The Myth of Buddhist Kingship in Imperial Tibet

CHAPTER 5 The Mirror and the Palimpsest: The Myth of Buddhist Kingship in Imperial Tibet

Georgios T. Halkias

Thereafter, the emanated king (Srong-btsan-sgam-po) established the law according to the sūtra of the Ten Virtues in order to convert all sen- tient beings in Tibet, the land of snow, to Buddhism. That is to say, because there were no religious laws in former times, twelve Tibetan princes were unsteady in their ways. Because the imperial law was unwholesome, there was no happiness in the Tibetan kingdom. However, now that there is a King who protects the Buddha’s doctrines, all Tibetans have been converted to the dharma and virtue. Maṇi Compendium, vol. e, 266a1–3 …

[M]yth is a system of communication . . . it is a message . . . it is a mode of signification, a form . . . myth is depoliticized speech . . . it purifies [things], it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact . . . it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth. Mythologies, 143 ⸪

1 Introduction: The Development of Buddhist Kingship in Tibet

There is no political-cum-religious figure that has been so widely referred to in Tibetan historical writings and celebrated in prophesy and legend as the emperor Songtsen Gampo (Srong-btsan sgam-po, c.613–c.649 C.E.), the archi- tect of the political, legal and cultural foundations of the Tibetan empire and an alleged embodiment of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva of compassion,

Avalokiteśvara. His symbolic import as the first ‘Buddhist King’ of Tibet (Skt. dharmarāja; Tib. chos.rgyal) signals a historical event and foretells the making of an intricately woven story that merits closer examination. The historicity of the event in question concerns Tibet’s transition from a tribal confederacy to a vast and sophisticated empire renowned in Central Asia, while the story recounts the deeds of heroic men in Tibet’s successful conversion to Buddhism. The teachings of the Buddha are said to have flourished in Tibet under the ‘enlightened’ patronage of Songtsen Gampo who, like the Indian Mauryan Emperor Aśoka, nearly a millennium before the rise of Tibetan imperialism, united much of India and passed down in Asian historiography as a religious devotee and an extraordinary sponsor of Buddhism. During the bygone age of heroic men, the emperor served as the custodian of the wisdom of the race. He stood as a symbol of an ideology that ascribed to the upper classes the mythical qualities of the gods (from which the heroes are supposed to descend) and to the lower classes the attributes of savages in need of the civilizing forces of Buddhism. In several ‘revealed texts’ (gter.ma) of pre- sumed imperial provenance, which appeared centuries after the collapse of the Tibetan empire, Songtsen Gampo is considered the first ‘Buddhist king’ in a lineage of monarchs whose prerogative to rule was sanctioned by a Mahāyāna plan of salvation drafted in illo tempore. The construction of Buddhist kingship marked the origins of an enduring tradition of historia sacra in Tibetan historiography from at least the twelfth century onwards.1 At first glance there is nothing remarkable about a fictionalized portrayal of Songtsen Gampo. Early depictions of the emperor go back to a statue in the Potala palace in Lhasa said to date from Tibet’s imperial era. The theme of emperors personified as celestial bodhisattvas was commonly embellished in Tibetan post-imperial histories, but in all likelihood this figurative trope goes back to an eighth century letter. Inspired from a number of episodes of the Buddha’s past lives as a bodhisattva, in texts known as Jātaka, the Indian Tantric teacher Buddhaguhya adopted the same model when, in a letter addressed to the Emperor Trisong Détsen (Khri srong lde btsan) and his forefathers, he wrote: “Because of rLung-nam ’phrul-gyi-rgyal-po [’Dus-srong], the Lord, and

1 Treasure or revealed texts from the 12th century, like the Maṇi Compendium (Ma ṇi bKa‌‌‌’ ’bum) attributed to Sontsen Gampo, the Pillar Testament (bKa‌‌‌’ chems ka khol ma), and especially those associated with Nyang ral nyi ma ’od zer (1124–1192) articulated “a narrative of Buddhist divinities intervening in the life of the Tibetans, who adopted a position heretofore exclusively occupied by Indian personalities;” Davidson, “The Kingly Cosmogonic Narrative,” 67.