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62-630: The Angsi Glacier or Nangser Glacier ( Tibetan : ངང་སེར་འཁྱགས་རོམ , Wylie : ngang ser 'khyags rom , THL : ngang ser khyak rom ) is a glacier located on the northern side of the Himalayas in the Purang County in China's Tibet Autonomous Region . It is immediately to the east of the Indus-Tsangpo water divide at the eastern edge of the Purang County . One of the headwaters of

124-513: A city for the Chinese princess, and a palace for her within its walls. According to Chinese sources, "As the princess disliked their custom of painting their faces red, Lungstan (Songtsen Gampo) ordered his people to put a stop to the practice, and it was no longer done. He also discarded his felt and skins, put on brocade and silk, and gradually copied Chinese civilization. He also sent the children of his chiefs and rich men to request admittance into

186-409: A dispute with his younger brother Tsensong ( Wylie : brtsan srong ), the younger brother was burnt to death by his own minister, Khasek ( Wylie : mkha' sregs ), possibly at the behest of the emperor. The Old Book of Tang records that when the king of 泥婆羅, Nipoluo (" Nepal "), the father of Licchavi king Naling Deva (or Narendradeva), died, an uncle, Yu.sna kug.ti , Vishnagupta ) usurped

248-689: A minor when he succeeded to the throne." The current head of the Royal House of Tibet and king in exile is a direct descendant of the Dharma kings and has been crowned King of Tibet by Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama . His Majesty King Lhagyari Trichen Namgyal Wangchuk lives in the United States and travels the world speaking out for the human and religious rights of the Tibetan people, under

310-502: A result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa , there is a great divergence between current spelling, which still reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan, and current pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform , to write Tibetan as it is pronounced ; for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka'-rgyud . The nomadic Amdo Tibetan and

372-527: A younger brother bTzan-srong who was betrayed and died in a fire, c.  641 . According to one partially damaged scroll from Dunhuang, there was hostility between Sa-tha-ma-kar and bTzan-srong, who was then forced to settle in gNyal (southeast of the Yarlung River and across the 5,090 metres (16,700 ft) Yartö Tra Pass, which borders on modern Bhutan , and Arunachal Pradesh in India). When

434-589: Is believed that he was a manifestation of Avalokiteśvara , of whom the Dalai Lamas are similarly believed to be a manifestation. His identification as a cakravartin and incarnation of Avalokiteśvara began in earnest in the indigenous Buddhist literary histories of the 11th century. Songtsen Gampo's mother, the queen, is identified as a member of the Tsépong clan ( Wylie : tshe spong , Tibetan Annals Wylie : tshes pong ), which played an important part in

496-533: Is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script . This writing system is used across the Himalayas and Tibet . The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India , Nepal , Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Lepcha , Marchen and

558-480: Is commemorated in inscriptions at Rajagrha - modern Rajgir – and Bodhgaya . Wang Xuanze made a second journey in 648, but he was badly treated by Harsha's usurper, his minister Arjuna, and Harsha's mission plundered. This elicited a response from Tibetan and Nepalese (Licchavi) troops who, together, soundly defeated Arjuna's forces. In 649, the King of Xihai Jun was conferred upon Songtsen Gampo by Tang Gaozong ,

620-666: Is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 standards since the initial version. Since

682-633: Is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྲ /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; ཀྱ /ca/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance,

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744-734: Is said to have been the mother of Gungsong Gungtsen . Other notable wives include a noble woman of the Western Xia known as Minyakza ("Western Xia wife", Wylie : mi nyag bza' ), and a noble woman from Zhangzhung . Well-known even today are his two foreign wives: the Nepali princess Bhrikuti ("the great lady, the Nepalese wife", Wylie : bal mo bza' khri btsun ma ) as well as the Chinese Princess Wencheng ("Chinese Wife", Wylie : rgya mo bza' ). Songtsen sponsored

806-486: Is said to have only ruled for these five years and died at eighteen. Songtsen Gampo, returned to the throne. Gungsong Gungtsen is said to have been buried at Donkhorda, the site of the royal tombs, to the left of the tomb of his grandfather Namri Songtsen (gNam-ri Srong-btsan). According to Tibetan tradition, Songtsen Gampo was enthroned while still a minor as the thirty-third king of the Yarlung dynasty after his father

868-528: Is simply read as it usually is and has no effect on the pronunciation of the consonant to which it is subjoined, for example ཀ་ཝ་ཟུར་ཀྭ (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/). The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/, ཀི /ki/, ཀུ /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels ཨི /i/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while

930-560: Is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/. The head ( མགོ in Tibetan, Wylie: mgo ) letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/. The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/. In this position they are described as བཏགས (Wylie: btags , IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example བ་ཡ་བཏགས་བྱ (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for ཝ , which

992-563: The Bailang , and Qiang tribes. The Bailan people were bounded on the east by the Tanguts and on the west by the Domi . They had been subject to the Chinese since 624. After a successful campaign against China in the frontier province of Songzhou in 635–36 ( OTA l. 607), the Chinese emperor agreed to send a Chinese princess for Songtsen Gampo to marry. Around 639, after Songtsen Gampo had

1054-794: The Chinese Academy of Sciences declared that the Angsi Glacier is the "true source" of the Tsangpo River and this determination has been accepted by the Indian observers. Encyclopedia Britannica continues to regard the Chema-yungdung Glacier as the source of Brahmaputra. Tibetan script The Tibetan script has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali , Nepali and Old Turkic . The printed form

1116-502: The Goddess of Compassion , the female aspect of Chenrezig , where "Dolma, or Drolma ( Sanskrit means Tara ). As Sarat Chaundra explains, the two wives of Emperor Srong-btsan gambo are venerated under this name. The Chinese princess is called Dol-kar, of 'the white Dolma,' and the Nepalese princess Dol-jang, or 'the green Dolma.' The latter is prayed to by women for fecundity." The Jiu Tangshu adds that Songtsen Gampo thereupon built

1178-660: The Jokhang in Lhasa , the city in which he is credited in one tradition with founding and establishing as his capital, and Tradruk Temple in Nêdong . During his reign, the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Tibetan began. Songtsen Gampo is considered to be the first of the three Dharma Kings ( Wylie : chos rgyal ) — Songtsen Gampo, Trisong Detsen , and Ralpacan — who established Buddhism in Tibet. The inscription on

1240-898: The Latin script . Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the Wylie transliteration system is widely used to Romanize Standard Tibetan , others include the Library of Congress system and the IPA-based transliteration (Jacques 2012). Below is a table with Tibetan letters and different Romanization and transliteration system for each letter, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A) and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL). The first version of Microsoft Windows to support

1302-476: The Pabonka Hermitage . This occurred c.  620 , towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by the King which were afterward translated. In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan script was used for the codification of these sacred Buddhist texts, for written civil laws, and for a Tibetan Constitution. A contemporary academic suggests that the script

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1364-604: The Tibetan Annals say the mother was the btsan mo (Princess Wencheng) of Songtsen while the Genealogy says it was Mangmoje Trikar Wylie : mang mo rje khri skar ). It is unlikely that the mother was the btsan mo because the Annals did not use the honorific kinship term yum (mother) for her. Tibetan Empire-era documents found at Dunhuang say that Songsten Gampo also had a sister Sad-mar-kar (or Sa-tha-ma-kar) and

1426-483: The Tibetan script and Classical Tibetan , the first literary and spoken language of Tibet. His mother, the queen, is identified as Driza Thökar ( Tibetan : འབྲི་བཟའ་ཐོད་དཀར་ , Wylie : ' bri bza' thod dkar , ZYPY : Zhisa Tögar ). The exact date of his birth and his enthronement are not certain, and in Tibetan accounts it is generally accepted that he was born in an Ox year of the Tibetan calendar . He ascended

1488-600: The Tibetan script . He then presented the script to the court and taught the king. Songsten Gampo then retired for four years to learn the written language, after which he translated twenty-one tantric texts on Avalokiteshvara, and the Mani Kumbum . Songtsen Gampo moved the seat of his newly unified kingdom from the Yarlung Valley to the Kyichu Valley, site of the future city of Lhasa . The site itself

1550-534: The Tsangpo River (Brahmaputra), called Angsi Chu or Nangser Chu , originates in this glacier. Angsi Chu merges with the Chema-yungdung Chu within a short distance ( 30°24′14″N 82°16′37″E  /  30.4038°N 82.277°E  / 30.4038; 82.277  ( Confluence of Angsi and Chema-yungdung streams ) ), and the combined river is called Chema-yungdung Chu. Swami Pranavananda, an Indian ascetic and pilgrim, noted in 1939 that

1612-414: The 8th Zhenguan year, or 634 CE. Tang dynasty chronicles describe this as a tribute mission, but it brought an ultimatum demanding a marriage alliance, not subservient rituals. After this demand was refused, Tibet launched victorious military attacks against Tang affiliates in 637 and 638. There is some confusion as to whether Central Tibet conquered Zhangzhung during the reign of Songtsen Gampo or in

1674-551: The Chinese Emperor, Gaozong , a devout Buddhist, gave him the title variously written Binwang , "Guest King" or Zongwang , "Cloth-tribute King" and 3,000 rolls of multicoloured silk in 649 and granted the Tibetan king's request for "silkworms' eggs, mortars and presses for making wine, and workmen to manufacture paper and ink." Traditional accounts say that, during the reign of Songtsen Gampo, examples of handicrafts and astrological systems were imported from China and

1736-583: The Chinese and that the Tang emperor delivered a bride under threat of force. Early Tibetan accounts say that the Tibetan king and the king of Zhangzhung had married each other's sisters in a political alliance. However, the Tibetan wife of the king of the Zhangzhung complained of poor treatment by the king's principal wife. War ensued, and, through the treachery of the Tibetan princess, "King Ligmikya of Zhangzhung, while on his way to Sum-ba ( Amdo province)

1798-471: The Chinese) more than 200,000 men (100,000 according to Tibetan sources). He then sent an envoy with gifts of gold and silk to the Chinese emperor to ask for a Chinese princess in marriage and, when refused, attacked Songzhou. According to the Tang annals, he finally retreated and apologised, and, later, the emperor granted his request, but the histories written in Tibet all say that the Tibetan army defeated

1860-687: The Indian Bhotiya merchants call the Tumulung Lake as "Brahmakund" and regard it as the source of Brahmaputra. Water residues seen in satellite maps indicate that waters from the Ganglung Glacier, to the west of Angsi Glacier, once flowed into the Tumulung Lake, but now they flow west into Sutlej ( 30°26′25″N 82°00′19″E  /  30.4402°N 82.0052°E  / 30.4402; 82.0052  ( Ganglung stream flowing west ) ). In 2011, Chinese scientists from

1922-466: The Indian subcontinent state that the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages wishing to modernize or to introduce a written tradition. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where Buddhist practitioners initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform of the Ladakhi language was controversial in part because it

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1984-531: The Skar cung Pillar (erected by Ralpacan, who ruled c. 800–815) reports that during Songtsen Gampo's reign, "shrines of the Three Jewels were established by building the temple of Ra-sa [Lhasa] and so on." The first edict of Trisong Detsen mentions a community of monks at this vihara . Songtsen Gampo was adept at diplomacy as well as on the field of battle. The king's minister, Nyang Mangpoje Shangnang , with

2046-732: The Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista . The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007. In Ubuntu 12.04, one can install Tibetan language support through Dash / Language Support / Install/Remove Languages, the input method can be turned on from Dash / Keyboard Layout, adding Tibetan keyboard layout. The layout applies the similar layout as in Microsoft Windows. Mac OS -X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani. The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme

2108-410: The Tibetan script is that the consonants can be written either as radicals or they can be written in other forms, such as subscript and superscript forming consonant clusters . To understand how this works, one can look at the radical ཀ /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes ཀྲ /kra/ or རྐ /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/

2170-401: The Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter ཨ is also the base for dependent vowel marks. Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal , the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features, they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words. One aspect of

2232-833: The Tibetan traditions regard the Chema-yungdung glacier as the source of Brahmaputra. He also noted that Kubi Chu, another source stream of Brahmaputra favoured by Sven Hedin , is larger, and that the Angsi Chu gives greater length. As another complication, Angsi Chu merges with another stream called Dangkar Chu flowing from the Tumulung Lake ( Tibetan : ཏུང་ལུང་མཚོ , Wylie : tung lung mtsho ) before its confluence with Chema-yundung Chu ( 30°25′29″N 82°11′06″E  /  30.4246°N 82.1851°E  / 30.4246; 82.1851  ( Confluence of Dangkar Chu and Angsi Chu ) ). Pranavananda also noted that

2294-787: The Western Xia; the dharma and the art of writing came from India; material wealth and treasures from the Nepalis and the lands of the Mongols , while model laws and administration were imported from the Uyghurs of the Second Turkic Khaganate to the North. Songtsen Gampo is traditionally credited with being the first to bring Buddhism to the Tibetan people . He is also said to have built many Buddhist temples, including

2356-452: The aid of troops from Zhangzhung, defeated the Sumpa in northeastern Tibet circa 627 ( Tibetan Annals [ OTA ] l. 2). Six years later (c. 632/633), Myang Mang-po-rje Zhang-shang was accused of treason and executed ( OTA l. 4–5, Richardson 1965). Minister Mgar-srong-rtsan succeeded him. The Jiu Tangshu records that the first ever embassy from Tibet arrived in China from Songtsen Gampo in

2418-509: The arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongkha (dz) keyboard layout is included in Microsoft Windows, Android, and most distributions of Linux as part of XFree86 . Tibetan was originally one of

2480-407: The basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds. In addition to the use of supplementary graphemes, the rules for constructing consonant clusters are amended, allowing any character to occupy the superscript or subscript position, negating the need for the prescript and postscript positions. Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in

2542-447: The building of two temples to house the images of Buddha brought by his Nepalese and Chinese wives, however he showed little interest in propagating Buddhism otherwise, and was buried according to pre-Buddhist protocols and rituals when he died. Songtsen Gampo's heir, Gungsong Gungtsen , died before his father, so his younger son Mangsong Mangtsen inherited the throne. Two Dunhuang sources give different mothers for Mangsong Mangtsen:

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2604-415: The c. 620 date of development of the original Tibetan script. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not been altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters . As

2666-418: The consonants ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/, མ /ma/ and འ /a/ can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants ག /kʰa/, ན /na/, བ /pʰa/, ད /tʰa/, མ /ma/, འ /a/, ར /ra/, ང /ŋa/, ས /sa/, and ལ /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position

2728-607: The king refused to consummate the marriage, she then helped Songtsen Gampo to defeat Lig myi-rhya and incorporate the Zhangzhung of Western Tibet into the Tibetan Empire in 645, thus gaining control of most, if not all, of the Tibetan plateau. Following the visit by the famous Chinese pilgrim monk Xuanzang to the court of Harsha , the king ruling Magadha , Harsha sent a mission to China which, in turn, responded by sending an embassy consisting of Li Yibiao and Wang Xuance , who probably travelled through Tibet and whose journey

2790-402: The multilingual ʼPhags-pa script , and is also closely related to Meitei . According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was developed during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota , who was sent to India with 16 other students to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and written languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at

2852-404: The national school to be taught the classics, and invited learned scholars from China to compose his official reports to the emperor." However, according to Tibetologist John Powers, such accounts of Tibet embracing Chinese culture through Wencheng are not corroborated by Tibetan histories. Songtsen Gampo's sister Sad-mar-kar was sent to marry Lig-myi-rhya, the king of Zhangzhung. However, when

2914-513: The occupation of the People's Republic of China . Songtsen Gampo sent his minister Thonmi Sambhota and other young Tibetans to India to devise a script for Classical Tibetan , which led to the creation of the first Tibetan literary works and translations, court records and a constitution . After Thonmi Sambhota returned from India, he stayed in retreat at Kukhamaru Palace in Lhasa while creating

2976-431: The prince Gungsong Gungtsen reached the age of thirteen (twelve by Western reckoning), his father, Songtsen Gampo, retired, and the prince ruled for five years, which could have corresponded to the period when Songtsen Gampo was working on a new Tibetan constitution. Gungsong Gungtsen is also said to have married 'A-zha Mang-mo-rje when he was thirteen, and they had a son, Mangsong Mangtsen (r. 650–676 CE). Gungsong Gungtsen

3038-460: The reign of Trisong Detsen (r. 755 until 797 or 804 CE). The Old Book of Tang do seems to place these events clearly in the reign of Songtsen Gampo, for they say that in 634, Yangtong (Zhangzhung) and various Qiang peoples "altogether submitted to him." Following this, he united with the country of Yangtong to defeat the 'Azha, or Tuyuhun , and then conquered two more tribes of Qiang before threatening Songzhou with an army of (according to

3100-1066: The scripts in the first version of the Unicode Standard in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0. The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts: Songtsen Gampo Samding Dorje Phagmo Songtsen Gampo (Classical Tibetan: [sroŋpt͡san zɡampo] , pronounced [sɔ́ŋt͡sɛ̃ ɡʌ̀mpo] ) ( Tibetan : སྲོང་བཙན་སྒམ་པོ , Wylie : srong btsan sgam po , ZYPY : Songzän Gambo ; 569–649/650), also Songzan Ganbu ( Chinese : 松贊干布 ; pinyin : Sōngzàn Gānbù ),

3162-624: The throne after emperor Harshavardhan's death around 647 CE, the Licchavi king came to their aid. Songtsen Gampo married Princess Bhrikuti , the daughter of King Licchavi. The Chinese Princess Wencheng , niece of the Emperor Taizong of Tang , left China in 640 to marry Songtsen Gampo, arriving the next year. Peace between China and Tibet prevailed for the remainder of Songtsen Gampo's reign. Both wives are considered to have been incarnations of Tara (Standard Tibetan: Drolma ),

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3224-521: The throne at age thirteen, circa 618. There are difficulties with the ascension dates, and several earlier dates for the birth of Songtsen Gampo have been suggested, including 569, 593 or 605. It is said that Songtsen Gampo was born at Gyama in Meldro , a region to the northeast of modern Lhasa , the son of the Yarlung king Namri Songtsen . The book The Holder of the White Lotus says that it

3286-531: The throne. "The Tibetans gave him refuge and reestablished him on his throne [in 641]; that is how he became subject to Tibet." Sometime later, but still within the Zhenguan period (627–650 CE), the Tibetans sent an envoy to present day Nepal, where the king received him "joyfully", and, later, when a Tibetan mission was attacked in present-day India by then minister of emperor Harshavardhan who had usurped

3348-558: The unification of Tibet. Her name is recorded variously but is identified as Driza Tökar ("the Bri Wife named White Skull Woman", Wylie : ' bri bza' thod dkar , Tibetan Annals Wylie : bring ma tog dgos ). Songtsen Gampo had six consort queens, of whom four were Tibetan and two were foreign born. The highest-ranking consort was Pogong Mongza Tricham ( Wylie : pho gong mong bza' khri lcam , also called Mongza , "the Mong clan wife", who

3410-512: The vowel ཨུ /u/ is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanwords , especially transcribed from the Sanskrit . The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti , Chinese and Sanskrit , often has additional and/or modified graphemes taken from

3472-582: The western dialects of the Ladakhi language , as well as the Balti language , come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings. Despite that, the grammar of these dialectical varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the orthography and grammar of Classical Tibetan would be similar to writing Italian according to Latin orthography, or to writing Hindi according to Sanskrit orthogrophy. However, modern Buddhist practitioners in

3534-459: Was ambushed and killed by King Srongtsen Gampo's soldiers. As a consequence, The Zhangzhung kingdom was annexed to Bod [Central Tibet]. Thereafter the new kingdom born of the unification of Zhangzhung and Bod was known as Bod rGyal-khab." R. A. Stein places the conquest of Zhangzhung in 645. He next attacked and defeated the Tangut people who later formed the Western Xia state in 942 CE),

3596-467: Was first initiated by Christian missionaries. In the Tibetan script, the syllables are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a tsek (་); since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space. Spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. As in other Indic scripts , each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel ; in

3658-428: Was instead developed in the second half of the 11th century. New research and writings also suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to the introduction of the script by Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota . The incomplete Dunhuang manuscripts are their key evidence for their hypothesis, while the few discovered and recorded Old Tibetan Annals manuscripts date from 650 and therefore post-date

3720-528: Was originally a herding ground called Rasa ("the place of goats") but the name was changed to Lhasa ("the place of gods") on the king's founding of the Jokhang Temple. The name Lhasa itself originally referred simply to the temple precincts. He is also credited with bringing many new cultural and technological advances to Tibet. The Jiu Tangshu , or Old Book of Tang , states that after the defeat in 648 of an Indian army in support of Chinese envoys,

3782-487: Was poisoned circa 618. He is said to have been born in an unspecified Ox year and was 13 years old (12 by Western reckoning) when he took the throne. This accords with the tradition that the Yarlung kings took the throne when they were 13, and supposedly old enough to ride a horse and rule the kingdom. If these traditions are correct, he was probably born in the Ox year 605 CE. The Old Book of Tang notes that he "was still

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3844-623: Was the 33rd Tibetan king of the Yarlung dynasty and the founder of the Tibetan Empire . The first of three Dharma Kings of Tibet, he formally introduced Buddhism to Tibet and built the Jokhang with the influence of his Nepali queen Bhrikuti , of Nepal 's Licchavi dynasty . He unified several Tibetan kingdoms, conquered lands adjacent to Tibet, and moved the capital to the Red Fort in Lhasa . His minister Thonmi Sambhota created

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