350 sven bretfeld
the “later spread” by Klu-mes himself.^19 Despite the importance of the
story of the “six men” as a xed point for the “later spread”, it seems
to me that, ideologically, the “later spread” myth owes much more to
another narration, namely the activities of the dharma-kings of Western
Tibet, who promoted the propagation of the Buddhist teaching in Tibet
with great nancial gratitude.^20
3.2. Ye-shes-’od and Rin-chen bzang-poAs we have seen, the “later spread” has been modelled by later authors
as a renaissance of truth against the background of a “dark age”
characterised by subversive activities of unknowing pseudo-Buddhist
pretenders. Although this dualistic view might be a topos of later lit-
erature, the motive of correcting corrupted religious practices appears
to be more than a mere invention of literary fantasy. Actually, it seems
quite likely that at least the activities of the kings of Western Tibet,
a major incentive of the “later spread”, were in fact intended to be
a socio-religious programme to replace certain tantric practices that
circulated in Tibet of the late tenth to eleventh century by of cially
scrutinised—and maybe state-controlled—religious communities.^21
Ye-shes-’od was the rst in a series of prominent gures of the royal
house of Western Tibet, who played active roles in the “later spread”.
It seems that around the beginning of the tenth century Ye-shes-’od’s
grandfather, Nyi-ma-mgon, who claimed ancestry of the Yar-lung
dynasty, had succeeded in uniting different local clans of mNga’-ris
(West-Tibet) under one rule. Thereby he built up a kingdom of con-
siderable dimensions containing the vast, mainly pastoral highlands
(^19) It is not clear if this work, the bsTan-pa phyi-dar-gyi lo-rgyus by Klu-mes, actually
existed. It is cited in the Bod-kyi chos-srid zung-’brel skor-pa by Dung-dkar Blo-bzang’phrin-
las (20th century); cf. Martin 1997, no. 3. The story of the survival of these monastic
groups in Khams is frequently retold by Tibetan historiographers who, however, are
at odds about many a detail (cf. Uebach 1987, pp. 36ff.). Already in the fteenth
century ’Gos lo-ts-ba dZhon-nu-dpal (Blue Annals, pp. 1084ff.) complained about the
inconsistency of the sources. 20
Cf. also Richardson (1998, p. 113), who states: “(.. .) the arrival of Klu-mes Tsul-
khrims shes-rab in 978 AD marked the beginning of the phyi-dar. (.. .) but in Tibetan
minds the phyi-dar is dominated by the coming of Ata; and the part played in bring-
ing that about by ’Od-srung’s descendants, the Western Tibetan kings Ye-shes-’od and
Byang-chub-’od, has quite obscured the fact that the blood of Srong-btsan Sgam-po
no longer ran in the royal veins.” 21
For an in-depth study of the genealogy of the royal house of Western Tibet and
its religio-political programme, see Vitali 1996.