the later spread of buddhism in tibet 371
an end about the thirteenth century. This termination is arti cial. As I
have said in the introduction, Tibetans refer to the “later spread”—as
a cultural epoch—to still be running. Nevertheless, there are four
points that mark a major caesura of Tibetan Buddhist history during
this time:
(1) Buddhism became rmly established in Tibetan society, mainly
due to alliances of monastic institutions to local aristocracy; some
monasteries had risen to considerable in uence and their leaders
started to play roles in domestic and foreign politics.
(2) Tibetan Buddhists started to convert foreigners.
(3) Buddhism disappeared from India.
(4) The canonisation processes of Tibetan Buddhist textual transmis-
sions began.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries Buddhism extended its in u-
ence over most parts of Tibet. While plenty of quite large monastic
communities quickly grew up around individual charismatic masters
and likewise quickly vanished again with the reduction of support from
local nobility and their subjects after these masters’ deaths, some com-
munities managed to secure the lasting support of local noble families
and developed wealthy monastic estates. I will mention only three of
these, because of their decisive roles in thirteenth century politics:
a) The Sa-skya-pa, whose close relationship to the Khon-family was
already mentioned.
b) The Karma-bKa’-brgyud, going back to a disciple of sGam-po-pa
named Dus-gsum mkhyen-pa (1110–1193)—also known as Karma-
pa—who founded the mTshur-phu monastery in the sTod-lung valley
near Lhasa.^63 This branch of the bKa’-brgyud-pa seems to have
been the one who invented the principle of abbot-succession by
conscious reincarnation of the decayed predecessor—the so-called
Tulku (sprul sku) system that was later adopted by the dGe-lugs-pa
school. Hence, the abbots of mTshur-pu are believed to be reincar-
nations of the monastery’s founder and bear the title rGyal-dbang
Karma-pa or Zhva-nag-pa “Black Hat Karma-pa”.
c) The ’Bri-gung-pa, also a branch of the bKa’-brgyud-pa, founded
by ’Jig-rten mgon-po (1143–1217), who established the Mi-nyag
(^63) For a very informative article on the history of the Karma-bKa’-brgyud school,
see Richardson 1998, pp. 337–378.