316 karénina kollmar-paulenz
6.1. Adherence to the Royal and Religious Laws:
Proclaiming Buddhism as State ReligionAs already mentioned, the rdo-ring, the stone pillar in front of the main
temple (lha-khang) of bSam-yas monastery, bears the earliest inscription
relating to Buddhism in Tibet. It records that the bTsan-po, i.e. Khri-
srong-lde-btsan, made a vow to maintain the religion of the Buddha
established in the temples of Ra-sa, bSam-yas etc. It also mentions a
detailed text concerning the advent of Buddhism preserved separately.^19
The inscription and accompanying authoritative account were also
preserved in the mKhas-pa’i-dga’-ston of 1565 and can be considered,
in the words of Giuseppe Tucci, as “the foundation-chart of Tibetan
Buddhism”. Buddhism became the of cial religion by royal command
of the emperor Khri-srong-lde-btsan.
The detailed text the rdo-ring refers to is faithfully reproduced in the
mKhas-pa’i-dga’-ston, with only a few minor deviations. dPa’-bo-gtsug-lag
explicitly states that the inscription is a summary of two documents
which he describes as edicts (bka’-gtsigs) and of which the texts are also
given. Although dPa’-bo-gtsug-lag calls both documents bka’-gtsigs, only
the rst is an edict, whereas the second is a bka’-mchid, a statement or
exposition, an authoritative account. The rst text explains why the
edict was necessary, mentions the names of the ministers who witnessed
it and were bound to it by oath. The very act of swearing an oath to
promote Buddhism as the state religion of the Tibetan empire stresses
the importance of the traditional religious customs, most of all the
cult of the mountain. In this oath nine mountain deities are invoked
to bear witness to the oath. Most of these nine mountains were located
in regions which were conquered by the Tibetan army. The fact that
these nine deities had to be invoked in order to con rm the act of
establishing Buddhism in Tibet shows the signi cance of the mountain
cult for the Tibetan people and their indigenous concepts for constitut-
ing their political and socio-cultural identity. Moreover it demonstrates
the incorporation of indigenous Tibetan religious concepts into the
Buddhist world-view, thereby transforming Indian Buddhism into the
Buddhist tradition peculiar to Tibet.
The edict (bka’-gtsigs) reproduced in the mKhas-pa’i-dga’-ston lists the
temples and religious communities to which sealed copies of the edict
(^19) The Tibetan text of the inscription is given in Richardson 1985, p. 28.