344 sven bretfeld
history.^5 Furthermore, these periods are associated with political and
social order or disorder respectively: The great time of Tibetan in uence
in Asian politics, its inner unity guaranteed by strong and wise kings,
emerged and decayed together with the presence of Buddhism in
Tibetan society; with the disappearance of Buddhism social and politi-
cal chaos also followed; and the “later spread” brought a renaissance
of Buddhism and at the same time a new phase of Tibetan social and
cultural prosperity. Thus, one of the most important statements of
Tibetan Buddhist historiography is the close interrelatedness of Tibetan
Buddhism and Tibetan society. This spreads further light on our sources
and what we can gain from them. To put it brie y: Talking about the
“later spread” is not talking about “factual history”, but talking about
an important aspect of Tibetan Buddhist self-perception.
In addition to these cultural implications of the terms and stories we
are dealing with, the situation is still more complex. Even if we consider
only the social minority of the Buddhist clergy, Tibetan Buddhism is
no homogeneous entity, but a conglomeration of very divergent opin-
ions, styles, norms and worldviews that are in constant synchronic and
diachronic ux. This, of course, has an impact on Tibetan statements
about history, and the meanings of terms and concepts used in them
vary with the intentions and the historical and social context of the
respective speakers. To give an example: As we will see below, some of
the early protagonists of the “later spread” are said to have encountered
religious communities in Tibet who practiced Buddhist rituals and kept
Buddhist identities; the same sources state that Buddhism had vanished
from Tibet completely during the “dark age”, because those religious
communities did not have a correct understanding of Buddhism and
practiced wrong rituals—and, therefore were no Buddhists at all. For
us, it is not possible to ask those communities what they would think
about such a statement. A still different speech-act is made, when these
anecdotes were used in polemical literature in order to prove, that the
rNying-ma-pas—the only school of Tibetan Buddhism that claims a
direct connection to the “earlier spread”—were in reality derived from
those pseudo-Buddhists of the “dark age” and, therefore, likewise were
no Buddhists at all. Moreover, rNying-ma-pa historiographers, conse-
quently, put lesser emphasis on the relevance of the “later spread” move-
(^5) I think this is based on the older Buddhist concept that structures world history
into periods where a Buddha has, and has not appeared.