Songtsen Gampo
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Songtsen Gampo (T. སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ་, srong btsan sgam po) (c.605-650) was the 33rd king of the Yarlung dynasty of Tibet and founder of the Tibetan Empire. He was the first of the "Three Dharma Kings" of Tibet; the other two being Trisong Detsen and Ralpacan. During his reign, the first Buddhist temples in Tibet were built: the Rasa Trulnang (future Jokhang) and the Ramoche.
Songtsen Gampo had two wives: Princess Bhrikuti from the Licchavi kingdom of Nepal, and princess Princess Wencheng from the Tang Dynasty of China. Traditional Tibetan histories consider both princesses as physical manifestations of the bodhisattva Tara, and Songtsen Gampo as a physical manifestation of Avalokitesvara.[1]
Matthew Kapstein writes:
- Later Tibetan historiography attributes three great civilizing innovations to the emperor Songtsen Gampo: the introduction of a system of writing, the codification of the laws, and the inception of Tibetan Buddhism. These themes have been much mythologized in the writings of post-eleventh-century historians, and their accounts can only be used with great caution. Nevertheless, their association of literacy, legislation, and religious change probably does represent a genuine insight into fundamental relationships among three undeniably crucial developments in the cultural history of early medieval Tibet. [2]
Notes
- ↑ Powers (2004), p. 36.
- ↑ Kapstein, M. The Indian Literary Identity in Tibet. In Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (2003), pp. 752.
External links
- King Songtsen Gampo, Khyentse Foundation
TBRC Profile- Songtsen Gampo (Wikipedia)
Songtsen Gampo, Rigpa Shedra Wiki
