the buddhist way into tibet 305
them as belonging (1) to the snga-dar, the “early spread [of the dharma]”,
including the period from the seventh to the ninth century, and (2) the
phyi-dar, the “later spread [of the dharma]”, starting in the late tenth
century and continuing up to the present. Both groups of sources
testify to the curious mixture of historical and mythical narration that
characterises the narrative of the advent of Buddhism in Tibet.
3.1. The snga-dar GroupA r st category of important sources testifying to the advent of Bud-
dhism in Tibet are the inscriptions, mostly on pillars, but sometimes
also on rocks, found in Lhasa and its vicinity, but increasingly also in
other parts of the country.^2 The earliest inscription relating to Buddhism
in Tibet is the rdo-ring, the stone pillar near the entrance to the great
temple of bSam-yas, Tibet’s rst Buddhist monastery. This inscription
can be dated to around 780.^3 A few other stone inscriptions on pil-
lars erected in Lhasa and rock inscriptions found in various parts of
the country testify to the extent of the Buddhist expansion during the
royal period.
By far the most important textual sources of the royal period are,
however, the documents discovered at the end of the nineteenth century
by the two scholar-explorers Paul Pelliot and Sir Aurel Stein in the caves
of Dunhuang of East Turkestan. In this remote region, they found not
only Buddhist temples and shrines, but also archaeological evidence of
the Tibetan presence in the area in the form of military posts, bringing
to light, among material remains like clothing and armour, fragments
of of cial papers written in Tibetan and inscribed tally-sticks used by
the Tibetan troops for local records and message plaques, many of
them dating to the eight and ninth century.^4 The most important nd
included the discovery of caves which were sealed off in the late tenth
century. One of them, the so-called “library cave” (cave 17) served
as a ritual “burial place” of scriptures in as many as 24 different lan-
guages, among them a few texts written in Old Tibetan. One of these
texts, today known as the Dunhuang Annals, recounts events at the royal
(^2) See, for example, Tsering 1982, p. 363. A photo of the inscription of Brag-lha-mo
is given on page 397. 3
See Richardson 1985, pp. 26–31, and Scherrer-Schaub 2002, p. 267 n. 20, con-
rming Richardson’s opinion. 4
See Richardson & Snellgrove 1980, p. 76.