People & Histories
c. 618–842

Songtsen Gampo and the Tibetan Empire

The Yarlung kings unite the plateau, and under Songtsen Gampo and his successors Tibet becomes an empire that fights and treats with Tang China as an equal, until it collapses in 842.

  • The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia — Christopher I. Beckwith, Princeton University Press (1987)
  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
  • A Cultural History of Tibet — David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1968)

Well established empirestatehoodidentity

In the early seventh century, chieftains of the Yarlung valley, south-east of today’s Lhasa, built a confederation of clans across central Tibet. Under Songtsen Gampo (died c. 649), it became an empire. He conquered the western kingdom of Zhangzhung, moved his court to Lhasa and turned Tibet into a power that Chinese, Indian and Turkic rulers had to reckon with.

  • The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia — Christopher I. Beckwith, Princeton University Press (1987)
  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)

Queens and temples

Tibetan tradition says Songtsen Gampo married a Nepali princess, Bhrikuti, and a Chinese princess, Wencheng, who came from the Tang court in 641. Each is said to have brought a precious Buddha image; Wencheng’s, the Jowo, is still the holiest statue in Tibet, in the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. The Chinese marriage is recorded in Chinese sources; the Nepali princess appears only in later Tibetan ones.

  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
Tradition also credits his minister Thonmi Sambhota with creating the Tibetan script from an Indian model, and the earliest Tibetan writing does date from this period.
  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
  • A Cultural History of Tibet — David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1968)

An Inner Asian empire

His successors expanded much further. For two centuries Tibetan armies fought the Tang for control of the Silk Road oases, and at its height the empire stretched from the Pamirs to western China and into Nepal and parts of northern India. In 763 Tibetan forces briefly occupied the Tang capital, Chang’an. Tibet also controlled Dunhuang for decades, where Tibetan documents from this era were later found in a sealed cave.

  • The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia — Christopher I. Beckwith, Princeton University Press (1987)
  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)

The treaty

In 821–822 Tibet and the Tang made a peace treaty, inscribed in Tibetan and Chinese on pillars in Lhasa, Chang’an and on the border. It describes two sovereign rulers, “nephew” and “uncle” by old marriage ties, and fixes a frontier, promising that “Tibetans shall be happy in Tibet and Chinese shall be happy in China”, in one common English rendering. The Lhasa pillar still stands outside the Jokhang.

  • A Cultural History of Tibet — David Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1968)
  • The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia — Christopher I. Beckwith, Princeton University Press (1987)
  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)

Collapse

In 842 the emperor Langdarma was assassinated. Later Buddhist histories remember him as a persecutor of Buddhism killed by a monk, though historians think the story is at least partly legend. A succession dispute split the dynasty, and the empire broke apart into local kingdoms and clans. Tibet would not be united under a single ruler again for centuries.

  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)

Tibetans today remember Songtsen Gampo, Trisong Detsen and Tri Ralpachen as the three Dharma Kings who made Tibet a Buddhist land, and the empire as proof that Tibet once stood as an equal among Asia’s great powers.

  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)

How it's seen
Tibetan tradition

Songtsen Gampo, an emanation of Chenrezig, united Tibet, created the script, gave the first laws and welcomed Buddhism through his Nepali and Chinese queens. He is the first of the three great Dharma Kings, and the empire shows Tibet as a sovereign power.

  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)
  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)

Chinese official narrative

The marriage of the Tang princess Wencheng to Songtsen Gampo in 641 brought Chinese culture, technology and Buddhism to Tibet and began the close bonds between the Tibetan and Han peoples that led to Tibet becoming part of China.

  • Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity — State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China (2021)
  • The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics — Elliot Sperling, East-West Center (2004)

Historians

The Tibetan Empire was a major independent power in Inner Asia, at times stronger than the Tang. The royal marriages were diplomatic alliances of the kind both courts made with many neighbours. Much of the later story of Songtsen Gampo's Buddhist piety was elaborated centuries afterwards.

  • The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia — Christopher I. Beckwith, Princeton University Press (1987)
  • Tibet: A History — Sam van Schaik, Yale University Press (2011)
  • The Tibetans — Matthew T. Kapstein, Blackwell (2006)

Why it matters today

Tibetans

The empire is the proudest memory of Tibetan statehood. Tibetans point to the treaty of 821–822, still carved on a pillar in front of the Jokhang in Lhasa, as proof that Tibet and China once met as equals. Chinese accounts stress instead Princess Wencheng's marriage as the beginning of Han–Tibetan kinship.