User:Gimme danger/Sandbox/HT

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[edit] Prehistory

Construction of an early history of the Tibetan region relies primarily on ancient Chinese histories supplemented with limited archaeological findings.[1]

Chinese and "proto-Tibeto-Burman" languages may have split sometime before 4000 BC. The Chinese began growing millet in the Yellow River valley and the Tibeto-Burmans remained nomads; Tibetan split from Burmese circa 500[2][3].

[edit] Archaeological record

Megalithic monuments dot the Tibetan Plateau and may have been used in ancestor worship. It is unknown whether these monuments were built by ancient Tibetans.[1]

Later Tibetan culture is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Qiang tribes that appear in ancient Chinese accounts like the Bamboo Annals and the Shi-chi. True Tibetans probably separated from the Qiang and moved south. [1]

[edit] Mythological origins

The first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsanpo (Wylie: Gnya'-khri-btsan-po), is supposed to have descended from the sky, or immigrated to Tibet from India. Because of his strange physical features such as having webbed hands, and eyes which close from below, he is supposed to have been greeted by the locals as a god. The king remained connected to the heavens with a rope, and rather than dying, ascended the same rope again.

The legendary King Drigum Tsenpo (Dri-gum-brtsan-po) provoked his groom Longam (Lo-ngam) to fight with him, and during the fight the King's heaven-cord was cut, and he was killed. As a result, Drigum Tsenpo and subsequent kings left corpses and were buried.[4][5]

In a later myth, first attested in the Maṇi bka' 'bum, the Tibetan people are the progeny of the union of a monkey and rock ogress. The Monkey is in fact a manifestation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (Tib. Spyan-ras-gzigs) and the ogress in fact the goddess Tara (Tib. 'Grol-ma).[6]

  1. ^ a b c Hoffman, Helmut (2003). "Early and Medieval Tibet", in Alex McKay: The History of Tibet 1. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 45–68. 
  2. ^ Van Driem, George "Tibeto-Burman Phylogeny and Prehistory: Languages, Material Culture and Genes"
  3. ^ Bellwood, Peter & Renfrew, Colin (eds) Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis (2003), Ch 19.
  4. ^ Haarh, The Yarluṅ Dynasty. Copenhagen: 1969.
  5. ^ Beckwith, Christopher I. The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia. A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages, 1987, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02469-3, p. 13.
  6. ^ Khar, Rabgong Dorjee (1991). "A Brief Discussion on Tibetan History Prior to Nyatri Tsenpo." Translated by Richard Guard and Sangye Tandar. The Tibet Journal. Vol. XVI No. 3. Autumn 1991, pp. 52-62. (This article originally appeared in the Tibetan quarterly Bod-ljongs zhib-'jug (No. 1, 1986).