While the Tibetan Plateau has been inhabited since pre-historic times, most of Tibet's history went unrecorded until the creation of Tibetan script in the 7th century. Tibetan texts refer to the kingdom of Zhangzhung (c. 500 BC– 625 AD) as the precursor of later Tibetan kingdoms and the originators of the Bon religion. While mythical accounts of early rulers of the Yarlung dynasty exist, historical accounts begin with the introduction of Tibetan script from the unified Tibetan Empire in the 7th century. Following the dissolution of Tibetan Empire and a period of fragmentation in the 9th–10th centuries, a Buddhist revival in the 10th–12th centuries saw the development of three of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
After a period of control by the Mongol Empire and the also Mongol led Yuan dynasty, Tibet effectively became independent in the 14th century and was ruled by a succession of noble houses for the next 300 years. In the 16th century, the Dalai Lama title was created by Altan Khan, and as requested by the family of Altan Khan, seal of authority was granted to the Dalai Lama by the Wanli Emperor. In the 17th century, the senior lama of the Gelug school, the Dalai Lama, became the head of state with the aid of the Khoshut Khanate. Seal of authority and golden sheets were granted by the Shunzhi Emperor to both the Dalai Lama and the founder Güshi Khan of Khoshut Khanate in 1653. In 1717, the Dzungar Khanate invaded Lhasa, killed Lha-bzang Khan of the Khoshut Khanate, which effectively destroyed the Khoshut Khanate. The Qing dynasty then sent military troops in the same year to fight the Dzungars, but failed.
In 1720, the Manchu led Qing dynasty sent troops for the second time and drove away the Dzungar army. An imperial edit for Imperial Stele Inscriptions of the Pacification of Tibet was written, and the term Xizang was officially used to designate the region. After the Thirteen Articles for the Settlement of Qinghai Affairs were proposed to Emperor Yongzheng, the borders between Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan were demarcated. In 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama went into exile in India in response to hostilities with the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC annexation in 1951 and flight of the Dalai Lama created several waves of Tibetan refugees and led to the creation of Tibetan diasporas in India, the United States, and Europe.
The Tibet Autonomous Region was established in 1965 after the Agreement of the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet was ratified in 1951 by the Dalai Lama. Tibetan independence and human rights emerged as international issues, gaining significant visibility alongside the 14th Dalai Lama in the 1980s and 1990s. Chinese authorities have sought to assert control over Tibet and has been accused of the destruction of religious sites and banning possession of pictures of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan religious practices. During the crises created by the Great Leap Forward, Tibet was subjected to mass starvation. The PRC disputes these claims and points to their investments in Tibetan infrastructure, education, and industrialization as evidence that they have replaced a theocratic feudal government with a modern state.
Geographical setting
Tibet lies between the civilizations of China proper and Indian subcontinent. Extensive mountain ranges to the east of the Tibetan Plateau mark the border with the Chinese heartland, and the Himalayas of the republics of Nepal and India separate the plateau from the subcontinent lying south. Tibet has been called the "roof of the world" and "the land of snows".
Linguists classify the Tibetan language and its dialects as belonging to the Tibeto-Burman languages, the non-Sinitic members of the broader Sino-Tibetan language family.
Prehistory
Some archaeological data suggest archaic humans passed through Tibet at the time India was first inhabited, half a million years ago. Impressions of hands and feet suggest hominins were present at the above 4,000 meters above sea level high Tibetan Plateau 169,000–226,000 years ago. Modern humans first inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least twenty-one thousand years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3000 years ago by Neolithic immigrants from northern China. However, there is a "partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations". The vast majority of Tibetan maternal mtDNA components can trace their ancestry to both paleolithic and Neolithic during the mid-Holocene.
Megalithic monuments dot the Tibetan Plateau and may have been used in ancestor worship. Prehistoric Iron Age hillforts and burial complexes have recently been found on the Tibetan Plateau, but the remote high altitude location makes archaeological research difficult.
Early history (c. 500 BC – AD 618)
Zhangzhung kingdom (c. 500 BC – AD 625)
According to Namkhai Norbu some Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the Bön religion.
By the 1st century BC, a neighboring kingdom arose in the Yarlung Valley, and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo, attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's Bön priests from Yarlung. Tsenpo was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century.
Tibetan tribes (2nd century AD)
In AD 108, "the Kiang or Tibetans, a nomad from south-west of Koko-nor, attacked the Chinese posts of Gansu, threatening to cut the Dunhuang road. Liang Kin, at the price of some fierce fighting, held them off." Similar incursions were repelled in AD 168–169 by the Chinese general Duan Gong.
Chinese sources of the same era mention of a Fu state (Chinese: 附国) of either Qiang or Tibetan ethnicity "more than two thousand miles northwest of Shu County". Fu state was pronounced as "bod" or "phyva" in Archaic Chinese. Whether this polity is the precursor of Tufan is still unknown.
First kings of the pre-Imperial Yarlung dynasty (2nd–6th centuries)
The pre-Imperial Yarlung dynasty rulers are considered mythological because sufficient evidence of their existence has not been found.
Nyatri Tsenpo is considered by traditional histories to have been the first king of the Yarlung dynasty, named after the river valley where its capital city was located, approximately fifty-five miles south-east from present-day Lhasa. The dates attributed to the first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo (Wylie: Gnya'-khri-btsan-po), vary. Some Tibetan texts give 126 BC, others 414 BC.
Nyatri Tsenpo is said to have descended from a one-footed creature called the Theurang, having webbed fingers and a tongue so large it could cover his face. Due to his terrifying appearance he was feared in his native Puwo and exiled by the Bön to Tibet. There he was greeted as a fearsome being, and he became king.
The Tibetan kings were said to remain connected to the heavens via a dmu cord (dmu thag) so that rather than dying, they ascended directly to heaven, when their sons achieved their majority. According to various accounts, king Drigum Tsenpo (Dri-gum-brtsan-po) either challenged his clan heads to a fight, or provoked his groom Longam (Lo-ngam) into a duel. During the fight the king's dmu cord was cut, and he was killed. Thereafter Drigum Tsenpo and subsequent kings left corpses and the Bön conducted funerary rites.
In a later myth, first attested in the Maṇi bka' 'bum, the Tibetan people are the progeny of the union of the monkey Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo. But the monkey was a manifestation of the bodhisattva Chenresig, or Avalokiteśvara (Tib. Spyan-ras-gzigs) while the ogress in turn incarnated Chenresig's consort Dolma (Tib. 'Grol-ma).
Tibetan Empire (618–842)
The Yarlung kings gradually extended their control, and by the early 6th century most of the Tibetan tribes were under its control, when Namri Songtsen (570?–618?/629), the 32nd King of Tibet of the Yarlung dynasty, gained control of all the area around what is now Lhasa by 630, and conquered Zhangzhung. With this extent of power the Yarlung kingdom turned into the Tibetan Empire.
The government of Namri Songtsen sent two embassies to China in 608 and 609, marking the appearance of Tibet on the international scene. From the 7th century AD Chinese historians referred to Tibet as Tubo (吐蕃), though four distinct characters were used. The first externally confirmed contact with the Tibetan kingdom in recorded Tibetan history occurred when King Namri Löntsän (Gnam-ri-slon-rtsan) sent an ambassador to China in the early 7th century.
Traditional Tibetan history preserves a lengthy list of rulers whose exploits become subject to external verification in the Chinese histories by the 7th century. From the 7th to the 11th centuries a series of emperors ruled Tibet (see List of emperors of Tibet) of whom the three most important in later religious tradition were Songtsen Gampo, Trisong Detsen and Ralpacan, "the three religious kings" (mes-dbon gsum), who were assimilated to the three protectors (rigs-gsum mgon-po), respectively, Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī and Vajrapāni. Songtsen Gampo (c. 604–650) was the first great emperor who expanded Tibet's power beyond Lhasa and the Yarlung Valley, and is traditionally credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet.
Throughout the centuries from the time of the emperor the power of the empire gradually increased over a diverse terrain so that by the reign of the emperor in the opening years of the 9th century, its influence extended as far south as Bengal and as far north as Mongolia. Tibetan records claim that the Pala Empire was conquered and that the Pala emperor Dharmapala submitted to Tibet, though no independent evidence confirms this.
The varied terrain of the empire and the difficulty of transportation, coupled with the new ideas that came into the empire as a result of its expansion, helped to create stresses and power blocs that were often in competition with the ruler at the center of the empire. Thus, for example, adherents of the Bön religion and the supporters of the ancient noble families gradually came to find themselves in competition with the recently introduced Buddhism.
Era of Fragmentation and Cultural Renaissance (9th–12th centuries)
Fragmentation of political power (9th–10th centuries)
The Era of Fragmentation was a period of Tibetan history in the 9th and 10th centuries. During this era, the political centralization of the earlier Tibetan Empire collapsed. The period was dominated by rebellions against the remnants of imperial Tibet and the rise of regional warlords. Upon the death of Langdarma, the last emperor of a unified Tibetan empire, there was a controversy over whether he would be succeeded by his alleged heir Yumtän (Yum brtan), or by another son (or nephew) Ösung ('Od-srung; either 843–905 or 847–885). A civil war ensued, which effectively ended centralized Tibetan administration until the Sa-skya period. Ösung's allies managed to keep control of Lhasa, and Yumtän was forced to go to Yalung, where he established a separate line of kings. In 910, the tombs of the emperors were defiled.
The son of Ösung was Pälkhortsän (Dpal 'khor brtsan; 865–895 or 893–923). The latter apparently maintained control over much of central Tibet for a time, and sired two sons, Trashi Tsentsän (Bkra shis brtsen brtsan) and Thrikhyiding (Khri khyi lding), also called Kyide Nyimagön (Skyid lde nyi ma mgon) in some sources. Thrikhyiding migrated to the western Tibetan region of upper Ngari (Stod Mnga ris) and married a woman of high central Tibetan nobility, with whom he founded a local dynasty.
After the breakup of the Tibetan Empire in 842, Nyima-Gon, a representative of the ancient Tibetan royal house, founded the first Ladakh dynasty. Nyima-Gon's kingdom had its centre well to the east of present-day Ladakh. Kyide Nyigön's eldest son became ruler of the Maryul (Ladakh region), and his two younger sons ruled western Tibet, founding the Kingdom of Guge– Purang and Zanskar– Spiti. Later the king of Guge's eldest son, Kor-re, also called Jangchub Yeshe-Ö (Byang Chub Ye shes' Od), became a Buddhist monk. He sent young scholars to Kashmir for training and was responsible for inviting Atiśa to Tibet in 1040, thus ushering in the Chidar (Phyi dar) phase of Buddhism in Tibet. The younger son, Srong-nge, administered day-to-day governmental affairs; it was his sons who carried on the royal line.
Tibetan Renaissance (10th–12th centuries)
According to traditional accounts, Buddhism had survived surreptitiously in the region of Kham. The late 10th century and 11th century saw a revival of Buddhism in Tibet. Coinciding with the early discoveries of "hidden treasures" (terma), the 11th century saw a revival of Buddhist influence originating in the far east and far west of Tibet.
Muzu Saelbar (Mu-zu gSal-'bar), later known as the scholar Gongpa Rabsal (bla chen dgongs pa rab gsal; 832–915), was responsible for the renewal of Buddhism in northeastern Tibet, and is counted as the progenitor of the Nyingma (Rnying ma pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism. In the west, Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055) was active as a translator and founded temples and monasteries. Prominent scholars and teachers were again invited from India.
In 1042 Atiśa (982–1054 CE) arrived in Tibet at the invitation of a west Tibetan king. This renowned exponent of the Pāla form of Buddhism from the Indian university of Vikramashila later moved to central Tibet. There his chief disciple, Dromtonpa, founded the Kadampa school of Tibetan Buddhism under whose influence the New Translation schools of today evolved.
The Sakya, the Grey Earth school, was founded by Khön Könchok Gyelpo (Wylie: 'khon dkon mchog rgyal po, 1034–1102), a disciple of the great Lotsawa, Drogmi Shākya (Wylie: brog mi lo tsā wa ye shes). It is headed by the Sakya Trizin, traces its lineage to the mahasiddha Virūpa, and represents the scholarly tradition. A renowned exponent, Sakya Pandita (1182–1251CE), was the great-grandson of Khön Könchok Gyelpo.
Other seminal Indian teachers were Tilopa (988–1069) and his student Naropa (probably died ca. 1040 CE). The Kagyu, the Lineage of the (Buddha's) Word, is an oral tradition which is very much concerned with the experiential dimension of meditation. Its most famous exponent was Milarepa, an 11th-century mystic. It contains one major and one minor subsect. The first, the Dagpo Kagyu, encompasses those Kagyu schools that trace back to the Indian master Naropa via Marpa Lotsawa, Milarepa and Gampopa.