the buddhist way into tibet 309
ba’i-me-long^8 the rst mythical king came down from the mountain
Yar-lha-sham-po:
He rst descended upon the summit [of mount] lHa-ri-rol-po [in the
Yar-lung valley] and looking around he realised that the snow-mountain
Yar-lha-sham-po was high (mtho) and that the country of Yar-lung was
fertile. Thereupon he descended on the bTsan-thang-gong-ma mountain,
where he was spotted by cattle-tending herdsmen. When he reached
the bottom they asked him: “Whence do you come?” and he pointed
his ngers towards heaven. [ They then knew] that he was a divine son
(lha-sras) descending from heaven, and they proclaimed: “[You are] elected
our ruler!”, and so they went off carrying [him] by making their necks
[function as] a throne. [ Thus] he was called the Mighty Neck-throned
Lord (rje-nya-khri-btsan-po). He was the rst Tibetan king.^9The mythical account of the rst Tibetan king, gNya-khri-btsan-po,
mirrors the indigenous Tibetan cult of the mountain and the moun-
tain-gods that is closely connected to the Tibetan royal dynasty. The
king was believed to be of divine origin, he descended from heaven
respectively from the mountain. This idea is founded in the cult of the
mountain which even nowadays plays a dominant role in the world-view
of the small Tibetan communities which usually live in villages situated
at the base of a mountain. The mountains are generally considered to
be sacred by the Tibetans. They are believed to be the incorporation of
the “deity of the territory” (yul-lha) of a speci cally delineated region,
often in unison with the “male god” (pho-lha) of the most powerful clan
of a given community living in the proximity of the mountain. The
mountain god is thus considered to be interrelated with the community,
having a family relationship with it by acting as its chieftain. Perhaps
the most sacred mountain to the Tibetans of the early royal period
was Yar-lha-sham-po, mentioned in the above cited quotation from the
rGyal-rabs-gsal-ba’i-me-long. Yar-lha-sham-po was the sacred mountain
of the Yar-lung dynasty, and the king was explicitly identi ed with the
mountain, thereby acting as the chieftain for the whole of Tibet. In
this way a centralised political authority was established for the rst
time in Tibet in the seventh century.
(^8) For a discussion of the author and the date of compilation see Sørensen 1994,
pp. 28–34.
(^9) rGyal-rabs-gsal-ba’i-me-long, p. 55 (lines 5–12). See also Sørensen 1994, p. 139.