BUDDHISM IN THE TIBETAN CULTURAL AREA 275Tibetans regard him as a second Buddha, eclipsing Sakyamuni in importance
for their country. In later centuries the Nyingma order claimed him as their
founder and as the conduit-from the great Cosmic Buddha Samantabhadra
(see Section 5.4.4)-of their central meditation tradition, Dzogchen (rDzogs-
ch'en, The Great Perfection).
Whatever the truth of these legends, Padmasambhava had little influence
over the policies adopted at Sam-ye. The king appointed a council, composed
of the chief monks, to oversee the translation of Buddhist works into Tibetan
and, in particular, to prevent the translation of Tantras. The large number of
Tantric works that did make their way into Tibetan during this period were
thus the result of independent efforts, and not of royal sponsorship.
The second major event occurring during Trhisong Detsen's reign was the
Great Debate on the issue of sudden versus gradual Awakening, held at Sam-
ye from approximately 790 to 792 (Strong EB, sec. 7.3). Historical sources
covering this event are contradictory, with some even suggesting that no di-
rect debate was held, but rather that different scholars from India and China
were invited to present their positions separately to the king. One of the few
sources dating from the time of the debate-the report of Hwa-shang Mo-
ho-yan, the major Chinese participant and a student of the Northern School
of Ch'an-claims that the Chinese defense of sudden Awakening won the
king's favor. Later Tibetan sources, however, all maintain that the Chinese lost
the debate and that the king banned any further Chinese missionary activity
in the country. There is strong evidence that this ban was never enacted, but
the accepted version of the event had an important effect on later Tibetan
thought and is in fact a major source for our understanding of the issues alive
in the period during which this version crystallized, the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries. Therefore we will discuss it in connection with that period
in Section 11.3.1.
Two of Trhisong Detsen's successors, his son and grandson, continued his
enthusiastic support ofBuddhism. The grandson, Ralpachen (Ral-pa-can; r.
823-40), even appointed a Buddhist monk as his chief minister. However, this
appointment, along with the growing power of the Buddhist monasteries in
general, appears to have been unpopular with members of his court, for in 840
both the king and his chief minister were assassinated. Ralpachen's brother,
Lang Dar-rna (gLang Dar-rna), ascended to the throne and proceeded to crack
down on the monasteries. He is depicted in the traditional histories as an anti-
Buddhist fanatic, although Tun-huang records portray him as opposed not to
the religion per se, but simply to the inordinate power that the monasteries
had begun to acquire based on their land grants. He in turn was assassinated by
a Buddhist monk-the assassination was later justified on the grounds that it
was an act of"kindness" to prevent the king from creating further bad karma-
and the ensuing political chaos brought about the end of the Tibetan empire
and any semblance of centralized control in Tibet. The monasteries were de-
populated, and thus the period of the First Propagation ended.
Although the political order in the following period was too fragmented
to provide any support to Buddhism, individual Tibetans continued to pursue