Purang-Guge Kingdom

Donor depiction, presumably king Lha lde of Guge. Northwest stupa, Tholing Monastery, ca. 1025 CE.[1]

Purang-Guge kingdom (Tibetan: པུ་ཧྲངས་གུ་གེ་, Wylie: pu hrangs gu ge; Chinese: 普蘭-古格王國) was a small Western Himalayan kingdom which was founded and flourished in the 10th century in western Tibet.[2]

The original capital was at Purang (Tibetan: སྤུ་ཧྲེང་, Wylie: spu hreng) but was moved to Tholing in the Sutlej canyon southwest of Mount Kailash. It was divided into smaller kingdoms around the year 1100 CE.[3][4] Tholing, at 12,400 feet (3,800 m), the last town before Tsaparang in the kingdom of Guge was then its capital, (163 miles from Darchen). It was founded by the great-grandson of Langdarma, who was assassinated, leading to the collapse of the Tibetan Empire.[4]

Buddhist monuments at both Tsaparang and Tholing are now mostly in ruins except for a few statues and scores of murals in good condition, painted in the western Tibetan style.[2]

While Langdarma persecuted Buddhism in Tibet, his descendant, King Yeshe-Ö, who ruled the Guge Kingdom in the 10th century with Tholing as its capital, was responsible for the second revival or "second diffusion" of Buddhism in Tibet; the reign of the Guge Kingdom was known more for the revival of Buddhism than for its conquests. He built Tholing Monastery in his capital city in the 997 AD along with two other temples built around the same time, Tabo Monastery in the Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh and Khochar Monastery (south of Purang); both these monasteries are functional.[4]

  1. ^ Heller, Amy (1 January 2018). "Tibetan Inscriptions at Alchi, Part I Towards a reassessment of the chronology". Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015), Guntram Hazod and Shen Weirong, Editors, China Tibetology Publishing House.
  2. ^ a b Swenson, Karen (19 March 2000). "Echoes of a Fallen Kingdom". New York Times. Archived from the original on 9 November 2012.
  3. ^ Luczanits, Christian (2004). Buddhist Sculpture in Clay: Early Western Himalayan Art, Late 10th to Early 13th Centuries. Serindia Publications, Inc. pp. 25–28. ISBN 978-1-932476-02-6. Retrieved 23 January 2013.
  4. ^ a b c McCue, Gary (1 October 2010). Trekking Tibet: A Traveler's Guide. The Mountaineers Books. pp. 235–. ISBN 978-1-59485-266-4. Retrieved 3 January 2013.