom; we do know that it soon dissolved into three separate kingdoms, ruled by Nyimagon’s sons. Tashigon stayed in Purang and also controlled the Guge area, while Palgyigon founded the Kingdom of Ladakh and Detsugon the Kingdom of Zanskar (or Zangskar). At least this order of partition is recorded in the important fifteenth-century text Royal Lineages of Ngari (mNga’ ris rgyal rabs), considered one of the earliest extant and reliable Tibetan histories of Western Tibet. The history of the Western Tibetan kingdoms is still far from being fully understood, and often little is clear from the primarily Buddhist textual sources beyond
the names of kings and the temples they built, restored, and patronized. Not only are primary sources lacking, but the entire region was fraught with numerous wars and invasions well into the modern period. After the initial division of Ngari into three separate kingdoms in the tenth century, Purang king Ode attempted to expand his kingdom in the early eleventh century, perhaps to counter advancing forces of the Garlok or Qarakhanid Turks, who controlled the Central Asian oases to the northwest, but he was killed in battle near Skardo (now Skardu) in Baltistan in 1037. This event appears to have given rise to a muddled traditional account of the history of Western Tibet that sees a Muslim abduction and ransoming of Purang king Tashigon’s son Songne (Srong ne) as the catalyst for the Bengali Buddhist master Atisha’s visit to Ngari in 1042–44. In actuality, Songne is known for abdicating in 988 to become a monk and changing his name to Yeshe Od. Traditional Tibetan religious histories, however, maintain that Yeshe Od’s refusal to be ransomed allowed his followers to use the gold instead to invite Atisha to bring Buddhist teachings to the kingdom. This religious history of Ngari came to overshadow interest in
Figure 17.1 Circa fifteenth-century mural of early kings of Guge and Purang in the Red Chapel (Lhakhang Marpo) at Tsaparang. King Tashigon (top left, fl. tenth century) was the first king of Guge and Purang. King Ode (top middle, 995–1037) was killed fighting the Qarakhanid Turks near Skardo. King Tsede (top right, son of Ode) became the first king of an independent Guge kingdom circa 1072. Figure 17.2 Circa fifteenth-century mural at Toling Monastery, likely depicting a merchant and his relatives.
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secular events and promoted widespread views of the Kingdoms of Guge and Purang as mainly promoting renewed interest in the faith and spearheading what has become known as the Second Diffusion of Buddhism eastward across Tibet. Certainly, Toling Monastery, which Yeshe Od founded in 996 and was the first abbot of, was the paramount center of early Tibetan Buddhist translation and artistic achievement in this period. Soon after Toling was founded, the eleventh century witnessed a major push to build Buddhist monasteries of the New Tantra Tradition school of Rinchen Zangpo across Ngari, with most clustering in the core agricultural valleys of Guge and Purang, where they benefited from the royal patronage of the Purang kings. The death of King Ode of Purang resulted in the further division of the Kingdoms of Guge and Purang, with Ode’s son Tsede (rTse lde) becoming the first king of an independent Guge in about 1072. His brother Tsensong (bTsen gsong) stayed in control of a now smaller Purang Kingdom. Another brother Tsende (bTsen lde) is considered by some scholars to have founded the Yatse Kingdom, based in the Himalayan foothills downriver from Purang, but this development is far from clear. Contributing to confusion over the origins of the kingdom of Yatse is a sparse textual record with often conflicting Tibetan and Hindi names for various kings in the royal line. Further, there was significant intermarriage among all of the royal families in Ngari, and thus at some points a king from one line might emerge with political influence across several kingdoms. Perhaps the rise in military conflict between Western Tibetan kingdoms and the Qarakhanid Turks recorded in the eleventh century partly contributed to the breakup of the Guge-Purang Kingdom, as local leaders became increasingly confined to the safety of their acropolis fortresses, the ruins of which still tower above each agricultural district.
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Sources consulted in making this map Denwood, Philip. 2007. “The Tibetans in the Western Himalayas and Karakorum, Seventh-Eleventh Centuries: Rock Art and Inscriptions.” Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 2(2):49–58. Dhungel, Ramesh K. 2002. The Kingdom of Lo (Mustang): A Historical Study. Kathmandu: Lusha Press. Luczanits, Christian. 2004. Buddhist Sculpture in Clay: Early Western Himalayan Art, Late 10th to Early 13th Centuries. Chicago: Serindia. ———. 2005. “The Early Buddhist Heritage of Ladakh Reconsidered.” In Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, edited by John Bray, 65–96. Leiden: Brill. Petech, Luciano. 1997. “A Regional Chronicle of Guge Purang.” Tibet Journal 22(3):106–11. Peter, F. A. 1977. “A Glossary of Place Names in Western Tibet.” Tibet Journal 2:5–37. Vitali, Roberto. 1997. The Kingdoms of Gu.Ge Pu.Hrang: According to “Mnga.’Ris Rgyal.Rabs” [Royal lineages of Ngari], by Gu.Ge Mkhan.Chen Ngag.Dbang Grags.Pa. Chicago: Serindia.
Guge Kingdom Religious and cultural sites, ca. 10th–14th centuries
Religious and cultural sites founded in the core region of the Guge Kingdom, circa 10th–14th centuries
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he core region of the Guge Kingdom was in the arid canyon country typically found below the limits of cultivation (approximately 4,300 meters above sea level) in the watershed of the Langchen Kabab. Known as the Sutlej River in India, the Langchen Kabab eroded this corner of the southwestern Tibetan Plateau into five main areas of historical settlement ringed by high mountain ranges on all sides except for the eastern river entrance from the plateau proper, where the ancient Khyunglung sites of the Zhangzhung Period are located. These five areas are called Lhoto (Southern Upper area), Lhome (Southern Lower), Changto (Northern Upper), Changme (Northern Lower), and Rongchung (Low Valley). During the heyday of the kingdom in the eleventh century, the Lhoto area was politically and economically the most important region, including as it did the ancient Zhangzhung fort of Tsaparang, called Caspatyrum by Herodotus and still an important trade emporium at this time, as well as the important early monasteries of Toling and Mangnang. Several high Himalayan passes connected Guge with India to the south via sacred Hindu sites such as Badrinath. The easiest and most popular route between Guge and India was via the Sibkyi (now Shipki) pass above a deep and narrow canyon of the Sutlej that eventually became a key frontier between Tibet and India, although in this early period the Khunu region was under the sway of Guge and even became
the base of a twelfth-century kingdom founded by the brother of a king of Guge. When the early Guge Kingdom is viewed in these geographical contexts, it is logical that most of the early Buddhist monasteries of the New Tantra Tradition school (gSang sngags gsar ma) of Rinchen Zangpo were founded with royal patronage in this core region. A popular historical tradition credits the founding of twenty- one specific Buddhist temples to Rinchen Zangpo himself, and it can be seen that except for two temples in Purang (see map 19), they all cluster around his birthplace in Radni in the western part of Guge and the neighboring valleys of Khunu and Spiti. Fortunately, more than half of these early Buddhist sites in Guge and Purang are still relatively intact today, including important statuary and murals documenting the early iconographic development of Tibetan Buddhism from its Indian and Kashmiri roots. Part of the reason for this successful cultural preservation lies in the arid climate of this canyon country, which lies in a rain shadow zone created by the blocking of South Asian monsoonal moisture by the high Himalayas. Centuries of low rainfall allowed the temple structures to survive almost intact, something much rarer in Central and Eastern Tibet, with historically higher levels of rainfall. But it is not completely understood today to what extent water levels for agricultural irrigation decreased in Guge, and across Western Tibet, since this early period,
Figure 18.1 Toling Monastery, 2006. Built in 996, Toling was one of the most important early centers for the translation of Indian Buddhist texts into Tibetan during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism.
Figure 18.2 Location of Toling Monastery on a terrace above the Langchen Kabab (upper Sutlej River), 2006. View south, with ruins of an ancient acropolis fort used during the early Guge Kingdom Period above.
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leading to later declines in population levels and material support for local political and economic systems. Based on a remote sensing survey I conducted of abandoned and currently cultivated fields in the Bedongpo Valley, about ten kilometers northeast of Toling, former cultivated fields amounted to about four times the area of today. Again, however, it is still not clear when in the historical Guge Kingdom period this decline started and when it reached its nadir. The next major period of temple building occurred in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in this core region of the Guge Kingdom. Adherents of the Kagyupa sects of Tibetan Buddhism constructed a number of new temples and monasteries. Interestingly, these new sites all clustered in the Changme and Rongchung regions of western Guge and along the main Tibet- Ladakh trade route, which followed the upper course of the Indus to the north. Not all of these sites were new Kagyupa constructions; in some cases earlier establishments of the New Tantra Tradition school, such as at Tashigang, Nako, and even Rinchen Zangpo’s own home temple of Radni, were converted. But this clustering of the new Kagyupa presence primarily in western Guge may indicate some degree of political decline in the kingdom, which had always primarily patronized the New Tantra Tradition school. These questions are treated in greater detail on map 20, which covers the period of Guge’s division between rival lineages during
Figure 18.3 Mangnang temple, 2004. View to the south with the large chorten and surrounding village, and main Himalaya range in the background. This temple, built in the eleventh century, was where the renowned Bengali Buddhist master Atisha stayed when he visited Western Tibet in 1042–44. The old trees are believed to mark the former outlines of this Indian-style vihara.
the twelfth century, and map 24, which details the new Kagyupa presence across Western Tibet during the Mongol Empire Period in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Sources consulted in making this map Guge Tsering Gyalpo (Tshe ring rgyal po). 2006. mNga’ ris chos ’byung gnas ljongs mdzis rgyan zhis bya ba bzhugs so [A cultural and religious history of Ngari]. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press. Guge Tsering Gyalpo and Christiane Papa-Kalantari. 2009. The Buddhist Monuments of Khartse Valley, Western Tibet. Austrian Academy of Sciences Working Paper in Social Anthropology 9. Luczanits, Christian. 2004. Buddhist Sculpture in Clay: Early Western Himalayan Art, Late 10th to Early 13th Centuries. Chicago: Serindia. Ryavec, Karl Ernest. 2005. “Aerial Survey of Abandoned Agricultural Fields in the Ancient Tibetan Kingdom of Guge: Recent Findings from 2-Foot Resolution Quick Bird Imagery of Bedongpo and Environs.” Aerial Archaeology Research Group Newsletter 30:18–25. ———. 2007. “Mapping Early Buddhist Sites in Western Tibet: Recent Findings from Tsamda County, China.” The Silk Road 4(2):43–47. Vitali, Roberto. 1997. “A Chronology (bStan rTsis) of Events in the History of mNga’ ris skor gsum (Tenth-Fifteenth Centuries).” In The History of Tibet, vol. 2, The Medieval Period, c. 850–1895, edited by Alex McKay, 53–89. London: Routledge Curzon.
Figure 18.4 Ruined Buddhist temple with large circa fifteenth-century statue (approx. 3 m tall) atop the Mangnang Fort, 2006. This ancient acropolis fort above the Mangnang Valley was redeveloped with various Buddhist shrines during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism and later periods.
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Purang and Kailash Religious and cultural sites, ca. 10th–17th centuries
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Religious and cultural sites founded in Purang and the Kailash region, circa 10th–17th centuries
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he earliest Buddhist temples and monasteries built in Purang date from the early eleventh century, some associated with the building activities of Rinchen Zangpo, although the Guru Bumpa chorten may date from the earlier Imperial Period. Khorchak (Khojarnath) is considered the most important temple in Purang historically. Its buildings and murals are still relatively well preserved, and the complex is the most active pilgrimage destination in the main agricultural valley of Purang, where all these early sites cluster. The next major period of temple building occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries both in this core region of Purang and around sacred Mt. Kailash and Mapham Yumtso (Lake Manasarovar) to the north. As in Guge at this time, adherents of the Kagyupa sects of Tibetan Buddhism constructed a number of new temples and monasteries. The spatial pattern of these new sites indicates that they served and benefited from increased pilgrimage traffic around the sacred mountain and lake. But unlike in the core region of the Guge Kingdom, it would appear from the available sources that all of these sites may have been new Kagyupa constructions, although about half of the sites around the lake were later converted by the Nyingmapa and the Gelukpa. The Sakyapa also became active in this region in the fifteenth century, when they converted
Khorchak to their sectarian tradition. Their political influence here did not wane until the seventeenth century, when the Gelukpa built the fortress monastery of Shakpel Ling overlooking the key trade mart of Purang (or Taklakhar/Taklakot) and the monasteries of Bonri and Dunchu along the main Lhasa-Ladakh trade route. It is likely that the construction of Shakpel Ling helped to shift the main seat of political and economic power in Purang from the ancient fort of Kardung (the Kukhar Nyizung of King Nyimagon) to Taklakhar, although the growth of this trade center’s importance probably had begun centuries earlier. Also, the religious influence of the Sakyapa survived in Purang, not just through their continued control of Khorchak but also through their participation in the teaching colleges of Shakpel Ling, which was one of the great Sakya-Geluk shared tradition monasteries of Tibet.
Sources consulted in making this map Guge Tsering Gyalpo (Tshe ring rgyal po). 2006. mNga’ ris chos ‘byung gnas ljongs mdzis rgyan zhis bya ba bzhugs so [A cultural and religious history of Ngari]. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press. Guge Tsering Gyalpo (Tshe ring rgyal po), Christian Jahoda, Christiane Kalantari, and Patrick Sutherland. 2012. Khorchag. Lhasa: Old Tibetan Books Publishing House.
Figure 19.1 Gang Rinpoche (Mt. Kailash), 2004. This mountain is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists and has long been the main pilgrimage destination of Western Tibet. Figure 19.2 Part of the main agricultural valley of Purang, 2006. View looking south toward the Himalayas from the monastery of Shakpel Ling. Figure 19.3 Khorchak Monastery, considered the most important temple in Purang historically.
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Ngari ca. 1100–1250: Guge divided and the rise of Yatse
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Ngari circa 1100–1250: Guge divided and the rise of Yatse
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here was a marked decline in the constructions of Buddhist temples in Guge and Purang during this period. In fact, after the intense temple- building activities of the eleventh century, it would appear from the available evidence that no temples were built in these regions until the arrival of the Kagyupa in the thirteenth century. But new building activities farther west in Maryul (Ladakh) and in Lahul and Spiti stand in stark contrast to this apparent decline of royal patronage in Guge and Purang. One likely reason for this decline were the depredations of the Garlok (Qarakhanid Turks) that had earlier resulted in the death of Guge-Purang King Ode in 1037, and that led by the early 1100s to a great alliance of Guge King Sonamtse’s three sons against them. The sons organized themselves into three subkingdoms of sorts, and this plan even led to the birth of a new Khunu Kingdom around 1120. It appears to have lasted for about one century, given that only four Tibetan kings are recorded in the available sources. Another possible explanation for the relative decline of Guge is indicated in the surviving lineages of its kings, where, starting in the mid-twelfth century, a lineage based at Dungkar is recorded instead of the lineage of the previous kings’ religious seats at Toling. Some scholars speculate that the kingdom became weakened and divided under competing queens’
factions, and the capital was even officially shifted to Dungkar. But again, frequent wars and invasions of the Garlok could have necessitated this more local fort- based rule system. The Guge Kingdom did not become reunified under one king until the later part of the thirteenth century, during the Mongol Empire Period. In a sense, the history of Guge during the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries may be viewed as a period of darkness, at least until more detailed sources someday come to light. Unlike Guge with its political stagnation during the twelfth century, the kingdoms of Purang to its east and Maryul to its west appear to have prospered more. The eighth king of Purang, Draktsende, made major renovations to the shrines at Khorchak (Khojarnath). Earlier, the seventh king of Purang, Tsenchugde (a great-grandson of King Ode), had extended his power over the newly emerging Himalayan kingdom of Yatse, including the Dolpo region. According to some scholars, Tsenchugde took over Yatse outright. This kingdom is better known in older Western scholarship as the Khasa or Malla Dynasty and was based lower down the Karnali River Valley than Purang, with its capital in Semja (the ruined site is now called Sinja). Yatse expanded significantly over the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to include the Himalayan territo-
Figure 20.1 Circa twelfth-century mural in Alchi Monastery, likely depicting a Ladakhi royal couple with their son.
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ries of Garhwal and Kumaun to the west and Mustang and Gungtang to the east. It would appear that Purang and Yatse continued to have close ties for centuries, for around 1330 the seventeenth king of Purang, Sonamde (Punya Malla in Hindi), is recorded as also taking the throne of Yatse and even invading the Kathmandu Valley. Political developments in Maryul (Ladakh) are less clear than those in Guge and Purang during this period. The burst of new temple-building activity, including the famous Alchi site with its important murals, indicates that there was likely more political stability here than in Guge. Also, the fact that the recorded name of the sixth king of Ladakh, Utpala, is clearly Sanskrit and not Tibetan leads some scholars to speculate that he was from a neighboring South Asian power and either married into or took over Ladakh around this time in the mid-twelfth century. The Alchi murals, for example, show striking Kashmiri artistic influences. Moreover, the depredations of the Garlok (Qarakhanid Turks) do not appear to have been as much of a factor here as in Guge. One possible explanation may lie in the location of this new temple cluster to the south of the upper Indus, in a region more difficult to access for invaders coming from Central Asia and the Tarim Basin to the north.
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Sources consulted in making this map Dhungel, Ramesh K. 2002. The Kingdom of Lo (Mustang): A Historical Study. Kathmandu: Lusha Press. Heller, Amy. 2009. Hidden Treasures of the Himalayas: Tibetan Manuscripts, Paintings and Sculptures of Dolpo. Chicago: Serindia. Luczanits, Christian. 2004. Buddhist Sculpture in Clay: Early Western Himalayan Art, Late 10th to Early 13th Centuries. Chicago: Serindia. Petech. Luciano. 1997. “Western Tibet: Historical Introduction.” In Tabo: A Lamp for the Kingdom, edited by Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter. London: Thames and Hudson. Snellgrove, David. 1961. Himalayan Pilgrimage. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer. Vitali, Roberto. 1997. The Kingdoms of Gu.Ge Pu.Hrang: According to “Mnga.’Ris Rgyal.Rabs” by Gu.Ge Mkhan.Chen Ngag. Dbang Grags.Pa. Chicago: Serindia.
Amdo ca. 900–1240: Tsongkha Kingdom and its religious sites
Amdo circa 900–1240: The Tsongkha Kingdom, and religious sites founded during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism
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he political history of Northeastern Tibet after the fall of the Tibetan Empire and during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism is mostly detailed in Song Period Chinese texts, because little information survives in Tibetan from this period. Amdo does not yet appear to have become the main Tibetan literary name for this region, although it could have been in use among local Tibetans orally. The Tsongkha Kingdom, or tribal confederation, is considered to have been the most important Tibetan polity in this region, but its eleventh century heyday ended by about 1100, when Song China conquered this region and built or took over key forts and walled towns in the major river valleys. As in traditional Tibetan religious histories of Western Tibet, Jiaosiluo, the first king of the Tsongkha Kingdom, is considered a descendant of the former Tibetan Empire’s royalty. But unlike the better-documented lineage of the early kings of Ngari, the imperial heritage of Jiaosiluo has not been confirmed and may be more legendary than factual. Also, the name Jiaosiluo is a Chinese title; in later Tibetan
Figure 21.1 Martsangdrak Temple (Baima si), 1891. Photo by William Woodville Rockhill. Figure 21.2 Dentik Monastery, 2006. Photo by Gray Tuttle.
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texts he is referred to as the Shar tsong kha’i (Eastern Tsongkha) bTsan po (emperor) or rGyal po (king), and then usually in the context of his alleged descent from the Tibetan emperors. It is intriguing that at the time Jiaosiluo established his own power base at Qingtang (Xining), this walled town had become important as a Silk Road trade terminus due to rising Tangut (Xixia) control over the Gansu-corridor Silk Road route. This southern shift in the Silk Road trade between China and Central Asia would have certainly increased the political and economic importance of Qingtang and the Tsongkha rulers. Documenting early Tibetan religious sites in Northeastern Tibet is difficult because, unlike in Central Tibet, where there is no evidence of Buddhist temples or carvings prior to the Imperial Period, a number of early cave shrines with murals and carvings were initiated in the fourth to fifth centuries along the ancient Silk Road routes of Northeastern Tibet. And it would appear that many were later redeveloped by Tibetans and others during the Imperial and Second Diffusion of Buddhism
Periods. Some sites, like Dentik, are famous in Tibetan religious histories for preserving Buddhist monastic traditions lost in Central Tibet at the end of the empire, possibly due to official persecution combined with the chaos of civil war during the empire’s demise. This region’s claim to fame as an incubator for either lost or initial Tibetan monastic traditions is corroborated by postimperial trends in Buddhist temple constructions documented in figure 5.2 (“Tibet: Growth of Buddhist temples and monasteries in core regions, circa 600– 1950”). It can be seen that Amdo (Northeastern Tibet) shows the greatest consistent growth of all four Tibetan macroregions during the eighth to tenth centuries. While all four of the main schools or sects of Tibetan Buddhism (Nyingma, Sakya, Kadampa, and Kagyu) established some temples or monasteries in the greater Tsongkha region during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism, the temples of the Bonpo were the most numerous and widespread. Some of the Bonpo temples were supposedly built even earlier, during the Imperial Period, according to local traditions, although no architectural or epigraphic evidence has yet been documented to support these claims. These Tibetan Buddhists and Bonpos would also have come into greater contact with Chinese Mahayana Buddhist schools, because frontier Chinese walled towns, such as Minzhou and Lanzhou, already had centuries-long traditions of active Buddhist monasteries. The Silk Road oasis town of Liangzhou was even under Tibetan rule during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.
Sources consulted in making this map Horlemann, Bianca. 2004. Aufstieg und Niedergang der Tsong- kha-Stammeskonfoederation im 11./12. Jahrhundert an der Schnittstelle von Tibet, China und Zentralasien. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ———. 2005. “On the Origin of Jiaosiluo, the Founder of the Tsong kha Tribal Confederation in 11th Century Amdo.” Zentralasiatische Studien 34:127–154. ———. 2012. “Buddhist Sites in Eastern Amdo/Longyou from the 8th to the 13th Century.” In PIATS Oxford 2003, vol. 14, Old Tibetan Studies, edited by Cristina Scherrer- Schaub. Leiden: Brill. Petech, Luciano. 1983. “Tibetan Relations with Sung China and with the Mongols.” In China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th–14th Centuries, edited by Morris Rossabi, 173–203. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Paul J. 1991. Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074– 1224. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. ———. 2006. “Irredentism as Political Capital: The New Policies of the Annexation of Tibetan Domains in Hehuang (the Qinghai-Gansu Highlands) under Shenzong and His Sons, 1068–1126.” In Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics, edited by Patricia B. Ebrey and Maggie Bickford, 78–130. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Tsutomu, Iwasaki. 1993. “The Tibetan Tribes of Ho-hsi and Buddhism during the Northern Song Period.” Acta Asiatica 64:17–37.
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Major polities and religious sites of the Mongol Empire Period
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Major polities and important religious sites of the Mongol Empire Period, circa 1240–1354
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he Mongols’ first military expedition to Central Tibet took place in 1240, about a decade after they defeated the Xixia Empire and annexed large parts of Northeastern Tibet, but thirty-one years before they founded the Yuan Dynasty in China. Initially, the Mongols established a proxy government from about 1240 to 1264 based at Drigung Monastery, seat of the Drigung Kagyu subsect, to rule Central Tibet through the bureaucracy of its chief civil officials, called gompa (sGom pa). By the 1260s the Mongols had adopted a longer-lasting political relationship with the Sakyapa sect that functioned from circa 1268 to 1354. In addition to holding their chief administrative seat at their mother monastery in Tsang, the Sakyapa assisted the Mongols in controlling Dokham (Eastern Tibet) through their temporal administrators or stewards (dPon chen) at two strategically located estates in Lingtsang and Gonjo. The end date of 1354 for this overview map of the Mongol Empire in Tibet (and also the Central Tibet map) is somewhat arbitrary, but it marks an important change in Tibet’s internal politics: the point at which a Pakmodrupa myriarch (Khri dpon) led a successful revolution against Sakyapa control over Central Tibet and garrisoned the great Sakya Monastery. Mongol control over agrarian China persisted somewhat longer, until the formal fall of the Yuan Dynasty and founding of the Ming Dynasty in 1368. Recently, evidence of a series of monsoon megadroughts that affected parts of India, Tibet, and China during the mid-fourteenth through fifteenth centuries have led some scholars to speculate that significant environmental deterioration led to the fall of the Mongol Empire. These trends are corroborated by an overall decline during the late fourteenth to fifteenth centuries in Buddhist temple constructions documented in figure 5.2 (“Tibet: Growth of Buddhist temples and monasteries in core regions, circa 600–1950”). It can be seen that this was the first time temple-building activity declined consistently across all four of Tibet’s macroregions since the first constructions were documented during the Imperial Period. Many studies on the history of Tibet during the Mongol Empire Period have adopted a simplistic view of Tibet as a singular political entity that quickly submitted to Mongol rule across the entire plateau region. Careful mapping of specific forms of Mongol military and proxy-Tibetan and Chinese civil territorial administration during this period reveals that only parts of
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Tibet fell under either direct or indirect Mongol rule, while many other areas remained isolated under their own indigenous polities and were largely terra incognita to the Mongols. The historical legacy of various aspects of Mongol administration in Tibet, however, continues to be important for the study of Tibetan and Chinese political geography today, because Chinese nationalists maintain that Central Tibet first became an integral part of China during the thirteenth century due to the establishment of a postal route between the two countries and the official taking of Mongol censuses there. Another key geographical concept from this period is the Cholkha Sum or “Three Regions of Tibet,” which during this period denoted U, Tsang,and Ngari but has come in the modern period to denote all of Tibet—as constituting the three most populous macroregions of U-Tsang, Kham, and Amdo. In this later concept Ngari is considered part of U-Tsang, perhaps due to its annexation by Lhasa in the seventeenth century. It may help to clarify these regional terms by noting that the Mongols incorporated other parts of Tibet, such as Dome and Litang, into administrative circuits (Chinese lu; Mongol colge), but these were not included in the original concept of the Cholkha Sum. Also, the modern Chinese name for Tibet (Xizang, literally Western Treasure House) comes from the adoption of the Mongol Period Chinese name Wusi Zang for the Tibetan name for U-Tsang, or Central Tibet. It is possible to generalize about the historical geography of Mongol control over Tibet during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in terms of three regional patterns: (1) incorporation of the densely settled agricultural valleys of Central Tibet under “ten thousand household districts” (Tibetan Khri skor; Chinese Wanhu); (2) indirect rule over Western and Eastern Tibet with garrisons, granaries, postal stations, and some “ten thousand household districts” established along key transportation routes; and (3) the extension or reuse of traditional forms of Chinese field administration along the Tibetan frontier in the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu. But it is not possible based on the available sources to accurately map all of the various forms of Mongol administration in Western and Eastern Tibet; the situation in these regions is just not as well documented as it is for Central Tibet. Complicating matters was the Mongol custom of granting feudal lands to royal princes, and in the case of Tibet the main units of land under centralized control that could
be formally given were monastic estates. In this way, Mongol control over many parts of Tibet hinged more on the extent that they could work with various monks of monastic feudatories than on how they fielded their own military forces. This problem is particularly relevant in the history of Western Tibet during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when some of the Kagyupa subsects, which had become aligned with different Mongol khans, established monastic estates there. At this point, now that the general geographical patterns of Mongol rule across Tibet have been outlined, it is necessary to refer to the regional-scale maps for further details. Map 23 shows the known seats of Mongol-Tibetan administration and new religious sites founded in Central Tibet. Map 24 focuses on the rivalry between the Purang/Yatse Kingdom of Western Tibet with Gungtang, which received significant Mongol- Sakya backing during this period. And map 25 documents the administrative geography and new religious sites founded in the Tsongkha region of Northeastern Tibet and major social changes that occurred as a result of the Mongol conquest. The legacy of Mongol rule was an important factor in the increased spread of Tibetan Buddhism to China and Mongolia beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This cultural diffusion marked the first time Tibetan Buddhism spread widely beyond its
plateau hearth. Another factor influencing these new connections was the Muslim conquest of the Gangetic plain of Northern India in the late twelfth century, the resulting destruction of the great centers of Buddhist learning there, and a concomitant decline in pilgrimage traffic between India and Tibet. From the Mongol period onward, Tibet became a new center of Buddhism in Asia, replacing the former center in India. Following the practices of the Mongol Yuan emperors, the Chinese Ming and Manchu Qing emperors continued to bestow lavish support and patronage on Tibetan Buddhist hierarchs and built new monasteries across China and Mongolia. Map 26 documents the Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries founded across North China and Mongolia during the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. And given the large number of sites founded in China’s new capital city in these centuries, Map 27 focuses on the important Tibetan Buddhist sites founded in Beijing during the Yuan and Ming Periods.
Sources consulted in making this map Everding, Karl-Heinz. 2002. “The Mongol States and Their Struggle for Dominance over Tibet in the 13th Century.” In Tibet, Past and Present: Tibetan Studies I, PIATS 2000, Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, edited by Henk Blezer, 109–28. Leiden: Brill. Petech, Luciano. 1988. “Yuan Organization of the Tibetan
Figure 22.1 Rare image of Tibetan officials (right) welcoming Mongol figures (left) to Central Tibet, possibly during the 1200s. The Tibetan greeter is holding a silk scarf, a traditional form of Tibetan welcoming, while the mounted Mongol figure is holding a triangular military flag. Circa seventeenth-century mural in Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse.
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Border Areas.” In Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 4th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Munich: Kommission für Zentralasiatische Studien, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. ———. 1990. Central Tibet and the Mongols. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Shen Weirong. 1989. “Administrative System of Thirteen Wan Hu of dBus and gTsang in the Yuan Dynasty.” Tibetan Studies 2:46–74. Sinha, Ashish, et al. 2011. “A Global Context for Megadroughts in Monsoon Asia during the Past Millennium.” Quarternary Science Reviews 30(1–2):47–62. Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 7, Yuan/Ming. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House. Tucci, Giuseppe. 1949. Tibetan Painted Scrolls. Rome: Libreria dello Stato. Van der Kuijp, Leonard. 2010. “The Tibetan Expression ‘bod wooden door’ (bod shing sgo) and Its Probable Mongol Antecedent.” In Wang Yao Festschrift: Historical and Philological Studies of China’s Western Regions, edited by Shen Weirong, 3:89–134. Beijing: Science Press.
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Central Tibet ca. 1240–1354: Sakya rule and religious sites
Central Tibet circa 1240–1354: Symbolic Sakya rule and religious sites founded during the Mongol Empire Period
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he period of Mongol rule in Tibet has been often viewed as a time when hierarchs of the Sakyapa sect ruled Tibet with Mongol support. But while it is clear that the Sakyapa wielded great influence and power at certain times and places, it is not true that they controlled Tibet exclusively. The Mongol system of proxy-rule over Central Tibet was based on about seventeen ten thousand household districts or Trikhor (Tibetan Khri skor, Chinese Wanhu) under Tibetan lay or religious elites who could communicate with the Mongol authorities directly. The non-Sakya sectarian- based Trikhor, such as the Tsalpa Kagyu and the Drigung Kagyu, often sent embassies directly to the Mongol court in China. These other Trikhor did not have to work through the Sakyapa first in order to communicate with the Mongols. For these reasons, I refer to this period as a time of mainly symbolic Sakya rule. This map focuses on showing the names and locations of Central Tibetan Trikhor that can be documented in historical Tibetan texts. A popular historical tradition claims there were thirteen Trikhor (often termed myriarchies by Tibetologists, from the Greek word for a leader of ten thousand men), with six in Tsang, six in U, and the highland Yardrok site in between. But a careful reading of the available scholarship provides this list of seventeen. Most of the locations in fortified monasteries are clearly documented, but the precise
location of the Khyung site is not clear. Given this name in some sources and Shangs in another (and simply “the northern pastures” in others), I have assumed its location to have been at or near the important Shangpa Kagyu monastery of Zhangzhong. The Mongol Period was also a time of great sectarian ferment in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Three important sects or subsects were founded and built or took over earlier monasteries across Central Tibet: the Shalu, Jonang, and Bodong. Many scholars consider the Shalu and Jonang teachings to represent subsects of the Sakya tradition and not independent sects in their own right. And although the mother monasteries of these new schools are still important sites in Central Tibet today, the number and locations of their various smaller branch and independent monasteries and temples are not clear, based on available surveys. There was a significant spread in the construction of Sakya monasteries across Central Tibet during this period, unlike in the Second Diffusion of Buddhism, when Sakya monasteries only clustered around the sect’s main seat in western Tsang, but much of these data derive from contemporary surveys, and it is possible some of these sites were actually founded by the newer sectarian movements. Some of the earlier Bodong sites have not been accurately surveyed and documented. Also, the Jonangpa faced persecution from the rising
Figure 23.1 Former seat of Gyama Trikhor (Khri skor), one of the ten thousand household districts of proxy Mongol rule established in Central Tibet in the thirteenth century. Note the trees that follow the course of the former wall with some surviving sections. The large bumpa-type chorten was built earlier in the twelfth century. View southward, 2004.
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Gelukpa power in the seventeenth century, and many of their monasteries were either destroyed or converted to Geluk establishments. For this reason, the Jonangpa mainly survived and flourished in parts of Kham and Amdo that were remote from Lhasa’s control. But the Jonang kumbum was one of the most important artistic monuments built in Central Tibet during the Mongol Period.
Sources consulted in making this map Shen Weirong. 1989. “Administrative System of Thirteen Wan Hu of dBus and gTsang in the Yuan Dynasty.” Tibetan Studies 2:46–74. Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 7, Yuan/Ming. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House. Tucci, Giuseppe. 1949. Tibetan Painted Scrolls. Rome: Libreria dello Stato. Van der Kuijp, Leonard. 2010. “The Tibetan Expression ‘bod wooden door’ (bod shing sgo) and Its Probable Mongol Antecedent.” In Wang Yao Festschrift: Historical and Philological Studies of China’s Western Regions, edited by Shen Weirong, 3:89–134. Beijing: Science Press. Vitali, Roberto. 1990. Early Temples of Central Tibet. London: Serindia.
m ap 2 3. c en tr al ti b et c a. 1 2 40 – 1 35 4 : s akya r u l e an d r el i g i ou s s ites
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Ngari ca. 1250–1365: Yatse-Gungtang rivalry
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Ngari circa 1250–1365: Yatse-Gungtang rivalry during the Mongol Empire Period
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he Guge Kingdom reunified around 1275, and some scholars maintain that it also expanded to administer Purang and Yatse during most of the Mongol Empire Period. But from 1277 to 1372, during the period when the Sakyapa exerted influence in Ngari, first as viceroys of the Mongols, no kings of Guge are recorded. Also, few details are known about how these Western Tibetan kingdoms functioned bureaucratically in relation to the Mongol imperium. Available sources mostly focus on religious events and persons important at the time. There is no evidence that the Mongols established ten thousand household districts, or Trikhor, in Guge-Purang as they did in Central Tibet and may have also done at Dzongka in Gungtang in Ngari Me (i.e., lower Ngari). There are reports, though, that the Mongols did establish a postal/relay station near Lake Manasarovar in the Kailash region. Basically, the political history of Western Tibet during the Mongol Empire Period is far from clear. Given this situation, this map focuses on showing what little is known in terms of the main wars, shifting regions of control
between various kingdoms, and expanding Kaygupa influence over many monasteries in the region. As seen in the previous Second Diffusion of Buddhism Period map of Ngari, the Drigungpas and Tsalpas (followers of some of the main subsects of the Kagyu school) started pilgrimage expeditions to Mt. Kailash in the late twelfth century from their great monastic seats in Central Tibet. The kings of Guge and Purang even supported the so-called Drigung Dorzin, who had political authority over the Mt. Kailash area and served as spiritual guides to the hermits at the sacred mountain in the 1200s. Certainly these growing regional political networks of the Drigungpas would have come to the attention of the Mongols when they first reached Central Tibet in 1240 and considered expanding into Western Tibet too. In fact, the Mongols established a proxy government from about 1240 to 1264, based at Drigung Monastery, to rule Central Tibet through the bureaucracy of its chief civil officials, called gompa (sGom pa). To what extent the Mongols were able to exploit the Drigungpas’ connections in
Figure 24.1 Detail of a Tibetan general from the circa fourteenth-century murals of Gongpur Temple in Purang.
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Western Tibet to secure control over areas there is not clear. It is important to note that while the Mongols and Drigungpas were working together politically, the Sakyapa supported the Gungtang Khabpa, ruler of the rising Mangyul Gungtang polity, in attacking Yatse and occupying Purang in circa 1253. This act must have come to the attention of the Mongols, and it may have influenced the Mongols’ decision to shift their primary support to the Sakyapa as their viceroy and temporal administrators of Tibet from circa 1268 to 1354. Then, around 1287, Gungtang figured prominently in the history of the Mongol Empire when Mongol Yuan Dynasty forces of Khubilai Khan defeated forces of the Mongol Chaghadai Khanate of Central Asia in a battle near the Dzongka Fort for control over Tibet. Mongol influence in Ngari began to wane by the 1320s, when Gungtang lost much of its earlier territorial gains to Yatse, which reoccupied the Dolpo and Lo Mustang regions. Then, around 1330, King Sonamde (Punya Malla) of Purang assumed the throne of Yatse and even invaded the Kathmandu Valley. This act continued a centuries-long tradition of close family ties between the Purang and Yatse royal families. As far back as about 1150, the seventh king of Purang, Tsenchugde, had extended power over Yatse and may have even taken over the kingdom outright. The Mongols continued to exert some influence over Ladakh, because from 1320 to 1323 King Gyalbu Rinchen of Ladakh occupied Kashmir following a Mongol invasion. But these efforts were short-lived. The Mongols were defeated in their last major penetration of India at a battle near Delhi in 1328–29. And while aspects of Mongol-Sakya influence continued until circa 1350, there was a resurgence in the power of the Guge Kingdom by the 1370s. Around this time, Purang ceased to exist as an independent kingdom and fell under the sway of Guge for centuries.
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Sources consulted in making this map Dhungel, Ramesh K. 2002. The Kingdom of Lo (Mustang): A Historical Study. Kathmandu: Lusha Press. Everding, Karl-Heinz. 2002. “The Mongol States and Their Struggle for Dominance over Tibet in the 13th Century.” In Tibet, Past and Present: Tibetan Studies I, PIATS 2000, Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, edited by Henk Blezer, 109–28. Leiden: Brill. Vitali, Roberto. 1997. The Kingdoms of Gu.Ge Pu.Hrang: According to “Mnga.’Ris Rgyal.Rabs,” by Gu Ge Mkhan Chen Ngag Dbang Grags Pa. Chicago: Serindia. ———. 2005. “Some Conjectures on Change and Instability during the One Hundred Years of Darkness in the History of La dwags (1280s–1380s).” In Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, edited by John Bray, 97–124. Leiden: Brill.
Amdo ca. 1240–1368: Mongol conquest and religious sites
Amdo circa 1240–1368: The Mongol conquest, and religious sites founded during the Mongol Empire Period
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he political geography of Amdo during the Mongol Empire Period was strongly influenced by the region’s division between regular Chinese provinces and the Tufan Government Commissionership (Ch. Xuanweishi, Tib. Swon wi si) under the authority of a commanding general of a circuit (Ch. lu, Mong. colge, Tib. Chol ka or kLu) based at Hezhou (now Linxia). The name Tufan dated back to the Tibetan Imperial Period, and the Mongols loosely employed this name for not just the greater Tsongkha region but all of Eastern Tibet. Amdo does not yet appear to have been used as the main Tibetan name for this region. Following the initial Mongol invasion of Amdo in about 1236, the Mongols fortified the Chinese walled town of Wenzhou, and this became their early base for controlling the region. After the Tufan Government Commissionership was established and Hezhou became the main center of authority, several smaller offices continued forms of Mongol proxy-rule based on local Tibetan elites. Surviving records of Mongol rule over Amdo are not as detailed as for Central Tibet, but we do know at least two ten thousand household districts (Ch. Wanhu, Tib. Khri skor) were established at Wenzhou and Guide (Khri kha), and one one thousand household district (Ch. qianhu, Tib. sTong dpon, Chen hu) in the lower valley of the Chulong Karpo (Bailong Jiang). The establishment of the Tufan Government Commissionership was part of Emperor Khubilai Khan’s formalization of Yuan dynastic administration for all of Tibet starting around 1268–69. This was done by placing the entire land under the control of the princely administration. Under this system, competing royal princes extracted wealth from and exerted varying levels of control in different areas of Tibet through their relationships with the Buddhist sectarian monastic seats of Central Tibet awarded to them. Because these great monasteries had numerous branch sites, including agricultural and pastoral estates, they became the Mongols’ main conduit for controlling different parts of Tibet, in addition to their far-flung network of garrisons and postal-relay stations. This system was particularly influential in Central and Western Tibet, as detailed on maps 23 and 24, and was also likely important for the many Sakyapa monasteries founded in Amdo during this period. In fact, Amdo first witnessed a significant increase in the construction of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries under the Mongol Empire after a period of relative
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stagnation during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism Period. In this it diverged from Tibet’s other three macroregions—Ngari, U-Tsang, and Kham—where earlier monastery constructions had increased, as documented in figure 5.2 (“Tibet: Growth of Buddhist temples and monasteries in core regions, circa 600– 1950”). During the Mongol Empire Period, available surveys indicate new monastery constructions clustered in the Yellow River Valley from the ancient temple of Dentik up to Chorten Karpo and including the side tributary valleys. Other key centers of new monastery construction clustered along the Tao River Valley in the Minzhou region, in the hills north of Xining and the Huangshui Valley, and around the Liangzhou oasis on the Silk Road. The Sakyapa and Nyingmapa appear to have been the main Tibetan Buddhist sects active during this period in Amdo, while the Bonpo also founded some key centers. The Bon monastery of Maksar (or Bongya; full name: Mag gsar sman re’i bshad sgrub smin grol gling), founded in the Rongwo Valley during the late Yuan to early Ming Period, became one of the paramount Bonpo centers of Amdo. Amdo also underwent major social changes as a result of Mongol rule that are still important and noticeable today. Available records indicate that the core Tsongkha region based on the city of Xining was depopulated as a result of the early Mongol invasions, with some of the Tangut people driven south to seek refuge in the Minyak region of eastern Kham. Mongol commanders and their followers moved into the Tsongkha region, and their descendants constitute the majority group within the present Tu (Monguor) nationality of the People’s Republic of China, although many Tibetans consider the Tu to be ethnically Tibetan. Outside of the Chinese provincially administered Tsongkha region, several Muslim groups settled along the Tufan-Chinese frontier in the Yellow River Valley. The Mongolic language and the Islamic religion of the Dongxiang people were brought to the Hezhou area during the Yuan Period, while Muslims from Samarkand settled farther up the Yellow River around Jishi. Their descendants became known as the Salar and were even considered a Tibetan-like Tufan/Xifan people by the Ming and early Qing courts. In fact, this region of Northeastern Tibet, as well as the western Ladakh- Baltistan region, became the two parts of Tibet where Islam successfully diffused and brought religious conversions. Today, some Tibetan-speaking Muslims reside
Figure 25.1 View westward over the heavily terraced upper Rongwo Valley of Amdo, 1990.
Figure 25.2 Rongwo (rong bo) Monastery, a Gelukpa establishment originally founded in 1301 by the Sakyapa. Monks at work whitewashing the walls, 1990.
in this part of Amdo. But in most places, Tibet’s high altitude and Tibetan Buddhist culture together proved an absorbing barrier to Islam. New mosque constructions first became noticeable across Amdo during the Mongol Empire Period, but they all clustered along the ethnic Tibetan-Chinese frontier in the agricultural valleys. To some extent, the early Muslim immigrants to the region based their livelihoods, in addition to agriculture on the fertile loess soil deposits, on trade as middlemen between Tibetan pastoral products and Chinese agricultural products.
Sources consulted in making this map Horlemann, Bianca. 2012. “Buddhist Sites in Eastern A mdo/ Longyou from the 8th to the 13th Century.” In PIATS Oxford 2003, vol. 14, Old Tibetan Studies, edited by Cristina Scherrer-Schaub. Leiden: Brill. Schram, Louis M. J. 1954. “The Monguors of the Kansu- Tibetan Frontier,” pt. 1, “Their Origin, History, and Social Organization.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 44. Wu Jianwei, ed. 1995. Zhongguo Qingzhensi Zonglan [Compendium of mosques in China]. Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe [Ningxia People’s Press].
m ap 2 5 . am d o c a. 1 2 40 –1 36 8 : m on g ol con q u est an d r el i g i ou s s ites
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Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries founded 12th–16th centuries
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he Yuan Period witnessed the first significant spread of Tibetan Buddhism across China and Mongolia, where it encountered a permeable cultural barrier leading to the development of a distinctly Tibeto-Mongol form of Buddhism in addition to the staffing of some important temples with monks from Tibet. During this early period, however, many Mongol Buddhist temples and monasteries were itinerant, under felt tents, and their numbers are not clear. For this reason, this map is limited to the main built structures that have been documented during the Yuan and Ming Periods. During the heyday of the Mongol Empire, from about 1250 to 1350, some early Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries were built across the Ordos and along the eastern edge of the Mongolian Plateau in Manchuria. These sites are all located within the present-day Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. It is likely that these sites were originally built along trade routes and in important towns, where the agricultural resources of the frontier zone (such as grain, salt, and butter) could support large monastic populations. Several sites cluster at Shangdu, once the summer capital of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. After the fall of the Mongol Empire, no Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries are recorded until the mid- to late Ming Period, about 1500–1640. These sites also cluster in the same vast steppe frontier
zone where North China merges into Mongolia. One of the few exceptions was the construction of Erdene juu next to the early Mongol Empire capital Kharakhorum in Central Mongolia. The extensive spread of built monasteries across Outer Mongolia to Siberia did not occur until the Qing Period. Several Mongol khanates continued to exercise political control over this region during the Ming Period. By the mid-1500s, Altan Khan was in command of the Ordos Tumed Khanate and most of the southern Mongols from the Ordos to the Kokonor region of Amdo. This development in the political geography of Amdo was to prove significant for the later course of Tibetan history after Sonam Gyatso, abbot of the Drepung and Sera Monasteries in Lhasa, met Altan Khan in 1578 at the Chabichiyal Temple (Chinese: Yanghua si) in the Kokonor region. Altan Khan bestowed the title of Third Dalai Lama (Ocean of Wisdom) on Sonam Gyatso and retrospectively on the first and second Dalai Lamas. This event showed the importance of growing Mongol support for the new Gelukpa sect when the Mongol people were converting en masse to Tibetan Buddhism, and it foreshadowed key Mongol military support for the Gelukpa in Central Tibet in the seventeenth century. This led to the later rule of the Dalai Lamas over Central Tibet, and much of Ngari and Kham, until the 1950s.
Figure 26.1 Part of a circa eighteenth-century mural in the Dalai Lamas’ audience hall on the top floor of the Potala Palace in Lhasa of Wutai Shan in north China. This sacred mountain became an international Buddhist pilgrimage center during the Tibetan Imperial Period and was the site of significant constructions of Tibetan Buddhist shrines and temples under the patronage of Mongol rulers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
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Figure 26.2 Part of the well- preserved Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monastery of Erdene juu, founded in 1585. Figure 26.3 Rows of stupa on the walls of Erdene juu Monastery near the ancient Mongol capital of Kharakhorum.
Sources consulted in making this map Charleux, Isabelle. 2003. “Buddhist Monasteries in Southern Mongolia.” In The Buddhist Monastery: A Cross-Cultural Survey, edited by Pierre Pichard and Francois Lagirarde, 351–90. Paris: École Francaise d’Extreme-Orient. ———. 2006. Temples et Monastères de Mongolie-intérieure. Paris: Éditions du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art.
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Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Beijing founded in Yuan and Ming Periods
Important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Beijing founded during the Yuan and Ming Periods, circa 13th–16th centuries
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mperor Khubilai Khan built Dadu (Chinese for “great capital”) over the course of the latter half of the thirteenth century as the new capital for the Mongol Yuan Dynasty of China. It was renamed Beijing (or “northern capital”) by the Ming Dynasty when they shifted their capital there from Nanjing in the early 1400s. During the Mongol Empire Period a number of important Tibetan Buddhist shrines and monasteries were built within the walled city, but most of the Mongol Period walls do not survive, and the morphology of Beijing since the Yuan Period largely reflects changes made by the Ming. Nevertheless, it is possible to visualize what Dadu looked like because the course of the former walls is known. When it is studied in relation to the locations of Tibetan Buddhist sites, it can be seen that these sites mainly clustered in the western part of the city. Some of the more significant shrines and temples of Mongol Period Dadu include the great stupa of Baita si, built on an earlier Liao temple in 1271, and Dadu Chongguo si, built in 1284, which became the largest Tibetan monastery of Beijing during both the Yuan and Ming Periods. It is known that the Mongols, like other rulers of multiethnic Central Asian regions, settled different peoples in distinct quarters of cities, similar to urban
traditions in the great Islamic cities of the time. In this regard, it is fascinating to see that the two early mosques documented in Dadu during the Mongol Period lie either just outside an eastern city gate or within an eastern section of the city. The main Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist sites of Dadu exhibit similar spatial patterns of clustering in different quarters and areas outside the city walls. Historical records indicate that many of the early hutong, or neighborhoods, of Beijing were originally settled according to ethnic or religious identity, and this map shows some of these early patterns. The Ming Period witnessed the construction of many more Tibetan Buddhist shrines and monasteries over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It would appear that this was the first period when significant constructions occurred in areas outside the city walls, particularly to the northwest around the Wuta si stupa built in 1473. Also, the Fahai si, with important examples of Tibeto-Chinese art, was built in the Western Hills about 20 km west of the city in 1443 (see map 45, “Important Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries of the Greater Beijing Area during the Qing Period, 1644– 1911”). It was staffed by both Han and Tibetan monks. Within the city walls, new Ming sites clustered
Figure 27.1 The Baita si stupa and monastery, 2008.
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Figure 27.2 The Wuta si, 2008. Figure 27.3 Ming Period Tibeto-Chinese Buddhist image detail on the outside of the Wuta si, 2008.
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in the central part of the city. The Fayuan si was the Beijing residence of Shakya Yeshe (1354–1435), an important disciple of Tsongkhapa who was awarded the Ming title Great Compassionate King of the Dharma (Da Ci Fawang) in 1415, when the Ming capital was still in Nanjing. The Fayuan si had both Han and Tibetan monks. Although there do not appear to have been any new Ming Period Tibetan Buddhist temples in the former western core area of Mongol Period construction, some restorations and enlargements took place. To some extent, the Chinese prefix Da indicates a temple or monastery that underwent significant enlargement and restoration under the Ming Dynasty. Also, it is likely that the Baita si became a Chinese Buddhist monastery under the Ming.
Sources consulted in making this map Archival research was carried out by Isabelle Charleux, CNRS Paris. Main primary sources stone inscriptions Beijing tushuguan cang huaxiang taben huibian. 1993. Beijing: Beijing shumu wenxian chubanshe. Franke, Otto, and Berthold Laufer. 1914. Epigraphische Denkmäler aus China: Erster Teil; Lamaistische Tempelinschriften aus Peking, Jehol und Si-ngan, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. von Franz, Rainer. 1984. Die unbearbeiten Peking-Inschriften der Franke-Lauferschen Sammlung. Asiatische Forschungen 86. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Zhang Yuxin. 1988. Qing zhengfu yu lamajiao. Lhasa: Xizang renmin chubanshe.
other primary sources (chinese and japanese) Chen Zongfan. [1930–31] 1991. Yandu congkao. Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe. Dun Lichen. ca. 1900. Yanjing suishi ji. Fu Gongyue et al. 1992. Jiujing daguan [Old Beijing in panorama]. Beijing: Renmin Zhongguo chubanshe. Jinliang. 1914. Xishan mingsheng tushuo. Beijing: Houji shiyin. Jin Liang, comp. 1994. Yonghegong zhilüe. Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe. Kämpfe, Hans-Rainer. 1976. Ni ma’i ’od zer / Naran-u gerel: Die Biographie des 2. Pekinger Lcang skya Qututu Rol pa’i rdo rje (1717–1786) [Biography of Rol pa’i rdo rje]. Monumenta Tibetica Historica 2.1. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Wissenschaftsverlag. Linqing Yangzhou. 1843. Hongxue yinyuan tuji. Liu Dunzhen. 1935. Beiping Huguosi canji. Beiping: Zhongguo yingzao xueshe.
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Liu Tong and Yu Yizheng. 1980. Dijing jing wu lüe. Beijing: Beijing guji. Miao Quansun et al. 1884–86. Shuntian fuzhi. 2nd ed. Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe. Pan Rongbi. [1758] 1981. Dijing suishi jisheng. Beijing: Beijing guji. Tang Yongtong. [1935] 1971. Jiudu wenwu lüe. Taipei: Guoli gugong bowuyuan. Thu’u bkwan Blo bzang chos kyi nyi ma. 1988. Zhangjia guoshi Ruobi Duoji zhuan [Biography of Rol pa’i rdo rje]. Translated from Tibetan by Chen Qingying and Ma Lianlong. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe. Tie Bao. [1739] 1985. [Qinding] Baqi tongzhi. 8 vols. Changchun: Dongbei shifan daxue. Tokiwa Daijo and Sekino Tadashi. 1928. Shina bukkyo shiseki hyokai. Vol. 5. Tokyo: Bukkyo shiseki kenkyo kwai. Wu Changyuan. [1788] 1981. Chenyuan zhilüe. Beijing: Beijing guji. Wu Tingxie et al. 1989. Beijingshi zhigao. 3 vols. Beijing: Beijing yan shan. Xu Daoling. 1936. Beiping miaoyu tongjian. 2 vols. Peking: Guoli Beijing Yanjiuyuan shixue Yanjiuhui. Yu Minzhong, ed. [1774] 2000. Rixia jiu wen kao. 4 vols. Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe. Zhenjun, aka Tang Yan. [1907] 1993. Tianzhi ouwen. Shenyang: Shenyang shi guji shudian. Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’an guan; Zhongguo zangxue yanjiu zhongxin. 1996. Liushi Banchan chaojin dang’an xuanbian. Beijing: Zhongguo zangxue chubanshe.
primary sources in western languages Arlington, Lewis Charles, and William Lewisohn. 1987. In Search of Old Peking. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Boerschmann, Ernst. 1925. Chinesiche Architektur. 2 vols. Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth. ———. Chinesische Pagoden. 1931. Leipzig: W. de Gruyter. Bouillard, Georges. 1922–25. Pékin et ses environs. Beijing: Albert Nachbauer. ———. 1931. Le temple des lamas. Beijing: n.p. Bredon, Juliette. 1922. Peking: An Historical and Intimate Description of Its Chief Places of Interest. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh. Combaz, Gisbert. 1912. Les temples impériaux de la Chine. Brussels: Presses de Vromant. Favier (Alphonse). Pékin: Histoire et description. Péking: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1897. Fei, Shi. Guide to Peking and its Environs, Tientsin: Tientsin Press, 1909. Perckhammer, Heinz von. Peking. Berlin: Albertus, 1928.
Secondary sources Berger, Patricia. 2003. Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and Political Authority in Qing China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Bianchi, Ester. 2008. “Protecting Beijing: The Tibetan Image of Yamaˉntaka-Vajrabhairava in Late Imperial and Republican China.” In Images du Tibet au 19e et 20e siècles, ed. Monica Esposito, 329–56. Études thématiques 22.1. Paris: EFEO. Danjiong Rannabanza and Li Decheng. 1997. Mingsha shuang Huangsi: Qingdai Dalai he Banchan zai jing zhu xidi. Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe. Hou Renzhi. 1985. Beijing lishi dituji. Beijing: Beijing chu ban she chu ban, fa xing. Huang Chunhe. 2002. Baitasi. Beijing: Wenhua chubanshe. Huang Hao. 1993. Zai Beijing de Zangzu wenwu. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe. Ishihama Yumiko. 2001. Shinchou to Chibetto bukkyoˉ. Tokyo: Waseda University Press. Lai Hui-min. 2006. “Qing Qianlong shidai de Yonghegong— Yige jingji wenhua cengmiao de kaocha.” Gugong xueshu jikan 23(4):131–64. ———. 2007. “Qing zhengfu dui Beijing zangchuan fosi de caizheng zhichu jiqi yiyi.” Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiu suo jikan 58:1–51. Lessing, Ferdinand D. 1942. Yong Ho Kung: An Iconography of the Lamaist Cathedral in Peking. Sino-Swedish Expedition 18, 8-I. Stockholm: Statens Etnografiska Museum. ———. 1956. “The Topographical Identification of Peking with Yamantaka.” Central Asiatic Journal 2(1):140–41. Li Decheng. 2009. Zangchuan fojiao yu Beijing. Beijing: Huawen chubanshe. Luo Wenhua. 2005. Longpao yu jiasha: Qinggong Zangchuan fojiao wenhua kaocha. Beijing: Zijincheng chubanshe, 2005. Lu Tiegang and Huang Chunhe. 2006. Fayuansi. Beijing: Wenhua chubanshe. Ma Lan and Li Lixiang. 2004. Yonghegong. Beijing: Huawen chubanshe. Naquin, Susan. 2000. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400– 1900. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tong Xun. 1997. Fojiao yu Beijing simiao wenhua. Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue. Uspensky, Vladimir. 2003. “The Beijing Lamaist Centres and Tibet in the XVII–Early XXth Century.” In Tibet and her Neighbours, edited by Alex McKay, 107–11. London: Thames and Hudson. Wang-Toutain, Françoise. 2009. “Sitatapatra (Baisangai fomu; gDugs dkar po): Interactions between Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism.” In Han zang fojiao meishu yanjiu, edited by Luo Wenhua and Jing Anning. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Wang Yufu. 1995. Longfu chunqiu. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe. Yang Yi and Chen Xiaosu. Miaoyingsi Baita shiliao. Beijing: Beijing Yanshan chubanshe, 1996. Yonghe gong daoguan suo qikan (periodical). Zhou Shujia. [2000] 2004. Qingdai fojiao shiliao jigao. Taipei: Xinwenfeng.
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Major polities and religious sites of the Pakmodrupa Period
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Major polities and important religious sites of the Pakmodrupa Period, circa 1354–1642
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mploying the term “Pakmodrupa Period” to cover all of Tibetan history from the end of the Mongol Empire to the founding of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Ganden Podrang government in 1642 is somewhat misleading. It has been done simply for the sake of convenience, so that this long period of political disunion between the Mongol and Ganden Podrang Periods can be shown on single maps. The Pakmodrupa (Phag mo gru pa) initially constituted one of the ten thousand household districts or Trikhor of proxy-Mongol rule in Central Tibet, and it grew more powerful over the first half of the fourteenth century until it became the main center of authority in Central Tibet for about one century from 1354 to 1478. But many other religious and secular-based polities also exercised varying levels of authority over different parts of Tibet during this time. Even in Central Tibet, many of the former centers of proxy-Mongol rule, such as Sakya and Drigung, managed to retain control over their monastic systems, including many agricultural estates. After the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Tibet was largely left alone by Ming-Dynasty China and would not see foreign troops again until the rise of Manchu Qing and Nepalese Gurkha power in the 1700s. For the most part, the Tibet-China frontier in Shaanxi and Sichuan defined by the former boundary of the Mongol Tufan Government Commissionership (Ch. Xuanweishi) continued to mark the western limits of the traditional Chinese field administration under the Ming. Along the Kham-Yunnan frontier, the Naxi Jang Kingdom brought areas as far north as Batang and Litang
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under its rule from circa 1400 to 1639. There were no serious Ming efforts at controlling Tibet politically; instead the court bestowed formal titles on important Tibetan religious hierarchs and secular rulers to cement Chinese ideas of Tibet as a tributary region of China. To some extent, these various titles merely formalized the authority of Tibetan polities already exercising control over different areas as previously seen in Mongol forms of proxy-rule. But while the Mongols backed up their formal authority with military force, the Ming never exercised direct rule over Tibet beyond some low-lying agricultural areas along the Tibet-China frontier in Amdo and Kham. The spatial pattern of the greatest Ming titles bestowed on Tibetan religious hierarchs shows how the Ming largely continued to recognize the main Tibetan powers of the Mongol Period. It is particularly interesting in this regard that several such titles given to Tibetan religious leaders outside Central Tibet were to Sakyapa figures in Ling and Gonjo in Kham. These two places had been key monastic seats of temporal administration under the Sakya Ponchen viceroyalty during the Mongol Period, and their reaffirmation of importance by the Ming shows how most Tibetan areas continued under their own indigenous forms of political administration. Even Chinese maps made under the Ming do not include Tibet as part of China. The Pakmodrupa Period is significant as the time when the new Geluk sect of Tibetan Buddhism grew and spread widely from its early base at Ganden Monastery in Central Tibet. This monastery was founded by
Tsongkhapa in 1409, and originally the Gelukpa were referred to as the Gandenpa, after this site. Though they were not to gain political control of the country until the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1642, they had political influence and control over most of the monasteries in the Guge Kingdom in Western Tibet, in parts of Central Tibet and Kham, and across much of Amdo over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is necessary to refer to the regional-scale maps to see further details about the political geography and religious and cultural sites of the Pakmodrupa Period. Map 29 shows the religious sites founded and the new fortresses (rDzong) established by the Pakmodrupa to secure their rule over Central Tibet. Map 30 focuses on the political and cultural resurgence of Guge in Western Tibet, with the many new religious sites and sectarian changes in the core region of the Guge Kingdom detailed in map 31. The situation in Amdo, where large Gelukpa monasteries acquired significant political control over areas both within and along the frontier of Ming China, is documented on map 32.
Sources consulted in making this map Gong Yin. 1992. Zhongguo Tusi Zhidu [China Tusi system]. Kunming: Yunnan Nationalities Press. Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 7, Yuan/Ming. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House. Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa. 2010. One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet. Translated by Derek F. Maher. Leiden: Brill. Van der Kuijp, Leonard. 1981. “On the Life and Political Career of Ta’i-Si-Tu Byang-Chub Rgyal-Mtshan (1302– 1364).” In Tibetan History and Language: Studies Dedicated to Uray Geza on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Ernst Steinkellner, 277–327. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universtät Wien. Zhongguo Zangxue Yanjiu Zhongxin. 1988. Dang’an Fanyi Gongzuo Cenkao Ziliao [Archival reference material translation works]. Beijing: China Tibetan Studies Research Center.
Figure 28.1 Nineteenth-century thangka of Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), founder of the Geluk sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple is depicted in the upper right. Private collection. Figure 28.2 The First Dalai Lama, Gendun Drup (1391–1474), was a student of Tsongkhapa and founded Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tsang in 1447. Mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, circa seventeenth century. Figure 28.3 The Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso (1543–88), abbot of the Drepung and Sera Monasteries in Lhasa. He was given the title Dalai Lama (Ocean of Wisdom) by Altan Khan of the Ordos Tumed Khanate in 1578. The title was given retrospectively to the first and second Dalai Lamas. Mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa, circa seventeenth century. Figure 28.4 Ming Period Chinese map of China showing the country as made up of fifteen provinces with the Great Wall forming a northern boundary, the headwaters of the Yellow River defining a western frontier with Tibet, and seas to the east and south. Fen Yeh Yu T’u (Atlas of China and the barbarian regions), circa 1610.
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Central Tibet ca. 1354–1642: Rival powers and religious sites
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Central Tibet circa 1354–1642: Rival powers and religious sites founded during the Pakmodrupa Period
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he first year of this period, 1354, was a turning point in Tibetan political history: the Pakmodrupa myriarch (Khri dpon) Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen (Ta’i si tu byang chub rgyal mtshan; 1302–64) led a successful revolution against Mongol-Sakyapa control over Central Tibet and garrisoned the great Sakya Monastery with his own troops. Mongol control over agrarian China persisted somewhat longer, until the formal fall of the Yuan Dynasty and founding of the Ming Dynasty in 1368. From their capital at Nedong (sNe’u gdong), the Pakmodrupa established a strategic network of fifteen fortresses or dzong (rDzong) across the core farming regions of Central Tibet from about 1350 to 1360. Their administrative system of staffing each dzong with hereditary or appointed governors (rDzong dpon) was later expanded upon by the Ganden Podrang government over the course of the seventeenth through twentieth centuries by building more sites in Central Tibet and also in parts of Ngari and Kham. There were clear geographical limits to the centralizing efforts of Pakmodrupa rule. Large areas under some of Tibet’s earlier elite polities retained a great deal of independence, as evidenced in no new dzong built in the Drigung, E Lhagyari, and Sakya areas. Agricultural taxation records are not available for all of Central Tibet during this period, but detailed nineteenth-century agricultural taxation data for the sixty dzong of Central Tibet at that time reveal that these same areas remained largely independent of direct central government taxation. The Pakmodrupa also maintained a network of fiefs and estates beyond the Central Tibet areas covered by the dzong administration. In the Drigung area, for example, the Pakmodrupa controlled some agricultural resources at least during the latter half of the 1300s. By the late 1400s, local secular leaders of Rinpung dzong allied themselves with the ecclesiastic polity of the Zhamarpa (Zhwa dmar pa), or “Red Hat” Kagyu subsect, based at Yangpachen Monastery (about 60 km northwest of Lhasa); they achieved political dominance in Central Tibet from circa 1478 to 1565. Some Kagyu subsects had increasingly come into conflict with the rising new polities of the Gelukpa during this period, and with the help of the Rinpung leaders were even able to take control of the annual Great Prayer Festival in Lhasa from the Gelukpa. Then, from about 1565 to 1642, the Karmapa or “Black Hat” Kagyu subsect based at Tsurphu Monastery west of Lhasa allied themselves with the Tsangpa leaders of Samdrubtse (later Shigatse)
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who had achieved military dominance over the Rinpung leaders. This rise of the kings of Tsang ushered in an almost century-long period of religious competition between the Kagyupa and the Gelukpa that ended only when the outside pro-Gelukpa military force of the Qoshot Mongols under Gushri Khan achieved control over Central Tibet in 1641–42 and made an offering of their conquests to the Fifth Dalai Lama. Many questions about the reasons so many rival powers competed for control of Central Tibet during this period remain unanswered. Most theories focus on dogmatic differences between the ecclesiastic polities, but this alone does not explain why secular leaders consistently considered these issues important enough to warrant military action. It might be useful instead to compare these roughly three centuries conveniently labeled as the Pakmodrupa Period (1354–1642) with the earlier three centuries of the Second Diffusion of Buddhism (Phyi dar; ca. 900–1240) in Central Tibet, when there also were numerous centers of ecclesiastic authority and secular rule but also greater levels of peace and less fighting. Based on the only survey of comparable levels of economic development across Tibet historically, using Buddhist temple constructions as proxy measures (presented in fig. 5.2, “Growth of Buddhist temples and monasteries in core regions, circa 600– 1950”), it is clear there was an overall decline across Tibet during the late fourteenth through fifteenth centuries. And while Kham and Amdo underwent renewed growth at times over the sixteenth through twentieth centuries, Central Tibet and Ngari never did. One possible reason for these regional declines in building activity could be environmental deterioration due to monsoon megadroughts that affected parts of India, Tibet, and China during the mid-fourteenth through fifteenth centuries. The western plateau regions of Ngari and Central Tibet have had significantly lower levels of precipitation than eastern regions over the historical period, and declines may have had disastrous effects on local agricultural yields and triggered local conflicts over resources. While this factor alone does not explain the higher levels of internal fighting in Central Tibet during the Pakmodrupa Period, it certainly is a possibility and may help to explain why the Pakmodrupa were unsuccessful in maintaining centralized control over the largely agricultural tax-in-kind systems of indigenous Tibetan bureaucracies. Another possible factor that may have contributed to increased levels of
Figure 29.1 Ganden Podrang Palace within Drepung Monastery, Lhasa, 2005. This palace became an early power base of the rising Gelukpa during the Pakmodrupa Period. After the Fifth Dalai Lama gained political control over all of Tibet after 1642 and shifted the main seat of power to the new Potala Palace, the political administration of Tibet was often called the Ganden Podrang government after this place. Figure 29.2 The walled complex of Gyangtse with its temples and famous kumbum, or multistoried chorten, 1904. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 29.3 The Gyangtse kumbum, circa 1955.
fighting is the introduction of firearms in Tibet over the 1500s. Despite the historically lower levels of Buddhist monastery construction across Central Tibet during the Pakmodrupa Period, many shrines of great artistic significance were built. Of particular importance are the kumbum (multistoried chorten) of Riwoche, Gyang, Tropu, and Gyangtse. In addition, the new Gelukpa sect was founded at Ganden Monastery and quickly spread its doctrine by both building new monasteries and converting old sectarian establishments. Also, the new Sakya monasteries of (from west to east) Dar Drongmoche, Ngor, Serdokchen, and Gongkar Chode developed their own subsectarian philosophical and artistic traditions, as did the Kagyu establishment of Yonpu Dratsang southeast of Lhasa. The Nyingmapa were active in founding new monasteries in their traditional areas of strength along the southern bank of the Tsangpo in U and also in far western Tsang. The
Bonpo remained active too, founding their important monastery of Menri in Tsang, which became one of the paramount teaching centers for Bon adherents from across Tibet up to the 1950s.
Sources consulted in making this map Sørensen, Per K., and Guntram Hazod. 2007. Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet; A Study of Tshal Gung-Thang. Vienna: Verlag Der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Shakabpa, Tsepon W. D. 1967. Tibet: A Political History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Tucci, Giuseppe. 1971. Deb t’er dmar po gsar ma: Tibetan Chronicles by Bsod nams grags pa. Serie Orientale Roma 24. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Van der Kuijp, Leonard. 2010. “The Tibetan Expression ‘bod wooden door’ (bod shing sgo) and Its Probable Mongol Antecedent.” In Wang Yao Festschrift: Historical and Philological Studies of China’s Western Regions, edited by Shen Weirong, 3:89–134. Beijing: Science Press.
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Ngari ca. 1365–1630: resurgence of Guge
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Ngari circa 1365–1630: The resurgence of Guge
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Religious and cultural sites in Guge Kingdom’s core region, ca. 15th–17th centuries
Religious and cultural sites in the core region of the Guge Kingdom, circa 15th–17th centuries
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t is difficult to characterize the history of Western Tibet from the end of the Mongol Empire Period until Ladakh’s triumph over Guge in 1630, which galvanized Tibet’s Ganden Podrang government and its Mongol supporters to take control over the region during the later 1600s. The Pakmodrupa and other Central Tibetan regimes never exerted direct control over Western Tibet, though in 1499 the Kingdoms of Guge and Mustang (gLo bo) asked the Rinpung rulers of Tsang to confirm their duties to support the hermits at Mt. Kailash (Ti se) and the right to rule the lands they controlled. But Guge frequently fought with both Mustang and Gungtang for control over areas, particularly Purang, with its strategic location for controlling trade with India and the Kailash region. By about 1500 Guge appears to have cemented its control over Purang, though fighting with Gungtang and Mustang continued at times throughout the 1500s. The Yatse Kingdom, though powerful during the Second Diffusion of Buddhism and Mongol Empire Periods, collapsed in the 1300s as power shifted to Hindu leaders in Jumla. Most historical studies of the fall of the Guge Kingdom emphasize the sectarian rivalries generated by Ladakh’s support of the Kagyupa, particularly the Drigung and Drukpa subsects, versus Guge’s support of the new Gelukpa sect. Other theories focus on tensions created by the Guge Kingdom’s support of an early Christian outpost established there by the Portuguese Jesuit priest Antonio de Andrade in 1624–35. Another problem is the long-term environmental dessication of the region, which led to significant lowering of water tables and farmland abandonment, but it has not yet been ascertained when these factors began to seriously affect population levels and agricultural output in different areas. It is clear that over the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries the Kagyupa gained control over most of the Buddhist monasteries westward along the main Tibet-Ladakh trade route from their early eastern base in Gungtang. This trade route connected the upper Tsangpo region with the Indus watershed. At the traditional source of these rivers, all of the monasteries around sacred Mt. Kailash, and most along the shore of the Mapham Yumtso (Lake Manasarovar), were founded by the Kagyupa (see map 19, “Religious and Cultural Sites Founded in Purang and the Kailash Region, circa 10th–17th Centuries”). Given the importance of the monasteries as key halting places and centers of
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political authority along the long-distance trade routes, it is likely that economic factors also contributed to Kagyu-Geluk rivalry in this region. Throughout this period, various Muslim leaders from the Tarim Basin and Kashmir continued to invade parts of Western Tibet, even reaching as far as Purang in 1533, and making significant impacts on Ladakh by fragmenting its power among different lords. Later, Ladakh strengthened and began to encroach on Guge’s domains by the late 1500s, until it finally defeated Guge in 1630. But the large-scale conversion of most of Baltistan’s population to Islam by the 1400s led to Ladakh’s gradual loss of control over areas it had long administered and made continued control over other parts more difficult. In fact, the kingdom of Ladakh was the only Tibetan political system that administered significant Muslim populations under forms of indirect rule, even after its formal annexation by the Dogras of Jammu in 1842. In this sense, toward the end of this period in the early 1600s Ladakh had already lost considerable territory, while Guge had not. Despite the eventual fall of Guge, this period is considered a cultural zenith in the kingdom when important Buddhist shrines and temples were built and restored. The murals painted during this time at Toling and Tsaparang are considered masterworks of Western Tibetan Buddhist art. It is necessary to refer to map 31 to study the new Buddhist temples and monasteries built and the sectarian changes among previously founded sites. Regrettably, insufficient surveys were available for me to make similar detailed maps of the other core agricultural areas of Ngari where important Buddhist shrines and monasteries were also built, mainly in Gungtang, Mustang, Dolpo, Khunu, Lahul, Spiti, Zanskar, and greater Ladakh. I hope in a future revised and expanded edition of this atlas to map these areas in greater detail. The advent of the Gelukpa in Ngari is attributed to Tsongkhapa’s pupil Ngawang Dragpa (Gu ge mkhan chen Ngag dbang grags pa), who returned to Guge soon after Tsongkhapa passed away in 1419 to spread his teachings. He was welcomed by members of the Guge royal family, quickly attained great renown, and was entrusted with the care of temples at Dungkar. While it is possible that the spread of the Gelukpa became concentrated in the Guge region of Ngari mainly due to Ngawang Dragpa’s personal efforts, the fact that Guge was locked in protracted territorial disputes with
Gungtang and Mustang over Purang and other areas during this period needs to also be taken into consideration. In these competing polities, the older Kagyu and Sakyapa sects remained strong, and perhaps the Guge rulers, faced with inroads of the Kagyupa in parts of Guge since the 1200s, sought a new sectarian tradition to lend their support to and distinguish themselves from their neighbors. According to some historians, in 1424 Guge king Phuntshokde moved the capital back to Tsaparang from Dungkar, where it had been under the rule of a northern dynasty since the twelfth century. The important temples with their murals were added to the Tsaparang fort complex at this time. At the nearby leading monastery of Toling, Ngawang Dragpa was responsible for expanding the complex around the ancient Tsuglagkhang, adding the Lhakhang Karpo and Dukhang,
among other structures. Most of the earlier New Tantra Tradition monasteries were converted to Gelukpa establishments, but the Kagyupa still retained control over most of the monasteries in the western part of the kingdom, with some of the monasteries of the Drukpa subsect becoming exclaves of their main political base of Bhutan by the 1600s. A number of new monasteries were also built by the Sakyapa for the first time in Guge, and it is noteworthy that most of their sectarian establishments clustered in a zone between the Kagyupa and Gelukpa sites.
Sources consulted in making these maps Bashir, Shahzad. 2009. “Nurbakhshis in the History of Kashmir, Ladakh, and Baltistan: A Critical View on Persian and Urdu Sources.” In Mountains, Monasteries
Figure 30.1 The Ngari teacher Shakya ’od (Thams cad mkhyen pa rje btsun Shakya ’od), known as one of three princes of the Guge royal house who invited Ngawang Dragpa (Ngag dbang grags pa) to subdue a female demon (’Dre). He apparently was a local representative of the Drigung Kagyu school. Circa fifteenth-century mural in Toling Monastery. Figure 30.2 View southward across the badland canyon country that constituted the core agricultural region of the Guge Kingdom with the Himalayas on the horizon, 2004. Figure 30.3 Partial remains of the iron bridge over the upper Sutlej near Toling. Construction of this key bridge is credited to Guge king Namgyalde in about 1390. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell, 1904.
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and Mosques: Recent Research on Ladakh and the Western Himalaya, edited by John Bray and Elena De Rossi Filibeck, 141–52. Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore. Bray, John. 1997. “Ladakhi and Bhutanese Enclaves in Tibet.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 7, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Rather, 89–104. Ulm, Germany: Ulmer Kulturanthropologische Schriften. Dhungel, Ramesh K. 2002. The Kingdom of Lo (Mustang): A Historical Study. Kathmandu: Lusha Press. Grist, Nicola. 2005. “The History of Islam in Suru.” In Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, edited by John Bray, 175–80. Leiden: Brill. Guge Tsering Gyalpo (Tshe ring rgyal po). 2006. mNga’ ris chos ‘byung gnas ljongs mdzis rgyan zhis bya ba bzhugs so [A cultural and religious history of Ngari]. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press. Howard, Neil. 2005. “Sultan Zain-ul Abidin’s Raid into Ladakh.” In Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, edited by John Bray, 125–46. Leiden: Brill. Mohammed, Jigar. 2005. “Mughal Sources on Medieval Ladakh.” In Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives, edited by John Bray, 147–60. Leiden: Brill. Petech, Luciano. 1997. “A Regional Chronicle of Guge Purang.” Tibet Journal 22(3):106–11. Schuh, Dieter. 2008. “Die Herrscher von Baltistan (Klein- Tibet) im Spiegel von Herrscherurkunden aus Ladakh.” In Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek: Festschrift fur Roland Bielmeier, edited by Brigitte Huber, Marianne Volkart, and Paul Widmer, 165–225. Halle, Germany: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. Vitali, Roberto. 1997. The Kingdoms of Gu.Ge Pu.Hrang: According to “Mnga’ Ris Rgyal .Rabs” [Royal lineages of Ngari], by Gu Ge Mkhan Chen Ngag Dbang Grags Pa. Chicago: Serindia. ———. 2003. “A Chronology (bStan rTsis) of Events in the History of mNga’ris sKor gSum (Tenth-Fifteenth Centuries).” In The History of Tibet, vol. 2, The Medieval Period, c. 850– 1895, edited by Alex McKay, 53–89. New York: Routledge Curzon.
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Amdo ca. 1368–1644: monastic powers in relation to the Ming Dynasty
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Amdo circa 1368–1644: Local monastic powers in relation to China’s Ming Dynasty
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he history of Amdo during the Ming Period was characterized by economic decline in the aftermath of Mongol rule in the late fourteenth century, which continued throughout the fifteenth century. A significant turn occurred around 1500, and the entire sixteenth century and early seventeenth century was a period of renewed growth with the support of Mongol khanates, as indicated by the extensive constructions of new Buddhist monasteries across the region. To some extent, this upturn in economic activity may have been related to the arrival of New World crops, principally the potato and maize, which helped to trigger significant population growth. Also, Western imperialism led to an influx of New World silver into the regional economies, and an increased demand for wool and other Tibetan pastoral products at China’s trading ports. But these massive historical changes across Tibet have been largely ignored by historians who favor the study of old texts, and elite personalities, to research mainly the history of religious traditions and artistic styles. Faced with these limitations in available scholarship from which to map the history of Amdo during this period, I have focused on showing the main religious sites and centers of political administration, to provide a basic reference map of the important places frequently mentioned in the historical sources. The cultural zenith of Amdo is largely associated with the spread of the Gelukpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism with the support of Mongol “religious kings” during the waning of Ming influence over the region by
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the early 1500s. In 1582 the Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, laid the foundations of Kumbum Monastery shortly after the Mongol leader Altan Khan conferred this title upon him. Some of Tsongkhapa’s students founded early Gelukpa centers in Eastern Tibet, such as Muge Monastery in 1411 and Kirti in 1413. Also in 1413, the Ming court patronized the early Gelukpa centers of Khawatai and Dzomokhar (Honghua si) in Tsongkha. By the late 1500s, the Geluk takeover of the region was well under way, with many major new monasteries founded or converted from primarily Kagyupa sectarian establishments. But early Ming involvement in Amdo was focused mainly on securing economic resources rather than the support of Buddhism per se. Soon after the formal founding of China’s Ming Dynasty in 1368, a Chinese army took Hezhou on Amdo’s frontier in 1370 by arranging the submission of the Tibetan commanding general. The Chinese controlled mainly the densely settled agricultural areas of Amdo based on a network of walled towns, as indicated by the locations of Ming forts (wei) and guards (suo). These centers of Ming political power were largely in the same locations as the fortified administrative centers established by the Northern Song Dynasty during the late eleventh through early twelfth centuries. One exception was the Bao’an fort or station (zhan), set up in the Rongwo Valley in 1371. The Ming, like the Song earlier, needed the sturdy Tibetan horses reared on the rich grasslands of interior
Amdo for their military; they established horse and tea trading stations (Chama Si) at Hezhou in 1376 and at Chone in 1404 as a way to obtain them by working with local Tibetan elites. In Hezhou the Ming acknowledged the local power of a one thousand household district ruler (Ch. Qianhu, Tib. sTong dpon), the Bili Qianhu, with political authority as far west as the Kokonor region. At Chone, the Ming awarded a Tibetan king a one thousand household district title too, and this ruler had authority over a significant stretch of the Lu chu (Tao he) and also the Thewo (The bo) Tibetans in the Chulung Karpo Valley to the south. It is clear from the types of Chinese titles recorded that the indigenous Tibetan Amdowa leaders were organized according to a decimal system, indicating that the Ming merely recognized rulers who had previously held political positions under the Yuan Dynasty. Present-day Chinese sources tend to obscure this tenuous nature of Ming rule over Amdo, preferring instead to describe non-Han rule in terms of the local ruler or tusi system. According to this Sinocentric view of political history, Tibetans were able to exercise rule over local areas only because the Chinese court bestowed titles and legitimacy upon them. But the great extent of Ming border-wall building in the Tsongkha region of Amdo, as well as their improvements to the earlier Han and Tang limes with the new Great Wall in the Gansu corridor, shows that the Ming felt quite insecure and did not wield complete power across Amdo despite the numerous titles they recorded having bestowed on
Tibetan, Mongol, and related Tibetan Buddhist leaders during this period. In addition to the one thousand household district rulers, who appear to have been the most powerful, there were a number of lower local positions the Ming recognized, and many of these positions reflect Tibetan indigenous terms such as nangso and garwa for local leaders. Initially these positions appear to have been secular and hereditary, but by the later Ming Period there were increasing numbers of Buddhist monks holding these positions. Given the destruction and depopulation associated with the Yuan-Ming transition, the awarding of many of these titles and fiefs to local lay and religious elites was one way the Ming attempted to develop economically those low-lying parts of Amdo that they controlled militarily. Over time, the result was a number of large Buddhist monasteries that functioned as de facto autonomous polities where Ming Dynasty officials had little impact in the day-to- day lives of local Tibetans. The monasteries were also sites of periodic religious festivals and trade fairs and so came to offer the inhabitants in the surrounding areas many of the economic services usually associated with urban centers. But these monasteries did not match traditional Chinese or Western notions of urban centers, and a great deal of research is still required to adequately understand how Amdo functioned as part of a greater Northwest China macroregional economy in addition to existing as one of the main macroregions of the Tibetan culture region.
Figure 32.1 Drotsang (Qutan si) Monastery, an early Tibetan Buddhist monastery of the Ming Period built in 1392 in a Chinese palace architectural style. Photo by Gray Tuttle, 2006. Figure 32.2 Kumbum Monastery, 1990. This site is considered one of the most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Amdo. Its foundations were laid by the Third Dalai Lama in 1582. Figure 32.3 Section of Ming border walls in Amdo, circa 1905. Photo by William Edgar Geil.
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Sources consulted in making this map Chang Yu and Pei-ping tu shu kuan [Beijing Library]. [1547] 1937. Pien cheng kao. 12 chuan, Kuo li Pei-ping tu shu kuan shan pen tsung shu, vols 5–10. Maps and description of the administration and the military defense of the northwestern border regions from the Ordos to Tibet, and of the relations with the adjacent peoples. Marks the locations in Chinese of some temples, forts, inns, and towns. Also depicts local Ming border walls and watchtower beacons. Filchner, Wilhelm. 1933. Kartenwerk der Erdmagnetischen Forschungs-Expedition Nach Zentral-Asien 1926–28. Erster Teil: China und Tibet I. Petermanns Mitteilungen 215. Blatt I: Uber den Nan-schan, das Becken von Si-ning und das Kuke-nor-Gebiet. Scale 1:500,000. Schram, Louis M. J. 1954. “The Monguors of the Kansu- Tibetan Frontier,” pt. 1, “Their Origin, History, and Social Organization.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 44. Tuttle, Gray. 2010. “Local History in Amdo: The Tsongkha Range (ri rgyud).” Asian Highlands Perspectives 1(2): 23– 105. Wu Jianwei, ed. 1995. Zhongguo Qingzhensi Zonglan [Compendium of mosques in China]. Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe [Ningxia People’s Press].
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part 4
t h e g an d en p od ra n g p eriod (Kingdom of the Dalai Lamas)
Major polities, ca. 1642–1900
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Major polities of the Ganden Podrang Period, circa 1642–1900
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ibet’s Ganden Podrang government is called after the palace-temple of that name within Lhasa’s Drepung Monastery, which had been an important center of the new Gelukpa sect’s religious and political activities during the fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. During this later period depicted on this map, Tibetans often simply called the government the Depa Zhung (sDe pa gzhung), which meant “authority center.” A major shift occurred in 1641–42, when Gushri Khan of the pro-Gelukpa Qoshot Mongols, who had supplanted the Tumed descendants of Altan Khan in Amdo, captured Central Tibet by defeating the prince of Tsang and proclaimed the Fifth Dalai Lama ruler of Tibet. While Altan Khan and then his sons continued to hold titles and exercise some power for the rest of the 1600s, the bureaucratic machinery for the administration of Tibet fell to the Dalai Lamas and their regents. For the first time since the rule of the Pakmodrupa in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Central Tibet was united again under a centralized administration. And this period saw Tibet ruled from Lhasa for the first time, largely because the early Gelukpa centers of Ganden, Sera, and Drepung clustered
around the sacred city. The Potala Palace was built in 1645 and came to represent the physical seat of Tibet’s government, with the White Palace for the lay administration and the Red Palace for the religious administration. This form of government, combining secular and religious rule, initially fell in 1705, and internal intrigues and invasion by the Zunghar Mongols led China’s Qing Dynasty to attempt a resurrection of Tibet’s old monarchy under the house of Pholhana (Pho lha nas) from 1728 to 1750. But the situation did not stabilize until the Seventh Dalai Lama established a reformulated administration that lasted approximately two centuries, from the early 1750s until the 1950s, when China annexed the country and dissolved the government. This map is designed to show the frontiers and boundaries of Tibet in relation to the Qing and British Empires that arose to prominence during this period. But detailed information about how the early Ganden Podrang administration controlled all of its territory during the 1600s and 1700s is not available, and a great deal of research still needs to be done in addition to simply mapping the spread of Gelukpa monasteries
Figure 33.1 The Fifth Dalai Lama, Lobzang Gyatso (1617–82). Late seventeenth- century mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa.
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and agricultural estates. One of the most detailed historical Tibetan sources for the study of Tibet’s territorial administration system in the 1800s is the Iron Tiger Land Settlement (lCag stag zhib gzhung), named for the year of 1830 in the Tibetan calendar, for which it was compiled. But this text covers only about sixty fortresses or dzong (rDzong) in Central Tibet that administered the tax obligations of government treasury, monastic, and noble estates in this core region. At the same time, a range of relatively independent areas and estates of elite status were not taxed. These fortresses are shown for reference on map 35 (“Central Tibet circa 1642–1951: Religious and Cultural Sites of the Ganden Podrang Period”). There are, unfortunately, no comparable available records to consistently map in detail the types of administrative seats of Lhasa’s power outside of Central Tibet in Ngari and parts of Kham during the pre-1912 period. It was only with the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, after the short-lived Chinese military takeover of the country in 1910, that Lhasa embarked on a more ambitious system of territorial administration outside of Central Tibet. This later system is better documented, and it is shown on maps 36 and 37
(“Frontiers and Forts of the Ganden Podrang Period, circa 1900–1951,” and “Central Tibet circa 1912–51: The Territorial Administration System of the Ganden Podrang Government”).
Sources consulted in making this map Sørensen, Per K., and Guntram Hazod. 2007. Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet; A Study of Tshal Gung-Thang. Vienna: Verlag Der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 8, Qing. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House. Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa. 2010. One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet. Translated by Derek F. Maher. Leiden: Brill. Zhongguo Zangxue Yanjiu Zhongxin. 1988. Dang’an Fanyi Gongzuo Cenkao Ziliao (Archival reference material translation works). Beijing: China Tibetan Studies Research Center.
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Important religious and cultural sites
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Important religious and cultural sites of the Ganden Podrang Period, circa 1642–1951
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his period may be aptly referred to as the Ganden Podrang Period, considering how the Gelukpa sect came to dominate most of the temples and monasteries across the Tibetan cultural world. with only a few regional exceptions. In far Western Tibet, in Ladakh, the Kagyupa remained strong, though the Gelukpa did manage to establish some monasteries there, such as the important center of Likir. In Kham, from the Hor region in the upper Salween watershed through the Nangchen and Derge Kingdoms to the Gyelrong region near the Sichuan Basin, the older sectarian establishments of the Bonpo, Nyingma, Sakya, and Kagyu sects still dominated the religious landscape. It can also be seen that major Gelukpa centers had spread to dominate different parts of Eastern Tibet since the Pakmodrupa Period. On the grasslands of the upper Yellow River and Yangtze watersheds, significant new Gelukpa centers were founded, such as Ragya, Taktsang Lhamo, and Sershul. The Gelukpa also seized firm control over the Tibet-China long-distance trade routes across Kham, displacing and converting older Bonpo establishments, though the Bonpo remained strong in the highest northernmost largely pastoral ar-
Figure 35.1 The sacred lake of Lhamo Latso, located about 10 km northeast of Chokhorgyal Monastery in the Olka area of Central Tibet. This lake came to be considered one of the chief visionary places of Tibet’s Ganden Podrang government after earlier reverence by the Gelukpa during the Pakmodrupa Period. Circa 1935 mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa.
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eas. Along the frontier with Yunnan Province, where the Karma Kagyupa had formally dominated under the patronage of the Naxi Jang Kingdom, the Gelukpa founded or took over most of the important monasteries. And in Amdo, the Gelukpa takeover of the region was almost complete after major inroads made during the earlier Pakmodrupa Period. In Central Tibet, though most of the new monasteries built were Gelukpa establishments, the Nyingmapa engaged in some new building activity in their old area of strength along the Tsangpo River Valley in U, and also in parts of Tsang. The important Nyingma centers Mindroling and Dorje Drak were founded in this period. The Bonpo also remained active along the northern bank of Tsangpo in Tsang, founding their key center Yungdrungling and rebuilding their destroyed center Yeru Wensakha. Many Bonpo monks from across the Tibetan world came to Yungdrungling and the older nearby center of Menri to complete their studies.
Figure 35.2 Painting depicting the Thirteenth Dalai Lama traveling in his palanquin between the Potala Palace and the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. Circa 1935 mural in the Potala Palace.
Sources consulted in making these maps Chokyi Gyasto, Katok Situ III (1880–1925). 1972. Dbus gtsang gi gnas yig: An Account of a Pilgrimage to Central Tibet during the Years 1918 to 1920: Being the Text “Gangs ljongs dbus gtsang gnas bskor lam yig nor bu zla shel gyi se mo do.” TBRC W9668. Palampur, India: Sungrab Nyamso Gyunphel Parkhang. Ferrari, Alfonsa. 1958. MKhyen Brtse’s Guide to the Holy Places of Central Tibet. Serie Orientale Roma 16. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo. Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 8, Qing. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House.
Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa. 2010. One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet. Translated by Derek F. Maher. Leiden: Brill. Van Spengen, Wim. 2000. Tibetan Border Worlds: A Geohistorical Analysis of Trade and Traders. London: Kegan Paul International. Zhongguo Zangxue Yanjiu Zhongxin. 1988. Dang’an Fanyi Gongzuo Cenkao Ziliao [Archival reference material translation works]. Beijing: China Tibetan Studies Research Center.
Figure 35.3 Lhasa’s main urban square in 1904, with the southern side of the Jokhang Temple visible behind. After the 1950s this square was largely built over, and a new plaza was created on the western side of the Jokhang. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 35.4 Farmers harvesting barley in fields surrounding Lhasa, with the Potala Palace in the background, 1904. After the 1950s Lhasa’s built-up area expanded over most of these formerly open lands. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell.
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Frontiers and forts, ca. 1900–1951
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Central Tibet ca. 1912–51: territorial administration
Central Tibet circa 1912–51: The territorial administration system of the Ganden Podrang government
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hese two maps are designed to show the locations of all the known seats of Tibet’s territorial administration, and frontiers and boundaries in relation to other major polities during this period. The Tibetan government assigned both nobles and Buddhist monks to serve as local administrators in the districts (Khul, rDzong) and agricultural estates (gzhis ka) scattered across the country. District governors were drawn from the body of ecclesiastic officials (rSte drung) and the lay officials (Drung ’khor) belonging to the aristocracy. Usually the district seat was based in an older fort or castle from earlier times, though some were built during this period, and some agricultural estates also had government offices in them, though these were not fortified. The personnel system of supervising the administrative units included postings of usually three years of single monks, single lay officials, two lay officials, or one monk and one lay official together. But often nobles could dispatch a steward to serve in their stead while they remained in Lhasa. For the most part, Tibet based its defense more on geographic distance than on defensive positions. The
districts were not to provide provisions to foreigners nor allow them to pass without a valid passport, and for the most part this system prevented outsiders from getting far across the high plateau beyond Tibet’s frontiers. There were military garrisons in only a few key towns and border posts. In most areas, local levies formed militias when needed.
Sources consulted in making these maps Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1968. “Anthropological Study of the Tibetan Political System.” PhD diss., University of Washington. Gong Yin. 1992. Zhongguo Tusi Zhidu [China tusi system]. Kunming: Yunnan Nationalities Press. Jagou, Fabienne. 2011. The Ninth Panchen Lama (1883–1937): A Life at the Crossroads of Sino-Tibetan Relations. Paris: École Francaise d’Extreme. Sørensen, Per K., and Guntram Hazod. 2007. Rulers on the Celestial Plain: Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet: A Study of Tshal Gung-Thang. Vienna: Verlag Der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 8, Qing. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing
Figure 36.1 The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Tubten Gyatso (1876–1933). Circa 1935 mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa. Figure 36.2 The Thirteenth Dalai Lama reviewing the new Tibetan standing army, circa 1917. Circa 1935 mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa.
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House. Tsepon Wangchuk Deden Shakabpa. 2010. One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet. Translated by Derek F. Maher. Leiden: Brill. Zhongguo Zangxue Yanjiu Zhongxin. 1988. Dang’an Fanyi Gongzuo Cenkao Ziliao [Archival reference material translation works]. Beijing: China Tibetan Studies Research Center.
Map photo credits Photo of the Potala Palace is from Laurence Austine Waddell, Lhasa and Its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903–1904 (London: John Murray, 1905). Photos of the governor of Gyangtse and the dzong of Lhatse and Shigatse are from Cecil Godfrey Rawling, The Great Plateau: Being an Account of Exploration in Central Tibet, 1903, and of the Gartok Expedition, 1904–1905 (London: E. Arnold, 1905).
Figure 36.3 Tibetan officials at Dromo (Yadong), circa 1903. Photo by Laurence Austine Waddell. Figure 36.4 Tibetan general (left) with bagpipe men (mounted) at Rongbatse in Eastern Tibet, 1918. This key town, approximately 10 km west of Kanze, lay near the de facto boundary between Tibet and China in 1918. Photo by Eric Teichman. Figure 36.5 Tibetan levies south of Dzogang in the lower Tsawarong region of Eastern Tibet, circa 1918. Photo by Eric Teichman.
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Ngari ca. 1630–1959: Incorporation into Ganden Podrang system
Ngari circa 1630–1959: Incorporation into Tibet’s Ganden Podrang administrative system
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his map is designed to show the administrative geography of Western Tibet after 1684, when the lands of the former Guge Kingdom were annexed by Tibet’s Ganden Podrang government with the military aid of its Mongol supporters. A few years earlier, in 1681, Tibet had invaded Ladakh, partly in retaliation for Senge Namgyal’s 1630 partitioning of Guge among his family members. Lhasa organized this entire region of Ngari under a system of district forts (dzong) and hereditary local rule corresponding to the approximate extent of the ancient kingdoms of Guge and Purang, and it remained basically intact until communist Chinese troops arrived in the 1950s. The “capital” of Ngari largely consisted of tent encampments with a few houses in the pastoral upper reaches of the Indus, where the provincial governors (garpon) alternated between winter and summer sites and supervised important annual trade fairs, which were vital to the export-oriented economy based mainly on wool and salt. This regional administrative system with provincial governors supervising local districts (dzong) was established early in Ngari, but only after 1912 was it expanded to control parts of Kham too. Not shown in their totality on this map are the numerous postal stations the Tibetan government maintained along the main route from Lhasa to the Western Tibetan capital of Gartok. Some officials posted to these stations exercised varying forms of territorial control; for example, the strategically located station at Barga next
to Mt. Kailash oversaw the important Himalayan trade mart of Gyanema at times. This period also saw most of the other major Western Tibetan polities fall under varying forms of control by Nepalese, Indian, Kashmiri, and British colonial powers. Mustang signed a treaty of dependence with Nepal in 1789, which was more symbolic than anything else because the kingdom continued to function largely independently of Kathmandu control. Gungtang, the other main historical power in lower Ngari, appears to have been more successfully integrated into the territorial administration of the Ganden Podrang government, but Lhasa’s posting of district governors to Dzongka Fort did not completely replace older local forms of rule. A similar situation prevailed across far western Tibet, where Ladakh’s formal annexation by the dogras of Jammu and Kashmir in 1842 did not lead to direct rule from Srinagar. Instead, many of the hereditary lay powers and the monasteries continued to exercise control over daily matters. In religious matters, the Gelukpa were able to continue their takeover of the main monasteries of Ngari by the late 1600s. The fortress monastery of Shakpel Ling, however, which also housed the seat of the Purang district governor, practiced both Gelukpa and Sakyapa sectarian traditions. Most of the earlier key Kagyupa establishments along the main Lhasa-Leh trade route, such as Tradun and Tashigang, were converted by the Gelukpa. In the sacred Mt. Kailash area, though,
Figure 38.1 The district governor (dzongpon) of Purang (left), at the district seat in the monastery of Shakpel Ling, circa 1905. Photo by Charles A. Sherring.
Figure 38.2 Large Buddhist image in the monastery of Shakpel Ling, circa 1905. Photo by Charles A. Sherring.
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Figure 38.3 The senior provincial governor (garpon) of Ngari, circa 1905. Photo by Charles A. Sherring.
Figure 38.4 The bazaar at Bageshwar in the foothills of the Himalayas, circa 1905. These markets received many of the natural products, such as wool and salt, from Western Tibet and helped connect the region with India via numerous long-distance trade routes. Photo by Charles A. Sherring.
the Kagyupa centers were left alone, and instead the Gelukpa constructed new monasteries at Bonri and Dunchu (see map 19, “Religious and Cultural Sites Founded in Purang and the Kailash Region, circa 10th– 17th Centuries”). In Ladakh, the key Gelukpa monasteries of Likir and Tiksey were founded. Also, toward the end of this period in 1930, the Bonpo founded their first monastery in upper Ngari at Gurugam. Although the Bonpo had much earlier established Dechengang in lower Ngari near Gungtang, several sites in Dolpo, and Ludra in the valley of the Kali Kandaki near Lo Mustang, Gurugam was the first Bonpo monastery founded in the ancient heartland of Zhangzhung, where many Bonpo believed their faith had flourished in the preimperial period.
Guge Tsering Gyalpo (Tshe ring rgyal po). 2006. mNga’ ris chos ’byung gnas ljongs mdzis rgyan zhis bya ba bzhugs so [A cultural and religious history of Ngari]. Lhasa: Tibetan People’s Press. Petech. Luciano. 1997. “A Regional Chronicle of Guge Purang.” Tibet Journal 22(3):106–11. Samphel, Tsering. 1997. “Zorawar Singh, Tshultim Nyima and the End of the Ladakhi Monarchy.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 7, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Rather, 421–26. Ulm, Germany: Ulmer Kulturanthropologische Schriften. Schuh, Dieter. 2008. “Die Herrscher von Baltistan (Klein- Tibet) im Spiegel von Herrscherurkunden aus Ladakh.” In Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek: Festschrift fur Roland Bielmeier, dited by Brigitte Huber, Marianne Volkart, and Paul Widmer, 165–225. Halle, Germany: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. Schwieger, Peter. 1997. “Power and Territory in the Kingdom of Ladakh.” In Recent Research on Ladakh 7, edited by Thierry Dodin and Heinz Rather, 427–34. Ulm, Germany: Ulmer Kulturanthropologische Schriften. Vitali, Roberto. 1997. The Kingdoms of Gu.Ge Pu.Hrang: According to “Mnga’ Ris Rgyal .Rabs” [Royal lineages of Ngari], by Gu Ge Mkhan Chen Ngag Dbang Grags Pa. Chicago: Serindia.
Sources consulted in making this map Crook, John, and Henry Osmaston, eds. 1994. Himalayan Buddhist Villages: Environment, Resources, and Religious Life in Zangskar, Ladakh. Bristol, UK: University of Bristol. Dhungel, Ramesh K. 2002. The Kingdom of Lo (Mustang): A Historical Study. Kathmandu: Lusha Press.
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Amdo ca. 1644–1911: monastic powers in relation to Qing Dynasty
Amdo circa 1644–1911: Local monastic powers in relation to China’s Qing Dynasty
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his map is designed to show the large, mostly Gelukpa monasteries that controlled most of the territory of Amdo during the Qing Period based on the system of combined politico-religious rule (Tib. Chosi Zungdrel, Ch. Zhengjiao Heyi) and were supported by networks of affiliated branch monasteries (dGon lag). The monasteries hosted numerous periodic trade fairs throughout the year that were vital to Amdo’s economy by providing goods and services for local people and facilitating bulk transfers of long-distance trade items between Tibetan, Chinese, and Muslim merchants. The networks of monastery branches largely conformed to distinct areas surrounding each of the large mother monasteries, though some far-flung branch sites also existed. In the core Tsongkha region, Gonlung (Ch. Youning) maintained a network covering the greatest territorial extent, with sites in both the Tsong chu (Ch. Huangshui) and Yellow River Valleys. Outside of Tsongkha, Labrang Monastery maintained another large network of branch monasteries, with sites as far south as the Ngaba and Dzoge regions of southern Amdo.
The Qing Period also saw the construction of large “grassland” monasteries across the upper Yellow River region of Amdo. Some of the more important sites included Ragya, Taktsang Lhamo, and Mewa. This upturn in economic activity across Eastern Tibet started to become noticeable in the Ming Period, and some factors include the firm establishment by the Qing Period of the New World crops potato and maize, which helped to trigger population growth through increased food yields and expansion of cultivated land onto hilly and higher altitude areas. There was also an influx of New World silver into the Tibetan economies, partly as a result of an increased demand for wool and other Tibetan pastoral products at China’s Pacific trading ports. Following and facilitating this growth in Eastern Tibet’s export-oriented economy, Muslim trading communities expanded onto more plateau areas, as indicated by the constructions of new mosques, such as next to Taktsang Lhamo / Kirti, Labrang, and Rongwo. The Qing also expanded their administrative presence in the agricultural districts of Amdo significantly after the failed Mongol rebellion of 1724 by convert-
Figure 39.1 The main assembly hall at Gonlung Monastery, 2006. This monastery supervised one of the largest networks of branch monasteries across Amdo during the Qing Period. Photo by Gray Tuttle.
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ing most of the former forts (wei) and guards (suo) of the Ming frontier into prefectures (fu), subprefectures (ting), departments (zhou), and counties (xian). In addition, smaller Chinese towns lacking formal status in the Qing field administration developed in remoter parts of Amdo, such as Bei Datong and Yong’an in the Pari region.
Sources consulted in making this map Fuchs, Walter. 1943. Der Jesuiten-Atlas der Kanghsi-Zeit. Monumenta Serica, Monograph Series 4. Plate 24, Shensi. Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 8. Qing. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House. Wu Jianwei, ed. 1995. Zhongguo Qingzhensi Zonglan [Compendium of mosques in China]. Yinchuan: Ningxia Renmin Chubanshe (Ningxia People’s Press).
Figure 39.2 The southeast corner of the walled city of Xining, circa 1904. The Qing Dynasty made this city a prefectural seat after the failed Mongol uprising in Amdo in 1724. Manchu Ambans or residents were stationed here and also indirectly administered the vast Kokonor region. Photo by Wilhelm Filchner. Figure 39.3 Circa eighteenth-century thangka attributed to the Rongwo region of Amdo and likely a product of Bonpo or Nyingma artistic traditions. Private collection.
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Khampa polities in relation to Central Tibet and China
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Kham circa 1642–1911: The Khampa polities in relation to Central Tibet and China
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his overview map of the political geography of Kham focuses on the main polities of the Hor region, Eastern Kham, and Gyelrong. Given the large number of these polities, the map is intended to provide merely a visual summary of the names and approximate central locations. The internal administrative divisions of each are not shown due to obvious limitations of scale, but detailed maps of the Derge and Nangchen Kingdoms, two of the larger, politically important kingdoms, have been made (see maps 41 and 42). Most of Kham lay beyond the direct administration of Tibet’s Ganden Podrang government, and China, during the Qing Period. To help define this vast region, I have shown the districts (dzong) administered by Lhasa in Kongpo, which is considered culturally more a part of Kham than of Central Tibet. Along the edge of eastern Kham, the main administrative seats of the Qing government are also shown for reference. Between these vast frontiers, a relatively stable line of control was respected by both Tibet and China along the Yangtze-Mekong divide from 1727 to 1910. Most aspects of daily life fell under the purview of local monasteries, hereditary elites, and communal norms, and it is misleading to assume that rigid administrative systems existed. Indeed, some areas could even be described as “stateless” during historical times. A great deal of textual research and mapping of local sites still needs to be done if we are to fully understand the historical political geography of Kham. Several major events brought different parts of Kham under varying forms of territorial control by Lhasa and Beijing, which means that it is impossible to generalize about the political geography of Kham
Figure 40.1 Caravan arriving at a Chinese inn, Eastern Kham, circa 1918. Photo by Eric Teichman.
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during this period. Initial Qing involvement in Central Tibet in the early 1700s led to the stationing of representatives of the Qing court, called Ambans, at Lhasa in 1728, and these officials subsequently supervised forms of indirect territorial control over the Hor region in the upper Salween watershed, with the hereditary leaders of the so-called Thirty-Nine Hor Tribes given minor ranks in the Qing Empire. Later, in the mid-nineteenth century, Lhasa sent an army into Central Kham to fight the Khampa ruler Gonpo Namgyal, who was defeated in 1865. This ruler, after taking over his home region of Nyarong, had conquered Batang, Litang, the Hor States, Derge, and Ling, controlling territory as far north as the important trading town of Jyekundo, and harassed even more areas. After his defeat, the Tibetan government administered Nyarong, initially with the acquiescence of the Qing court, until 1932. In other areas within Lhasa’s sphere of influence, I have shown the names of the large Gelukpa monastic estates of Chamdo, Drayab, and Pasho for reference, but not their internal administrative structures. Before the reforms of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama after 1912, and extension of the dzong administration system across western Kham, the early Ganden Podrang government extended its influence in Kham largely through establishing Gelukpa monastic estates. These can be seen to have mainly spread along the Tibet- Sichuan trade routes, with key centers such as Sok on the northern branch in the Hor region and Pembar on the southern branch. In Powo, which was largely independent during the Qing Period, the Gelukpa founded key centers such as Chumdo and Chodzong by entering the kingdom over passes from areas they controlled to the north in the Salween Valley. Slowly this process of
Figure 40.2 Mengung Monastery, an important Gelukpa center in the Tsawarong region along Kham’s southern frontier, circa 1910. Photo by Frank Kingdon- Ward.
Figure 40.3 Pelyul Monastery, an important early Nyingmapa center founded in 1165 in the Dri chu (Yangtze) Valley of Kham, circa 1918. Photo by Eric Teichman.
extending the Gelukpa monastic estates across Kham whittled away at many of the older indigenous polities. Pasho, for example, is recorded as having benefited by annexing some eastern territories of the Powo Kingdom. The physical geography of Kham led traders to prefer the long-distance trade routes that passed through the drier agricultural valleys with good pasturage in upper alpine zones. In general, the southern Himalayan regions of Kham, such as Powo and Zayul, had more deeply incised river valleys in the Tsangpo- Brahmaputra drainage system, and received much higher levels of rainfall than other parts of Kham. As a result, these steeper, more vegetated terrains were not suited to pack animals, and human porters were needed for moving goods. At the opposite extreme, the high, cold northern Jangtang and Golok regions were difficult for all but large, well-organized caravans with military escorts to cross, because supplies in the absence of villages and inns were difficult to obtain, and nomadic groups could harass travelers more easily than farmers tied to their houses and fields. In this sense it can be seen that most of the areas in Kham favored by the spreading Gelukpa monastic estates with links to
Tibet’s Ganden Podrang government, and the Khampa polities courted by the Qing Empire with official recognition, tended to locate across this wide swath of Central Kham.
Sources consulted in making this map Chen Qingying. 1991. Zhongguo Zangzu Buluo [Tibetan tribes of China]. Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue Chubanshe. Fang Jianchang. 1992. “Zang Bei Sanshi Jiu Zu Mulue” (Records of Northern Tibet’s Thirty-Nine Tribes). Zhongguo Bianjiang Shidi Yanjiu 1:55–67. Tan, Q. X., ed. 1982. Zhongguo Lishi Dituji [Historical atlas of China], vol. 8, Qing. Shanghai: Cartographic Publishing House. Wang Xiuyu. 2011. China’s Last Imperial Frontier: Late Qing Expansion in Sichuan’s Tibetan Borderlands. New York: Lexington Books. Yudru Tsomu. 2006. “Local Aspirations and National Constraints: A Case Study of Nyarong Gonpo Namgyel and His Rise to Power in Kham (1836–1865).” PhD diss., Harvard University. Zhongguo Renmin Zhengzhi Xieshang Huiyi Ganzi Zangxu Zizhizhou Weiyuan Hui. 1990. Kanze Zhou Wenshi Ziliao (Kanze Prefecture Historical Literary Materials), vol. 11.
Figure 40.4 Batang, one of the few towns in Kham, circa 1910. Photo by Zenas Sanford Loftis. Figure 40.5 The Eastern Tibetan border town of Dartsedo (Ch. Tachienlu), circa 1890. Photo by Antwerp Edgar Pratt. Figure 40.6 Bridge outside the Eastern Tibetan border town of Dartsedo (Ch. Tachienlu) on the main route to Lhasa, called the “Gate of Tibet,” circa 1910. Photo by Elizabeth Kendall.
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The Derge Kingdom: Territorial administration
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The Derge Kingdom: Territorial administration system, circa 1630–1909
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sDe dgei rgyal rabsGenealogy of the Kings of Derge
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he early roots of the Derge (sDe dge) Kingdom may be traced to Tibetan officials appointed by the Mongol Empire in Dokham during the thirteenth century. These local elites established their base in Samar (Sad mar) for several centuries until moving to Chakra (lCags ra) to serve the then powerful Lingtsang (gling tshang) Kingdom. It was not until about 1640 that their descendants formally founded the Derge Kingdom, during a tumultuous period when the Mongol leader Gushri Khan was subjugating large parts of Tibet in support of the Fifth Dalai Lama. To a great extent, the new Derge Kingdom benefited territorially by acquiring lands from the surrounding major polities of Lingtsang, Gonjo (Go ’jo), and Beri (Be ri), as well as some other minor polities and powerful families. The Bonpo leader of Beri was a particular target of the pro-Gelukpa Mongols, and records indicate that Gushri Khan, after executing this leader, gave some of his lands to Derge. One of the main sources for the history of the Derge Kingdom is the 1828 sDe dge’i rgyal rabs (Genealogy of the kings of Derge), which records the thirty-seventh King Jampa Puntsok as instrumental in expanding the earlier proto-kingdom in about 1630 to rule over a network of “Eighteen Forts (rDzong) or Palaces (Pho brang),” though the actual number of forts listed is twenty-one. They all concentrated in the main agricultural valleys of the Dri chu (Yangtze) and its tributaries, the only exception being Yilungwa to the east on the edge of the Hor States region. Eventually the number
grew to include approximately thirty-three agricultural districts (rDzong khag), along with some nomadic areas, by the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The ruler of the Derge Kingdom, though commonly called “king” in Western accounts, was the abbot throne holder of the state temple. The original temple of the ruling family was Lhundrupteng (Lhun grub steng), founded by the famous bridge builder Tangtong Gyelpo in the 1400s. A new, larger family temple was founded nearby in 1616 and called Samdrup Tongdrol Chenmo (bSam ’grub mthong grol chen mo). This site remained the main administrative center of the kingdom until its dissolution in the early twentieth century. The sDe dge’i rgyal rabs text from 1828 lists the initial fort-palaces of the kingdom’s territorial administration system by paraphrasing the text of an old mural on the wall in one of the palaces, and provides valuable information about how each area was initially taken by King Jampa Puntsok. I have listed them here as follows, arranged when possible by which Khampa polity they were acquired from, in order to provide more insight into the early political geography of this part of Kham:
Figure 41.1 Part of the Parkhang (Royal Printing House), circa 1918. This printing establishment founded in the capital of the Derge Kingom in the eighteenth century was one of the most important centers for the carving and printing of Buddhist scriptures in Tibet. Photo by Eric Teichman.
Figure 41.2 Palbung Monastery, circa 1918. This important monastery founded in the eighteenth century in Derge is the seat of the Situ lamas of the Karma Kagyu subsect and contained one of the most important ateliers of the Eastern Tibetan Karma Gardri art tradition in Tibet. Photo by Eric Teichman.
Lingtsang Kingdom (gLing tshang) Meshod (rMe shod) Khardo (mKhar mdo tshu ri) Beri Kingdom (Be ri) Pewar (sPe war) Khardo (mKhar mdo pha ri) Wonto Phari (dBan stod pha ri)
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Figure 41.3 Polu Monastery, circa 1918. One of the local palaces of the Derge Kingdom’s territorial administration system was located in this monastic complex. Photo by Eric Teichman.
Yilungwa (Yid lhung ba) The Female Chief of Gonjo (Go ’jo) Kusi Denying (Ku se rnying, “old Kusi”) and Kusi Desar (Ku se sde gsar, “new Kusi”); original sites unclear, both represented on map by a single Kusi site Nyakshi (Nyag gshis) Polu (sPo lu) Tongra governor (sTong ra sde pa) Garje (sGar rje) and Pelbar (dPal ’bar; location unclear) Pelyul (dPal yul) Chief Gepen Ezhi (Ge ’phan e gzhi) Tsamdo (Tsam mdo) Community belonging to a lama (specific polity name, if any, unknown) Wonto Tsuri (dBan stod tshu ri) Areas under other various individuals (specific types and names of polities unknown) Yena (Ye na) Khorlomdo (Khor lo mdo) Rakchab (Rag chab) Dzomthog (’Dzom thog) Chakra (lCags ra) Rabten (Rab brtan) Horpo (Hor po)
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Sources consulted in making this map Hartley, Lauran Ruth. “The Kingdom of Derge.” In The Tibetan History Reader, edited by Gray Tuttle and Kurtis R. Schaeffer, 525–48. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Originally published in “A Socio-historical Study of the Kingdom of sDe dGe (Derge, Kham) in the Late Nineteenth Century: Ris Med Views of Alliance and Authority.” MA thesis, Indiana University, 1997. Kolmas, Josef. 1968. A Genealogy of the Kings of Derge [Sde dge’i rgyal rabs]. Dissertationes Orientales 12. Prague: Oriental Institute in Academia, Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Phuntsok, Lodoe. 1995. sDe dge’i lo rgyus [History of Derge]. Derge: srid gros sde dge rdzong rig gnas lo rgyus rgyu cha bsdu sgrig u yon lha khang. Ronis, Jann. 2011. An Overview of the Derge Kingdom. The Tibetan and Himalayan Library, www.thlib.org.
Map photo credits Photo of the monastic palace of the Derge Kingdom is from Eric Teichman, Travels of a Consular Officer in Eastern Tibet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922). Photo of the circa nineteenth-century thangka of the forty- third king of Derge is by Karl E. Ryavec from a private collection viewed in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 2008.
The Nangchen Kingdom: Territorial administration
The Nangchen Kingdom: Territorial administration system, circa 1725–1951
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he Nangchen Kingdom may be traced back to an early king (Tre bo A lu) of the twelfth century. This earliest founding period is largely unclear because of sparse available records, and more information about the political geography of the kingdom is available only dating from the advent of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Historical records indicate that areas in Nangchen were granted to the Barompa during the Mongol Period. Some “ten thousand household districts” or Trikhor (Tib. Khri skor, Ch. Wanhu) under local lay or religious elites were established to facilitate indirect Mongol rule, but further research is required to fully map how this intertwined religious and secular system under Barompa domination functioned territorially. Unlike in the Jyekundo (Ch. Yushu, Tib. Yulshul) area, where all the main sects and schools of Tibetan Buddhism operated monastic establishments by the Qing Period, the core region of the Nangchen Kingdom farther south remained dominated by these older Kagyupa centers of the Barompa, and also Yelpa, subsects. In fact, the monastery of Tana Senge Nam Dzong in the southwestern corner of the kingdom was the chief seat of the Yelpa, founded in 1188. Little information is available, however, for these earlier periods, and it is only in the eighteenth century with the awarding of official ranks in the Qing Empire to the king and surrounding elites on the upper Yangtze and Mekong watersheds that Chinese records provide greater insight into the territorial administration system. In 1725, the eighteenth king, Dorje Tsewang (rDo rje tshe dbang) was acknowledged as a head of a one thousand household district (Ch. Qianhu, Tib. sTong dpon, Chen hu). The lesser titles Baihu (Commander of One Hundred Households) and Baizhang (Leader of One Hundred Men) were bestowed on local leaders both directly and indirectly subordinate to the Nangchen king, and this entire regional political system became known as the Twenty-Five Tribes of Yushu by the Qing. Some similarity can be seen with the Qing court’s treatment of the neighboring “Thirty-Nine Hor Tribes” in the upper Salween watershed. In all of these cases, it is clear from the types of Chinese titles recorded that the indigenous Khampa and Horpa leaders were organized according to a decimal system, likely indicating that the Qing were merely recognizing rulers who previously held political positions under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.
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Qing records of the administrative structure of the Nangchen Kingdom reveal that seven Baihu officials in areas surrounding the king’s seat at Nangchen Gar were directly subordinate to the king and acted as ministers or aides of some sort. Most of the forty-two Baihu recorded, however, were more loosely tied to the king, and the reality on the ground probably owed more to given events and personalities than to the indicated neat administrative ranks of the Chinese. There were also 107 Baizhang under the various Baihu, but they are not shown on this map. One of the great difficulties in researching the historical geography of indigenous Tibetan polities is that most ways of doing things were based on oral agreements and accepted norms, and written records were not usually compiled. Given this historical reality, early PRC surveys conducted during the 1950s, such as the social history investigations in Qinghai Province, from which much of the data on this map derives, are invaluable for recording indigenous leaders’ names and home areas in a consistent manner covering entire regions. Agricultural production, collecting of natural products, and long-distance trade formed the basis of the political economy of historical Tibetan polities such as the Nangchen Kingdom. The geographical distribution of numerous local leaders was conditioned by the nature of the tax-in-kind system, under which farmers and herders gave agricultural products, such as sheep, barley, and butter, to partly meet their tax obligations. There were also labor services that had to be rendered, especially at planting and harvest times. Some of these taxes-in-kind went to support the monasteries, many of which housed family temples of the hereditary leaders. Long-distance trade provided ways for the farmers, herders, local leaders, monastic corporations, and outside traders to acquire wealth by selling or trading surplus staples such as hides and specialty items such as medicinal plants. Major trade fairs frequented by long- distance traders were held periodically in the town of Jyekundo and vicinity and in about ten neighboring monasteries along the upper Yangtze and three monasteries to the south in the core region of the Nangchen Kingdom on the upper Mekong and its tributaries. This concentration of fairs was largely due to the converging of major long-distance trade routes from Central Tibet and China and brought a considerable amount of money, mainly in the form of silver coins, into the regional trading economies. Many of the monasteries that hosted
Figure 42.1 The town of Jyekundo (lower left), circa 1910. The Sakya monastery of Jyegu Dondrubling is on the hills above the town. Photo by Albert Tafel. Figure 42.2 Khampa chiefs meeting in a tent encampment, Eastern Tibet, circa 1918. Photo by Eric Teichman.
these fairs were branches of the powerful Central Tibetan monasteries of Sakya, Ngor, Drigung, Tsurphu, and Sera, and a great deal of research still needs to be done on how these economic networks functioned in terms of capital flows between different polities and areas. The focus of this map, in addition to showing the names and approximate base areas of the main leaders, is merely to depict the locations of the major trade fairs in relation to the long-distance trade routes and large monasteries.
Sources consulted in making this map ’Brong pa Rgyal Po (Lamchen Gyalpo Rinpoche) and Josayma Tashi Tsering. 2003. Bod ljongs mdo khams nang chen spyi dang bye brag gi byung ba brjod pa ldong ’brong pa’i deb gter smug po [Historical account of Brong-pa tribes of the Ldong clan of Nangchen County in Eastern Tibet; includes history of Nangchen Kingdom]. Rare Historical and Literary Texts from Khams 1. Dharamsala: Amnye Machen Institute. Gruschke, Andreas. 2004. The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces, vol. 2, The Qinghai Part of Kham. Bangkok: White Lotus Press.
Qinghai Renmin Chubanshe. 1985. Qinghaisheng Zangzu Mengguzu Shehui Lishi Diaocha [Qinghai Province Tibetan and Mongolian nationalities social historical investigation]. Xining: Qinghai Renmin Chubanshe. Zhou, Xiwu. Yushu diao cha ji [An investigation of the Yushu region]. Original title: Yushu tu si diao cha ji [An investigation of the chieftains of the Yushu region]. First published in 1919, publisher unknown; republished by Cheng wen chu ban she, Taibei, 1968. Written in 1904 after an investigation into the dispute between the Gansu and Sichuan governments over the Yushu region, this report introduces the Yushu region’s geography, culture, economy, and politics, including detailed statistical accounts of the distribution of population; the distribution of monastic sites and religious sects they belonged to, as well as the number of monks affiliated with each monastery; the quantity of its annual import and export products (and unit price of each product) from and to neighboring regions (Sichuan, Gansu, and Central Tibet); transporting fees; currency (Tibetan currency was the main currency used in the Yushu region); and when and where regional commercial markets were held. A brief regional history from the Qing to the Republican Periods is also included.
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ompared to the initial spread of Tibeto-Mongol Buddhist monasteries during the Yuan and Ming Periods (see map 26), the Qing Period witnessed an explosion of new sites across the entire Mongol world, from North China to Siberia. This map is mainly designed to document the larger sites that housed at times more than five hundred monks by the mid-nineteenth century and are more often mentioned in Qing Period sources. The contemporary surveys are invaluable for locating these sites and often reflect the legacy of Chinese and Russian imperialism in terms of place-names. The sites in China today mostly cluster along the historical North China frontier in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and require listing both Mongol and Chinese names to aid in their identification. Sites in Russia occur across various Central Asian and Siberian regions, though this map shows only the larger, more important monasteries of Buryatia, and for these both Mongol and Russian names are listed. Also, the Soviet-era destruction of religious sites appears to have been more extreme in Siberia than in both Mongolia and later Maoist China. No sites in the well- preserved category are to be found in Buryatia today. In Mongolia itself, most sites cluster along a swath through the northern part of the country, while fewer monasteries were built in the drier, more sparsely populated Gobi Desert region of the south. The recent
documentation of Mongolian Buddhist monasteries by the Arts Council of Mongolia (S. Tsedendamba et al 2009) is one of the highest-quality surveys of historical Buddhist sites in an Asian country today, even listing latitude and longitude values for the temple locations. The larger Mongolian sites on my map make up only about 10 percent of the total number documented in that impressive publication. This map merely provides an overview of the historical geography of the development and spread of Tibetan Buddhism across Mongol lands, and indicates the need for a historical atlas of Mongolia in the future.
Sources consulted in making this map Banzragch, Ch., and B. Sainkhuu. 2004. Mongol khüree khiidiin tüükh (emkhtgel) [History of Mongolian monasteries]. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: n.p. Belka, Lubos. 2000. Burjatsky Buddhismus: Tradice a Soucasnost [Buryat Buddhism: Tradition and presence]. In Dan Berounsky, Lubos Belka, and Jindrˇich Štreit, Na konci sveˇta [At the end of the world]. Volary, Czech Republic: Stehlík. Charleux, Isabelle. 2006. Temples et monastères de Mongolie- intérieure. Paris: Éditions du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques; Institut National d’Histoire de L’Art. Daajaw, B. 2006. Mongoliin uran barilgiin tüükh [History of Mongolian architecture]. 3 vols. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Admon.
Figure 43.1 The large Tibeto- Mongol Buddhist monastery of Juun khiid (Chinese: Helanshan Bei si, Fuyin si) in the Alashan region, circa 1908. Photo by Peter Kutzmitsch Kozlow.
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Damdinsüren, Ts. Myangan jiliin kharitsuulsan khüsnegt. Ulaanbaatar: ShUTMK-iin tsekh. Lokesh Chandra, ed. 1964. The Golden Annals of Lamaism: Hor chos-’byung of Blo-bzang rta-mgrin. ’dzam-gling byang phyogs chen-po hor-gyi rgyal-khams-kyi rtags-pa brjod-pa’i bstan-bcos chen-po dpyod-ldan mgu byed ngo-mtshar gser-gyi deb-ther zhes-bya-ba bzhugs-so. Çata-Piþaka Series 34. International Academy of Indian Culture. Maidar, D. 1970. Mongoliin khot tosgoniii gurwan zurag (Three maps of Mongolian cities and villages). Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: n.p. Rinchen B, Maidar D., ed. 1979. Mongol ard ulsiin ugsaatnii sudlal, khelnii shinjleliin atlas [Ethnographic and linguistic atlas of the Mongolian People’s Republic]. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: n.p. Tsedendamba, S., L. Lkhagwa, Sh. Soninbayar, E. Luwsanbaldan, R. Otgonbaatar, and N. Amgalan, eds. 2009. Mongolyn süm khiidiin tüükhen towchoon [Brief history of Mongolian monasteries]. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: Admon.
Figure 43.2 A Mongol moving his tent in the plains along the North China frontier, circa 1910. Wheeled transport, unlike on the Tibetan Plateau historically, was common across the Mongolian steppe. Photo by John Hedley, circa 1910.
m ap 43. ti b eto- m on g ol b u d d h i st m on aster i es fou n d ed 1 6 4 4 –1 91 1
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Tibetan Buddhist monasteries of Beijing
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any new Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries, staffed with Tibetan, Mongol, Manchu, and Chinese monks, were built across Beijing during the Qing Period. One of the most important new areas of growth was in the Imperial Palace (“Forbidden City”) itself. The Ming emperors had originally built the palace according to the traditional south-facing layout of Chinese urban centers, and it is noticeable how the Qing managed to fit in the new Tibetan Buddhist shrines mostly in the northwest corner. The only exception is the Fanhua Lou, built in 1772 along the eastern axis. Important gift statues from Tibet were placed here. These sites, except for the Zhongzheng Dian, destroyed in 1697 and rebuilt in 2008, are well preserved.
Within the Imperial City, including the Western Park (Xiyuan or Beihai), a number of important temples and stupas were built in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The Songzhu si, built in 1712, was the residence of the politically influential Amdo incarnate Jangkya (lCang skya qutuqtu) lama. Partially preserved today, it housed both Mongol and eunuch monks. Many of the great Amdo incarnations lived in Beijing part of each year, and some also had seats in the Qing frontier town of Dolonnor on the Inner Mongolian steppe. In 1723 the old palace of Kangxi was transformed into the Fuyou si, which explains why it nestles alongside the western moat of the Imperial Palace. Just to the southeast of the palace, the Pudu si or Mahakala temple was built in 1694; it is partially preserved.
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The temples in the Western Park were imperial temples staffed by Tibetan lamas. The Hongren si (or Zhantan si; Tib. Can dan jo bo lha khang) was built in 1665 and housed Tibetan monks under the Ganden Siregetu incarnate lamas (dGa’ ldan siregetu qutuqtu) until it was destroyed in 1900. One of the most well- known sites in Beijing is the Yong’an si with its large stupa (“White Dagoba”), built in 1651 on Qionghua Island. In the Inner City (“Tartar City”), many of the older Tibetan Buddhist temples founded in the Yuan and Ming Periods were restored. The Huguo si was restored in 1722, and today four ruined halls still stand. The Baita si (Miaoying si) was restored in 1753 and in other years. Also, the former residence of Prince Yongzheng was turned into the Yonghe Gong in 1725. Its official foundation was not until 1743–44, though a few monks are recorded there already in 1732. This temple became one of the better known Tibetan Buddhist sites of Beijing among Westerners and was called simply the “Lama Temple.” Records also indicate that the destroyed Longfu si was restored in 1723–25.
Figure 44.1 Part of the Yonghe Gong, 2005. Photo by Isabelle Charleux. Figure 44.2 The Yuhuage, inside the Forbidden City, 2008. Photo by Isabelle Charleux.
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In the northern suburbs, the Xihuang si (“Yellow Temple”), with its stylistically important and preserved pagoda, was built in 1782. Several other sites were built upon former Liao/Jin temple foundations. These include the Donghuang si, rebuilt in 1651–52, which possibly has some ruined halls preserved but is in an off-limits government compound today, and the destroyed Dalai Lama Temple (or Huizong fanyu) built by Mongols in 1723. The Tibetan Buddhist sites in the western suburbs cluster around the Ming Period Zhenjue si. Although this site was likely staffed by Chinese monks under the Ming, it came to be staffed by Tibetan monks during the Qing Period. It was restored in 1761, but only the famous pagoda is well preserved. Nearby, the Xiyu si was destroyed with only a Tibetan chorten (stupa) remaining. The eastern surburbs contained at least one dozen Tibetan Buddhist temples by the Qing Period, but none of the recorded sites are still extant except for several ruined halls at the Sanfo si, just east of the Inner City’s outer wall. These destroyed sites included the Xin si,
Jingzhu si, Xin Zhengjue si, Shenghua si, Huizhao si, Huacheng si, Ciyou si, and Fanxiang si. Northwest of the Beijing urban area of the Qing Period, near the base of the Western Hills, the Yihe Yuan (“Summer Palace”) and the Yuanming Yuan contained a number of important Tibetan Buddhist temples. Chief among them was the now partially preserved Dabao’en Yanshou si. It was staffed with Manchu monks. Nearby, the Gongde si was restored in 1770 and staffed by Tibetan monks, though records indicate that it was earlier restored under the Ming when it was a Chinese Buddhist monastery. At least eleven other Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in this area were staffed by Manchu monks; one of the more important sites was the Zhengjue si, built in 1773. These modest maps of the approximate locations of the main Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and shrines of Beijing and environs during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Periods are far from complete but cover most of the important sites mentioned in the historical sources. The late doyen of Chinese historical geography Hou Renzhi made the Beijing Lishi Dituji (Beijing historical
atlas), an invaluable resource for locating religious sites in the city from different periods. However, a great deal of archival and field research is required to determine the cultural and sectarian traditions that prevailed. Not covered at all on the Beijing maps in this atlas are the many isolated Tibetan chortens and Tibetan rock inscriptions, such as in the Western Hills. For sources consulted in making these maps, refer to the extensive list based on archival research by Isabelle Charleux, CNRS Paris, given in the bibliography for map 27 (“Important Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries of Beijing Founded during the Yuan and Ming Periods”).
Figure 44.3 Scenes of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s visit to Beijing in 1908. Circa 1935 mural in the Potala Palace, Lhasa.
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Natural resources of the Tibetan Plateau
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his map is designed to show the major forms and regional patterns of natural resource use and extraction across the Tibetan Plateau. These resources generally consist of two main forms: natural surface vegetation, some products of which have traditionally been collected in the wild like mushrooms, and underground minerals like gold and silver. Though many minerals were traditionally mined across Tibet, historical mines were mostly small-scale workings and do not compare with the industrial-scale mines constructed since the 1950s, supported by truck and rail transportation and employing thousands of miners from across China. Some of Tibet’s most economically important natural products include the caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis), collected in the wetter parts of the alpine meadow region, and the Matsutake mushroom (Tricholoma matsutake) of the eastern forests. Tibetans call the caterpillar fungus yartsa gunbu, meaning “summer grass, winter worm.” It is a fungus endemic to the Tibetan Plateau region that parasitizes the larvae of ghost moths (Thitarodes spp.), resulting in dried bodies that are traded as precious medicinal products. The alpine and subalpine meadowland cover types depicted on this map, which constitute the main habitat of this fungus, derive from the 1:1,000,000 Land-Use Map of China (shown in greater detail on map 47, “Major Land- Cover Patterns of the Tibetan Plateau”). These data are restricted to the territory of the People’s Republic of China, and thus alpine meadowland cover areas of bordering South Asian states are not shown. In light of these coverage limitations, forests are depicted based
on data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Forest Cover Mapping program. The caterpillar fungus and the Matsutake mushroom, as well as many other natural products, are harvested in the wild and over the past several decades have come to contribute significantly to the incomes of rural Tibetans with access to them. Also, increasing numbers of migrant workers from across China seasonally travel to collect these products, and a range of local permits and fees have been implemented at both official and community levels in an attempt to deal with these large influxes. The rich range of natural products historically traded and sold across Tibet is evident in table 1 (in the introductory section of this atlas), which lists long-distance trade items recorded at markets in Jyekundo around 1920. The primary reason for the increased economic value of these products stems from rising demand in both China and abroad. Some people value the traditional medicinal properties of these products, while some value them as status symbols—for example, as foods served to guests. Recent scholarship expresses growing concern over the sustainability of harvesting these products in the wild, but further research is required to determine how current collecting patterns affect annual growth levels. Mining also draws large numbers of both seasonal and permanent workers from China proper to Tibetan areas. The numbers of migrants recorded in recent China decadal censuses do not accurately count all of the workers involved in natural-resource extraction ventures across the plateau at any given time. Moreover, mining data is much more time-specific than
Figure 46.1 Tibetan tent in front of mining operations on a mountain in Gansu Province. Anonymous, 2005.
Figure 46.2 A Matsutake mushroom (Tricholoma matsutake). Photo by Daniel Winkler.
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are lists of general vegetative surface cover types, because as mineral veins become worked out mines are abandoned, while new prospects are constantly being searched for and developed. And Chinese governmental permits and laws governing mining have changed a lot since the 1950s. Given the complexity of this situation, I have merely shown those major mines ascertained in recent publications to be active across Tibet. A great deal of research is still required to accurately map all of the abandoned and working mines across Tibet and to determine how many people and places have been affected.
Sources consulted in making this map Forestry Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2001. Global Forest Cover Mapping Final Report. Working Paper 50. Rome: United Nations FAO.
Lafitte, Gabriel. 2013. Spoiling Tibet: China and Resource Nationalism on the Roof of the World. New York: Zed Books. Ryavec, K. E., and D. Winkler. 2009. “Logging Impacts to Forests in Tibetan Areas of Southwest China.” Himalaya 26(1):38–45. Winkler, Daniel. 2008. “Yartsa Gunbu (Cordyceps sinensis) and the Fungal Commodification of Tibet’s Rural Economy.” Economic Botany 62:291–305. ———. 2008. “The Mushrooming Fungi Market in Tibet Exemplified by Cordyceps sinensis and Tricholoma matsutake.” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 4. Wu Chuanjun. 1990. 1:1,000,000 Land-Use Map of China. Beijing: Science Press. Yeh, Emily T. 2013. Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Yeh, Emily T., and Kunga T. Lama. 2013. “Following the Caterpillar Fungus: Nature, Commodity Chains and the Place of Tibet in China’s Uneven Geographies.” Social and Cultural Geography 14:318–40.
Figure 46.3 A caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis). Note the stroma growing out of the larva. Photo by Daniel Winkler. Figure 46.4 Tibetans harvesting the caterpillar fungus near Jyekundo, Qinghai, 2010. Photo by Daniel Winkler.
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Main land cover patterns of the Tibetan Plateau, ca. 2000
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Main land cover patterns of the Tibetan Plateau, circa 2000
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his map shows the main land cover patterns of the Tibetan Plateau, but coverage is limited to Tibetan regions in China today because the digital version of the 1:1,000,000 Land-Use Map of China (Wu 1990) was used as the basis for the map. These digital data were produced by the Australian Centre of the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network at Griffith University in Brisbane. All land cover polygons from the map were scanned and vectorized to produce the database. The original map project was commissioned by China’s State Planning Commission in 1978. Most of the land-use data were derived from extensive aerial photography conducted during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Field trips were made to carry out ground checks of data in areas that were difficult to interpret. The mapping was first done on a provincial basis at scales of 1:100,000 and 1:500,000. The maps were then generalized to produce the final sixty-four sheets of the 1:1,000,000 Land Use-Map of China. In this generalization process no polygons smaller than 4 km2 were depicted. Work was completed in 1988. The result was the first detailed set of maps showing land use/cover througout China. In fact, these data still provide more detailed vegetation coverage for Tibet than the global 1 km resolution digital datasets available from the US Geological Survey, because the Chinese maps were made by people visually interpreting air photos and satellite imagery, While the global datasets were derived by automatically classifying reflectance values of 1 km2 pixels from weather satellites into var-
ious vegetation categories. For example, the specific alpine meadow type shown in this map is not available in the global datasets, where only general grassland categories are mapped, such as “low sparse grassland” and “tall grasses and shrubs.” Faced with these limitations, I decided to show land-cover types for most of Tibet from the best available dataset, although the missing areas in northern Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma are regrettable. The Tibetan Plateau is dominated by two main ecosystems: vast high-altitude grasslands and forest-clad dendritic river valleys. Grasslands constitute the most extensive form of land cover on the Tibetan Plateau. Beginning with nomadic hunting approximately thirty thousand years ago, the grassland ecosystem has been an important factor in the history of human settlement in Tibet. Domestication of livestock and developments in cultivating grain crops permitted greater densities of people to live there, but pastoral land use continues to be important alongside farming due to the limited valley areas below approximately four thousand meters above sea level, where cultivation is feasible. Tibetan grasslands below the treeline (4,600–4,800 m), however, are largely the result of long-term deforestation by humans based on livestock herding and fuel-wood collection. Indeed, Central Tibet may be viewed as an ancient cultural landscape where most of the steppe land cover below the treeline once consisted mostly of forest. Forest ecosystems are found mainly on the south-
Figure 47.1 Herder tents near a glacier in Dzado, Qinghai, August 2005. Photo by Emily T. Yeh.
Figure 47.2 Forest and fields in Gonjo, Tibet Autonomous Region, July 2005. Photo by Emily T. Yeh.
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eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau in the river valleys. The major rivers, such as the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, and the middle reaches of the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, have deeply incised the plateau. These river valleys permit the summer monsoon to bring over 80 percent of the annual precipitation levels across much of Tibet. Since the Neolithic Period, livestock herders have greatly reduced the areas of forest ecosystems and converted them mainly to pasture due to long- term impacts from grazing and fuel-wood collection (the maximum area of potential forest on the plateau prior to human-induced land-cover change is shown on map 9 of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Periods). Deforestation is most pronounced in areas with relatively low precipitation, such as those found across most of Central Tibet, or in areas with excellent grazing conditions, such as around the bend of the Yellow River in Amdo. In general, most forests in core population areas are found on steep slopes along the deep river valleys. Valley bottoms, broad ridges, and rolling hills have mostly been cleared for pastures and agriculture. Although deforestation and forest fragmentation have a long history on the Tibetan Plateau, peripheral areas, such as the Eastern Himalayas, have retained their forest cover nearly intact. Most of the lower-altitude grasslands of Tibet consist of dry steppe and scrub grassland and occur primarily on valley floors and sides at elevations between approximately 3,000–4,500 meters above sea level. Dominant steppe vegetation consists of mesothermal
xeric grasses and forbs: Aristide triset, Stipa bundgeana, Pennisetum flaccidum, Orinus thoroldi, and Artemisia webbiana. Xeric shrubs such as Sophora moorcroftiana, Leptodermis sauranja, and Ceratostigma griffithi are often mixed with steppe vegetation or form distinct shrubland communities. Above approximately 4,500 meters, the slope vegetation changes from mesothermal steppe to alpine and subalpine steppe dominated by Stipa purpurea, often known as purple feathergrass. Across the Jangtang (i.e., Chang thang; “northern grassy plain”) and eastward through Amdo, the mountains and plateaus are covered by alpine and subalpine meadow from 4,500 to 5,500 meters. These alpine meadows are relatively lush compared to steppe and scrub grasslands and are favored by the nomads for their yak herds. Plant communities are characterized by a thick turf or sod layer, and vegetation is dominated by the sedge Kobresia pygmaea and the cushion plants Arenaria musciformis, Androsace tapete, and Oxytropis chiliophylla. The nival zone of bare rock, glaciers, and permanent snowfields begins between 5,800 and 6,200 meters in Western and Central Tibet, but somewhat lower in eastern Tibetan areas.
Sources consulted in making this map Wu Chuanjun. 1990. 1:1,000,000 Land-use Map of China. Beijing: Science Press.
Figure 47.3 Satellite images of the Tibetan Plateau from January 1995 (left) and from August 1995 (right). These monthly composite images are derived from daily 1 k m resolution “weather satellite” (advanced very high resolution radiometer) imagery and reveal general vegetation biomass characteristics of the Earth’s surface. Lighter areas depict higher biomass values than darker areas. Lakes are virtually black. Here the summer green-up that occurs across the Tibetan grasslands due to warmer temperatures and increased precipitation contrasts starkly with the image from the winter months. Note the richer grasslands across the eastern half of the plateau due to wetter and warmer climatic conditions.
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The Tibetan population, circa 2000
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his map shows the de facto numbers of people across Tibet, by county, as of November 1, 2000, when the Chinese census was conducted. Specifically, it employs graduated pie chart symbols to map the numbers and proportions of Tibetans, Han Chinese, Muslims, and related Mongolian and Tibeto-Burman peoples. Given the complex migrant labor flows in China today, the large numbers of short-term and mostly domestic Chinese tourists, and the unknown numbers of Chinese military and paramilitary police forces deployed across Tibet to secure the region, this map does not provide a completely accurate demographic picture. But it does show the spatial legacy of long-term patterns of cultural and religious identity that were historically important in different parts of Tibet, and it is this aspect of the map that is of principal reference value in this atlas. There are no complete and reliable historical census data for all of Tibet, although some monastic and government archives provide details for various times and places. The first comprehensive and relatively accurate census was conducted by the Chinese government in 1982 and once at the start of each decade since then. In this system, Tibetans are defined as members of one of China’s 56 minzu or nationalities. And in a general sense, there is wide agreement that most people who identified as Tibetan, or Bodpa, prior to 1950 and found themselves within the new People’s Republic of China are included in this designation. But there are some cases where Tibetan nationalists claim that the new Chinese state intentionally implemented a divide-and-rule approach by designating various Tibetan-speaking and Tibetan Buddhist peoples along the margins of Tibet as members of different nationalities, instead of Tibetan. These cases mainly include some Tibetan Buddhist and Tibetan-speaking Mongols and Tu (or Monguor) people in Qinghai, and some of the Tibetan Buddhist Qiang and Pumi people in Sichuan and Yunnan. The total 2000 Tibetan population of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, and Tibetan autonomous prefectures and counties in Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan was 5,224,980. In these same areas Han Chinese totaled 3,629,115, Muslims 928,673, and Mongolian and Tibeto-Burman peoples 724,760. This total population of 10,507,528 persons represented 0.83 percent of China’s total 2000 population of approximetely 1.265 billion people. Indeed, the Chinese govern-
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ment reported that approximately 12 million domestic tourists alone visited the TAR in 2013. The China 2000 census certainly undercounted the larger summertime floating migrant population across Tibet by counting those away from home for less than six months at their legal, instead of actual, residence, as well as by conducting the census in November. In terms of the regional distribution of the ethnic Tibetan population in 2000, approximately 47 percent were in the TAR, 23 percent in Sichuan, 20 percent in Qinghai, 8 percent in Gansu, and 2 percent in Yunnan. Unfortunately, subprovincial nationality data from China’s 2010 census were not available when this map was made. But available 2010 figures reveal that the total population of the Tibet Autonomous Region increased from approximately 2,620,000 in 2000 to 3 million in 2010, representing a total increase of 14.6 percent.
Sources consulted in making this map Anderson, Anders Hoejmark, Sarah Cooke, and Michael Wills. 1995. New Majority: Chinese Population Transfer into Tibet. London: Tibet Support Group UK. Childs, Geoff. 2008. Tibetan Transitions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Fertility, Family Planning and Demographic Change. Leiden: Brill. Fischer, Andrew M. 2012. “Provincial Migration in China: Preliminary Insights from the 2010 Population Census.” Working Paper 541. The Hague: International Institute of Social Studies. People’s Republic of China, Department of Population, Social, Science and Technology Statistics, National Bureau of Statistics. 2002. Tabulation on the 2000 Population Census of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing: China Statistical Press.
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Tibet in the People’s Republic of China, circa 2000: The territorial administration system
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hina created the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in 1965, after sixteen years of fighting first the Tibetan army and then the guerrilla resistance while building up its own military and transportation infrastructure. The new boundaries of the TAR generally conformed to the territory controlled by the Tibetan government in 1950, though only the section with Nepal was subsequently demarcated by treaty. The Upper Yangtze, which formed the line of control between Tibetan and Chinese troops since 1932, now became the TAR–Sichuan Province boundary. The largest territorial change was in the Southeastern Himalayas, and most importantly the Tawang tract that had been under Lhasa for centuries. The Chinese claim in this region extends all the way down to the plains of Assam and includes far more territory than just smaller areas along the ethnic Tibetan frontier that Lhasa used to administer. Thus Chinese-made maps of the PRC always show this part of northeastern India (though incorporated into the new Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1987) as part of China. Otherwise, the approximate course of the rest of the Tibetan Himalayan frontier had been largely settled to the satisfaction of Tibet during the late 1600s through 1700s. The only
other large disputed territory today is the Aksai Chin in Western Tibet, claimed by India but under Chinese control. There never had been a politically important northern frontier, because beyond the pastoral Jangtang grasslands the Kun Lun region was mostly a high, desolate, unpopulated region. Roughly the eastern half of Kham and all of Amdo became incorporated into new Tibetan autonomous prefectures and counties of the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan. The Qing Empire drew the boundaries of these provinces (excluding Qinghai, which did not become a province until 1928) generally like this on their maps starting in the 1700s, but most ethnic Tibetan areas remained under their own de facto political systems until the 1950s. Outside of Tibet proper, Bhutan is the only independent Tibetan kingdom left in the world today, and its first-order Dzongkag administrative divisions, along with the third-order districts in those parts of Pakistan, India, and Nepal in the Tibetan culture region, are shown for reference. Although some of these parts of South Asia were not administered from Central Tibet since the times of the Tibetan and Mongol Empires, they are still considered part of the greater Tibetan cul-
Figure 49.1 A Tibetan map of Tibet, circa 1970s, on public display in the Norbulingka near Dharamsala, India, 1995. This painted map was influential in raising awareness around the world of Tibet as a plateau-wide culture region with a people’s shared sense of belonging and future aspirations.
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tural world in various ways. Given the growth of ethnic and national identities in this part of the world over the past century, more localized historical atlases, such as of Ladakh, Mustang, Sikkim, and Bhutan, would be welcome and more useful than the peripheral treatment of these countries and lands in this atlas. In conclusion, it is intriguing to speculate what Tibet’s political system and territorial extent would be like today if China had not annexed the country. Though we will never know whether the indigenous Tibetan political system would have been conducive to long-term sustainable development, the comparative success of culturally similar neighboring states and autonomous areas, such as Bhutan and Ladakh, in following their own paths to modernity generally indicate that it would have been. It is not clear whether population would have increased as much as it has, and whether migration influxes from China proper would have reached the levels they have, if the indigenous land tenure systems had remained intact. Hopefully, the maps and related information presented in this historical atlas will be of value for understanding the legacy of the past in relation to Tibet’s future.
m ap 49 . ti b et i n th e p rc , c a. 2 0 0 0 : ter r i tor i al ad m i n i str ation
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his atlas would not have been possible for me to make without the advice and support of many individuals over a period of two decades. For this reason I have decided to acknowledge the help I received in a chronological format, partly to make sure I don’t miss anyone and partly to place these key people in the contexts during which our working relationship was established. The first period during which this atlas began to take a sort of proto-shape started in 1990, when I moved to Washington, DC, to work as a geographer at the US Defense Mapping Agency. My duties involved editing the cultural data on various maps of Asia. To keep up with changes in place-names and boundaries, geographers like me were also given staff positions on the US Board on Geographic Names so that we could constantly submit changes for review and approval. Though I was hired based on my Chinese language and geography skills, I had started to become particularly interested in Tibet. This new and growing interest partly resulted from two visits I had made to Tibet: the first in the summer of 1987, after I had finished teaching English in China for one year after graduating from college in America, and the second the following summer of 1988, between my years as a master’s student in East Asian regional studies at Harvard University. I became fascinated with how Tibet had been mapped by various powers and how the official US treatment of Tibetan place-names had developed over time. While working at the Defense Mapping Agency, I often went to the Library of Congress to research toponymic problems as they related to Tibet and China, and was fortunate to find Susan Meinheit there as the Tibetan specialist. Over the next four years that I was in DC, Susan was very helpful in helping me track down Tibetan texts and reference materials and giving me introductions to other specialists working in the library. Sometimes she would mention that Gene Smith, who also worked for the Library of Congress but was sta
tioned in India and then later in Indonesia, was really the best person to ask about what Tibetan texts might be available listing various Tibetan place-names. Then one day when I stopped by to see her, Gene was there for his annual week’s visit to Washington. From that day on, Gene never failed to take time from his busy schedule to answer questions I had about textual sources for mapping historical Tibetan cultural and religious sites. I still remember his advice in a letter he sent in 1993: “You have an interesting project. Stick with it.” Later that year I left the federal government and drove across the country to start my first year of doctoral research at UC-Davis, and a few years later Gene also left the government to work at the Trace Foundation in New York and was instrumental in helping me secure a grant from Trace to begin field research in the Gyama Valley in Central Tibet on how China’s political and economic reforms had affected traditional forms of agricultural land use. Later, in 2006, after Gene had established the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York, he recommended me for a grant from the Rubin Foundation to cover part-time student GIS (geographic information systems) and cartographic help in making this atlas. I recall Gene’s telling me that it was not possible to make a historical atlas of Tibet, because there was just too much we still did not know. And this was true from the perspective of one of the greatest minds in the study of Tibetan history. But my goal was more practical: I merely wanted to map the major patterns that were known in a concise, handy reference volume for the benefit of students and scholars new to Tibetan studies. I think Gene accepted the value of this modest endeavor and did far more in seeing this project along than he could ever have been expected to do. It was all the more tragic and surprising, then, when Gene suddenly passed away in fall 2010. To some extent this great loss caused me to realize that I needed to actually finish my atlas. Though there were still more maps I
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wished to add, there would no longer be such an expert to whom I could pose any and all questions to about Tibetan historical sources and of whom I could expect a prompt and detailed response. Gene was an incredible person. I hope that readers will understand how much this atlas owes to him. Within Tibet, the person who helped me the most in laying the foundations for this atlas was Dawa Tsering. He was a scholar at the China Tibetology Center in Beijing when I first met him as part of a Tibetan delegation to the Library of Congress during the early 1990s. Later, when I was visiting Tibet regularly while working on my dissertation, Dawa was a curator in the Potala Palace. He helped me so much in different ways, such as finding rare Tibetan reference works not available in the West, securing travel arrangements to visit sites in Central Tibet, and always having the time to take me out for lunch or dinner in Lhasa, that it is difficult to convey what an extraordinarily helpful and wonderful person he was. More than anyone else, Dawa also explained the values and meanings of Tibetan Buddhism clearly to me. After a few years I found out that in addition to caring for his own three children, Dawa had adopted about seven or eight Tibetans who were in need of his help in some way or other. In retrospect I am not surprised that he also decided to adopt me toward the end of the 1990s, given how much help I had sought from him. Tragically, I last saw him in a hospital room in Chengdu in the summer of 2002 as he lay dying from an illness. Upon my return to America that fall, I started working in my recent position as a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin and received the sad news that he had passed away. I still miss my adopted father Dawa so much and will never forget his amazing generosity and guidance. An advantage that living and working in Washington, DC, gave me early in my career was contact with the Tibetan government in exile though advocacy groups such as the International Campaign for Tibet. At that time John Ackerly was director of the ICT, and we shared many interests, having both traveled recently in Tibet. We often met and discussed the current Chinese policies in different areas and the best maps and sources for locating important sites and their current preservation status. Lodi Gyari, special envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, was frequently in the office too, and he became helpful in facilitating connections for me with people in the Tibetan government in exile
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in India that shared my interests in mapping Tibet. In winter 1993, Lodi arranged for me to travel to Dharamsala for a week to meet with Lhamo Tsering, then the minister of security. He was then working on his memoirs concerning the key role he played in the Tibetan resistance movement during the 1950s and 60s. He had received covert military training in the United States along with other Tibetan resistance fighters, and he fondly showed me his map of Tibet on silk, made to be easily carried in a pocket when one parachuted into Tibet. He had begun a new research project mapping the farthest extents of historical Tibetan settlement along the frontier with agrarian China, and we both benefited from sharing maps and gazetteers and talking together. Later that year he traveled to Washington to work further on mapping Tibet’s eastern frontiers, to help counter the very different views in official Chinese maps. The cartographer John Isom joined the project and was very helpful, because I was then only in the beginning stages of learning the rapidly expanding field of computer cartography. This project culminated in John’s and my presention of the final draft of this map to His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he was staying near Stanford in spring 1994. It was of great value to talk with the Dalai Lama about these geographical questions, and I hope this atlas is worthy of the thanks he gave me. I then made a second trip to Dharamsala in spring 1996 to continue working with Lhamo Tsering and also Ala Jigme Rinpoche, an incarnate lama from Rongwo Monastery in Amdo, then head of the Security Bureau’s Research and Analysis Section. This second visit was particularly helpful, as we started to make our first geodatabase of Tibetan Buddhist temples using the Rongwo area of Amdo for a pilot study. Sadly, Lhamo Tsering passed away in 1999 after I had left the federal government to return to graduate school, and to this day I regret that I had not found a way to meet with him again. I wish to acknowledge his help to me and emphasize how fortunate I was to have had these experiences learning from members of the older Tibetan generation about how they viewed the historical extent of Tibet and approached mapping it from their own indigenous perspectives. During these formative years working in Washington, I found that a Swiss scholar, Peter Kessler, had published a series of “ethnic-historical” atlases of some of the Khampa polities of Eastern Tibet, and I began corresponding with him. Peter became a great help to
me over the following decade by mailing me copies of various historical Chinese and Western maps covering Tibet that I used to locate important religious and cultural sites. By the late 1990s, however, I had begun to acquire more detailed contemporary Tibetan and Chinese surveys of historical sites and started inputting them into a geodatabase to study and make maps from. This approach led me to abandon most of the highly inaccurate Western and Chinese texts and maps from the pre-PRC period in favor of the more accurate and detailed results of these contemporary surveys. Nevertheless, I wish to emphasize how inspiring and helpful Peter Kessler’s work was to me initially. He was a pioneer in mapping historical Tibetan polities from indigenous cultural perspectives, and my efforts in making this atlas have succeeded in part through the foundations his maps gave me. I also learned the basics of reading and writing Tibetan due to the generosity of the resident lama of the Sakya tradition in Washington, Khenpo Kalsang Gyaltsen. He tutored me every Sunday afternoon for about half a year, asking only five dollars for each class. Unbelievably, after this short time I could transcribe the names of places from the Tibetan script into a romanized form and use a Tibetan dictionary to look up words. This basic knowledge formed an important foundation for my later language studies and work on this atlas, as I continually had to deal with which Tibetan script forms of place-names to accept as conventional for my mapping efforts. I would like to thank Lama Kalsang for taking time from his many obligations to teach me. One of the few geographers of great help to me initially was Barry Bishop, then director of the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society. I recall reading his book based on his doctoral work in Nepal, The Karnali under Stress, and being impressed with his broad regional historical approach to human culture and the environment, and so one day I simply walked over to the National Geographic building to look him up. Barry became quite helpful in supporting my early research endeavors by allowing me to apply for and receive several small grants from the National Geographic Society. The first grant was for making a modest Tibetan place-name index of a part of Amdo, and the second was for conducting field research in Central Tibet during summer 1994, after my first year in graduate school at the
University of California at Davis. After taking early retirement about this time, Barry was going to return to academia at the University of Montana, but tragically he died in a car accident on his way west. I first met my future dissertation adviser, Joseph Schwartzberg, when I attended the Twenty-Seventh International Geographical Congress in Washington, DC, in 1992. Joe was widely known and respected in the Asian studies community for his A Historical Atlas of South Asia, and though I had no idea I would follow in his footsteps to make this historical atlas of Tibet, I was impressed with his ability to make maps showing complex social and historical problems. Though my interests in Tibet were peripheral to Joe’s main interests in India and Kashmir, I had started to realize that I was not going to find a Tibetan specialist at a top geography department. Besides, it was mainly access to training and resources in the new and expanding field of GIS that I was seeking to advance my research on Tibet’s cultural geography and help make me more competitive for later finding an academic position. Certainly without Joe’s help and support I would never have succeeded as far as I did. But I knew little about the inner workings of academia at this time, and naively thought that academic geographers would value someone who carefully mapped cultural data in detail, especially a candidate like me who had already worked professionally as a geographer. I soon realized how wide a gulf there was between professional and academic geography when my first application to the PhD program at Joe’s geography department at the University of Minnesota did not result in securing any financial support. In retrospect, I now realize I should have been applying to history or religious studies departments, where the study of foreign languages and working with archival data were valued. By this time cultural geography had become dominated by theoretical approaches, and quantitative methods and regional specializations were ridiculed. But if I had gone into another discipline, I would probably never have had the opportunity to learn GIS and computer cartography and become capable of making this atlas. Still, it was immensely helpful that Joe went to bat for me to get me accepted at Minnesota, even though I would not enroll until 1996. Instead, I first went in summer 1993 to the geography department at UC-Davis, which offered me one semester of financial support, only to find upon my arrival that the department was being ac k n ow l ed g m e n ts
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eliminated. I then tried doing my PhD at the geography department at the University of Hawaii from 1994 to 1996, because I obtained three years of support there, only to find that, as at UC-Davis, there were no geography faculty members then working on integrating GIS with the study of human culture. But UC-Davis’s was clearly one of the worst geography departments in the country; unbelievably, it had no faculty teaching GIS at all, and this was in the 1990s. Hawaii did have several faculty teaching GIS and computer cartography, but they were still working under the old mindset that only the student who wanted to teach GIS and cartography would study these subfields, while the cultural geographers there did purely theoretical work making no use of the technological advances of recent decades. Each group just viewed me with confusion, not sure of what I was trying to do by integrating GIS into the study of historical and cultural geography. It turned out that there was a silver lining to my year at UC-Davis in 1993. G. W. Skinner was teaching in the anthropology department there and conducting his research on regional systems theory. He had pioneered this approach to study the growth and development of historical agrarian societies, with a focus on China. I was fortunate in that Skinner took an interest in my work and allowed me to take several directed research courses with him. We used some detailed demographic and agricultural data I had recently acquired from Tibetan areas in Sichuan Province to model how spatial variation affected various social processes, such as farming practices and population growth. Over the next years as I worked on my dissertation on land use change in Tibet, I largely employed Bill Skinner’s regional systems theory and methods in my research, partly because none of the human geographers I approached had any interest or expertise in constructing spatial databases to model social processes and test theories with. After finishing graduate school and starting work as a geography professor in 2002, I started what would become a decade-long project of building a regional systems model for the study of Tibetan history, largely using the founding of Buddhist temples and monasteries as one key measure of local economic development, for want of better data. It was in this context that I realized in 2005 that I could make a series of time period maps from my database to form the skeletal framework for a historical atlas of Tibet. I wish to ac
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knowledge these important methodological and theoretical contributions Bill Skinner gave me. Later, after Bill passed away in 2008, his former research assistant Mark Henderson continued to help me with regional systems modeling problems. Map 5 and figure 5.2 on regional growth trajectories in Tibetan history would not have been possible to make without Mark’s knowledge and help. I also started corresponding with Prof. Larry Crissman at this time. He had set up the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network (ASIAN) at the University of Brisbane in Australia and was instrumental in helping me begin to learn how to digitize hard-copy map data into GIS formats. He also made his spatial databases on China available for my research efforts, such as the digital version of the 1:1 Million Land Use Map of China, still the most detailed available geospatial data depicting the land use and land cover of China in its entirety. Several of the maps in this atlas showing land-cover types on the Tibetan Plateau, and historical core areas of Buddhist temple constructions defined in terms of ecumen area densities, were possible to make only due to Larry’s help and generosity. While I was at the University of Hawaii from 1994 to 1996, the China historian Harry Lamley taught me how to use dynastic Chinese gazetteers in my research. Faced with the lack of any coursework and faculty guidance in integrating GIS with the study of history, I ended up using a lot of my time quite productively in mining Hawaii’s rich collection of dynastic Chinese gazetteers for Tibet-related maps and socioeconomic data. Indeed, the data are so rich and vast that later, when finalizing my dissertation’s focus on Central Tibet, I was unable to use much of it until I published an article in Inner Asia in 2004 on the major errors in how the China Historical GIS (CHGIS) project mapped Tibetan regions. I’m happy that I was then finally able to acknowledge Dr. Lamley’s help to me. In 1996, after three years of little progress in learning new geospatial technologies, I realized I needed to get to a top geography department with the necessary funding and resources to have faculty and courses in these subfields. Joe Schwartzberg helped get me accepted again into the geography department at the University of Minnesota, where I finally finished my PhD in 2002. During my first year at Minnesota, I presented a paper at the First International Amdo Studies Conference
at Harvard on findings from mapping Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the project I had earlier participated in with a group of Amdo scholars in Dharamsala. At this conference I met the Amdo specialist Gray Tuttle, who was then working on his doctorate at Harvard. We continued to stay in touch and worked together on making what would eventually become a very detailed geodatabase covering almost all the known Buddhist and Bon monasteries/temples of greater Amdo. Without Gray’s help and advice I would not have been able to make the Amdo regional maps for the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Periods in this atlas. Later, Gray introduced me to the German historian Bianca Horlemann, who specialized in the early history of Amdo during the Tibetan Imperial and Chinese Song Periods. Without Bianca’s generosity and advice I would not have been able to make the earliest regional map of Amdo in this atlas, covering the postimperial period from circa 900 to the eve of the Mongol conquests in the early thirteenth century. I would also like to thank Donald Rubin, whom I first met in New York in 2000 before his Museum of Himalayan Art opened. Donald was very generous in supporting my efforts to map Tibetan Buddhist monasteries where most of the great art of Tibet was originally produced and exhibited. In fall 2000, Donald gave me a small grant to produce a map of traditional Tibetan art schools. This support helped me greatly while I was still a graduate student at Minnesota. Then later, after I had started formally making this atlas, the Rubin Foundation provided a subvention to the University of Chicago Press to help with the final production phase. These grants from the Rubin Foundation, including the above-mentioned grant for part-time student help in 2006, have been indispensable in helping to bring this atlas project to fruition. In addition to the numerous individuals I sought out for assistance during the 1990s, the largest coherent group of Tibetan specialists I collaborated with were all associated with various projects organized under the auspices of the newly created Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (now the Tibetan and Himalayan Library). The director of the library, Professor David Germano of the University of Virginia, was extremely helpful in facilitating archival and fieldwork connections in Tibet for me. David originally brought me on board to provide the first comprehensive set of digital cartographic layers representing key elements of Tibet’s cultural and physical geography. But it quickly became
apparent that almost all the Tibet-related data different scholars were working on had a geographic component. At the same time, there simply was not enough funding, nor were there enough qualified researchers, to assemble all the digital data being produced into a robust online mapping system. It was in this context that I stumbled in 2005 upon the realization that many people appreciated manually made summary maps of cultural and religious sites in historical regional contexts, and that these maps complemented, rather than replaced, the digital data. Also in 2005, I approached the Henry Luce Foundation in New York about the need for a Tibet Historical Geographic Information System. This sort of project would be important to counter the inaccurate historical representation of Tibet in the China Historical GIS the foundation had earlier funded at Harvard University. The Luce Foundation took an interest in my idea and suggested that I apply for a grant. At the time it seemed to me that the logical home for such a project would be within the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, so the grant ended up going to the University of Virginia from the Luce Foundation, with David Germano and I serving as codirectors. This grant project ran from 2007 to 2009 and involved a wide array of scholars who researched various aspects of Tibetan history with a focus on mapping cultural and religious sites and forms of political authority. But, as explained above, it started to become clear that all the digital GIS data being produced could not quickly and easily be made accessible for people to visualize for themselves in online systems, and the raw data were basically useless to most scholars because they did not know how to use GIS software. I thus decided to make the maps in this atlas as a way for me and others to study and visualize these vast amounts of spatial data pertaining to Tibetan history. For the earliest evidence of human activity on the Tibetan Plateau, the archaeologists John Olsen and Mark Aldenderfer offered valuable advice, and this is reflected in the first main map in this atlas, covering the Paleolithic and Neolithic Periods. Daniel Winkler kindly helped me delineate the potential treeline levels in different parts of Tibet and provided a list of the best sources for the study of Tibet’s past vegetation patterns. His help may be seen in the potential historical forest patterns on the Paleolithic and Neolithic Period map. For the ancient Tibetan period straddling the prehistorical to historical periods, John Bellezza made incredible ac k n ow l ed g m e n ts
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contributions with his surface archaeological surveys of hundreds of ancient sites from Western Tibet. I owe a debt of gratitude to John for making his data available to me so I could add them to the second main map covering the ancient Tibetan world of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Guntram Hazod and Brandon Dotson are to be thanked for making available to me their findings on the names and locations of key cultural and religious sites and administrative units of the Tibetan Empire and explaining numerous aspects of these data in detailed e-mail exchanges over the years. Indeed, their research was so detailed and extensive that I needed three maps of Central Tibet, in addition to the main map of the Tibetan Empire, to show their main findings. I was particular fortunate to meet the Western Tibetan historian Tsering Gyalpo of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences in Lhasa as part of research projects conducted under formal academic agreements. He had spent years visiting and documenting the local history of basically every Tibetan Buddhist temple and monastery in Ngari (Western Tibet). Starting in the tenth century, a new form of Tibetan Buddhism developed in this region and spread to Central Tibet in what was to become known as the Second Diffusion of Buddhism. I am extremely thankful to Tsering Gyalpo for taking the time to go over the locations and sectarian histories of these sites with me. As a result, I was able to make the series of detailed maps of Ngari, and also even more detailed maps of the kingdoms of Guge and Purang, which were important during this early period. My only regret is that I was not able to find comparable data to extend this level of detail to Ladakh and other parts of Western Tibet that later became incorporated into Indian-based political systems. I am thankful to Christian Luczanits for sharing his chronological data on the main Tibetan Buddhist temples in the Indian part of Western Tibet with me so that I could map the most important sites. Guntram Hazod and Tsering Gyalpo continued to offer valuable advice for making the postimperial maps of Central Tibet. And, in particular, I found the three detailed guidebooks to Tibetan Buddhist sites in Central Tibet published recently by the independent Tibetan scholar Chophel immensely helpful. Jann Ronis, Yudru Tsomu, and Andreas Gruschke provided great help in the mapping of the Kham region. I could not have made the main map of Kham
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without their help and am particularly indebted to them for providing data that allowed me to make the detailed maps of the Nangchen and Derge Kingdoms in Kham. Isabelle Charleux, Zsuzsa Majer, Krisztina Teleki, and Lubos Belka offered invaluable data and advice about the locations and histories of hundreds of Tibetan Buddhist–tradition temples and monasteries in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Mongolia, and Buryatia. Isabelle was immensely helpful to my efforts in mapping sites in Beijing by giving me copious lists of Tibetan Buddhist sites she had painstakingly compiled herself from dynastic Chinese texts. Then my student assistant, Anqi Zhang, worked hard to locate these sites on maps in the Beijing Lishi Dituji (Historical atlas of Beijing). I would like to thank these scholars for all their help. The addition of these maps covering Beijing and the traditional Mongol and Buryat lands has increased the value of this atlas tremendously. I would also like to thank the linguist Nicolas Tournadre for providing his data on the names and geographic distributions of the Tibetic languages so that I could include a general reference map. These data were only recently collected and analyzed by Nicolas after years of fieldwork across the Tibetan Plateau and bordering hill regions in China, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. I am so happy Nicolas agreed to allow me to map his linguistic data, because they offer important perspectives on the historical growth and spread of Tibetan language and culture. Finally, I would like to thank my editor at the University of Chicago Press, Christie Henry, for facilitating the reviews and vetting of this atlas and patiently waiting for me to finish making it over these past years. And it was most helpful that Christie retained the services of the Tibet historian Paddy Booz for commenting on the final maps and texts in this atlas and compiling the index.
histo r i c a l p h oto g r a p h s o u rc es
All photos by the author unless otherwise noted. Filchner, Wilhelm. 1912. Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Expedition Filchner nach China und Tibet 1903–1905, vol. 2, Bilder aus Kan-su. Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn. Geil, William Edgar. 1909. The Great Wall of China. New York: Sturgis and Walton. Hedley, John. 1910. Tramps in Dark Mongolia. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Kendall, Elizabeth. 1913. A Wayfarer in China: Impressions of a Trip across West China and Mongolia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Kingdon-Ward, Frank. 1913. The Land of the Blue Poppy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kozlow, Peter Kutzmitsch. 1925. Mongolei, Amdo und die Tote Stadt Chara-Choto: Die Expedition der Russischen Geographschen Gesellschaft 1907–1909. Translated from the Russian. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius. Landon, Perceval. 1905. The Opening of Tibet: An Account of Lhasa and the Country and People of Central Tibet and of the Progress of the Mission Sent There by the English Government in the Year 1903–4. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
Loftis, Zenas Sanford. 1911. A Message from Batang. New York: Fleming H. Revell. Pratt, Antwerp Edgar. 1892. To the Snows of Tibet through China. London: Longmans, Green. Rawling, Cecil Godfrey. 1905. The Great Plateau: Being an Account of Exploration in Central Tibet, 1903, and of the Gartok Expedition, 1904–1905. London: Edward Arnold. Rockhill, William Woodville. 1894. Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Sherring, Charles A. 1906. Western Tibet and the British Borderland. London: Edward Arnold. Tafel, Albert. 1914. Meine Tibetreise. Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft. Teichman, Eric. 1922. Travels of a Consular Official in Eastern Tibet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waddell, Laurence Austine. 1905. Lhasa and Its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903–1904. London: John Murray. White, Jean Claude. 1909. Sikhim and Bhutan: Twenty-One Years on the North-East Frontier, 1887–1908. New York: Longmans, Green.
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administration, 8, 70 and Chinese field administration, 88, 112, 149 of Derge territorial system, 154, 156 dzong, 116, 152 and Ganden Podrang government, 8, 130, 131, 140, 141, 145, 152 and Iron Tiger Land Settlement (1830), 131 and Mongol administration, 88, 100 and Mongol-Tibetan seats, 89, 130 and Nangchen territorial system, 157 and political administration, 70, 112, 117, 124 and territorial administration, 44– 49, 63, 66, 131, 142, 145, 158, 182, 183 administrative chiefs, 49 in Sumpa, Zhangzhung, Chibs, Mthong, Khyab, Mon, 49 agrarian China. See China, agrarian agriculture, agricultural, 5, 49, 101, 112, 120, 121, 124, 148, 158, 177. See also food estates, 10, 63, 100, 112, 131, 142 irrigation, 48, 76 resources, 14, 103, 116 and subsistence economy, 8 taxation, 116 valleys, districts, 63, 74, 79, 88, 101, 153, 155 Aksai Chin, 184 and disputed territory, 184 Alchi Monastery, 63, 81, 82 and Kashmiri artistic influences, 82 alphabet. See writing Altan Khan, 103, 113, 124, 130 commander of Ordos Tumed Khanate, 103, 113 and defeat of Tsang, 130 and Sonam Gyatso (Third Dalai Lama), 103, 113, 124 Ambans, 149, 152 and Hor region, 152 as Qing representatives in Lhasa, 152 Amdo, 8, 14, 15, 83–85, 99–101, 112, 123– 25, 147–49, 165, 177, 184. See also macroregions
and Amdo-Gansu frontier, 15, 20 and farming, 10, 124, 148 and Gelukpa, 136 and Kokonor region, 103 language, 9, 15 during Ming period, 125 and monasteries, 16, 113, 116, 125, 147 and Mongols, 100, 130, 149 political geography of, 100, 103 Amdo-Gansu frontier, 15, 17, 20, 84, 85 Andrade, Antonio de, 120 animal husbandry, 40 animism, 40, 63. See also shamanism Arrunachal Pradesh, 184 and Chinese territorial claim, 184 Indian state of, 184 art, 62, 95, 117, 124 Buddhist, 62, 63, 74, 117, 162 Indian and Kashmiri, 82 Karma Gardri style, 155 rock art, 50, 54 Tibeto-Chinese, 106 in Toling, Western Tibet, 74, 120 Assam, 20 and Chinese territorial claim, 184 and jungle areas, 20 Atisha (Bengali Buddhist master), 64 and Ngari, 73 and visit to Guge, 77 Aurangzeb (Mughal emperor), 23, 24 Azha (Tuyuhun), 48
Badrinath (Hindu site), 76 Bageshwar, 146 and markets, trade routes, 146 Baihu, one hundred households, 158. See also districts Baita si (Miaoying si) Monastery, Beijing, 166 becomes a Chinese Buddhist monastery, 108 Baita si stupa, 106, 108 Baizhang, leader of one hundred men, 158 Baltistan, 8, 73, 100 and conversion to Islam, 120 Bao’an fort/station, 124. See also Rongwo
Valley barley, 15, 40, 137, 158. See also food domestication of, 36, 40 Barga, postal station, 145 and trade mart of Gyanema, 145 Barom Monastery, 64, 65 and Barompa, 64, 65, 158 Batang, 9, 21, 112, 152, 153 Bedongpo Valley survey, 77 Beichuan Xianzhi (Beichuan County Gazetteer), 20 Bei Datong, Amdo, 149 Beijing, 14, 21, 32, 152, 165, 166 Buddhist sites in suburbs of, 166, 167 and Fayuan Si, 108 and Inner City, 166. See also Inner City and Tibetan Buddhist temples/monasteries, 89, 105 and Yonghe gong (Lama Temple), 166 and Yuan, Ming, and Qing sites, 106, 164 Beijing Historical Atlas (Beijing Lishi Dituji), 167, 192 Beri and Beri Kingdom, 155 and Bonpo leader, 155 Bhutan, 4, 28, 65, 121, 176, 184, 185. See also Drukpa and coins, silver, 23, 24 and Dzongkag administrative divisions, 184 Bodong sect, 94 Bodpa. See Tibet, Tibetans Bon, Bonpo, 21, 40, 55, 62, 63, 64, 66, 71, 85, 100, 136, 146 and Beri, 155 and Classical Literary Tibetan, 49 monasteries, temples, 14, 63, 71, 85, 100, 117, 146 sacred sites, 54, 55, 63 and shamanism, 40, 63 and Zhangzhung. See Zhangzhung bonpo ritual specialists, 55 Bon religion, 40, 62, 100 Bonri Monastery, 90 bridge, 20, 153 of rope, 20
195
British Empire, 130, 145 Bronze Age, bronze, 36, 40, 192 Buddhism, Buddhist, 4, 15, 32, 40, 48, 54, 55, 58, 62–64, 70, 71, 73, 79, 85, 100, 125, 158 art and literature, 50, 54, 62, 65, 66, 74, 76, 103, 120 and Classical Literary Tibetan, texts, 10, 48, 49, 51, 54, 62–64, 73, 74, 155 as court religion, 15, 48 and Geluk sect. See Gelukpa monasteries, sites, temples, 10, 14– 16, 40, 41, 54, 55, 63, 66, 71, 74, 76, 77, 79, 81, 85, 88, 100, 106, 116, 117, 120, 125, 165–67 and Mongols, 89, 94, 100, 103, 106, 124, 162 and population, 180 Second Diffusion of, 8, 15, 41, 60– 62, 64, 65, 68–70, 74, 76, 84, 100 and trade fairs, 21 Vajrayana (tantric), 49, 63, 64, 76, 77 burial mounds (tumuli), 54, 55 Burma (Myanmar), 28, 176 and Tibeto-Burman peoples, 180 Buryat, Buryatia, 162, 192
caravans, 15, 21, 152, 153 carvings, 50 Buddhist, 50, 54, 84 stone, 50, 54 catalogs (dKar chag), 8 caterpillar fungus (yartsa gunbu), 172, 173 caves, cave complex, 40, 51, 55 as shrines, cells, 54, 84 cemetery, burial complexes, 40, 54, 55. See also Dzapung census, censuses, 14, 28, 172, 180 Central Asia, 20, 23, 48, 49, 54, 73, 82, 84, 98, 106, 162 Chabichiyal Temple (Yanghua si), 103 and Sonam Gyatso (Third Dalai Lama), 103 Chagadai. See Khanate Chakra region, 155, 156 Chamdo, 8, 9, 21, 36 and Gelukpa estates, 152 Chimphu caves, 55. See also Samye China, Chinese, 4, 8, 14, 84, 112, 113, 116, 172, 184 agrarian, 32, 88, 116, 188 and annexation of Tibet, 130, 184 and Buddhism, 89, 94, 103, 113, 162 and census, population, 180, 203 and Kham, 152 and language, 28, 49 and mines, 172
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and money, 23, 24 and Mongols, 88, 89, 94, 106, 116, 130 North, 103, 162, 163 Northwest, 15, 125 People’s Republic of (PRC), 14, 24, 100, 158, 184 and tea, to Tibet, 20 and Tibetan culture region, 4, 8, 10, 14 and trade, trade routes, 21, 65, 84, 124, 136, 148, 158, 172 Cho tradition, 71 Chodzong, Gelukpa estate, 152 Chokhorgyal Monastery, 136 Cholkha Sum. See Three Regions of Tibet Chone region, 8 and Ming title, 125 Chongye, 54. See also Yarlung Valley chorten (stupa), 54, 77, 79, 94, 117, 166, 167 Chorten Karpo, 100 Chugong, Neolithic site, 36 Chumdo, Gelukpa center, 152 Chunag floodplain, 40 Chusang, Paleolithic site, 36 circuits, administrative, 88, 100 clans and families, 48, 49, 55, 58, 62, 64, 66, 70, 74, 98, 120, 145, 155, 158 climate, 15, 21, 36, 76 coins and currency, 21, 23, 24, 158, 159 Assamese, 23 and Bhutan, 23, 24 and bilingual inscriptions, 24 British Indian rupee, 24 Byzantine gold, 23 Chinese copper cash, 23 and Chinese dragon types, 24 Cooch Behar silver, 23 Dolakha silver, 23 Garhwal silver, 24 Kongpo, 24 Ladakh silver, 24 Lhasa, 24 Lichhavi copper, 23 Malla silver, 23 and Manchu writing, 24 and Nepal, 23 paper money, 23 Qianlong silver, 24 rupee of Aurangzeb, 23 and silver, debased, 24 silver bullion, 23 silver ingots, 23 Sino-Tibetan, 24 with snow lion, 24 tangkas, 24 Tibet (gold/silver), 23 Tibetan script on, 23
council, 56, 58 central political (’Dun-ma), 58 eastern Tibetan, 58 court, 15, 48, 49, 56, 58, 64, 100, 112. See also Ganden Podrang Chinese, Ming, Qing, 100, 124, 125, 152, 158 court encampment, 58 Mongol, 94 movable, 58 religion, 15, 48 royal, 56
Dabao’en Yanshou si Temple, 167 Dadu, 106. See also Beijing and Khubilai Khan, 106 Dadu Chongguo si Monastery, Beijing, 106 Dakla Gampo, Kagyu Monastery, 64 Dakpo Kagyu sects, 64 Dakpo Lhaje Sonam Rinchen, 64. See also Gampopa Dalai Lamas, 4, 24, 62, 64, 103, 113, 130 First, Gendun Drup, 113 Second, 103, 113 Third, Sonam Gyatso, 103, 113, 124, 125 Fifth, Lobzang Gyatso, 112, 113, 116, 117, 130, 155 Seventh, 130 Eighth, 24 Thirteenth, Tubten Gyatso, 24, 136, 142, 152, 167 Fourteenth, Tenzin Gyatso, 24, 188 and regents, 24, 130 Dar Drongmoche Monastery, 117 Dartsedo (Tachienlu), 21, 22, 153 Dechen, Yunnan, 21 Dechengang Monastery, Bon, 146 deforestation. See forests Demo Tulku, regent, 24 Densatil Monastery, 64, 65, 66 Dentik Monastery, 62, 84, 85, 100 and monastic traditions, 85 Depa Zhung (authority center), 8, 130 Derge, Derge Kingdom, 9, 21, 32, 136, 152, 154, 155, 156 and “Eighteen Forts, ” 155 Detsugon, 73 and Zanskar Kingdom, 73 digital elevation model (DEM), 32 districts, 9, 49, 74, 142, 145, 152 agricultural, 148, 155 five hundred household, 49 hundred household, 158 one thousand household, 49, 58, 70, 100, 125, 158 sub-thousand district, 49 ten thousand household, 65, 88, 94,
97, 100, 112, 158 Dokham region, 14, 49, 51, 62, 63, 65, 88, 155 Dolonnor, 165 Dolpo region, 8, 81, 98, 120, 146 Dome region, 48, 51, 58, 88 Dongxiang people, 100 doring, stone columns, 54 Dorje Drak Monastery, 136 Dorje Tsewang, king of Derge, 158 Draktsende, king of Purang, 81 Drak Yerpa caves, 55 Drayab, 85, 152 Gelukpa estate, 85 Drepung Monastery, 8, 103, 113, 117, 130. See also Ganden Podrang Dri chu (Yangtze River). See rivers Drigung, 65, 88, 97, 98, 112, 116, 159 and Drigung-Kagyu school, 88, 121 Drigung Til Monastery, 65 Dromo (Yadong), 143 Drotsang Monastery (Qutan Si), 125 drought. See megadrought Drukpa, Kagyu, 65, 120, 121 Dunchu Monastery, 79, 146 Dungkar, West Tibet, 81, 120, 121 Dunhuang, Buddhist cave complex, 40, 51 Dusum Khyenpa (first Karmapa Lama), 64 Dzapung cemetery complex, 40, 41 Dzogang, 143 Dzomokhar Monastery (Honghua si), 124 Dzongka Fort, 98, 145 Dzongkag. See Bhutan
economic development, 32, 116, 125, 190 economy 5, 14, 15, 21, 40, 48, 76, 77, 79, 84, 120, 124, 125, 158, 187. See also trade based on wool, salt, 145, 146 and exports, 145, 148 and natural resources, 170, 171, 172 and networks, 159 environment, 8, 36, 63, 189 environmental change, 36, 88, 116, 120 Erdene juu Monastery, Mongolia, 104 estates, 63, 64, 88 agricultural, 10, 63, 100, 112, 131, 142 Gelukpa, 65, 152, 153 monastic, 62, 63, 89, 131 and Pakmodrupa, 116 and Sakya sect, 88 E Yul, E Lhagyari. See Lhagyari
Fahai si Monastery, 106
and Tibeto-Chinese art, 106 Fayuan si Monastery, 108 and Shakya Yeshe, 108 fairs. See trade fairs farmers (shingpa), farming, 9, 10, 15, 36, 63, 116, 120, 137, 153, 158, 176, 190 festival, 14, 21, 62, 125 Great Prayer, 116 Fifth Dalai Lama (see Dalai Lamas) firearms, introduction of, 117 food and agriculture, 15, 20, 103, 124, 148, 158. See also barley; hunters, hunting; tea butter, 9, 15, 103, 158 and crop cultivation, 10, 32, 36, 40, 48, 76, 176 grain, 20, 103, 176 maize, 124, 148 meat, 15 and New World crops, 124 potato, 124, 148 salt, 15, 22, 103, 145, 146 Forbidden City. See Imperial Palace forests, 10, 14, 36, 37, 172, 176, 177, 191 bamboo, 15 and deforestation, 36, 176, 177 and fuel wood, 176, 177 and jungles, 15, 20 forts, fortresses, 40, 41, 63, 74, 77, 79, 81, 84, 113, 116, 124, 131, 138, 142, 145, 149, 155
Gampopa, 64 Ganden Monastery, 14, 112, 117, 130 Ganden Podrang government, 4, 8, 62, 112, 116, 117, 120, 128–40, 144, 145, 152, 153 and Drepung Monastery, 8, 117, 130 and Fifth Dalai Lama, 112, 116, 117, 130 Ganden Podrang palace, 8, 117 Ganden Siregetu lamas, 166 Gandhara region, 41, 48 Gang Rinpoche. See mountains: Mt. Kailash Gansu, 15, 21, 159, 180 province, 20, 88, 172, 180, 184 products from, 22 and Tibetan areas, 180, 184 Gansu corridor, 48, 84, 125 Garhwal, India, 24, 82 Garlok (Qarakhanid) Turks, 73, 81, 82 garpon, provincial governors, 145, 146 Gartok, 145 Geluk, Gelukpa, 63, 79, 94, 103, 112, 113, 116, 120, 124, 130, 136, 145 estates, 65, 152, 153 and Ganden Monastery, 112, 113, 117
monasteries, 79, 95, 101, 113, 117, 121, 124, 130, 136, 145, 146, 148, 152 and Mongols, 103, 130, 155 and Tsongkhapa, 108, 113, 120, 124 Gendun Drup. See Dalai Lamas Genealogy of the Kings of Derge (sDe dge’i rgyal rabs), 155 geography, 8, 10, 14, 89, 145. See also forests; grasslands; steppe cultural, 10 historical, 158, 162, 167 political, 88, 100, 103, 113, 152, 155, 158 physical, 10, 14, 48, 153 Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS), 32 Gobi Desert, 162 Golok region, Amdo, 9, 153 Gongkar Chode Monastery, 117 Gongpur Temple, Purang, 97 Gonjo region, Kham, 88, 112, 155, 176 female chief of, 156 Gonlung Monastery (Youning si), 148 Gonpo Namgyal, Khampa ruler, 152 Google Earth, 32 grasslands, pasture, 4, 10, 14, 15, 36, 37, 40, 63, 94, 124, 136, 148, 176, 177, 184 Guge Kingdom, region, 32, 41, 64, 73–77, 79–82, 97, 98, 113, 118–21, 145 Guge-Purang Kingdom, 32, 62, 64, 70, 74, 81, 92, 97 Guide region, Amdo, 9, 100 Gungtang, 8, 82, 89, 96–98, 120, 121, 146 Guru Bumpa chorten, 79 Gurugam Monastery, 146 Gushri Khan, 116, 130, 155 Gyalbu Rinchen, 98 Gyama Valley, region, 10, 94, 187 Gyanema trade mart, 145 Gyangtse, 9, 14, 21, 117 Gyantse Kumbum, 117 Gyelrong region, 9, 15, 63, 136, 152
Herodotus, 41, 76 and Tsaparang, 41, 76 Hezhou (Linxia), 100, 124, 125 Himalaya Mountains. See mountains Himalayan passes. See passes Himalayan region, kingdoms, 4, 8, 9, 15, 48, 65, 74, 81, 121, 145, 177 Hongren si Temple (Zhantan si), 166 Hor, Hor region, 9, 136, 152, 155 Thirty-Nine Tribes of, 152, 158 and Tibet-China trade routes, 21 Horns (Ru) of Tibet, 49, 55 horse and tea trading stations (Chama Si), 125
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households, household districts. See districts Huguo si Temple, 166 Hui Muslims, 21. See also Muslims human porters. See porters hunters, hunting, 36, 40, 176
Imperial Palace (Forbidden City), Beijing, 165, 166 Imperial Period. See Tibet India, Indian, 4, 8, 24, 48, 145 and architecture, 54 and Buddhism, religion, 62–64, 76, 89 and Chinese claims, 184 and Mongols, 98 and monsoon climate, 15, 88, 116 and trade, trade routes, 21, 22, 76, 120, 146 Indian Ocean, 21 Inner City (Tartar City), Beijing, 166 Inner Mongolia, 103, 162, 192 Inner Mongolian steppe, 165 Iron and Bronze Age, 36, 192 Iron Tiger Land Settlement (1830), 131 and territorial administration, 131 Islam, Islamic. See Muslims
Jammu (and Kashmir), 120, 145 Jampa Puntsok, King, 155 Jampel Chokyi Tenzin Trinle, 8 Jang Kingdom. See Naxi Jangkya lama, 165 Jangtang (Chang thang), northern plateau, 9, 36, 153, 177 Jiaosiluo, King, 84 Jishi region, 100 Jokhang Temple, 54, 113, 136, 137 Jonang Kumbum, 95 Jonangpa, 94, 95 Jonang sect, 94 and Geluk persecution, 94, 95 Jumla, Nepal, 120 Juun khiid Monastery, 162 Jyegu Dondrubling Monastery, 159 Jyekundo, 21, 152, 158, 159. See also Yushu and caterpillar fungus, 173 and trade items, 22, 172
Kadampa sect, 63, 64, 70, 71, 85 Kagyu, Kagyupa, 64, 66, 71, 77, 79, 81, 85, 89, 94, 117, 120, 121, 124, 136, 145, 146, 158 Drigung, 88, 94, 97, 121 and Eight Lesser Kagyu Schools, 65, 66 and Four Great Kagyu Schools, 64
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and Karmapa “Black Hat” Kagyu. See Karmapa and reincarnation, 64 and Shangpa Kagyu, 66 and Zhamarpa, 116 Kagyu-Geluk rivalry, 120, 121 Kailash. See mountains: Mt. Kailash Kali Kandaki. See rivers Kangding. See Dartsedo Kangxi, Manchu emperor, 165 Kanze, Kham, 21, 143 Karakoram Mountains. See mountains: Karakoram Karakoram-Pamir region, 51 Kardung fort, 79 Karmapa, Karma Kagyu, 64, 116, 136, 155 Karu Neolithic site, 36 Kashmir, 64, 98, 145, 189 and Kashmiri art, 76, 82 and Muslim invasion, 63, 120 trade routes, 21, 41 Kathmandu Valley, 82, 98, 145 Katok Monastery, 65 Kham, Khampa, 8–10, 14–16, 103, 112, 131, 136, 150–52, 158, 159. See also macroregions and currency, 24 and dzong, 116, 145, 152 and Jonangpa, 95 and language, 28 and monasteries, 65, 112, 113, 152, 153 and Neolithic site, 36 physical geography of, 153 political geography of, 152, 155, 188 and Tibetan autonomous areas, 184 and trade, trade routes, 21, 136 Khanate, 23, 98, 103, 113, 124 of Chagadai, 23, 98 Ordos Tumed, 103, 113 Kharakhorum, Mongol capital, 103, 104 Khardong mesa, 40, 41 Khawatai Monastery, 124 Khon Konchog Gyalpo, 64 Khorchak (Khojarnath) Temple, 79, 99 Khotan, 23 Khubilai Khan, 98, 100, 106 Khunu region, 76, 120 and kingdom, 81 Khyunglung monastery-fort, 40 and Zhangzhung period, 41 Kirti Monastery, 124, 148 Kokonor. See lakes Kongpo region, 9, 24 and dzong, 152 and language, 40 Kukhar Nyizung fort. See Kardung fort Kumaun, India, 82 Kumbum, multistoried chorten, 117 at Gyang, 117
at Gyangtse, 117 Jonang, 95 at Riwoche, 117 at Tropu, 117 Kumbum Monastery, 124, 125 Kun Lun Range. See mountains Kyi Chu Valley, 9, 55 Kyide Nyigon. See Nyimagon, King
Labrang Monastery, 148 Labrang region, 8 Ladakh, Ladakhi, 4, 8, 15, 20, 24, 62, 70, 81, 82, 98, 120, 145, 184, 185, 192 kingdom founded, 73 Mughal conquest of, 24 and Muslim impact, 120 and religious history, 4, 136, 146 and trade routes, 77, 79, 120 Ladakh-Baltistan region, 100 Lahul, 81, 120 lakes, 32, 177 Kokonor, 9, 103, 125, 149 Lhamo Latso, 136 Manasarovar (Mapham Yumtso), 79, 97, 120 Nam Tso, 55 Lama Temple. See Yonghe gong Land Use Map of China, 1:1,000,000, 14, 172, 176 Langdarma, 70, 73 language, 9, 10, 15, 49 Chinese, 14 Mongolic, 100 Tibetic, 4, 9, 10, 15, 26–29, 40, 49. See also Tibetic languages Lanzhou, 21, 85 Last Glacial Maximum (Ice Age), 36 Leh, 21, 145 Lhagyari (E Yul) area, 70, 116 Lhalung Monastery, 70 Lhamo Latso. See lakes Lhasa, 9, 14, 21, 32, 36, 63, 142, 152 and Ambans, 152 and coins, currency, 24 and famine, 62 and Lhasa Valley, region, 8, 14, 32 and monasteries, temples, 103, 113, 116, 117, 136 and trade, trade routes, 20, 21, 153 Lhasa-based politics, control, 4, 8, 64, 88, 95, 116, 130, 131, 145, 152, 184 Lhasa-Ladakh trade route, 20, 79, 145 Lhato Jang area, 70 Lhato Lho area, 70 Lhodrak region, 9, 70 Lho dzong, 21 Lhoto area, 76
and Tsaparang, 76 Lhundrupteng Temple, 155 Liangzhou, Silk Road oasis, 85, 100 Likir Monastery, in Ladakh, 136, 146 Ling. See Lingtsang Lingtsang, Lingtsang Kingdom, 88, 155 Linxia. See Hezhou Litang, 21, 88, 112, 152 livestock, 36, 176, 177 Lobzang Gyatso. See Dalai Lamas Ludra Monastery, Bon, 146
Machik Lapdron, 65 founder of Cho tradition, 65 macroregions of Tibet, four main, 8, 11, 14, 15, 32, 85, 88, 100, 125 Amdo, 15, 32, 88, 100 Kham, 15, 32, 88, 100 Ngari, 9, 15, 32, 88, 100 U-Tsang, 9, 15, 32, 88, 100 Maksar (Bongya) Monastery, 100 Manasarovar (Mapham Yumtso). See lakes Manchu, 24, 89, 112, 167. See also Qing Ambans (residents), 149 garrisons, 21 Manchuria, 103 Mangnang Monastery, temple, 76, 77 and fort, 77 and valley, 77 Mangyul Gungtang polity, 98 Mapham Yumtso. See lakes: Manasarovar Marpa Chokyi Lodro, 64, 66 Martsangdrak (Baima si) Temple, 84 Maryul (Ladakh), 81, 82 Matsutake mushroom, 172 megadrought, 16, 88, 116 megaliths, 40 Mekong River. See rivers Mengung Monastery, 152 Menri Monastery, 117, 136 merchants, 21, 73, 148 Mewa Monastery, 148 Milarepa, 64, 66 military colonies (Tibetan), 49 Mindroling Monastery, 136 mines, mining, 172, 173 Ming Dynasty, 88, 89, 103, 108, 125, 148, 149, 162, 165 and monasteries, temples, 100, 103, 105, 106, 108, 125, 165, 166 Minyak region, Kham, 100 Minzhou, Minzhou region, 85, 100 monastic ordinations, 15, 62 money. See coins and currency Mongol Chaghadai Khanate, 23, 98 Mongolia, 9, 89, 103, 162 and Buddhism, 89, 103 and monasteries, 103, 162
Mongols, Mongol Empire, 65, 66, 77, 81, 86–89, 97, 100, 103, 112, 120, 124, 125, 155, 158, 184 and administration, 88, 89 and Amdo uprising, 148, 149 and Beri, 155 and Gelukpa, 112, 116, 155 and Kagyupa, 77 and language, 29, 100, 180 and military forces, control, 65, 88, 89, 98, 99, 100, 112, 130, 145 and monasteries, temples, 16, 63, 89, 99, 102–4, 106, 108, 160–62, 165, 166 and mosques, 101, 106 and Phagmo Drupa, 64 and population, 180 and postal-relay stations, 97, 100 and Qoshot Mongols, 116, 130 and Sakyapa sect, 64, 66, 88, 89, 97, 98, 116 and Zunghar Mongols, 130 Mongol-Sakya influence, 66, 98, 116 and administration of U-Tsang, 66 monsoon, Monsoon Asia, 15, 16, 76, 88, 116, 177 mountains, 4 Himalaya, 15, 20, 21, 23, 48, 62, 74, 76, 79, 121, 184 Karakoram, 8, 51 Kun Lun, 184 Mt. Kailash (Gang Rinpoche), 8, 14, 41, 78, 79, 97, 120, 145, 146 Pamir, 51 Wutai Shan, 103 Muge Monastery, 124 Mughal emperor, 23, 24 Muslims, Islam, 21, 100, 101, 106, 120, 148 invasions, 63, 64, 89, 120 and Ladakh, 120 and population, 120, 180 and trade, 148 and Yeshe Od, 64, 73 in Yellow River Valley 100, 101 Mustang (Lo Mustang), 82, 98, 120, 121, 146, 184 and treaty with Nepal, 145 myriarchies. See districts
Nakchu, 21 Namri Lontshan, 48 Nam Tso. See lakes Nam Tso doring, 55 Nangchen Kingdom, 32, 136, 152, 157, 158 and Nangchen Gar, 158 Nanjing, 21, 106, 108 NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mis-
sion (SRTM), 32 natural resources, 170–73 Naxi Jang Kingdom, 112, 136 Nedong, 116 Neolithic Period, cultures, 34–36, 40, 177, 191 Nepal, 21, 23, 28, 145, 176, 184, 189, 192 Nepalese-Gurkha power, 112 New Tantra Tradition school, 63, 64, 76, 77 Ngari, 9, 14, 16, 62, 63, 70, 74, 80, 84, 88, 96, 98, 116, 118–20, 131, 144, 145, 192 dialect, 9, 40 dzong, 145 macroregion, 8, 15, 32, 100 religious history of, 63, 64, 73, 97, 103, 120, 145, 146 and Rinchen Zangpo, 64, 74 Ngari Khorsum (Three Divisions of Ngari), 62, 70, 72, 73 Ngari Mé (lower Ngari), 97 Ngawang Dragpa, 120, 121 Ngor Monastery, 117, 159 nomads (drokpa), nomadic, 10, 20, 36, 153, 155, 176, 177 Nyarong region, 152 Nyatri Tsenpo, 41 Nyimagon, King, 73, 79 Nyingma, Nyingmapa, 62, 63, 64, 79, 85, 100, 136 and artistic tradition, 149 monasteries, 63, 65, 70, 71, 117, 136, 152 and rituals, 64
Ode, King, 73, 74, 81 of Guge-Purang, 81 Old Tibetan Annals, 49, 51, 58 Ordos, region, 103 Ordos Tumed Khanate, 103, 113. See also Khanate Osung, 70, 73 and competing rule, 70 Outer Mongolia, 103. See also Mongolia
pack animals, 15, 20, 153 Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche), 48, 65 and Uddiyana, 48 Pakmodrupa, 66, 88, 113, 116, 117, 120, 130, 136 artistic importance of, 117 fiefs and estates, 116 and fortresses (rDzong), 113, 116 period (1354–1642), 110–17, 136 Palbung Monastery, 155 Paleolithic era, 34, 35, 36, 40, 177, 191
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Paleo-Neolithic transition, 36 Palgyigon region, 73 and kingdom of Ladakh, 73 Parkhang (Royal Printing House), 155 and Buddhist scripture, 155 Pasho, 152, 153 monastic estate, 152 passes, 152 Dang la pass, 21 Himalayan, 21, 76 Sibkyi (Shipki), 76 Pelyul Monastery, 152, 156 Pembar, 152 Persia, 4, 23, 41 Pholhana, house of, 130 Phuntshokde, King, 121 physical geography. See geography pilgrimage and pilgrims, 8, 20, 21, 79, 89 and Jokhang Temple, 54, 55 and Mt. Kailash, 79, 97 and Wutai Shan, 103 Polu Monastery, 156 population, 14, 21, 32, 49, 77, 120, 124, 125, 148, 177, 185, 190 and migrant labor, 180 monastic, 103 Muslim, 120 Tibetan, 4, 32, 178–80 porters, 20, 153 postal routes, 88 and postal-relay stations, 97, 100, 145 Potala Palace, 117, 130, 137 murals, 28, 36, 41, 50, 103, 113, 136, 142, 167 and Red Palace, 130 and White Palace, 130 Powo Kingdom, region, 9, 20, 152, 153 Pudu si (Mahakala temple), 165 Pumi people, 180 Purang, 32, 62, 64, 70, 73, 74, 78, 82, 98, 120, 121, 145. See also Guge- Purang kings of, 62, 73, 74, 81, 82, 120 and monasteries, temples, 64, 76, 79, 81, 82, 97, 145, 146 and Purang/Yatse Kingdom, 82, 89, 97, 98. See also Yatse and trade, 70, 120
Qarakhanid Turks. See Turks Qiang, Qiangic, 28, 29, 180 Qing Dynasty Period, 8, 20, 100, 103, 106, 131, 147–49, 152, 158, 160, 163, 184, 191 and agriculture, 148 and Ambans, 149, 152 and emperors, 89 and Kham, 152, 153, 158, 184
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and monasteries, 103, 147, 148, 160, 162, 164–67 and trade routes, 21 and troops, invasion, 112, 130, 131 Qinghai Province, 158, 159, 173, 176, 180, 184 Qingtang (Xining), 84 Qoshot Mongols, 116, 130
Ragya Monastery, 136, 148 rain shadow zone, 15, 76 Red Chapel (Lhakhang Marpo), Tsaparang, 73 regional systems theory, 190 Rinchen Zangpo, 64, 74, 76, 77, 79 Rinpung, 116, 120 dzong, 116 rivers, river valleys, 14, 21, 36, 100, 136, 148, 177 Brahmaputra, 153, 177 Chulong Karpo (Bailong Jiang), 100 Dri Chu, 155. See also Yangtze Ganga (Ganges), 14 Huangshui, 100, 148 Indus, upper, 14, 36, 77, 82, 120, 145 Kali Kandaki, 146 Karnali, 81, 189 Kyi Chu, 9, 55 Langchen Kabab (upper Sutlej), 76 Lu Chu (Tao he), 100, 125 Mekong, 15, 36, 152, 158 Nyang, 9 Salween, 15, 21, 36, 63, 136, 152, 158 Sutlej, 9, 36, 40, 41, 76 Tao, 100, 125 Tsang, 58 and Tsangpo-Brahmaputra, 153, 177 Tsong chu, 148 Yangtze, 15, 36, 152, 158 Yarlung Tsangpo, Tsangpo, 9, 14, 36, 63, 66, 70, 117, 120, 136 Yellow, Yellow River watershed, 15, 48, 51, 63, 100, 113, 136, 148, 177 Riwoche chorten and region, 8, 117 Rongbatse, Kham, 143 Rongwo Monastery, 101, 188 Rongwo Valley, 100, 101, 124, 148, 188 Royal Lineages of Ngari (mNga’ ris rgyal rabs), 73 Russia, 162
Sakya, Sakyapa, 64, 66, 71, 79, 85, 88, 92, 93, 94, 98, 100, 112, 116, 121, 136 monasteries, 64, 94, 100, 101, 117, 159 and Mongol relations, 89, 92, 93, 94, 98, 112, 116
and Ngari, 97, 98 and Sakya Ponchen viceroyalty, 112 Sakya-Geluk shared tradition, 79, 145 Sakya Monastery, 23, 88, 116 Salar nationality, 100 Salween River. See rivers Samar, 155 and early roots of Derge, 155 Samdrubtse, 116 and Tsangpa leaders, 116 Samdrup Tongdrol Chenmo, 155 and Derge family temple, 155 Samye Monastery, 54, 55 Sanskrit, 49, 82 satellite imagery, 32, 176, 177 sDe dge’i rgyal rabs. See Genealogy of the Kings of Derge Second Diffusion of Buddhism. See Buddhism Semja, 81. See also Yatse Senge Namgyal, 145 and partitioning of Guge, 145 Serdokchen Monastery, 117 Sershul Monastery, 136 Seventh Dalai Lama. See Dalai Lamas Shakpel Ling Monastery, 79, 145 Shakya ’od, 121 Shakya Yeshe, 108 Shalu Monastery, 70, 94 shamanism, 40, 63 Shangdu, 103 Mongol summer capital, 103 Shangpa Kagyu, 66, 94 Shangs Khyungpo Nalbyor, 66 and Zhangzhong Monastery, 66 Shigatse, 9, 14, 20, 21, 89, 116. See also Tashilhunpo Shije tradition, 71 Shopamdo, 65 Siberia, 32, 103, 162 and Buryatia, 162, 192 Sichuan Basin, 15, 20, 63, 136 Sichuan Province, 10, 15, 20, 24, 88 and Tibetan autonomous areas, 180 and trade, trade routes, 21, 22, 152 Sikkim, 21, 184 Silk Road, 15, 20, 64, 70, 84. See also trade and Dunhuang Buddhist cave complex, 40, 51 and Liangzhou oasis, 85, 100 oases, 48, 51 Simla, India, 21 Simla Convention (1914), 138, 139 Sino-Tibetan treaty (821–823), 58 Skardo, Baltistan, 73 Skinner, G. William, 14, 190 snowline, permanent, 36 Sok, 21, 152 Geluk monastic estate, 152
Sok Yungdrungling. See Yungdrungling Sonamde (Punya Malla), King, 98 Sonam Gyatso. See Dalai Lamas Song Dynasty Period, 84, 124, 191 Songne, King, 64, 73 Songtsen Gampo, Emperor, 10, 48 and Songtsen Gampo temples, 48 South Asia, South Asian, 15, 32, 48, 54, 82, 172, 184 monsoon, 76 Spiti, 76, 81, 120 Srinagar, Kashmir, 145 steppe, 103, 163, 165, 176, 177 Summer Palace. See Yihe Yuan Sumpa, 40, 48, 49, 51 early polity in the north, 40
Tabo Monastery, 63 Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen, 116 Pakmodrupa myriarch, 116 Taklakhar/Taklakot, 79. See also Purang Taktsang Lhamo Monastery, 136, 148 Tana Senge Nam Dzong Monastery, 158 as seat of Yelpa subsect, 158 Tang Dynasty, 48, 125 and Chinese texts, 54 and princesses, 48 Tangtong Gyelpo, 155 Tangut Empire, 64, 84, 100. See also Xixia and Tangut people, 100 Taozhou (frontier town), 21 and trade, 22 Tarim Basin, 41, 51, 82, 120 Tartar City. See Beijing, Inner City Tashigang Monastery, Kagyu, 77, 145 Tashigon, King, 73 and Ngari Khorsum, 73 Tashilhunpo Monastery, 89, 113 and murals, 89 Tawang, India, 184 and Chinese claim, 184 tax, taxation, 41, 48, 58, 63, 70, 116, 131, 158 tax-in-kind system, 63, 116, 158 tea, 15, 20, 22, 24, 158 ten thousand household districts. See districts, Trikhor system Testament of Ba (dBa’ bzhed, sBa bzhed), 48 Thirteenth Dalai Lama. See Dalai Lamas Thirty-Nine Hor Tribes. See Hor Thonmi Sambhota, 28 thousand household districts. See districts Three Regions of Tibet (Cholkha Sum), 88 Tibet (general), 3, 4, 8–10, 14, 15, 20, 21 Chinese annexation of, 4, 130, 184 as culture region (cultural world), 3,
4, 8, 10, 14, 15, 32, 125, 184, 192 and Imperial Period, 8, 15, 36, 40, 41, 44–50, 52–55, 58, 62, 63, 79, 84, 85, 88, 103 as “Snowland,” 4, 8 and Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), 4, 176, 180, 184 and Tibet-China frontier regions, 15, 20, 21, 85, 88, 100, 101, 103, 112, 113, 124, 130, 136, 138, 139, 149, 152, 162, 163, 165, 188 and Tibetans, population, 4, 180 and Xizang, 88 Tibetan Empire, 4, 8, 14, 15, 28, 48, 49, 51, 54, 58, 62, 63, 70, 84, 85, 103, 184 Tibetan language. See Tibetic languages Tibetan Plateau, 4, 8, 10, 14–16, 20, 21, 36, 37, 40, 48, 49, 63, 76, 88, 142, 148, 172, 176, 177, 184, 190, 191 and initial human occupation, 36 and land cover patterns, 176 and two main ecosystems, 176 Tibetan writing. See writing Tibetic languages, 4, 9, 10, 15, 26–29, 32, 40, 49, 192 and Burma, 28 and Tibetic-speaking peoples, 48 Tibeto-Burman languages, people, 180 Tibeto-Mongol Buddhism, 103 and Buddhist monastery building, 89, 102–4, 160–62 Tiksey Monastery, Ladakh, 146 timber and fuel-wood extraction, 36, 176, 177 Toling Monastery, 64, 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 120, 121 tombs, 23, 55 topography, of Tibetan Plateau, 15, 21 tourism, tourists, 180 trade, 41, 84, 15, 21–23, 41, 70, 76, 84, 101, 120, 158, 172 networks, 5, 10, 12, 13, 41 patterns, 18–19 and trade fairs, festivals 21, 125, 145, 148, 158, 159 and trade items, 22, 148, 172 and trade marts, 76, 79, 84, 145 and traders, 20, 153, 158 wool, 24 trade routes, 21, 41, 48, 63, 65, 70, 77, 79, 84, 103, 120, 136, 145, 146, 152, 153, 158, 159 Tradun Monastery, 145 translation, 74 Tibetan Buddhist, 74, 76 Trikhor, 65, 66, 94, 97, 112, 158. See also districts Tsakhalho (Yanjing), 21
Tsal, Tsalpa, 64, 94, 97 Tsal Gungtang Monastery, 64 Tsang, region, 8, 9, 14, 63–66, 70, 71, 88, 94, 113, 117, 120, 130, 136. See also U-Tsang Tsangpo, Yarlung Tsangpo. See rivers Tsangpo Valley, 71, 136 Tsaparang, fort, 9, 41, 76, 121 and Buddhist art, 73, 120 Tsawarong region, 143, 152 Tsede, King, 73, 74 Tsenchugde, 81 seventh king of Purang, 81, 98 Tsende, 74 and Yatse Kingdom, 74 Tsensong, brother of Tsede, 74 Tsetang, 21 Tsongkha Kingdom, region, 9, 48, 62, 64, 70, 83, 84, 89, 125, 148 and Bonpo sites, 85 and Jiaosiluo, first king, 84 and Mongols, 100 and Sakya, 64, 71 and Yellow River Valley, 63 Tsongkhapa, 108, 113, 120, 124 and Ganden Monastery, 112, 113 Tsurphu Monastery, 64, 116, 159 seat of Karmapa, 64 Tu (Mongour) nationality, 100, 180 Tufan, 100 and Tufan-Chinese frontier, 100, 112 Tufan Government Commissionership, 112 Turks, 48, 73, 74, 81, 82
Uddiyana, 48 USGS (US Geological Survey), 32, 176 Utpala, king of Ladakh, 82 U-Tsang region (Central Tibet), 8–10, 14–16, 62, 64, 66, 88 and language, 9, 28, 40 macroregion, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 32, 88, 100 monasteries and religion in, 15, 62–64
Vajrayana Buddhism. See Buddhism vihara (Indian-style temple), 54, 77
Wenzhou region, Amdo, 100 and Chinese town, 100 Western Hills, Beijing, 106, 167 Western Park (Xiyuan, Beihai), 165, 166 Western Tibet. See Tibet, Ngari writing, script, 40, 48, 49, 54, 189 Arabic, 23 Chinese, 24
i n d ex
201
Manchu, 24 Old Tibetan, 49 Tibetan, 23, 24, 48 Wuta si stupa, 106, 107 Wutai Shan. See mountains
Xihuang si (Yellow Temple), 166 Xining, 21, 84, 100, 149. See also Qingtang Xixia (Western Xia, Tangut Empire), 64, 71, 84, 88 Xizang (Chinese name for Tibet), 88
Yadong. See Dromo yaks, 20, 40, 177. See also livestock; pack animals Yangpachen Monastery, 116 Yangtze River. See rivers Yangtze-Mekong divide, 152 as China-Tibet line of control, 152 Yardrok region, 94 Yarkand, 23
202
i nd ex
Yarlung region, valley, 41, 54 and Yarlung Dynasty, 41, 62 and burial mounds, 54 and Yarlung Kingdom, 48 Yarlung Tsangpo. See rivers Yatse Kingdom, 74, 80–82, 89, 96–98, 120 Yelpa, 65, 158 as Kagyupa subsect, 158 Yeru Wensakha Monastery, 136 Yeshe Od (King Songne), 64, 73, 74 Yihe Yuan (Summer Palace), 167 Yilungwa district, 155 Yong’an, Amdo, 149 Yong’an si, Beijing, 166 and White Dagoba (stupa), 166 Yonghe gong (Lama) Templem 1, 66 Yonpu Dratsang Monastery, 117 Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), 23, 88, 89, 98, 100, 103, 106, 125, 158, 162, 166 and emperors, 89 and fall of, 116 and Khubilai Khan, 98
Yuan-Ming transition, 125 and depopulation, 125 Yuanming Yuan, 167 Yumten, 70, 73 and competing rule, 70 Yungdrung Lhading Monastery, 63 Yungdrungling Monastery, 63, 136 Yunnan Province, 15, 21, 24, 88, 112, 136, 180 and Tibetan autonomous areas, 180, 184 Yushu, 22, 158. See also Jyekundo
Zanskar, 62, 70, 73, 120 Zayul region, 20, 153 Zhamapa, “Red Hat” Kagyu, 116 Zhangzhong Monastery, 66, 94 Zhangzhung, 8, 40, 41, 48, 49, 51, 76, 146 period, 76 Zhenjue si Temple, 166 Zunghar Mongols, 130