Thread by @HistoryTibetan

King Songtsen Gampo and his Chinese and Nepali queens Wen-cheng Kung-chu and Bhrikuti Devi.

Songtsen Gampo (617 – 649 A.D.) Songtsen Gampo ascended to the throne at the age of thirteen.

During the reign of King Songtsen Gampo, #Tibet emerged as a unified state and became a great
military power, with its armies marching across Central Asia. Thus, the King of #Nepal and the Emperor of #China offered their daughters in marriage to the Tibetan king.

The marriages with the Nepalese and Chinese princesses have been given prominence in the religious story of Tibet because of their
contributions to #Buddhism

Songtsen Gampo promoted Buddhism in Tibet and sent seventeen Tibetan students to India to master its languages and, through them, Buddhism.
Thonmi Sambhota, the most famous of these students, mastered Sanskrit and was introduced to Buddhism.

He then returned to #Tibet and, on the basis of the
#Brahmi and #Gupta scripts, devised the Tibetan alphabet and grammar. For the first time in the history of Tibet he was then able to translate several important Buddhist texts from #Sanskrit into #Tibetan

Songtsen Gampo invited a large number of Buddhist translators and scholars from #India and the entire corpus of Buddhist teaching was translated into Tibetan. Songtsen Gampo was also Tibet’s first lawmaker.

He drew up ten moral principles and sixteen rules of public conduct. The border between #Tibet and
#China was defined.

#HistoryTibetan #kingoftibet #Buddhism #lawmakers #texts #Tibet