the buddhist way into tibet 315
Buddhism was of vital importance to the ourishing of the dharma at
that time. It is worth considering that during the royal period, before
being proclaimed the state religion during the reign of Khri-srong-lde-
btsan and even after this signi cant event, Buddhism did not play such
a prominent role in Tibetan society as later Buddhist historians would
have us believe. The Dunhuang Annals do not mention Buddhism at all,
and the Dunhuang chronicle only incidentally comments upon the new
religion. The of cial discourse in the early royal period was certainly
not governed by religious affairs. On the other hand, the presence of
Buddhist teachers in the country, the building of Buddhist chapels and
the rst attempts of translating Mahyna scriptures from various lan-
guages, including Sanskrit, into Tibetan, all suggest a slow but steady
in ltration of Buddhist ideas and concepts.
It was Khri-srong-lde-btsan, whom later historians regard as the
second dharmarja among the kings of the royal period, after Srong-
btsan-sgam-po, who rmly established Buddhism in Tibet and even let
the new religion be proclaimed as state religion. During the reign of
Khri-srong-lde-btsan the Tibetan empire reached its greatest expansion.
The aggressive policy of the ruler brought the Tibetans to the height
of their political and military power. Tibetan troops were stationed in
East Turkestan and Northern China as well as in the Western regions
of the Hindukush and adjacent areas.^18 It is maybe more than just his-
torical coincidence that the same king who brought the Tibetan empire
to its broadest expansion also proclaimed Buddhism as the new state
religion. The question arises whether with the expansion of the empire
the power of the king needed to be legitimised other than by referring
to the indigenous beliefs in his divine origin. As already stressed, the
cult of the mountain is deeply grounded in the indigenous belief in a
pho-lha (“male god”), bound to the ruling clan, and the yul-lha (“deity
of the territory”), who was merged with the pho-lha. A society which no
longer is bound to clan structures clearly needs other, clan-extending
elements to shape a collective socio-cultural identity. Buddhism as a
religion not bound to ethnicity certainly provided the necessary unifying
authority in a broader socio-cultural context. This observation could
serve as an explanation for the interest and active support Khri-srong-
lde-btsan gave Buddhism and its protagonists.
(^18) See Beckwith 1987.