DOCSLIB.ORG

Remarks on Territorial Transformation and Identity in Imperial and Early

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Remarks on Territorial Transformation and Identity in Imperial and Early Tribal Mobility and Religious Fixation: Remarks on Territorial Transformation and Identity in Imperial and Early Post-Imperial Tibet Guntram Hazod [Accepted manuscript of the chapter published in: Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner and Richard Payne (eds.), Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300-1100 (Farnham: Ashgate 2012) 43–57.] At the start of the seventh century CE, there was a political upheaval in the southern agrarian zone of the Tibetan Highlands that was to have a lasting impact. A union of rival clans under the leadership of a local dynasty, the Pugyel (‘Princes of Pu’ (spu rgyal)), 1 led to the formation of a united kingdom. The Pugyel and their allies represented the new political unit as a holy order whose maintenance was guaranteed by the sovereign, henceforth entitled the tsänpo (btsan po), ‘powerful one’ (i.e. emperor). An effective military organization permitted the kingdom, striving for outward expansion, rapidly to emerge as a leading power in Central Asia. In the eighth century the empire came to extend beyond the Himalayas in the south, as far as Yunnan and Sichuan in the south-east and east, and into present-day north Pakistan in the west, and controlled the city states on the Silk Road in the north. Tang China, the powerful neighbour in the east, was repeatedly put in its place by Tufan, as Tibet (T. Bö (Bod); below, n. 9) was known in the Chinese sources. In the mid-ninth century the empire disintegrated almost as fast as it had emerged. But its after-effects were enormous and in many respects formative for the following epochs. The post-imperial era is the history of the extension and establishment of Buddhism (Lamaism) in the Highlands, which in its discourses created the vision of a common Tibetan history and led to the flowering of Buddhist universalism, the seeds of which had been sown in the period of the tsänpo. The development of the religion took place within a tribal order, represented by the patrilineal clans, which survived the break-up of the empire and established a new polity in union with Buddhism. These two developments of the foundation of 1 Tibetan names and terms in brackets represent their transliterated form in accordance with the Wylie System. Abbreviations used in this article: T. = Tibetan, S. = Sanskrit, Ch. = Chinese. 1 the empire and the Lamaist expansion transformed the ethnic, religious and social identities within this area in favour of new concepts of integration and community-building. They found their expression not least in a specific political geography of the imperial (seventh–ninth century) and hegemonial (twelfth–seventeenth century) periods which I will outline in the following with regard to the decisive mechanisms of integration and the associated territorial transformations. The Building of the Empire The core zones of the Highlands were the agrarian areas of Central Tibet, on either side of the Tsangpo River (Brahmaputra) (Figure 2.1). From the third and fourth centuries, a number of local polities (in the sources described as ‘petty kingdoms’, gyetren (rgyal phran)) developed here. These were stratified, clan-based societies headed by ruling lineages (i.e. lineages of ‘lords’ and ‘ministers’, je, lön (rje, blon)). In the tradition, the bearers of the lineages were described as the ‘people of inner Tibet’ (bod nang gi mi’u) and as descendents of (four) proto- clans that were supposed to go back to a common ancestry – a fabrication of later, nationalistically coloured accounts of history, because the names of these ‘proto-clans’ are rather to be identified as ethnonyms referring to people of different origins (various Turkic groups and groups linguistically belonging to the Tibeto-Burmese family of languages).2 The 2 The ‘Tibetans’ do not appear in the classical (post-imperial) account of Tibetan anthropogenesis and socio-genesis: see Tsering Gyalbo, Guntram Hazod and Per Kjeld Sørensen, 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), Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, 36, Denkschriften der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 290 (Vienna, 2000), pp. 55f. The ‘four great clans’ (rüchen shi (rus chen bzhi)) were associated with Minyag (Tangut), the Sumpa (Ch. Supi) and Azha (Ch. Tuyuhun) (both of Turkic tongues) and with the population of Zhangzhung (Zhang–zhung). The last mentioned relates to the prehistoric Zhangzhung power in present-day west Tibet, which was conquered by the Tibetans in the seventh century. In this account the Zhangzhung people are linked with the rü (clan, lit. ‘bone’) called Ma (rma), a term for ‘man’ and an ethnonym that in this classification probably also includes the originally Tibeto-Burmese population of the Highlands usually associated with the name Mön (Mon). ‘Tibet’ derives from the Arabic ‘Tubbat’, which denoted postulation of a common origin is not entirely unjustified, however, because it indicates a reality under which the core areas of the Highlands had already developed a cultural homogeneity in the centuries before the foundation of the empire. The ‘petty kingdoms’ are here the result of this early Tibetan identity. 3 The patrilinear clan as the primary structural principle of this segmentary pre-state order was connected with a particular territory, and ancestrally linked to a territorial divinity, which each represented the celestial unity of the individual settlement areas. The territory of the Pugyel was Yarlung, with the snow mountain called Yarlha Shampo as the territorial god (lha). Like the other gyetren, it was affinally linked with several units, such as those described as ‘ancient relatives at the four borders’ (nanyen thashi rab (gna’ gnyen mtha’ bzhi)), four local dynasties that bordered Yarlung, each of which formed its own gyetren. Furthermore, the the Tuyuhun, one of the components of this ethnic construct of ‘Tibet’. Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetans, The Peoples of Asia (Oxford, 2006), p. 29, summarizes the question of Tibetan origin: ‘The peoples of the Tibetan plateau became Tibetan primarily owing to cultural developments during the past two millennia, rather than to common genetic origins.’ This cultural assimilation process, which was a process of ethnization, was forced and concretized by the development of the empire and led, among other things, to a Tibetan lingua franca. There are numerous Indo- Germanic elements in it, which go back to early contacts with Indo-Scythian groups in the north-east of the Highlands (ibid., pp. 18f.); see also Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton, 2009), p. 375. 3 Cf. Brandon Dotson, ‘Complementarity and opposition in early Tibetan ritual’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 128, 1 (2008): 41–67. One of the outstanding commonalities of pre-imperial Central Tibet is the tumulus tradition (and the associated ritual complexes; John Vincent Bellezza, ‘gShen–rab Myi–bo: his life and times according to Tibet’s earliest literary sources’, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 19 (October 2010): 31–118), whose beginnings are to be dated to at least the fourth century (Guntram Hazod, ‘Imperial Central Tibet – an annotated cartographical survey of its territorial divisions and key political sites’, in Brandon Dotson and Guntram Hazod, The Old Tibetan Annals: An Annotated Translation of Tibet’s First History, Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie, 12 (Vienna, 2009), p. 175). They point to the ‘gyetren culture’ as part of the Eurasian culture complex, with the tumulus tradition as a late inheritance of the Indo-Scythian contacts. See Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road, p. 127; see also above, n. 2. sources speak of the ‘six clans of paternal subjects’ (yabang rüdrug (yab ’bangs rus drug)), clans of the lön (‘minister’) category (see above), which were allied to the Pugyel.4 It appears they also formed something like a ritual unit, where in the course of a joint hunt (the hunt for the wild Yak) the Pugyel regularly had to prove his sacred power.5 The clans of these gyetren units were transregional, that is, apart from their own territory they had branch settlements in various areas. Thus a clan in one unit could represent the ruling lineage (je (rje)) and elsewhere serve as a lön lineage. The link to the home territory here remained an important identity criterion. It also explains the mutual demarcation of the gyetren, which not only faced one another as bride-giver and bride-taker but also waged wars against each other. The sources finally make it clear that the alliance formations were apparently relatively open and had no lasting foundation. The lön lineages could leave the alliance at any time, as is made clear in the description of the rival of Yarlung, the house of Ngäpo (Ngas–po). Several clans left the alliance of the Lord of Ngäpo, who is described as unloved, and joined the Yarlung lord, entitled ‘Son of the Gods’ (lha sä (lha sras)), and indeed linked to the suggestion to destroy the territory of their former chief. The successful crusade against the rival, with his territory in the area of the Lhasa valley, was the actual start of the foundation of the empire. 6 The alliance of the Pugyel and his heroic fellow combatants was of a new quality, as the records in the early chronicles, with their panegyrics to the Yarlung house, show. The mythical charter, which legitimized the figure of a god king, now addressed as lha tsänpo (‘divine mighty one’), was essentially the principle of higher descent, according to which the mythical progenitor of the Pugyel line was described as the distant progenitor of all lines.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Life and Scholarship of the Eighteenth- Century Amdo Scholar Sum Pa Mkhan Po Ye Shes Dpal ’Byor (1704-1788)
    Renaissance Man From Amdo: the Life and Scholarship of the Eighteenth- Century Amdo Scholar Sum Pa Mkhan Po Ye Shes Dpal ’Byor (1704-1788) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40050150 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Renaissance Man From Amdo: The Life and Scholarship of the Eighteenth-Century Amdo Scholar Sum pa Mkhan po Ye shes dpal ’byor (1704-1788) ! A dissertation presented by Hanung Kim to The Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History and East Asian Languages Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April, 2018 © 2018 – Hanung Kim All rights reserved. ! Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp Hanung Kim Renaissance Man From Amdo: The Life and Scholarship of the Eighteenth- Century Amdo Scholar Sum pa Mkhan po Ye shes dpal ’byor (1704-1788) Abstract! This dissertation examines the new cultural developments in eighteenth-century northeastern Tibet, also known as Amdo, by looking into the life story of a preeminent monk- scholar, Sum pa Mkhan po Ye shes dpal ’byor (1708-1788). In the first part, this study corroborates what has only been sensed by previous scholarship, that is, the rising importance of Amdo in Tibetan cultural history.
    [Show full text]
  • High Peaks, Pure Earth
    BOOK REVIEW HIGH PEAKS, PURE EARTH COLLECTED WRITINGS ON TIBETAN HISTORY AND CULTURE BY HUGH RICHARDSON A COMPILATION OF A SERIES OF PROGRAMS ON RADIO FREE ASIA TIBETAN SERVICE BY WARREN W. SMITH 1 HIGH PEAKS, PURE EARTH High Peaks, Pure Earth is the title of the collected works on Tibetan history and culture by Hugh Richardson, a British diplomat who became a historian of Tibet. He was British representative in Lhasa from 1936 to 1940 and again from 1946 to 1950, during which time he did many studies on ancient and modern Tibetan history. He wrote numerous articles on Tibetan history and culture, all of which have been published in this book of his collected writings. Hugh Richardson was born in Scotland, a part of Great Britain that bears some similarities to Tibet, both in its environment and in its politics. Scotland has long had a contentious relationship with England and was incorporated only by force into Great Britain. Richardson became a member of the British administration of India in 1932. He was a member of a 1936 British mission to Tibet. Richardson remained in Lhasa to become the first officer in charge of the British Mission in Lhasa. He was in Lhasa from 1936 to 1940, when the Second World War began. After the war he again represented the British Government in Lhasa from 1946 to 1947, when India became independent, after which he was the representative of the Government of India. He left Tibet only in September 1950, shortly before the Chinese invasion. Richardson lived in Tibet for a total of eight years.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Genocide in Tibet a Report
    Cultural Genocide in Tibet A Report The Tibet Policy Institute The Department of Information and International Relations Central Tibetan Administration Published by the Tibet Policy Institute Printed at Narthang Press, Department of Information and International Relations of the Central Tibet Administration, 2017 Drafting Committee: Thubten Samphel, Bhuchung D. Sonam, Dr. Rinzin Dorjee and Dr. Tenzin Desal Contents Abbreviation Foreword .............................................................................................i Executive Summary ...........................................................................iv Introduction ........................................................................................vi PART ONE A CULTURE OF COMPASSION The Land .............................................................................................4 Language and Literature....................................................................4 Bonism .................................................................................................6 Buddhism ............................................................................................6 Sciences ................................................................................................8 Environmental Protection ................................................................9 The Origin and Evolution of Tibetan Culture ..............................10 The Emergence of the Yarlung Dynasty .......................................11 Songtsen Gampo and the Unification
    [Show full text]
  • 11 the Emergence of the Yarlung Dynasty Songtsen Gampo and The
    beliefs shaped the mind of peoples of Sumpa, Asha, Minyak and the Yarlung valley from which emerged the kings and emperors who laid the foundation of the Tibetan empire. The Emergence of the Yarlung Dynasty The one event which had the greatest impact on the subsequent cultural development of Tibet was the emergence of the kings of Yarlung who over the centuries cemented the peoples of the plateau under one single central authority and overran regions beyond Tibet. The ability of the kings of Yarlung, headquartered in Tsethang, the cradle of Tibetan civilization, to bring the whole plateau under one administration provided not only the material base for Tibet’s cultural development but also the governance that strengthened the cohesion of the Tibetan people. According to Buddhist historians, on this scene, emerged Nyatri Tsenpo in around 127 BC. From this period to the 7th century AD, until the emergence of Songtsen Gampo, who consolidated the realm of his forefathers and then took Tibet on an expansionist mission, Yarlung was ruled by a succession of thirty-one kings. During the reign of these kings, Bon remained the dominant belief system, although tentative contacts with Buddhism were made, especially during the reign of Lhatho Thori Nyentsen, the 28th king, who in around 233 AD received two Buddhist sutras which, though treated with great reverence, remained a mystery because Tibetans at the time had not mastered other peoples’ languages, including Sanskrit, the language in which the two sutras were presumably written. This piece of scriptural wisdom from Buddhist India remained as the Nyenpo Sangwa, A Fragile Secret.
    [Show full text]
  • A Historical and Religious Study of 18Th Century Tibetan Rainmaking Rituals in the Qing Dynasty
    religions Article Rainmakers for the Cosmopolitan Empire: A Historical and Religious Study of 18th Century Tibetan Rainmaking Rituals in the Qing Dynasty Hanung Kim Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China; [email protected] Received: 21 October 2020; Accepted: 19 November 2020; Published: 24 November 2020 Abstract: Although Tibetan rainmaking rituals speak of important aspects of both history and religion, scholars thus far have paid only biased attention to the rituals and performative aspects rather than the abundant textual materials available. To address that issue, this article analyzes a single textual manual on Tibetan rainmaking rituals to learn the significance of rainmaking in late Imperial Chinese history. The article begins with a historical overview of the importance of Tibetan rainmaking activities for the polities of China proper and clearly demonstrates the potential for studying these ritual activities using textual analysis. Then it focuses on one Tibetan rainmaking manual from the 18th century and its author, Sumpa Khenpo, to illustrate that potential. In addition to the author’s autobiographical accounts of the prominence of weather rituals in the Inner Asian territory of Qing China, a detailed outline of Sumpa Khenpo’s rainmaking manual indicates that the developmental aspects of popular weather rituals closely agreed with the successful dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism in regions where Tibetan Buddhist clerics were active. As an indicator of late Imperial Chinese history, this function of Tibetan rainmaking rituals is a good barometer of the successful operation of a cosmopolitan empire, a facilitator of which was Tibetan Buddhism, in the 18th century during the High Qing era.
    [Show full text]
  • Tibet: a History/Sam Van Schaik
    1 2 3 4 5 6 TIBET 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 37R 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 37R 1 2 3 4 SAM VAN SCHAIK 5 6 7 8 9 TIBET 10 A HISTORY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 6 NEW HAVEN AND LONDON 37R 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Copyright © 2011 Sam van Schaik 9 20 All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and 1 except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. 2 For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: 3 U.S. Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.com 4 Europe Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.co.uk 5 Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd 6 Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall 7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 8 9 Van Schaik, Sam.
    [Show full text]
  • Title <History> History of the Tibetan Language Author(S) TAKEUCHI, Tsuguhito Citation Grammatical Phenomena of Sino-Tibet
    Title <History> History of the Tibetan Language Author(s) TAKEUCHI, Tsuguhito Grammatical Phenomena of Sino-Tibetan Languages 4: Link Citation languages and archetypes in Tibeto-Burman (2021): 303-323 Issue Date 2021-03-20 URL http://hdl.handle.net/2433/263983 Right Type Book Textversion publisher Kyoto University Nagano Yasuhiko and Ikeda Takumi (eds.) Grammatical Phenomena of Sino-Tibetan Languages 4: 303–323, 2021 Link Languages and Archetypes in Tibeto-Burman History of the Tibetan Language Takeuchi Tsuguhito Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Emeritus Summary This paper surveys the historical development of the Tibetan language. This language has two different styles, literary and colloquial, the former of which is documented from the 7th century AD. The founder of the Tibetan Empire Srong tsen sgam po hastened to establish the official language and its orthography. Old Literary Tibetan gradually gained literature in many genres, such as annals, law, contracts, and divination. Old Literary Tibetan was used as a lingua franca by neighboring non-native speakers (Han and Khotanese, for instance) by the 9th century AD. Literary Tibetan has developed both in orthography and syntax. The complex syllable structure was simplified in colloquial Tibetan, which is reflexed in orthographic change. In syntax, the auxiliary verb yin newly emerged and came to function to reflect the speak- er’s judgment. Literary Tibetan grew more stable by introducing the linguistic change of the colloquial style that occurred in Central Tibet since the 12th century AD, when Old Literary Tibetan was re-established as Classical Tibetan. In colloquial Tibetan, the simplification of syllable structure caused tonogenesis prob- ably around the 10th century AD, and the distinction between myi and mi was lost.
    [Show full text]
  • Gshen-Rab Myi-Bo
    gShen-rab Myi-bo His life and times according to Tibet’s earliest literary sources1 John Vincent Bellezza Senior Research Fellow Tibet Center, University of Virginia gShen-rab mi-bo-che the Buddha and gShen-rab myi-bo the archetypal priest he founder of the g.Yung-drung or ‘Eternal’ Bon religion is sTon-pa gshen-rab, a Buddha or Sangs-rgyas reckoned to have lived thousands T of years ago. Also commonly known as gShen-rab mi-bo-che, his life is thought to have long preceded the historical Buddha of India, Ṥākyamuni (6th century BCE). Depending on the way in which gShen-rab mi-bo-che’s life is dated in traditional chronologies known as bstan-rtsis, he was born as much as 23,000 years ago.2 Such an early periodization places this holy personage in the Upper Paleolithic, a remote age in which big game hunting and plant gathering dominated wherever Homo sapiens had spread. The earliest major literary works to chronicle the life and times of gShen-rab mi-bo-che the Buddha are mDo-’dus and mDo gzer mig, texts which probably 1 Translations of the Tibetan texts in this paper were made in consultation with Yungdrung Tenzin of sTeng-chen, a Tibetan scholar of exceptional philological aptitude, with whom I have worked for more than a decade. I am also most grateful to Pasang Wangdui and Don- drup Lhagyal of the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences (Lhasa) for furnishing me with high quality digital images of the byol-rabs text. Furthermore, I must thank Geshe Changru Tritsuk Namdak Nyima of Triten Norbutse (Kathmandu) for his input regarding my reading of PT 1068.
    [Show full text]
  • A 60-POINT COMMENTARY on the Chinese Government Publication: a Collection of Historical Archives of Tibet
    A 60-POINT COMMENTARY on the Chinese Government Publication: A Collection of Historical Archives of Tibet DIIR PUBLICATIONS 2008 Published by: The Department of Information and International Relations, (DIIR) Central Tibetan Administration Gangchen Kyishong Dharamsala - 176 215 H. P., INDIA Email: [email protected] Website: www.tibet.net/ ww.tibet.com © DIIR First Edition, November 2008 2000 Copies ISBN 81-86627-82-0 Printed at: Narthang Press, Gangchen Kyishong, Dharamsala - 176 215 (H.P.) P U B L I S H E R ’ S N O T E This book is an English translation of the 60-point rebuttal in Tibetan by the Research and Analysis Unit of the Department of Security of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) issued on 13 January 2000 to counter the claims made in the Chinese government publication — A Collection of Historical Archives of Tibet. Compiled by the Archives of the Tibet Autonomous Region and published by the Cultural Relics Publishing House of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in October 1994, A Collection of Historical Archives of Tibet is a voluminous collection of 107 historical documents and cultural relics gleaned from the archives of the Mongol and Manchu periods down to the present People’s Republic of China. It seeks to prove that Tibet has always (or historically) been “a part of the big family of the Chinese motherland”. The Chinese government has — in so proving — resorted to actually re-writing history by churning out a concocted version of the past events that shaped Tibet’s relations with the Mongols and the Manchus in the 13th and 17th centuries respectively, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Mongols and the Manchus were foreign powers who once conquered and ruled China.
    [Show full text]
  • Pattern Recognition: Tracking the Spread of the Incarnation Institution Through Time and Across Tibetan Territory
    Pattern Recognition: Tracking the Spread of the Incarnation Institution through Time and across Tibetan Territory Gray Tuttle (Columbia University) ithin the limits of my sources, I will outline here the spread of incarnation lineages across time and throughout Tibetan W territory. The cultural institution of children being understood as rebirths (yang srid, but more commonly tulku, sprul sku) of important Buddhist teachers allowed for a concentration of charismatic, economic, and social power that had dramatic consequences for Tibetan society. While scholars have treated the origins of the first and most important of these lineages (the Karmapa, Dalai, and Paṇchen Lamas), no one has attempted to write a general history of the growth of the institution. I have compiled a list of nearly 500 incarnation series for which I have determined the rough start date as well as the location of the seat of the incarnation. I also have information on the location of roughly an additional 1000 incarnations series for which the start date is not known. I use this data to trace the growth of the institution and its spread throughout Tibet. This has been a daunting task for one person to undertake, even with the help of research assistants, but the initial results are quite compelling. Most publications about reincarnate lama lineages have been focused on a few key figures in Central Tibet, while reincarnation lineages from Eastern Tibet, the details of which I will discuss at the end of this article, have received less scholarly attention until fairly recently. In contrast to this pattern, the greatest concentration of reincarnate lineages is found in Amdo (with over 400 named lineages out of a total of more than 1000 throughout Tibet), while even Kham (with some 374 lineages) has over twice the number of Central Tibet (with 150 lineages).
    [Show full text]
  • Hidden Tibet: History of Independence and Occupation
    Hidden Tibet: History of Independence and Occupation by Sergius L. Kuzmin Edited by Andrey Terentyev Translated from Russian by Dmitry Bennett Originally published as: Hidden Tibet. History of Independence and Occupation. Sergius L. Kuzmin. 2010. St. Petersburg: Narthang. Copyright © 2011: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior per- mission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-93-80359-47-2 Published by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, H.P. 176215, and printed at Indraprastha Press (CBT), Nehru House, New Del- hi-110002 Contents Introduction v Chapter 1. Geography and Origin of the Tibetans 1 Chapter 2. Antiquity and the Middle Ages 9 Chapter 3. Epoch of the Qing Empire 41 Chapter 4. Last Years of Independence 83 Chapter 5. Religion and Culture 109 Chapter 6. State, Society and Economy 129 Chapter 7. “Peaceful Liberation” and Its Consequences 157 Chapter 8. From the People’s Uprising to the Cultural Revolution 207 Chapter 9. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Results of the Mao Period 287 Chapter 10. Reconstruction and Modernization 347 The Tibetan People’s Struggle, the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Refugees 353 Religion 387 Autonomy and Demography 409 Language, Education and Culture 418 Condition of the Natural Environment 424 Economy 428 Militarization 434 Living Standards and Health Care 436 Chapter 11. Tibet, an Inseparable Part of China? 441 Statehood in International Law and in the Chinese Tradition 441 On China and the “Chinese Dynasties” 452 Solution to the “Ethnic Problem” in China 470 The Status of Tibet: a Historical Retrospective 480 Chapter 12.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origin Myths and Upheavals Courtesy: LTWA
    The Origin Myths and Upheavals Courtesy: LTWA The Divine monkey mated with the mountain ogress to produce the first Tibetans The Tethys Sea was lifted up to become the Roof of the World What is a Nation? The Romans called ‘natio’, a race or a human group with a common ‘birth’. Today, the dictionary says that it is “a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin, who typically inhabit a particular country or territory”. This is the case for Tibet. Tibetans have an ‘imagined common history’, they descend from a male monkey, an incarnation of Avalokitesvara who married a mountain ogress. Their six offspring were the first Tibetans. The inhabitants of the Tibetan plateau are said to have the characteristics of both their ancestors. Except for the divine origin in the Tibetan legend, the modern Theory of Evolution is A supine ogress is said to have tamed Tibet’s soil not too different. by lying on her back to make it habitable As the supercontinent Gondwanaland broke up 100 million years ago, India separated from Africa. The Indian plate moved north and one day collided with the Asian plate. In the process the Tethys Sea was elevated to 5000 m. The Tibetan plateau was born. Eurasian plate India 10 millions years ago A Tibetan legend speaks of a Tibet covered by a giant lake The Indian continent 38 milions collided with Asia years ago 55 millions which dried up. The remaining lakes were prophesized to years ago Indian Ocean 71 millions years ago progressively shrink and give space to humans to live and India practice their religion.
    [Show full text]