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How Buddhism was Brought to Ladakh





 Panorama at an altitude of 4,094m. The Srinagar-Leh Road was constructed in the 1960’s and descends more than 1,000m to the rugged landscape of Ladakh.


                  Historians state that Dards made West Tibet their home in the 4th and 5th centuries. They say that these people migrated along the course of the Indus River and that they introduced irrigation and settled communities. But who were the Dards? Colonial historians placed almost all peoples and languages of the Upper Indus River into one pot and defined Tibetans as Baltis, later obscuring and simplifying distinct identities by introducing three other terms, “Dard, Dardistan, and Dardic,” which in truth do not occur in classical sources and were never mentioned before. John Mock noted that the word dard “may be a loan word from Persian via Urdu” and means “pain.” He investigated all sources (Herodotus, Strabo, Sanskrit, Puranic, and Kashmiri references) that led modern scholars to make such a mistake and wrote: “This usage of the term is curiously parallel to the Sanskrit usage, where it connoted non-specific ferocious outsiders living in the mountains beyond the borders of civilization.
 



 Mid 16th century mural of Guru Padmasambhava, with Yeshe Tsogyal and Princess Mandarava in the Temple in the Citadel of Basgo.

                                    
 
The 9-meter high image carved in the rock is referred to as Maitreya Buddha in most guidebooks, but the image is Avalokiteshvara, Lord of Compassion, since the statue has four arms. It is carved in the late Gupta period of India (8th or 9th century). Mulbek marks the western gateway from Srinagar to Ladakh.


                          It is not clear when the first Buddhist communities were established in Ladakh. The site of His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, writes that “Starting about the 3rd century, Buddhism began to grow and spread outside India, adjusting to local cultures and the varying conditions of different countries. Buddhism began to take root in different countries in Asia as they came in contact with Buddhism from the early 2nd century B.C.E. Buddhism became nearly extinct in India, the country of its origin

History books concede that after the eastward propagation of Buddhism in the 7th century, Ladakh and its neighbours were overrun by those fleeing westwards from the early Tibetan Tubo Kings. The chiefs of the Tubo Empire in Yarlung (which is situated in Central Tibet) had established an aristocracy and displaced the native inhabitants who had an independent state with its own language, literature, and culture; these people continue living in remote areas of Zhang Zhung in West Tibet proper, Kashmir, Ladakh, Zanskar, and the Himalayan regions of Nepal.

Under the patronage of King Trison Detsen, Khenpo Shantarakshita from India established a monastic order in Tibet by ordaining the first seven monks at Samye Monastery in the year 791. He called Guru Rinpoche to vanquish all obstructions impeding the construction and to help establish Buddhism on the Tibetan Plateau.



Guru Padmasambhava, the “Second Buddha,” travelled from Northwest India through Lahaul-Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and Arunchal Pradesh and firmly established Buddhism in these lands. The site of His Holiness the Karmapa wrote, “If born in the year 732, then he would have been 54 years of age when he made the difficult journey into the Land of Snow”3  - a moment in history that denotes the first coming of Buddhism to the Himalayan region. Furthermore, “One may conclude that a major reason for so many Indian Buddhist sages coming to Central Tibet from Kashmir, and notably, the famous Padmasambhava from Uddiyana, was the simple fact that Tibet then ruled much of this region. Nothing is really reported concerning Padmasambhava’s life in Kashmir. He lived, some say, with wandering yogis and sadhus, in exile from his homeland. Others report that it was during this period that he acquired knowledge and skill in various crafts. In Kashmir he earned the name Sthiramati, ‘the Youthful Genius.

 
It is often reported that the war-like activity and expansion of the Tubo Empire in Central Tibet pressed the Himalayan peoples living in the west to block their advances on the one hand, while they were forced to fight the Muslims on the other. The Dharma Fellowship notes that between “720 and 726 the King of Baltistan moved his seat to Gilgit out of fear of the Tibetan advance. (…) Although the King of Baltistan remained loyal to his alliance with China, the nobility and peoples of Baltistan are said to have gone over to the Tibetan side. (…) Mention of tribute from the King of Kapisa in 748 ascertains that by that date Uddiyana had become a vassal state.
 

 Mural of Mahasiddhas and Lotsawas, “Great Translators,” in the Tempel of Stakne Citadel.
 


During those times, King Lalitaditya-Muktapida, who ruled between approx. 725 and 756 C.E., had united Ladakh and gave craftsmen who fled from northern India the possibility to work and build monasteries in his kingdom. Many rock reliefs from the 8th century onwards can be attributed to King Lalitaditya’s times. David Snellgrove and Tadeusz Skorpuski wrote: “Religious treasures, both Hindu and Buddhist, were plundered from all over northern India and craftsmen brought in from distant lands, thus building up what might have proved an amazingly rich heritage. But even as it was being built up, it was already being ravaged by raiding Tibetans, who were then the main power in Central Asia and scarcely yet converted to Buddhism. Moreover, Lalitaditya’s successors were unable to hold the kingdom together, and several centuries of political turmoil and disruption, of internal strife and foreign invasion must have resulted in the dissipation of what must have been an extraordinary civilization long before the country fell to a Muslim dynasty in 1337 A.D. Little more than the foundations of a Buddhist monastery, a large temple and a stupa, may still be seen at Lalitaditya’s one-time capital of Parihasapura, some 30 km north of Srinagar. Ladakh must surely have been subject to him, and thus it is to the 8th and subsequent centuries that we may attribute the Buddhist rock-reliefs, which represent the most important traces of pre-Tibetan, i.e., direct Indian Buddhist influence in Ladakh.

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