Vol. VI, No. 3.] The Kingdom of gNya khri btsanpo. 07 



[N.S.] 



about all this. 



Ladakh 



and its writer naturally contrived to make his home the king- 

 dom of the first king of Tibet. In the same way, the Central 

 Tibetan historians placed his kingdom near Lhasa. Quite so, 

 and yet, the Ladakhi account strikes me as being more 

 original. The Lhari was evidently added to the name Yarlha 

 shambu, to make the mountain fit in the story. The name 

 Umbu bla sgang was misunderstood and changed to Yumbu gla 

 sgang which cannot be traced anywhere. The only other local 

 name in the central Tibetan version is bTsan thang (plain of 

 the btsanpo or king) which can be given to any plain near the 

 royal residence. 



Although gNya khri btsanpo' s empire was apparently 



very small, it seems to have grown in extent towards the east, 



until Srong bisan sgampo made Lhasa his capital. Before he 



went there, he resided in Ladakh, at least according to my ex- 



planation of Tibetan history Thus, the message to the Chinese 



emperor in which he asked the hand of Kongjo in marriage was 



sent from Ladakh, and a Ladakhi, the minister Rigpacan, 



a native of Shargolha in Purig, was the ambassador in this 



matter. The name of Rigpacan actually occurs in the rGyalrabs , 



but Schlagintweit in his translation mistook it for an adjective 



and translated it accordingly. At Shargolha, the house of 



this very same minister is still shown to travellers. Also the 



embassy of Thonmi sambhota started from Ladakh. As the 



Ladvags rGryal robs says, it was sent to Kashmir, and to no 



other part of India. This was very natural, for the Ladakhi 



form of Buddhism which then prevailed among the Dards of 



Ladakh, was closely related to the Buddhism of Kashmir, 



it used the same kind of characters, a form of the Gupta 



character, but it had become stagnated. As the Ladakhi 



inscriptions of these times (700-900 A.D.) show us, the characters 



were used for nothing, but the summum bonnm of Buddhism of 



those times, the Ye dharma formula. 



In Kashmir, the motherland of Ladakhi Dard Buddhism, 

 Thonmi received instructions from a Brahman called Libyin. 

 This name has always been wrongly translated. It has to be 

 translated ■ Glory * (or blessing) of the land 'Li.' It is a name 

 parallel to another name mentioned under King ^'itng srong 

 9 adu rje. Under the latter king a priest called Khri bdun yul 

 byin is mentioned. This name can only be translated by 

 1 Glory of the land Khri bdun.' Libyin had apparently re- 

 ceived his name, because the land Li had reason to be proud of 

 him. The land Li is either a country near Nepal or Turkistan. 

 I am convinced that it here signifies Turkestan ; for there is some 

 probability that it was in the Turkistan monasteries that Tibet an 

 was first reduced to writing, and Thonmi sambhota simply reaped 

 the fruit of such learning. The theory of the first origin of 

 the Tibetan script in Turkistan was first propounded by Dr. 



