310 karénina kollmar-paulenz
The signi cance of the mountain in connection with the person of
the king in the indigenous religious tradition is also expressed in the
title “mighty one” (btsan-po), which the early Tibetan kings bear as an
integral part of their name. The title corresponds to the class of btsan-
deities, hero-warriors, to which the mountain-deities usually belong.
Nya-khri-btsan-po, the rst mythical king of the Tibetans, had seven
descendants who in the Tibetan world-view were not just ordinary
human beings but gods. They lived on earth during day-time, at night
returning to their heavenly abode. They were believed to have nally
returned to their divine home at the time of their “death”, which took
place as soon as their eldest son was able to ride a horse. This usually
happened when the youth turned thirteen. It is not clear whether the
coming of age of the eldest son included the ritual death of the father.
The divine power of the king, however, was believed to diminish over
the years and nally to pass over to the son. The rst kings did not
have a burial place on earth. According to the indigenous world-view
of the Tibetans they were connected to heaven by a rope (dmu). The
son of the last of the seven celestial kings unfortunately cut off the
rope which connected him to his heavenly home, and thus was the rst
king who had to be given an earthly burial place. From then onwards
the Tibetan kings turned into human beings and were given a burial
place on earth. The sources tell us that on this occasion the leaders of
the Yar-lung dynasty called on religious specialists from the adjacent
kingdom of Zhang-zhung in order to conduct the appropriate burial
rites, thus for the rst time relying on foreign religious specialists. The
burial rituals centring around the tombs of the Tibetan kings build an
integral and important part of the Tibetan religious tradition during
the royal period.
The list of the mythical Tibetan kings is much longer than the
above mentioned seven and differs slightly from source to source. In
the mKhas-pa’i-dga’-ston the historian dPa’-bo-gtsug-lag mentions all in
all twenty-seven kings before the advent of king lHa-tho-tho-ri-gnyan-
btsan, during whose reign the sacred Buddhist relics fell from the sky
onto the roof of his palace, as legend tells us. The legend may hint
at a rst contact of the Tibetans with Buddhism much earlier than
later historiography claims. The reign of lHa-tho-tho-ri, although not
proven historically, can be approximately dated to the fth century. It
does not seem impossible at all that the Tibetans came into contact
with Buddhist monks during that time, considering the fact that Tibet
in the fth century was surrounded by countries where Buddhism was
well established and ourishing. We nd evidence in early texts as well