Note 3 — INTRODUCTION.

With regard to the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet, Emil Schlagintweit3 remarks that “the early history is involved in darkness and myth.” Sanang Setsen, in his “History of the East Mongols,”4 says that during the reign of King Hlatotori, who came to the throne in 367 A.D., four objects descended from heaven one day and lighted upon the golden terrace of his palace, “namely, the image of two hands in the position of prayer, a golden pyramid-temple an ell high, a small coffer with a gem marked with the six fundamental syllables (Om-ma-ni-pad-mè-hûm), and the manual called Szamadok.”5 As the king did not understand the nature of the holy objects, he ordered them to be locked up in his treasury. While they lay there, “misfortune came upon the king. If children were born, they came into the world blind; fruits and grain came to nothing; cattle plague, famine, and pestilence prevailed; and of unavoidable misery was there much.” But after forty years had passed, there came five strangers to the king and said, “Great king, how couldst thou let these objects, so mystic and powerful, be cast into the treasury?” Having thus spoken, they suddenly disappeared. Therefore the king ordered the holy objects to be brought forth from the treasury, and to be attached to the points of standards, and treated with the utmost respect and reverence. After that all went well: the king became prosperous and long-lived, children were born beautiful, famine and pestilence came to an end, and in their place appeared happiness and welfare. With the date of this event Sanang Setsen connects the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet; but according to Tibetan historians, says Schlagintweit, “the earliest period of the propagation of Buddhism, which reached down till the end of the tenth century A.D., begins with King Srongtsan Gampo, who was born in the year 617 A.D., and died 698.” This king is said to have sent a mission to India in the year 632 A.D., the result of which was the invention of a Tibetan alphabet, based upon Devanāgari characters, and the translation into Tibetan of Indian sacred books. In his introduction of Buddhism into his kingdom he is said to have been “most energetically supported by his two wives, one of whom was a Nepalese, the other a Chinese princess. Both of them, who throughout their lifetime proved most faithful votaries to the faith of Buddha, are worshipped either under the general name of Dolma (in Sanskrit Tārā), or under the respective names of Dolkar and Doljang.” After making considerable progress during the reign of this monarch, the new religion lost ground under his immediate successors. “But under one of them, Thisrong de tsan, … Buddhism began to revive, owing to the useful regulations proclaimed by this king. He it was who successfully crushed an attempt made by the chiefs during his minority to suppress the new creed, and it is principally due to him that the Buddhist faith became henceforth permanently established.”