Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/366

Rh districts, where they also ruled as petty princes. Hodde left four sons,—Phabdese, Thide, Thich'ung, and Gnagpa. The first and fourth became masters of Tsangrong, the second took possession of Atndo and Tsongkha, the third became king of Dblls, and removed the capital to Yarlung, south of Lhasa. He was followed on his throne from son to son by eleven successors. History is silent as to the fate of the eastern king, the other son of gLang-dharma, and his successors, but the geographical names of the chieftainships enumerated above make it clear that the western kingdom had extended its power to the east. Chronology is deficient for all that period. While the dynasty of Khorre in Shang-shung and that of Thich ung in Dblls were running, another authority, destined to become the superior of both, had arisen in Tibet. Khorre left his throne to his son Lhade, who was himself succeeded by his three sons, the youngest of whom invited the celebrated Indian Buddhist, Atisha, to leave his monastery Vikrama Shila for Tibet, where he settled in the great lamaserai of Thoding in Ngari. Besides religious books and teachings, he introduced in 1026 the method of computing time by cycles of sixty years, "obtained from the Indian province of Shambala." He was the first of the several chief priests whose authority became paramount in the country. The kings of Dblls greatly patronized them, as for instance in the case of the celebrated Sakya Pandita by the seventh of these kings. Pandita, at the special request of Kuyuk, the successor of Ogdai, paid a visit to his court in 1246-48. Five years afterwards Kublai Khan conquered all the east of Tibet; and, after he had ascended the throne of China, the Mongol emperor invited to his court Phagspa Lodoi Gyaltshan, the nephew of the same Pandita. He remained twelve years with the emperor, and at his request framed for the Mongol language an alphabet imitated from the Tibetan, which, however, did not prove satisfactory, and disappeared after eighty-five years without having been very largely used. In return for his services, Kublai invested Phagspa with sovereign power over (1) Tibet proper, comprising the thirteen districts of U and Tsang, (2) Kham, and (3) Amdo. From this time the Sakya-pa lamas became the universal rulers of Tibet, and remained so, at least nominally, under twenty-one successive lamas during seventy years (1270-1340). Their name was derived from the Sakya monastery, which was their cradle and abode, and their authority for temporal matters was exercised by specially appointed regents. When the power of the Sakya began to wane, that of the rival monasteries of Digung, Phagdub, and Tshal increased largely, and their respective influence and authority overbalanced that of the successors of Phagspa. It was at this troubled epoch that Chyang Chub Gyalt shan, better known as Phagmodu from the name of his native town, appeared on the scene. He subdued Tibet proper and Kham, for the continued possession of which he was, however, compelled to fight for several years; but he succeeded in the long run, and with the approval of the court of Peking established a dynasty which furnished twelve rulers in succession. When the Mongol dynasty of China passed away, the Mings confirmed and enlarged the dominion of the Tibetan rulers, recognizing at the same time the chief lamas of the eight principal monasteries of the country. Peace and prosperity gradually weakened the benign rule of the kings of this dynasty, and during the reign of the last but one internecine war was rife between the chiefs and nobles of U and Tsang. This state of things, occurring just as the last rulers of the Ming dynasty of China were struggling against the encroachments of the Manchus, their future successors, favoured the interference of a Khoskot Mongol prince, Tengir To, called in the Tibetan sources king of Koko-nur. The Mongols were interested in the religion of the lamas, especially since 1576, when Altan, khakan of the Tumeds, and his cousin summoned the chief lama of the most important monastery to visit him. This lama was Sodnam rGyamtso, the third successor of Gedundub, the founder of the Tashilumbo monastery in 1447, who had been elected to the more important abbotship of Galdan near Lhasa, and was thus the first of the great, afterwards dalai, lamas. The immediate successor of Gedundub, who ruled from 1475 to 1541, had appointed a special officer styled depa to control the civil administration of the country. To Soduam rGyamtso the Mongol khans gave the title of Vadjra Dalai Lama in 1576, and this is the first use of the widely known title of dalai lama. During the minority of the fifth (really the third) dalai lama, when the Mongol king Tengir To, under the pretext of supporting the religion, intervened in the affairs of the country, the Pan-chen Lo-sang Ch o-kyi Gyal-ts ang lama obtained the withdrawal of the invaders by the payment of a heavy war indemnity, and then applied for help to the first Manchu emperor of China, who had just ascended the throne. This step enraged the Mongols, and caused the advance of Gushri Khan, son and successor of Tengir To, who invaded Tibet, dethroned all the petty princes, including the king of Tsang, and, after having subjugated the whole of the country, made the fifth dalai lama supreme monarch of all Tibet, in 1645. The Chinese Government in 1653 confirmed the dalai lama in his authority, and he paid a visit to the emperor at Peking. The Mongol Khoskotes in 1706 and the Sungars in 1717 interfered again in the succession of the dalai lama, but the Chinese army finally conquered the country in 1720, and the present system of government was established. The events which have happened since that time have been recorded in the articles and.

Bod-skad is the general name of the language of Tibet, which Lanis also occasionally called Gangs-can-gyi skad (i.e. "the glaciers guage. language "). This name is specially applied to the forms in use in Dblls-gTsang. The vernacular is called p dl-skad or common language in contradistinction to the Kos-skad or book language. Besides the Bod-skad there are two chief dialects in Great Tibet, that of Khams, spoken in the three provinces of Mdo (Darrtsemdo), Kham, and Gong in the east, and that of Ngari-Khorsum in the west. Jaeschke arranged these dialects under three heads, (1) western, including those of Balti and Purig, the most archaic, and of Ladak and Lahul; (2) central, including those of Spiti and of Dblls and gTsang; (3) Khams. To the same Bhot group belong the Changlo or Bhutani or Lhopa, the language of Bhutan, of which we have a grammatical notice by Robinson (1849), and the Serpa and the Takpa, of Tawang, both of which are only known through the vocabularies collected by Hodgson. The later Takpa forms the transition between the Bhot group and the Si-fan group, which includes the Miniak, Sungpan, Lifan, and Thochu dialects, spoken near the eastern borders, as well as the Horpa, spoken on a larger area west of the preceding, and much mixed with Turkic