History of China

The Organized Bon Religion and the Native Tibetan Tradition The two main religious traditions of Tibet are Bon and Buddhism. The former was the native faith of Tibet, while the latter had been introduced by Tibet’s first emperor, Songtsen-gampo (Srong-btsan sgam-po, r. 617 ...

The Founding of the Qarakhanid Empire When the Orkhon Uighur Turks were driven from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz takeover in 840 CE, they lost possession of the sacred earth-goddess mountain Otuken near their former capital, Ordubaliq. According to the pre-Buddhist and...

The Early Yarlung Kings According to the traditional account, the first king of the Yarlung Dynasty (Yar-klungs) in Central Tibet came there from the central North Indian kingdom of Magadha. He was called Nyatri Tsenpo (gNya’-khri btsan-po) and it was thought that he descended...

The Regional Context Before discussing historical developments during the early Abbasid caliphate, let us briefly review the political situation in Central Asia just before the dawn of this period. The Umayyads ruled Sogdia and Bactria, while the Tang Chinese army occupied the...

The following academic institutions in Beijing are invol­v­ed with Tibetan studies. (1) The China Tibetology Research Center (Zhongguo Zang­xue Yanjiu Zhongxin 中国藏学研究中心), with director, Dorje Tsetan, and deputy director, Hu Tan, ­­has 120 workers, half of whom are engaged...

Long before the Arabs brought Islam to Central Asia in the mid-seventh century CE, Buddhism had flourished there for hundreds of years. It was particularly prominent along the Silk Route, which carried trade between India and Han China, and led from both to Byzantium and to...

The Fragmentation of Tibet after Langdarma’s Assassination The Tibetan Empire disintegrated after the assassination of Langdarma in 842 CE. Central authority was not restored for four centuries. The imperial Tibetan troops had already started to withdraw from the border...

Review of Tibetan Relations with China Tibet and China had first established diplomatic relations in 608 C.E. when Emperor Songtsen-gampo’s father, Namri-lontsen (gNam-ri slon-mtshan), had sent the first Tibetan mission to the Chinese court at the time of the Sui Dynasty...

Wutaishan 五台山 (Ri-bo rtse-lnga), the five-peaked sacred mountain of Manjushri in Shanxi 山西, China, has 57 Buddhist monasteries. The first of these, Xiantong Si 显通寺, was founded in the seventh-cen­tury when a stupa was brought there from Baima Si 白马寺, according to tradition,...

Khotanese Missions to Han China Khotan, lying to the east of the Qarakhanid stronghold in Kashgar, was a wealthy Buddhist state. Its mines were the main source of jade for all the lands along the Silk Route, especially Han China. Occasionally, its kings had even visited Han...