Changing Relations 25
Chinese scribes in the scriptorium.19 It is to be assumed that the monks not
only were teaching the Chinese scribes the Tibetan script and language but
that they were ordered by the Tibetan authorities to go to Dunhuang to prop-
agate the school of Buddhism favoured by the Tibetan Emperor.20 It was taken
up and among its followers was the monk Wu Facheng (吳法成, alias Tib.
Chos grub) who also featured among the proofreaders of a number of Tibetan
scriptures. Later, during the local rule of the Return-to-Allegiance Army under
Zhang Yichao (張議潮, r. 848–872?),21 one of his pupils named Kang Hengan
(康恒安) became an important personage in the Buddhist community.22
A manuscript of the later period of Tibetan rule indicates that religious
duties were allocated by the administration. It is a fragment of a sequence
of manuscripts in which members of the population of Dunhuang divided
in subunits of hundred (Tib. brgya’ tshan) and subdivided in crews (Tib.
rkya) are designated as patrons (Tib. yon bdag) of certain temples (Tib. gtsug
lag khang).23
The Tibetan government also introduced Tibetan law. This was a unique sys-
tem, since in certain cases in which the evidence was not clear decisions could
be made by rolling three four faced dice.24 The meaning of the results was fixed
19 Or. 8210/S. 5824 transliterated, translated and discussed in Taenzer, Dunhuang Region dur-
ing Tibetan Rule, 314, 273. It must have been written around the time when the military
unit was divided in 808.
20 Demiéville (Demiéville, Paul, Le concile de Lhasa (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1952) gives a description of the contest of the two schools of Buddhism incited by
the Tibetan Emperor shortly after the takeover of Dunhuang. Mahāyāna, the head of the
clergy (Tib. mkhan po chen po) of Dunhuang, is said to have argued against the Indian
Kamalaśīla.
21 The actual dates are not evident, as he went to the Chinese court never to return. In 865
his nephew Zhang Huaishen sponsored a cave commemorating him. Thus he must have
left Dunhang already, how could he rule from a distance?
22 Zheng Binglin 鄭怲林, “Tang Wudai Dunhuang de suteren yu fojiao 唐五代敦
煌的粟特人與佛教 [The Sogdians of Dunhuang and Buddhism during the Tang and
Five Dynasties],” in Dunhuang Guiyijun shi zhuanti yanjiu 敦煌歸義軍史專題研究
[Studies in the Guiyijun Regime of Dunhuang], ed. Zheng Binglin 鄭怲林 (Lanzhou:
Lanzhou daxue chubanshe, 1997), 443.
23 IOL Tib J 1357 A/B and IOL Tib J 575 transliterated and translated in: Thomas, Tibetan
Literary Texts, 87 and discussed in Taenzer, Dunhuang Region during Tibetan Rule, 249.
24 Or. 8210/S. 2228 fragment C, recto (transliterated in: Iwao Kazushi et al., “Old Tibetan Texts
in the Stein Collection Or. 8 210,” in Studies in Old Tibetan Texts from Central Asia, Tokyo:
the Toyo Bunko, 2012, 44) is a fragment of a legal document. Line 14 refers to ‘dice statutes’
(Tib. sho tshigs): ’brog zhing mdzad pa’i rtsis mgo dang / sho tshigs las// [.. .] “According
to the manual made for the conducting of the census of the fields and the dice statutes