Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Most histories of Tibet begin with the kings of the Yarlung Valley region and their unifica-
tion of central Tibet in the 7th century. But it is thought that the Shangshung (or Zhang-
zhung) kingdom of western Tibet probably ruled the Tibetan plateau for several centuries
before this. According to some scholars, the Bön religion made its way into the rest of
Tibet from here. The Shangshung kingdom may also have served as a conduit for Tibet's
earliest contacts with Buddhism. There is little material evidence of the Shangshung king-
dom in modern Tibet, though the Khyunglung Valley, on the Sutlej River near Tirthapuri
hot springs, marks the site of the old kingdom.
The next regional power to emerge in Ngari was the Guge kingdom in the 9th century.
After the assassination of the anti-Buddhist Lhasa king Langdharma, one of the king's
sons, Namde Wosung, fled to the west and established this kingdom at Tsaparang, west of
Lake Manasarovar and Mt Kailash. The Guge kingdom, through its contacts with nearby
Ladakh and Kashmir, spearheaded a Buddhist revival on the Tibetan plateau. The great In-
dian sage Atisha spent three years in the region, and his disciple Rinchen Zangpo brought
over 25 artists whose stylistic influences were felt all over Tibet.
In the late 16th century, Jesuit missionaries based in the enclave of Goa took an interest
in the remote kingdom of Guge, mistaking it for the long-lost Christian civilisation of
Prester John (a legendary Christian priest and king who was believed to have ruled over a
kingdom in the Far East). The Jesuits finally reached Tsaparang over the Himalaya from
India in 1624 after two failed attempts, but if their leader, Father Antonio de Andrade, had
expected to find Christians waiting for him, he was disappointed. Nevertheless, he did
meet with surprising tolerance and respect for the Christian faith. The Guge king agreed to
allow de Andrade to return and set up a Jesuit mission the following year. The foundation
stone of the first Christian church in Tibet was laid by the king himself.
Ironically, the evangelical zeal of the Jesuits led not only to their own demise but also to
the demise of the kingdom they sought to convert. Lamas, outraged by their king's increas-
ing enthusiasm for an alien creed, enlisted the support of Ladakhis in laying siege to Tsa-
parang. Within a month the city fell, the king was overthrown and the Jesuits imprisoned.
The Guge kingdom never recovered.
At this point, Ngari became so marginalised as to almost disappear from the history
books - with one notable exception. In the late Victorian era, a handful of Western ex-
plorers began to take an interest in the legend of a holy mountain and a lake from which
