History of the Zhang Zhung Kingdom

Revised version of a compilation by GlobalSecurity.org

Tibetans believe that they originated from a monkey and a Raksasi, who married
under the order of Avalokiteshvara and gave birth to six children, thus starting the
history of Tibet. Mount Gongpori (dzo dang gangs po ri) located in the Shannan
Region, is considered to be the place where the couple once lived according to a
legend handed down through generations. In this early time, the Tibetans indulged in
a sort of devil worship, practised magic and probably offered human sacrifices to
appease the wrath of the unseen powers. Recent archeological discoveries in different
parts of Tibet show that the original inhabitants began to live in the highlands as early
as the Palaeolithic Age. They later merged with the Qiang people, who had come the
long way from Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, becoming the ancestors of Tibetans.
Early archaeological investigations on the Tibetan Plateau concluded that this harsh,
high-elevation environment was successfully colonized around 30,000 years ago.
The Tibetan culture is a magnificent culture which started in Zhang Zhung (zhang
zhung), the first kingdom of Tibet. Zhang Zhung, the area that was the original source
of Tibetan culture, once actually included the whole of Tibet. Tibetan culture,
thoroughly permeated with religion, is the product of a particular historical epoch.
This culture of the Tibetan people finds expression in traditional folk art forms. It can
be traced back as far as the Tubo and Zhang Zhung period. There were at least two
early kingdoms in Tibet: Zhang Zhung and Yarlung (yar klungs), the former situated
to the west of Tibet. The kingdom of Zhang Zhung not only is a historical reality, but
it is from there that Tibetan culture originated, preceding the Yarlung dynasty in
Tibet. The Zhang Zhung (transcribed Zhang Zhung, Shang Shung, Zan Zun or
Tibetan Pinyin Xang Xung) appears to have been more of a culture zone than an
actual 'kingdom', so Tibetan history usually starts with the advent of Buddhism under
the Yarlung Kingdom.
The Zhang Zhung kingdom is usually considered to cover a geographical area
corresponding to today's west Tibet. Zhang Zhung, before its decline, was the name
of an empire which comprised the whole of Tibet. The empire known as Zhang
Zhung Go-Phug-Bar-sum (sgo phug bar sum) consisted of Kham (khams) and Amdo
(a mdo) forming the Go or door, U (dbus) and Tsang (gtsang) forming the Bar or
middle, and To Ngari Korsum (stod mnga' ris skor gsum) forming the Phug or
interior. Zhang Zhung existed as a non-Tibetan country at the time of the emergence
of Tibet as a great power in Central Asia. From the 11th century BC the Chinese used
to call by the name of Kiang the tribes (about 150 in number) of nomads and
shepherds in Koko Nor and the northeast of present Tibet; but their knowledge
continued to be confined to the border tribes until the sixth century of the Christian
era. The Lhasa dynasties which invited over the Indian Buddhists Atisha and others
about this time were entirely unknown to the Chinese. Even of Khotan they knew
absolutely nothing subsequent to 990, and Khotan relations with the Song Dynasty
were confined to complimentary missions. Hence analysts reject the idea that the U
and Zhang Zhung dynasties of the old Lhasa Empire had ever anything to do with
China, North or South, in any shape or form, subsequent to the end of the ninth
century, and up to the conquests of Kublai Khan four centuries later. From 866 to
1260 Tibet and Lamaism were as completely a blank to China as were the Franks and
Christianity, nor had the Tangut monarchy ever at any period the faintest relations
with Lamaistic Tibet.
The Bon religion of the royal period (seventh to ninth centuries) is said to have come
from Tazig (stag gzig, Tajik/Iran) via Zhang Zhung, and Zhang Zhung is the probable
source of other early components of Tibetan civilization. A pre-Buddhist shamanistic
religion prevalent in early Tibet, Bon originated just west of Mount Kailash in Guge
(gu ge), the capital of the ancient kingdom of Zhang Zhung. Like the Buddhists who
came centuries after him, Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche (ston pa gshen rab mi bo che)
combined the various native mystical cults under his own to fashion Bon, or Bn. He
settled in Zhang Zhung, presently known as western Tibet's Guge region. Centered on
the Tibetan Plateau, the tale of the kingdom of the Bon people is of profound
importance, for it was from the Bon kingdom of Zhang Zhung that the myth of
Shambhala arose. Shambhala, named Olmo Lung Ring ('ol-mo lung-rings), was
considered to be one of the great centers of the Zhang Zhung culture of central Tibet.
These people settled in Tibet and practiced some form of ritual Bon culture, which
must have evolved from Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. Animal sacrifice and burning
of junipers indicate strong influence of these religions.
The Bon culture may or may not have had a single central state. According to Bon
belief, Zhang Zhung had 18 kings, but it is unclear whether this means 18 kings in
dynastic sequence, or rulers of 18 co-existing kingdoms. History does not record the
names of many of the kings of Zhang Zhung, nor is anything known of what they did.
The absence of even a fictive king list would tend to suggest the absence of a
dynastic sequence, even a mythic one. This kingdom of Zhang Zhung, probably a
confederation of local chieftains headed by the Ligmi (lig mi meaning existence)
dynasty, ruled much of present-day western and central Tibet for some centuries.
Although there is evidence of a lost Zhang Zhung Bonpo script, it is generally
believed that Tibet had no written language until King Songtsen Gampo (srong btsan
sgam po 617 - 699). But legend relates that Tonpa Shenrab (surely a millenium prior
to Songtsen Gampo) taught the calculation of astrology, medicine and other
teachings. It is also said he invented the first writing, which did not exist before him.
This script for the language of Zhang Zhung is called Mar (smar) which means
divine, or coming from the sky. It is considered to be a very holy, a divine writing.
Bon was the official religion of the Zhang Zhung kingdom. The literature of the Bon
religion is replete with references and allusions to Zhang Zhung which, according to
these sources, was large and powerful, and once covered much of todays Tibetan
territory. According to Bonpo sources, there were eighteen Zhang Zhung kings who
ruled Tibet before King Nyatri Tsenpo (gnya' khri btsan po). The first king of Zhang
Zhung called Triwer Laje Sergyi Jaruchen (khri wer la rje gser gyi bya ru can), was a
contemporary of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche. Bon texts attest that Triwer lived one
thousand years before the Buddha, in very ancient times.
The earliest Tibetan documents preserved at Dunhuang mention both Bon and Zhang
Zhung, but these documents can be difficult to date and even harder to interpret. This
culture predated the coming of Buddhism. The eighth book of the grub mtha' legs
bshad shel kyi me long in twelve volumes by the Tibetan lama Chokyi Nyima (chos
kyi nyi ma dpal bzang po 1674 - 1740) gives some information on the rise of the
Bonpo in the region of Zhang Zhung, identified not with the modern region of the
same name in the northwest of Lhasa, but with Guge and Kinnaur.
According to some historians, Nyatri Tsenpo, the first king of Tibet, was a
contemporary of the Buddha Shakyamuni, while according to others he lived at a
later time. According to the standard modern text book on the history of medicine
used presently in Tibet (gso rig lo rgyus, Beijing, 2004), the ancient scholar Shenton
Yeshe Lodro (gshen ston ye shes blo gro) asserts that Shenrab was born in 1957 BC,
while some modern historians would date his birth to the year 1917 BC.
But the famed Zurkhar Lodro Gyalpo (zur mkhar blo gros rgyal po) relates in his
Encyclopedic Outline that "At the same time that Bhagavan Shakyamuni arrived in
the world, the one called Shenrab Miwoche arrived in Purang" (in Western Tibet).
This statement dates the Buddha to Shenrab. The Cambridge and Oxford histories of
India accept 483 BC as the date of Buddha's nirvana. He was 80 years old when he
died, so this puts his birth year at 563 BC. The most recent birth date of the Buddha
would be 562 BC, versus the traditional Theravadin date of 624 BC, while the so
called short chronology puts the birth of the Buddha in the range of 484 BC. But it
is as difficult to take these works seriously as a work on the life of Tonpa Shenrab as
it is to take the Morte D'Arthur as true history of British royalty.
The three regions of Tibet - the Tsangpo Valley, Changthang and Kham - give Tibet
its varied physical landscape. The home of Zhang Zhung is the Changthang (byang
thang, northern plain), the remote north and west of the Tibetan Autonomous
Region and the highest, coldest and driest part of the Tibetan plateau. At 15,000 to
17,000 feet above sea level, Zhang Zhung represents the highest elevation civilization
ever to have existed. By the early first millennium BC, the Tibetans began to create a
civilization on the highest reaches of the Plateau in which mountaintop strongholds,
lakeside settlements, and ritual centers associated with the dead predominated. The
largest lake in the Changthang, Nam Tsho (gnam mtsho, Celestial Lake) is nearly
50 miles long. It is the site of a series of Zhang Zhung monuments, all within sight of
the lake. This area was visited in the 1870s by two Indian Pundits working for the
British Imperial government. They returned to India with fantastic stories of
pyramids and other ancient wonders.
Scholars know very little about the Zhang Zhung Kingdom and its original
geographical extent. The chronology of Zhang Zhung sites remains in question. The
methodologies of archaeology, genetics, and historical linguistics have the potential
to shed light on Tibet's prehistory, but they have so far been little employed. In the
stunningly beautiful Changthang area in the Tibetan plateau, the Zhang Zhung culture
built a large network of temples, forts, villages and tombs. There are a number of
hilltop ruins in western Tibet ascribed by local residents to the Mon-pa. A semi-
legendary prehistoric people, the Mon-pa were probably of non-Tibetan origin. Their
hilltop forts exhibit diverse construction styles, and some of these structures were
probably constructed in the Zhang Zhung period.
Until recently, little hard evidence of Zhang Zhungs purported greatness had
emerged. Archeological work on the Changthang plateau has found evidence of an
Iron Age culture which some identify as the Zhang Zhung. According to John
Vincent Bellezzas findings, the stone remains date to the Iron Age, a time span from
the first millennium BC to the period of the first Buddhist Kings of the 7th century
AD. Some locate the lost kingdom of Zhang Zhung and, in doing so, the original
Shambala itself, in a remarkable gorge beyond the Himalayas, full of extraordinary
ruins.
The Zhang Zhung kings of the past lived in different places such as Guge and
Khyunglung Ngulkar (khyung lung ngul mkhar), near Mount Kailash, and many
others. The Silver Palace of Khyunglung is in the upper Sutlej Valley of Zhang
Zhung. Khyunglung is interesting because it is the place where the last king of Zhang
Zhung lived. And, by one account, Khyunglung Ngulkar is more than 3000 years old
because from the time of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, there were eighteen famous
Zhang Zhung kings and most of these continued to live in this area and used
Khyunglung Ngulkar for more than two thousand years.
The sacred Kailash, also called Meru, occupies an important place in Hindu
mythology. Mount Kailash is regarded in the Hindu mythology as the mansion of the
gods and Shiva's paradise, and as late as the mid-19th century was thought to be the
highest mountain in the world, being estimated to have a height of 30,000 feet
(actually 22,000 feet). The Kailash mountain forms a great water parting to the north
of the southern range of the Himalayas. The Indus starts eastward from its northern
slope; the Sutlej takes off to the south-west from its southern side and the Tsangpo, or
Brahmaputra, flows eastwards from its eastern base. The Sanskrit mythologists
believed that the Ganges issued from the sacred lake Manasarowar. This, of course,
was a pure conjecture, and an erroneous one. Geographers held that the Sutlej took its
rise in the lake, but the true origin of that river is ascribed by Moorcroft to the
Rakshastal lake, close to the west of the Manasarowar and perhaps connected with it.
The Manasarowar formed a beautiful feature of the Elysium of the Hindus, or Siva's
paradise on the Kailash mountain. It is one of the four lakes of which the gods drink.
The Light of Kailash is a monumental work of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu (chos
rgyal nam mkha'i nor bu) about the origins of the Tibetan Culture. In 1988 Prof.
Namkhai Norbu, the founder of the Zhang Zhung Institute, organized an expedition
to Mount Kailash, which also visited the ancient cave-city near the modern village of
Khyunglung in Dzamda county (rtsa mda' rdzong). There, he identified for the first
time the cave-city with the last capital of Zhang Zhung, Khyunglung Ngulkar
(literally Silver Castle in the Garuda Valley). The remains of the three-story
Palace of Khyunglung, probably the king and his familys residence, are still
visible. Beneath the castle there were other constructions of which there are no traces
on the surface.
As the Zhang Zhung empire declined, a kingdom known as Bod, the present name of
Tibet, came into existence at Yarlung and Chonggye ('phyongs rgyas) valleys at the
time of King Nyatri Tsenpo, who started the heroic age of the Chogyals (chos rgyal,
religious kings). Initially the ancient kings of Zhang Zhung, in Western Tibet, fought
off the armies of the emerging Yarlung kings of southern Tibet. Zhang Zhung
flourished until around 700 AD, when deteriorating climate and cultural and religious
changes in Tibet combined in its demise. Songtsen Gampo (618 to 649), the first
King of the Tubo Kingdom, introduced Buddhism as one of the pillars of his
kingdom. The Bon culture of Zhang Zhung was seen as a political threat by Songtsen
Gampo and thus this early Tibetan king adopted Buddhism and attempted to
eliminate all traces of Bon. Songtsen Gampo was forced to marry off his sister,
Sadmarkar (bza dmar dkar), to a powerful adversary in the West - the Zhang Zhung
king Ligmigya (lig mi rgya) - as a tribute. Songtsen Gampo eventually murdered the
last king of Zhang Zhung in 645 AD. Bod grew until the whole of Tibet was reunited
under King Songtsen Gampo, once Ligmigya was killed. The Bon master Gyerpung
Drenpa Namkha (gyer spung dran pa nam mkha') struggled with Trisong Detsen
(khri srong lde btsan) to protect the Bon faith until the king finally broke Zhang
Zhung's political power.
The kingdom of Zhang Zhung is named in the Dunhuang documents as having been
conquered by the great Tibetan king. The gradual merger of the Tubo culture of the
Yarlung Valley and the ancient Zhang Zhung culture of the western part of the
Tibetan Plateau formed the native Tibetan.