Early Tibet (pre-7th century)
Before the unification of Tibet under Songtsen Gampo (c. 618–650 CE), the Tibetan Plateau was not a single state.
It was a mosaic of tribal clans (rus-chen) and chiefdoms (sde-srid) spread across high valleys and river basins — especially in Yarlung, Ngari (Western Tibet), Kham, and Amdo.
These groups were semi-nomadic pastoralists and highland farmers who raised yaks, sheep, and barley, and organized themselves around powerful clan heads.
There were hundreds of such clans, but a few gained prominence — especially the Yarlung clan, who ruled from the fertile Yarlung Valley south of present-day Lhasa.
It was from this valley that Songtsen Gampo’s ancestors, especially his grandfather Namri Songtsen (Gnam-ri Srong-btsan), began expanding control over neighboring chieftains — laying the foundation for the Tibetan Empire.
Religion and cosmology — before organized Buddhism
Before Buddhism arrived from India in the 7th century, the people of the plateau practiced an indigenous religion later called Bön (བོན་).
But it’s important to distinguish between:
• the ancient, pre-Buddhist Bön (shamanic, animistic traditions), and
• the organized Bön religion that developed later (10th–11th centuries), influenced by Buddhist ideas.
The early Bön tradition involved:
- Nature worship — mountains, rivers, sky, and local deities (yul lha, gzhi bdag, srung ma)
- Ancestor veneration — lineage spirits of the great clans (rus-chen)
- Ritual specialists or shamans (bon-po, lha pa, gshen), who performed divination, healing, exorcism, and funeral rites
- Sky burials and funerary tumuli — archaeological finds in western Tibet (Ngari, Guge, Rutok) show rich burial goods, masks, and bronze objects related to death cults.
So early Tibet’s spiritual world was a complex shamanic-animistic cosmos.
Cultural connections
By the late first millennium BCE and early centuries CE, Tibet was connected through trade and migration to surrounding cultures:
- To the west: Zhang Zhung kingdom in Ngari, possibly connected to Central Asian and Iranian peoples
- To the south: Nepalese and North Indian polities (the Lichchavi kingdom of Kathmandu Valley)
- To the north and east: the proto-Qiang and Tangut cultures of present-day Qinghai and Gansu
The ancient Zhang Zhung kingdom, centered around Mount Kailash, is often regarded as an early cultural predecessor to Tibet — many Bön traditions claim origin there.
Tibetan Empire (7th–9th century)
Around the early 600s CE, a young king named Songtsen Gampo (སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ་) came to power in the Yarlung Valley, inheriting a growing kingdom from his father Namri Songtsen.
He is remembered as the ruler who unified the many clans and tribes of the Tibetan Plateau into one powerful state — the Tibetan Empire (Bod chen po).
From his capital at Ra-sa (which later became Lhasa, “Place of the Gods”), Songtsen Gampo began building roads, fortresses, and laws that linked the distant regions of Tibet together.
His court organized the first Tibetan script, said to have been created by his minister Thonmi Sambhota, based on an Indian model of writing. This became the foundation of Tibetan literature and record-keeping.
Expansion and diplomacy
Under Songtsen Gampo and his successors, Tibet quickly grew into a major power in Central Asia.
Tibetan armies reached into:
• Nepal and North India,
• the Tarim Basin and Xinjiang,
• parts of Yunnan, and
• along the ancient Silk Road toward the western Chinese provinces and Central Asian kingdoms.
Tibet even established alliances through marriage diplomacy — the most famous being:
- Princess Bhrikuti from Nepal, and
- Princess Wencheng from Tang China (sent by Emperor Taizong around 640 CE).
These marriages were meant to secure peace and trade, but they also opened the door for new religions, arts, and technologies to enter Tibet.
The coming of Buddhism
Before this time, Tibetans followed their own ancient spiritual traditions (early Bön), centered on nature spirits and mountain gods.
Through Nepal and China, Songtsen Gampo encountered Buddhism, which taught compassion, meditation, and rebirth.
He and his queens built the first great Buddhist temples in Tibet: Jokhang Temple and Ramoche Temple in Lhasa.
Inside Jokhang, the statue of the Buddha Shakyamuni (arguably brought by Princess Wencheng, or his Nepali wife) is still one of Tibet’s most sacred treasures.
At first, Buddhism did not replace the old beliefs — it mixed with them.
Many early monasteries performed both Buddhist and Bön rituals, and mountain spirits were reinterpreted as protector deities in the Buddhist world.
This gradual blending became one of Tibet’s most unique cultural features: a synthesis of Indian Buddhism and native Bön.
The empire’s height
After Songtsen Gampo, Tibet continued to expand under kings like:
- Trisong Detsen (755–797 CE), who invited Indian teachers such as Padmasambhava and Śāntarakṣita to establish Samye Monastery, Tibet’s first Buddhist monastery;
- Ralpachen (815–838 CE), who supported large-scale translation of Buddhist texts and built alliances with monks.
During this time, Tibet became one of the largest empires in Asia, controlling much of western China, Nepal, and parts of Central Asia.
In 783 CE, the Tibetan and Tang Chinese courts even signed a peace treaty, the terms of which are still carved on a stone pillar outside the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa — a rare surviving witness to this era.
The fall of the empire
However, not everyone in Tibet supported Buddhism. Traditional noble families and old Bön priests felt their power was being replaced by the growing influence of monasteries. This tension led to political struggles at the royal court.
In 842 CE, the last emperor, Langdarma, who is said to have opposed Buddhism, was assassinated — possibly by a Buddhist monk. After his death, the empire collapsed into civil war.
Regional rulers and monasteries began to govern on their own. This long period of fragmentation (9th–10th centuries) is known as the Era of Division.
Tibet no longer had a single king, but local kingdoms and monastic centers kept the culture and religion alive.
Later, in the 10th–11th centuries, Buddhism would revive in a “Second Diffusion,” leading eventually to the rise of powerful monasteries and the Dalai Lama system centuries later.
Medieval Period (10th–17th century)
- Monastic revival; great centers like Samye, Drepung, Sera, and Ganden flourish.
- Buddhist schools—Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug—shape culture and politics.
- Mongol patronage (13th c.); Sakya leadership, later rise of Gelug (Tsongkhapa).
Dalai Lama Government (1642–1951)
- 5th Dalai Lama, backed by Gushri Khan, founds a theocratic state in Lhasa.
- Relative isolation; interactions with Nepal, Mongols, and Qing empire.
- Qing suzerainty asserted in the 18th c., but local administration remains Tibetan.
20th Century to Present
- 1911–1950: de facto self-rule after Qing collapse.
- 1950–51: PRC asserts control; 14th Dalai Lama leaves Lhasa in 1959.
- Today: governed as the Tibet Autonomous Region; ongoing debates over autonomy, culture, and religion.
• Samten Karmay, “The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet” (2009)
• R.A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization (1972)
• Per Kværne, The Bon Religion of Tibet (1995)
• Charles Ramble (2013) on pre-Buddhist ritual and local deities
• Archaeological surveys by John Bellezza (esp. “Death and Beyond in Ancient Tibet,” 2008)
0 comments