THE GRAVES OF THE CHIEF MINISTERS OF THE TIBETAN EMPIRE MAPPING CHAPTER TWO OF THE OLD TIBETAN CHRONICLE IN THE LIGHT OF THE EVIDENCE OF THE TIBETAN TUMULUS TRADITION Guntram Hazod Introduction1 hapter two of the Old Tibetan Chronicle (PT 1287: l.63-117; hereafter OTC.2)2 is well known as the short paragraph that C lists the succession of Tibet’s chief ministers (blon che, blon chen [po]) – alternatively rendered as “prime minister” or “grand chancel- lor” in the English literature. Altogether 38 such appointments among nineteen families are recorded from the time of the Yar lung king called Lde Pru bo Gnam gzhung rtsan until the end of the Tibet- an empire in the mid-ninth century. This sequence is conveyed in a continuum that does not distin- guish between the developments before and after the founding of the empire. Only indirectly is there a line that specifies the first twelve ministers as a separate group – as those who were endowed with 1 The resarch for this chapter was conducted within the framework of the two projects “The Burial Mounds of Central Tibet“, parts I and II (financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF); FWF P 25066, P 30393; see fn. 2) and “Materiality and Material Culture in Tibet“ (Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS) project, IF_2015_28) – both based at the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. I wish to thank Joanna Bialek, Per K. Sørensen, and Chris- tian Jahoda for their valuable comments on the drafts of this paper, and J. Bialek especially for her assistance with lingustic issues. Thanks are also due to Hou Haoran for making Chinese sources accessible to me. 2 In addition to PT 1287 the “Old Tibetan Chronicle“ also includes the documents PT 1286 (TDD 197-199) plus the (older) Chronicle fragments ITJ 1375 and PT 1144 (cf. Dotson 2011a), but in the following OTC refers only to PT 1287. The refer- ences follow the chapter divisions 1-10 in Bacot et al. 1940-46, irrespective of their partly chronological disorder (cf. Uray 1992). There are numerous studies related to this first narrative history of Tibet’s past (composed in the mid-ninth century at the earliest) – from Uray to Dotson to mention only two scholars who have made special contributions to identifying the history, structure and nature of this text and its sources (Uray 1972, 1992; Dotson 2007a, 2011, 2016 [in Dotson and Helman-Ważny 2016]). A full translation of PT 1287 is given in Bacot et al. 1940- 46; largely also in Drikung 2011 (chap. 2-10). A comprehensive study on the OTC by Dotson (based on his Habilitationsschrift, not seen by the author of the present study) is said to be forthcoming. Guntram Hazod, “The Graves of the Chief Ministers of the Tibetan Empire: Mapping Chapter Two of the Old Tibetan Chronicle in the Light of the Evidence of the Tibetan Tumulus Tradition”, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 47, Février 2019, pp. 5-159. 6 Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines magical power, with the addition that (later) no man was born any- more who could compete with them. This era can be easily identified as the pre-imperial period of the Yar lung principality, while the sub- sequent seven ministers (nos. 13-19) are to be attributed to the early phase of the empire, before, with Mgar Stong rtsan Yul zung (no. 20), the list overlaps with the period of the Old Tibetan Annals (OTA – the most important comparative source for the historical period), and the position of chief minister appears for the first time in the entry of 652- 53 (Table 1). It seems clear that “chief minister” in this early chiefdom period (nos. 1-12) meant something different compared to the time of the empire, if it is not in itself a back projection of later realities, par- allel to the likewise anachronistic form of btsan po, Mighty One, i.e. emperor, which is sometimes found in later chronicles but also in OTC as a designation of the rulers of this epoch. But also for this sec- ond phase (nos. 13-19) it is questionable whether the post of chief minister already existed in the form described in the OTA. In fact, during this period there are indications in the sources that point to a juxtaposition of central ministers, who partly shared the responsibil- ity in administrating the core regions in a spatial division before, in the middle of the seventh century, this paramount figure of the blon chen can be clearly identified historically. This “account of those who served as chief ministers” (blon che brgyis pa’i rabs; Dotson 2009: 150) is actually a fairly condensed cata- logue. Apart from a few anecdotes and the brief statement about dis- graced ministers, the text does not include any further comments.3 So 3 In its form the blon che brgyis pa’i rabs seems to have no parallels in the historical tradition concerning Tibet’s ministers. There have evidently been several minister accounts available by the late ninth century, explicitly mentioned as models in the representations in later sources are the records of the Buddhist scribe Ldan ma Rtse rma[ng], i.e. the (lost) “king’s catalogue” (rgyal po’i dkar chag) Thang yig chen mo, said to be composed at the time of Mu tig btsan po (= Khri Lde srong brtsan, d. 815). Cf. Sørensen 1994: 177 (fn. 500), 541-42. This dkar chag was reportedly recov- ered by O rgyan Gling pa, who extensively used it in his accounts of the ministers included in the Bka’ thang sde lnga (KT), notably in the fifth book, the Blon po bka’i thang (BK; esp. Chap. 3 (the chapter about the origin of the ministers; KT: 436-37 – henceforth BK.3) and Chap. 19 (about the minister’s accomplishments; KT: 489-91 – henceforth BK.19); see also Rgyal po bka’i thang, KT: 88. These representations (as well as those in other post-dynastic history books) are important comparative sources but do not include any account of the chief ministers. BK.3 is a chronologi- cally disordered listing of 61 ministers among 14 families, where the title blon chen does not even appear. (There is talk about the “five classes of ministers”, starting with gung blon (“central” or “high minister”, a term also known from the Chronicle and edicts yet without being used as equivalent to blon chen), followed by spyi blon, dbang blon, nang blon, and bka’ blon). BK.19 again provides interesting anecdotes to leading ministers of Khri Srong lde brtsan (cf. Drikung 2011: 100ff.), representing more or less authentic reflections from the time of Ldan ma Rtse rmang in the early ninth century, and in this sense complements OTC.2, where, strikingly, no anec- The Graves of the Chief Ministers 7 how are we to speak about the graves of the chief ministers if the main source says nothing about them? Moreover, there are hardly any clear indications in this respect in the other chapters of the Old Tibetan Chronicle either, nor generally in Old Tibetan documents and the later sources. In contrast to the tombs of the royal family, there was evidently never an account of the tombs of Tibet’s chief minis- ters. Our source is the database of the “Tibetan Tumulus Tradition” (hereafter TTT) – a list of the burial-mound fields of Central Tibet, which in the meantime comprises more than 550 entries (grave fields nos. 0001-0562, but see Addendum below), based on information from in situ surveys, satellite imagery and the additions from Chinese archaeological documentations.4 The analysis of data related to the geographical position of the burial mound sites and their specific historical contexts etc. has already enabled a more detailed determi- nation of “elite grave mounds”, with several notable indications for the identification of lineage-specific cemeteries (Hazod 2018; Hazod, in press). Moreover, the tomb of one chief minister had already been identified much earlier (no. 33), providing important indications for the work at hand as to which particular category of burial mound can be expected. To map OTC.2 in connection with the issue of localising the chief ministers’ graves methodologically entailed a certain shift compared to earlier TTT studies, as it suggested not starting from the burial- mound sites themselves, but from the text. Here that means first to clarify the information on the individual family histories, and only in a second step to contrast the information with the evidence of elite mounds as they are more or less well documented today. In this way, some plausible approaches can be made. In some cases, not only can we isolate the possible tumulus field, but even, on the basis of certain statistical criteria, point to the grave that in all likelihood should be- long to the chief minister in question. However, the issue of identifi- cation is not the only point. Even if all the graves concerned were to be surveyed by excavations, – something, which will never happen, – the looted remains would probably not yield concrete evidence con- dotes are mentioned for the later ministers of the eighth and ninth centuries. In all, OTC.2 (combined with the most reliable information from the Annals; cf. here Dot- son 2009: 150-53) apparently represents the only source with regard to the succes- sion and chronology of Tibet’s chief ministers. 4 See the project website https://www.oeaw.ac.at/tibetantumulustradition for details on the individual sites, the circumstances of their finding, the current state of documentation, etc. This research project, entitled “The Burial Mounds of Cen- tral Tibet”, started in 2013 (based on previous surveys by the author) and is cur- rently in its second phase, both parts financed by the Austrian Science Fund: FWF P 25066 (2013-17); P 30393 (2017-21).