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Gonchen Monastery

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Samding Dorje Phagmo

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33-451: Gonchen Monastery ( Tibetan : དགོན་ཆེན་དགོན , Wylie : dogn chen dgon , ZYPY : Goinqên Goin ), also known as Derge Monastery ( Tibetan : སྡེ་དགེ་དགོན་ཆེན , Wylie : sde dge dgon chen ), is a large Sakya Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the town of Derge , in Sichuan , China . Gonchen is located in the ethnic Tibetan cultural region of Kham . The main chapel of the monastery

66-458: 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 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

99-496: 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 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

132-544: Is a Sino-Tibetan language of Nepal spoken by the Thakali people , mainly in the Myagdi and Mustang Districts . Its dialects have limited mutual intelligibility . Seke (Serke, Tangbe , Tetang, Chuksang) is sometimes considered a separate language. Other names and dialect names are Barhagaule, Marpha, Panchgaunle, Puntan Thakali, Syang, Tamhang Thakali, Thaksaatsaye, Thaksatsae, Thaksya, Tukuche, Yhulkasom. Seke (Serke)

165-410: 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,

198-712: Is an extensive complex which resulted in it being called the "great monastery". The monastery has a notable design, with striped walls of white, dark red and gray, colors unique to the Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Below the monastery itself is the famous Derge Parkhang (Printing House), built in 1729, where the Buddhist scriptures the Kangyur and the Tengyur and other Buddhist works are still printed from wooden blocks in traditional handwork. The printing house, run by monks of

231-670: Is bounded by Annapurna Himal on one side and Dhawalagiri Himal on the other, with Tatopani village in the south and Jomsom in the north ( Ethnologue ). The Tukuche dialect is spoken from Tukuche to Thaksatsae, in 13 villages: Tukuche, Khanti, Kobang, Larjung, Dampu, Naurikot, Bhurjungkot, Nakung, Tithi, Kunjo, Taglung, Lete, Ghansa. Many live outside the area. Seke is spoken by Gurung of Chuksang, Tsaile, Tangbe, Tetang, and Gyakar villages of Mustang District , Dhawalagiri Zone . There are only 700 native speakers of this language, 100 of whom live in New York City . Reportedly, half of

264-666: 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

297-528: 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

330-560: 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

363-810: Is spoken in the villages of Tangbe, Tetang, Chuksang, Chaile, and Gyakar in Mustang District , northern Nepal. Martine Mazaudon has documented the Tangbe dialect of Seke as spoken by an expatriate speaker in Paris. Honda (2002) also documented two other dialects of Seke, Tetang and Chuksang. Thakali is spoken in the middle of the Kali Gandaki River valley and in the upper part of the Kali Gandaki Gorge (also known as Thak Khola), in Mustang District , Gandaki Province . The Thakali area

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396-578: 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 the multilingual ʼPhags-pa script , and is also closely related to Meitei . According to Tibetan historiography,

429-898: 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

462-518: 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 the western dialects of the Ladakhi language , as well as the Balti language , come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings. Despite that,

495-482: 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 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

528-732: 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

561-606: The Tibetan opera, and the numerous iron suspension bridges he constructed throughout the Himalayan region. He is said to have made 108 of them, the most celebrated being the one over the Yarlung Tsangpo near modern Chushul . He is often shown in murals with long white hair and holding some chain links from his bridges. The monastery was completely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution . The monastery

594-490: 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 the Pabonka Hermitage . This occurred c.  620 , towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by

627-426: The administrative building opposite the monastery which is protected from earthquakes and fire by the goddess Drolma, an emanation of Tara . Tangyel Lhakhang is a secondary temple to the west of Gonchen Monastery's main temple. Gonchen Monastery was founded by Thang Tong Gyalpo (or Tangton Gyelpo) (1385-1464), a Buddhist yogi and polymath , physician, and treasure finder, renowned for founding of Ache Lhamo ,

660-509: 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

693-407: 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

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726-418: 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

759-592: 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 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

792-452: 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 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

825-490: The monastery, continues to use ancient techniques and uses no electricity. The roof is used for drying the printed sheets. It houses some 217,000 engraved blocks of scriptures from all Tibetan Buddhist sects including the Bon and about 2,500 pages are hand-produced each day by monks in the traditional manner. Upstairs in the same building older printers produce prints on both cloth and paper. Workers carve new wooden printing blocks in

858-404: 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/ 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

891-453: 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 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

924-749: 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: Thakali language Thakali

957-467: 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 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

990-512: 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

1023-742: Was crushed by police by gunfire and detentions, according to the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy citing reports from the region. The monks were released four days later but, according to sources cited by the Voice of Tibet , 30 had been badly injured following beatings and torture. Tibetan script The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or abugida , derived from Brahmic scripts and Gupta script , and used to write certain Tibetic languages , including Tibetan , Dzongkha , Sikkimese , Ladakhi , Jirel and Balti . It

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1056-414: Was originally developed c.  620 by Tibetan minister Thonmi Sambhota for King Songtsen Gampo . 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 is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script . This writing system

1089-480: Was restored in the 1980s and the three inner sanctums are dedicated to Guru Rinpoche ( Padmasambhava ), Sakyamuni Buddha (Sakya Thukpa) and the future Buddha, Jampa or Maitreya . On the way downhill to the printing press there is a small alley which leads off to the left to the Tangton Gyelpo Chapel (Tangyel Lhakhang). On 27 January 2009, a protest involving several Tibetan monks near the monastery

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