Introduction
Tibet (/tɪˈbɛt/ (listen); Tibetan: བོད་, Lhasa dialect IPA: /pʰøː˨˧˩/; Chinese: 西藏; pinyin: Xīzàng) is a historical region covering much of the Tibetan Plateau in Inner Asia. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Tamang, Qiang, Sherpa, and Lhoba peoples and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese and Hui people. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 5,000 metres (16,000 ft). The highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising 8,848 m (29,029 ft) above sea level.
The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century, but with the fall of the empire the region soon divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet (Ü-Tsang) was often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations; these governments were at various times under Mongol and Chinese overlordship. Thus Tibet remained a suzerainty of the Mongol and later Chinese rulers in Nanjing and Beijing, with reasonable autonomy given to the Tibetan leaders. The eastern regions of Kham and Amdo often maintained a more decentralized indigenous political structure, being divided among a number of small principalities and tribal groups, while also often falling more directly under Chinese rule after the Battle of Chamdo; most of this area was eventually incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Qinghai. The current borders of Tibet were generally established in the 18th century.
Selected general articles
The Changpa or Champa are a semi-nomadic Tibetan people found mainly in the Changtang in Ladakh and in Jammu and Kashmir. A smaller number resides in the western regions of the Tibet Autonomous Region and were partially relocated for the establishment of the Changtang Nature Reserve. As of 1989 there were half a million nomads living in the Changtang area. Read more...
The Panchen Lama (Tibetan: པན་ཆེན་བླ་མ, Wylie: pan chen bla ma) is a tulku of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. Panchen Lama is one of the most important figures in the Gelug tradition, with its spiritual authority second only to Dalai Lama. "Panchen" is an abbreviation of "Pandita" and "Chenpo", meaning "Great scholar".
The lineage of Panchen Lamas began with Lobsang Chökyi Gyaltsen, tutor of the 5th Dalai Lama, who received the title "Panchen Bogd" from Altan Khan and the Dalai Lama in 1645. "Bogd" is Mongolian, meaning "holy". Khedrup Gelek Pelzang, Sönam Choklang and Ensapa Lobsang Döndrup were subsequently recognized as the first to third Panchen Lamas posthumously. Read more...
Tibet under Qing rule refers to the Qing dynasty's rule over Tibet from 1720 to 1912. During the Qing rule of Tibet, the region was controlled by the Qing dynasty established by the Manchus in China. In the history of Tibet, Qing administrative rule was established after a Qing army defeated the Dzungars who occupied Tibet in 1720, and lasted until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, although the region retained a degree of political autonomy under the Dalai Lamas. The Qing emperors appointed imperial residents known as the Ambans to Tibet, who commanded over 2,000 troops stationed in Lhasa and reported to the Lifan Yuan, a Qing government body that oversaw the empire's frontier regions.
The protectorate that China had established over Tibet in the 18th century remained into the 20th century, but by the late 19th century Chinese hegemony over Tibet remained in theory but in actuality was a dead letter given the weight of China's domestic and foreign-relations burdens. However, the Chinese began to take steps to reassert their authority shortly after the British expedition to Tibet. Read more...- Tibet is the term for the major elevated plateau in Central Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is today mostly under the sovereignty of the People's Republic of China, primarily administered as the Tibet Autonomous Region besides (depending on the geographic definition of the term) adjacient parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan.
The English name is adopted from Modern Latin Tibetum, and is shared by all western languages.
However, the term "Tibet" is subject to many definitions and controversy over its function and territorial claims.
There isn't any clear equivalent of the English term Tibet in either Tibetan or Chinese; names for the region loosely corresponding to the Tibetan Plateau include the Standard Tibetan endonym Bod (Bö) for "Greater Tibet",
Ü-Tsang (དབུས་གཙང་ Wü-Tsang, 烏思藏
Wūsīzàng) for "Central Tibet", Chinese 吐蕃 Tǔbō or Tǔfān for the historical Tibetan Empire,
西藏 Xīzàng "Western Tsang" for the territory of the Tibet Autonomous Region (etc.). Read more...
The main religion in Tibet has been Buddhism since its outspread in the 8th century AD. The historical region of Tibet (the areas inhabited by ethnic Tibetans) is nowadays mostly comprised by the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and partly by the provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. Before the arrival of Buddhism, the main religion among Tibetans was an indigenous shamanic and animistic religion, Bon, which now comprises a sizeable minority and which would later influence the formation of Tibetan Buddhism.
According to estimates from the International Religious Freedom Report of 2012, most of Tibetans (who comprise 91% of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region) are bound by Tibetan Buddhism, while a minority of 400,000 people (12.5% of the total population of the TAR) are bound to the native Bon or folk religions which share the image of Confucius (Tibetan: Kongtse Trulgyi Gyalpo) with Chinese religion, though in a different light. According to some reports, the government of China has been promoting the Bon religion linking it with Confucianism. Read more...- Below is a list of rulers of Tibet from the beginning of legendary history. Included are regimes with their base in Central Tibet, that held authority over at least a substantial portion of the country. Read more...
- The history of Tibet from 1950 to the present started with the Chinese invading Tibet in 1950. Before then, Tibet had declared independence from China in 1913. In 1951, the Tibetans signed a seventeen-point agreement reaffirming China's sovereignty over Tibet and providing an autonomous administration led by Dalai Lama. In 1959 the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet to northern India under cover where he established the Central Tibetan Administration. The Tibet Autonomous Region within China was officially established in 1965. Read more...
- This is a list of Panchen Lamas of Tibet. There are currently 10 recognised incarnations of the Panchen Lama; the 11th Panchen Lama is disputed however. Read more...
- Lhamo Latso or Lha-mo La-tso (Tibetan: ལྷ་མོའི་བླ་མཚོ།, Wylie: Lha mo'i bla mtsho) is a small oval oracle lake where senior Tibetan monks of the Gelug sect go for visions to assist in the discovery of reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas. Other pilgrims also come to seek visions. It is considered to be the most sacred lake in Tibet.
It is also known as "The Spiritual-Lake of the Goddess", the goddess being Palden Lhamo, the principal Protectress of Tibet. Other names include: Tso Lhamo (mTsho Lha mo), Chokhorgyelgi Namtso (Chos 'khor rgyal gyi gnam mtsho) and Makzorma (dmag zor ma) and, on old maps, as Cholamo. Read more...
Bon, also spelled Bön (Tibetan: བོན་, Wylie: bon, Lhasa dialect IPA: pʰø̃̀), is a Tibetan religion. According to traditional Bon beliefs and legends, the Bon religion predates the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet. According to the scholar and Buddhist master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, there is clear manuscript evidence confirming the existence of fully articulated Bon doctrine and practice prior to the forcible annexation of the Bon kingdom of Zhangzhung in the 8th century CE by Tibetan king Trisong Deutsung: "It is very clearly stated in the ancient lineage-manuscripts of Bon, known as Srid-rGyud, during the reign of the Buddhist King Trisong Deutsen, that the tradition of Bon and its founder both first started [centuries earlier] in Zhangzhung." [This is disputed by some subsequent Buddhist commentators, e.g., by Sam van Schaik, "in truth the 'old religion' was a new religion." Its scriptures are derived primarily from termas (hidden teachings) and visions by tertöns (discoverers of hidden teachings) such as Loden Nyingpo..] Read more...- Orange refers to areas in the People's Republic of China that have been designated as Tibetan (and other ethnic minorities) autonomous areas.
The 2008 Tibetan unrest, also referred to as the 3-14 Riots in Chinese media, was a series of riots, protests, and demonstrations that started in the Tibetan regional capital of Lhasa. What originally began as an annual observance of Tibetan Uprising Day turned into street protests by monks, which had become violent by March 14. The unrest spread to a number of monasteries and other Tibetan areas beyond Lhasa as well as outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. Xinhua, the Chinese government's official media outlet, estimated that 150 protest incidents occurred across Tibet between March 10 and March 25, but estimates vary. Casualty estimates also vary; the Chinese government claimed that 23 people were killed during the riots themselves, and the Tibetan government-in-exile claimed that 203 were killed in the aftermath. Violence occurred between Chinese security forces and the protesting Tibetans as well as between Tibetans and Han and Hui civilians. Police eventually intervened more forcefully to end the unrest. Protests mostly supporting the Tibetans erupted in cities in North America, Europe, and Australia as well as India and Nepal. Many of the international protests targeted Chinese embassies, ranging from pelting the embassies with eggs and rocks to protestors entering the premises and raising Tibetan flags.
The Chinese government asserted that the unrest was motivated by separatism and orchestrated by the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama denied the accusation and said that the situation was caused by wide discontent in Tibet. The Government of the People's Republic of China and the Dalai Lama held talks on the riots on May 4 and July 1 of the same year. Read more... - The 1987–1989 Tibetan unrest were a series of pro-independence protests that took place between September 1987 and March 1989 in the Tibetan areas in the People's Republic of China: Sichuan, Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai, and the Tibetan prefectures in Yunnan and Gansu. The largest demonstrations began on March 5, 1989 in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, when a group of monks, nuns, and laypeople took to the streets as the 30th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising approached. Police and security officers attempted to put down the protests, but as tensions escalated an even greater crowd of protesters amassed. After three days of violence, martial law was declared on March 8, 1989, and foreign journalists and tourists were expelled from Tibet on March 10. Reports of deaths and military force being used against protesters were prominent. Numbers of the dead are unknown. Read more...
- Human rights in Tibet are a contentious issue. According to a 1992 Amnesty International report, judicial standards in China, including in autonomous Tibet, were not up to "international standards". The report charged the Chinese Communist Party government with keeping political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, including the death penalty in its penal code, ill-treatment of detainees and inaction in the face of ill-treatment of detainees, including torture, the use of the death penalty, extrajudicial executions, forced abortions, and sterilisation. The status of religion, mainly as it relates to figures who are both religious and political, such as the 14th Dalai Lama, is a regular object of criticism.
Reported abuses of human rights in Tibet include restricted freedom of religion, belief, and association. Specifically, Tibetans have faced arbitrary arrest and maltreatment in custody, including torture at the hands of Chinese authorities. Freedom of the Press in the PRC is still absent, and Tibet's media is tightly controlled by the Chinese leadership, making it difficult to determine accurately the scope of human rights abuses. A series of reports published in the late 1980s claimed that China was forcing Tibetans to adhere to strict birth control programs that included forced abortions, sterilizations, and even infanticide. Read more...
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Tibetan program was a nearly two decades long covert operation consisting of "political action, propaganda, paramilitary and intelligence operations" based on U.S. Government arrangements made with brothers of the Dalai Lama, who himself was not initially aware of them. The goal of the program was "to keep the political concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet and among several foreign nations".
Although it was formally assigned to the CIA alone, it was nevertheless closely coordinated with several other U.S. government agencies such as the Department of State and the Department of Defense. Read more...
The Tibetan Empire (Tibetan: བོད་ཆེན་པོ, Wylie: bod chen po, "Great Tibet") existed from the 7th to 9th centuries AD when Tibet was unified as a large and powerful empire, and ruled an area considerably larger than the Tibetan Plateau, stretching to parts of East Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.
Traditional Tibetan history described the exploits of a lengthy list of rulers. External corroboration is available from the 7th century in Chinese histories. From the 7th to the 9th century a series of emperors ruled Tibet. From the time of the emperor Songtsen Gampo the power of the empire gradually increased over a diverse terrain. By the reign of the emperor Ralpacan, in the opening years of the 9th century, it controlled territories extending from the Tarim basin to the Himalayas and Bengal, and from the Pamirs to what are now the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Yunnan. Read more...- Neolithic Tibet refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Tibet.
Tibet has been inhabited since the Late Paleolithic. During the mid-Holocene, Neolithic immigrants from northern China largely replaced the original inhabitants, bringing with them elements of Neolithic culture and technology, although a degree of genetic continuity with the Paleolithic settlers still exists. Read more... - The Phagmodrupa Dynasty or Pagmodru (Tibetan: ཕག་མོ་གྲུ་པ་, Wylie: phag mo gru pa, IPA: [pʰʌ́kmoʈʰupa]) was a dynastic regime that held sway over Tibet or parts thereof from 1354 to the early 17th century. It was established by Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen of the Lang (Wylie: rlangs) family at the end of the Yuan dynasty. The dynasty had a lasting importance on the history of Tibet; it created an autonomous kingdom after Mongol rule, revitalized the national culture, and brought about a new legislation that survived until the 1950s. Nevertheless, the Phagmodrupa had a turbulent history due to internal family feuding and the strong localism among noble lineages and fiefs. Its power receded after 1435 and was reduced to Ü (East Central Tibet) in the 16th century due to the rise of the ministerial family of the Rinpungpa. It was defeated by the rival Tsangpa dynasty in 1613 and 1620, and was formally superseded by the Ganden Phodrang regime founded by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1642. In that year, Güshi Khan of the Khoshut formally transferred the old possessions of Sakya, Rinpung and Phagmodrupa to the "Great Fifth". Read more...
The Tibetan Plateau (Tibetan: བོད་ས་མཐོ།, Wylie: bod sa mtho), also known in China as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau (Chinese: 青藏高原; pinyin: Qīng–Zàng Gāoyuán) or Himalayan Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau in Central Asia and East Asia, covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai in western China, as well as Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) and Lahaul & Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) in India. It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north to south and 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east to west. With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres (14,800 ft), the Tibetan Plateau is sometimes called "the Roof of the World" because it stands over 3 miles (4.8 km) above sea level and is surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, and is the world's highest and largest plateau, with an area of 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi) (about five times the size of Metropolitan France). Sometimes termed the Third Pole, the Tibetan Plateau contains the headwaters of the drainage basins of most of the streams in surrounding regions. Its tens of thousands of glaciers and other geographical and ecological features serve as a "water tower" storing water and maintaining flow. The impact of global warming on the Tibetan Plateau is of intense scientific interest. Read more...- Tibetan Buddhism (also Indo-Tibetan Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism named after the lands of Tibet where it is the dominant religion. It is also found in the regions surrounding the Himalayas (such as Bhutan, Ladakh, and Sikkim), much of Chinese Central Asia, the Southern Siberian regions such as Tuva, as well as in Mongolia.
Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Mahayana Buddhism stemming from the latest stages of Indian Buddhism (and so is also part of the tantric Vajrayana tradition). It thus preserves "the Tantric status quo of eighth-century India." However, it also includes native Tibetan developments and practices. In the pre-modern era, Tibetan Buddhism spread outside of Tibet primarily due to the influence of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), founded by Kublai Khan, which ruled China, Mongolia and parts of Siberia. In the modern era, it has spread outside of Asia due to the efforts of the Tibetan diaspora. Read more...
The Yarlung Tsangpo, also called Yarlung Zangbo (Tibetan: ཡར་ཀླུངས་གཙང་པོ་, Wylie: yar kLungs gTsang po, ZYPY: Yarlung Zangbo) or Yalu Zangbu (simplified Chinese: 雅鲁藏布江; traditional Chinese: 雅魯藏布江; pinyin: Yǎlǔ Zàngbù Jiāng) is the longest river of Tibet Autonomous Region, China.
It is the upper stream of the Brahmaputra River. Originating at Angsi Glacier in western Tibet, southeast of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, it later forms the South Tibet Valley and Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon before passing into the state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. Read more...- Xinhai Lhasa turmoil (Chinese: 辛亥拉萨动乱) refers to the ethnic clash in the Lhasa region of Tibet and various mutinies following the Wuchang Uprising. It effectively resulted in the end of Qing rule in Tibet. Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that Kunphela, a favorite personal attendant of the 13th Dalai Lama, was a co-founder of a political party that aimed to restructure Tibetan society through revolution?
- ... that the proposed Potala Tower in Seattle was named after the Potala Palace in Tibet by its developer, a former Tibetan Buddhist monk?
- ... that the Kangri Garpo mountain range contains the lowest-altitude glacier in Tibet?
- ... that the Tibetan eared pheasant may be declining in number because there are insufficient places for it to roost?
- ... that Tibet's Moupin pika is a burrowing mammal that makes haypiles to store food?
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Selected images
Putuo Zongcheng Temple, a Buddhist temple complex built between 1767 and 1771. The temple was modeled after the Potala Palace.
The Phugtal Monastery in south-east Zanskar
Rogyapas, an outcast group, early 20th century. Their hereditary occupation included disposal of corpses and leather work.
The Mongol Yuan dynasty, c. 1294.
Tibetan family in Kham attending a horse festival
King Songtsen Gampo
Rishabhanatha, the founder of Jainism attained nirvana near Mount Kailash in Tibet.
Tibet is located on the Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest region.
Edmund Geer during the 1938–1939 German expedition to Tibet
Tromzikhang market in Lhasa
Tibetan Plateau and surrounding areas above 1600 m – topography.
The Tibetan yak is an integral part of Tibetan life
Buddhist monks practicing debate in Drepung Monastery
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** Southern portions of these counties are claimed by the PRC as part of the South Tibet area, but are administered by India. |
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