the later spread of buddhism in tibet 343
religious specialists telling its own history, which is interpreted dependent
on the respective horizons, concepts and intentions of the individual
authors.
As I have said above, there is no such thing as “later spread” apart
from the use of this term in speci c acts of speech. The same holds true
for other concepts—religious or otherwise. If this appears hair-splitting
to the readers, I would insist on the great relevance of this observation
when we consider the social forces implied in the production of sym-
bols like these. As indicated above, religious symbol-production—the
making of religious meaning—was mainly the area of responsibility
of religious specialists. In the case of the “later spread”-symbol we are
dealing with a concept of historical hermeneutics. Its main function is
to be an element in a concept of history employed to structure Tibet’s
past according to a speci c religious worldview. This concept de nes
Tibetan history as a series of cultural epochs comprising:
(a) a pristine epoch when Tibetans had no knowledge of Buddhism.
This is followed by
(b) the period of the “earlier spread” (snga-dar), temporarily nearly con-
gruent to the glorious age of the Tibetan empire, when bodhisattva
kings invited and sponsored Buddhist scholars from almost every part
of the known Buddhist world (7th–9th century).^4 This epoch ended
with the persecution of the (alleged) anti-Buddhist king Glang-dar-ma,
who is said to have destroyed Buddhist institutions in Central Tibet.
The result was
(c) a period of political and religious chaos lasting for about one century;
commonly referred to as the “dark age” of Tibetan history. New light
appeared when Buddhism was revived by fresh impulses—this time
from India only—when
(d) the “later spread” was taking place. As an epoch, the “later spread”
lasts to the present day insofar as—with one exception—all Tibetan
Buddhist traditions identify themselves as the heirs of transmission
lineages of Buddhist teachings unbroken since the protagonists of the
“later spread”; in other words: up to now Buddhism did not again
cease to exist on Tibetan soil.
In this context the label “later spread” gets a far greater meaning than
a simple denotation for certain religious movements. As we see, this
concept has a binary structure based on the single criterion of existence
or non-existence of Buddhism on Tibetan soil in a certain period of
(^4) Cf. the contribution of K. Kollmar-Paulenz in this book.