22 Taenzer
into left and right jiang—a feature otherwise well known in Chinese military
divisions.7 There is neither any evidence that they were further divided, nor
that a land reform was carried out in the area civil units occupied. Only one
contract in Tibetan concerning members of a civil unit is extant (all the other
contracts were written in Chinese). Members of the civil units did not take on
Tibetan personal names8 and seem not to have been Tibetanised to the same
degree as members of the military units. They had to perform corvé duty such
as working as watchmen, ordinary labourers and long distance messengers,
however.9
In order to protect the Northern border of the Tibetan Empire two mili-
tary units were established at the periphery of Dunhuang.10 These units con-
sisted of peoples transferred from other areas of the Tibetan Empire and are
designated in contemporary Tibetan manuscripts as thongkyab (Tib. mthong
7 But according to Tsuguhito Takeuchi, Chinese jiang here is most probably the phonetic
rendering of the Tibetan term tshan. See Takeuchi, Tsuguhito. “Tshan: Subordinate
Administrative Units of the Thousand-Districts in the Tibetan Empire,” in Tibetan Studies:
Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies held at
Fagernes 1992, vol. 2, ed. Per Kvaerne (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human
Culture, 1994), 859.
8 Takeuchi, Tsuguhito, Old Tibetan Contracts from Central Asia, 19; text 6 is a sales con-
tract in which the seller is a member of the Darpa unit, which was a civil unit. All people
mentioned in this contract—sellers, buyers and witnesses—bear Chinese given names.
Contracts written in Tibetan are only attested from the second third of the Tibetan rule
onwards (second decade of the 9th century).
9 P. 3774, line 32, transliterated, translated and discussed in Ikeda On 池田温, “Ushi doshi
Jūnigatsu Sō Ryūzō chō 丑年十二月僧龍藏牒 [The Document of the Monk Longzang of
the Twelfth Month of the Chou Year],” in Yamamoto hakushi Kanreki kinen Tōyōshi Rōnso
山本慱士還曆紀念東洋史論叢 [ Jubilee Volume Presented to Dr. Tatsuro Yamamoto
on the Occasion of his 60th birthday] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1972), 27.
10 A member of a mthong khyab unit had a field in the location Pugpeu (Tib. Pug pe’u)
(Takeuchi, Contracts, text 55A), which was the first post relay station in the direction of
Guazhou. This is documented in the manuscript 0336.10–336/10.074/74, a manuscript
stored in the Wenhuayuan (文化院) in Dunhuang: see Taenzer, Gertraud, “The Registered
Express Letter and the System of Official Transport in Areas during Tibetan Rule during
the Old Tibetan Empire c. 786–850,” paper presented at the 13th Seminary of IATS 2013
in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia). The manuscript mentioned above is transliterated in Bsod
nams Skyid, “Gna’ bo’i bod kyi yig rnying las “slung tshang” dang “slungs dpon” zhes pa’i
tha snyad la rgas tsam dpyad pa [Research into the Etymology of the Terms slung tshang
and slungs dpon in Manuscrips of Ancient Tibet],” in Bod kyi yig rnying zhib ’jug [Precise
Rendering of Old Documents of Tibet], ed. Kha sgang Bkra shis Tshe ring (Beijing: Mi rigs
dpe skrun khang, 2003), 270.