the buddhist way into tibet 335
king. Glang-dar-ma, the brother of Ral-pa-can, is known, according to
new textual evidence perhaps unjustly, in later Buddhist accounts as a
cruel persecutor of the Buddhist faith. He reigned for only a short time
before suffering the same fate as his brother. As there was no heir to
the royal line, and also the charisma of the divine kingship was quickly
fading, the royal dynasty of Tibet came to its end.
In the middle of the ninth century, the “dark age” of the later Bud-
dhist historians starts, denoting a time where the spread of the dharma
was brought to a standstill and decline, a situation, which was to change
once again a century and a half later, when the “later spread” of the
dharma was inaugurated and nally converted the whole of Tibet to
Buddhism. But this is another story.
- The Expansion of Buddhism in Tibet
During the Royal Period
In the royal edict proclaiming Buddhism as the state religion Khri-srong-
lde-btsan ordered the authoritative account (bka’-mchid) to be transmitted
to the religious communities in Tibet and to the neighbouring countries
under Tibetan jurisdiction:
Also, the text of an authoritative account of how the religion of the
Buddha came to Tibet both in earlier and later times has been deposited
together with the edict. Thirteen copies like this have been written. One
has been placed in the archives. Two have been sealed and one each
deposited with the religious communities of the ’Phrul-snang temple of
Ra-sa and the Bsam-yas Lhun-gyi-grub temple of Brag-dmar. Ten cop-
ies have been sealed at the end and one each given to the ’Phrul-snang
temple of Ra-sa, the temple of Bsam-yas Lhun-gyis-grub, the temple of
Bkra-shis-lha-yul of Khra-’brug, the religious community of the palace,
to the Rgya-btags Ra-mo-che of Ra-sa, Khams-sum Myi-ldog-sgrol of
Brag-dmar, to the country of Bru-sha, the country of Zhang-zhung, to
Mdo-smad and to the jurisdiction of sde-blon, to be held by the religious
community of their temples.^59Whereas most of the temples mentioned are situated in Central Tibet,
the text mentions also Bru-sha, that is Gilgit, and Zhang-zhung, nowa-
days probably Western Tibet, as well as mDo-smad, Northeastern Tibet.
Beside the textual evidence that the spread of the dharma even in the
(^59) Richardson 1998g, pp. 92–93.