ried construction—derive largely from India, often via
Nepal. The main inspiration for building materials and tech-
niques, as well as some of the decoration, has been the do-
mestic farmhouse architecture of Tibet itself, with its many
regional variations. Economic conditions dictate the use of
native labor—essentially drawn from the local peasant farm-
ing population—for erecting and maintaining the main
structure of religious buildings, which follow the local farm-
houses in their reliance on heavy load-bearing outer walls of
layered mud, mud brick, or rough stone. Internally the ceil-
ings and flat roofs are supported by wooden columns, beams,
and joists, the timbers for which may have to be imported
from a distance. These factors in turn determine the form,
finish, and size of walls, room spaces, and other architectural
elements of temples, which from the constructional point of
view can be regarded as oversized farmhouses. Temples are
however distinguished from farmhouses by decorative em-
bellishments that have originated in India, Nepal, Kashmir,
China, and Mongolia and have often been executed by
craftspeople imported from those countries.
THE FIRST SPREADING OF BUDDHISM: JO KHANG (JOK-
HANG) AND BSAM YAS (SAMYE). Buddhism is traditionally
held to have been introduced into Tibet in the early seventh
century. A major landmark in the process was the foundation
of the still extant Jo khang temple in Lhasa by the Nepalese
wife of King Srong btsan sgam po (Songtsen gampo, r. c.
618–641). While the story is heavily obscured by legend its
essentials are plausible. The Jo khang, built on a level site and
facing in the direction of Nepal, follows the viha ̄ra layout so
common in the architecture of the Kathmandu Valley. A
three-storied range of chambers faces inward toward a rec-
tangular inner courtyard, which, unlike its Nepalese proto-
types, is covered with a flat roof. Light is admitted through
a skylight onto the main image of the Buddha, which occu-
pies a chamber in one of the shorter sides opposite the en-
trance porch.
While the outer walls and much of the present wood-
work are entirely of the farmhouse-derived Tibetan type, the
older columns, brackets, and door frames are compatible
with the seventh-century Nepalese style, suggesting the par-
ticipation of craft workers from Nepal. The four small-
pitched roofs perched on the flat top of the building, with
their complex wooden bracketing and gilded metal covering
are instantly recognizable as of Chinese inspiration, almost
certainly executed by Chinese artisans. At least one of them
is known to have been added in the fourteenth century.
The inward-looking chambers of the Jo khang are occu-
pied by chapels containing images of Buddhist divinities and
a variety of mural paintings, both iconic and narrative in sub-
ject matter. An additional circumambulation corridor was
later added round the whole building, and further concentric
circumambulation routes lead round the streets outside and
toward the outskirts of the city of Lhasa, reinforcing the su-
preme position of the Jo khang at the center of Tibetan reli-
gious life.
The other major religious complex founded in Tibet
during the first spreading of Buddhism is Bsam yas, some
120 kilometers southeast of Lhasa, built by King Khri Srong
lde btsan (Trisong detsen, ruled c. 755–797) in about 770
as the home of the country’s first monastic community. Its
layout, based on the man:d:ala with explicit cosmic symbol-
ism, is strikingly different from that of the Jo khang. A cen-
tral building of three superimposed temple chambers con-
taining images of buddhas and divinities (the stories were
originally built or decorated in Tibetan, Indian, and Chinese
style respectively) represents Mount Meru at the center of the
universe in Indian cosmology, looking outwards across a low
surrounding wall representing concentric rings of mountains
and lakes. Outside this, symmetrically placed at the quarters
and intermediate directions, are four directional stupas and
variously shaped small temples representing the sun and
moon and the four earthly continents. The whole is sur-
rounded by a quasi-circular wall. Living quarters for monks
and other ancillary buildings are not part of the symbolic
plan, as is normally the case in later buildings. The founda-
tion of Bsam yas marks the inauguration of Buddhism as the
state religion of Tibet under the King as a kind of cosmocra-
tor. Its plan was allegedly inspired by the monastery of
Odantapuri in Bihar, India, and may also owe something to
the example of a temple at Wutaishan in China; there are
also interesting parallels with the roughly contemporary pal-
ace-city of Baghdad. While the main structures of the present
buildings at Bsam yas are original, the complex, like the Jo
khang, has suffered periods of damage and neglect, most re-
cently in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and much
of the woodwork and decoration dates from later periods.
THE SECOND SPREADING OF BUDDHISM: TABO AND ALCHI.
After the collapse of the early Tibetan empire in the years
after 842 CE, Buddhism was on the defensive in a politically
fragmented country and little is known of architectural activ-
ity except for the mention of a few temples which, if genuine,
must have been very small. Datable building programs begin
again in 996 with the Western Tibetan complexes of Tabo
and Mtho lding (Tholing, the latter largely destroyed in the
Cultural Revolution). Generally, individual temples of this
period are much smaller than the Jo khang or Bsam yas, and
are built in small groups within walled compounds. While
the details of a number of temple compounds from this peri-
od are known, by far the best preserved are those at Tabo
and Alchi, both now in India.
The main temple at Tabo (Himachal Pradesh, India) is
externally an unprepossessing single-story mud-brick cham-
ber with no windows or external decoration. Internally how-
ever it displays a sophisticated arrangement of the deities of
the Vajradha ̄tu Man:d:ala, crafted in stucco and fixed part way
up the internal walls of the single chamber. The image of the
central buddha, Vairocana, is moved along the axis from the
entrance porch toward the rear of the chamber, and in a
small space behind it is the image of Amita ̄bha, of whom
Vairocana is an emanation. Thus the use of height to convey
symbolically a progression to more supramundane levels at9050 TEMPLE: BUDDHIST TEMPLE COMPOUNDS IN TIBET