The Spread of Buddhism

the later spread of buddhism in tibet 349

tion about this period already at the time when the Tibetan authors
started to get interested in this topic. But this is only one side of the
affair. On the other side, I think, we also have to explain the speci c
representation of this age in the chos-’byungs from their inherent notion
of history and meaning. As we have seen, most authors attribute to this
period a certain sombre quality. To these authors, the “darkness” of
this age is not due to a lack of information—indeed, the shortage of
information about this period itself bears meaning for the story these
authors have to tell: it “proves” that this period was a time of discon-
tinuity and cultural standstill. Within the general plot of the narrative
of Tibetan history the “dark age” serves as a silent pause after the
catastrophe and, perhaps more important, as a dramaturgical contrast
to the “light” that then follows, namely the renaissance of true religion,
the “later spread”.

3. The Religious Kings of Western Tibet and the
   Notion of Buddhist Renaissance

3.1. The Return of Buddhist Monasticism to Central Tibet

The chos-’byungs tell quite a lot of stories connected to the “later spread”
of Buddhism in Tibet. From the immanent chronology of these sources,
the  rst story is the decision of Klu-mes Tshul-khrims-shes-rab and  ve
other monks to bring back the tradition of Buddhist Vinaya (monastic
codex) from the Eastern Tibetan province Khams to Central Tibet,
where they re-established the sagha and built many monasteries.^18 Most
sources take the arrival of these so-called “six men of dBus and gTsang”
(dBus gTsang-gi mi-drug) in Central Tibet as the beginning of the “later
spread” and calculate its dating from this event. A long story narrating
the survival of the monastic tradition in Khams to where a small group
of Buddhist monks  ed from Central Tibet at the dawn of the “dark
age” is told in the chos-’byungs and possibly goes back to a history of

(^18) The actual importance of these “Eastern Vinaya monks” for the re-establish-
ment of Buddhism in Central Tibet was emphasised by R. Davidson (2004) recently.
In this brilliant study, which was published too recently to become fully incorporated
in this paper, Davidson argues that the Buddhist culture brought to dBus and Tsang
from Eastern Tibet had already acquired a  rm social position quite a time before the
West-Tibetan kings started their programme of reintroducing Buddhism in Tibet. Their
in uence remained strong at least up to the 12th century, when they gradually became
assimilated by the emerging tantric movements, maily by the bKa’-gdams-pas.