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Little is known of the beginnings of the Tibetan people. They originated from the nomadic, war like tribes known as the Qiang. Chinese records of these tribes date back as far as the 2nd century BC. However, the people of Tibet were not to emerge as a politically united force until the 7th century AD.
The Tibetans have many myths concerning the origin of the world and themselves. As the myths suggest, the Yarlung Valley was the cradle of the civilization. Credible historical records regarding the Yarlung Valley Dynasty date only from the time when the fledgling kingdom entered the international arena in the 6th century. By this time the Yarlung kings, through conquest and alliances, had unified much of central Tibet. Namri Songtsen (circa 570-619), the 32nd Tibetan king, extended Tibetan influence into inner Asia, defeating Qiang tribes on China's borders. But the true flowering of Tibet as an important regional power came about with Namri Songsten's son, Songtsen Gampo (circa 618-49).
Under Songtsen Gampo, Tibetan expansion continued unabated. Armies ranged as far afield as northern India and emerged as a threat to the Tang Dynasty in China. Both Nepal and China reacted to the Tibetan incursions by reluctantly agreeing to alliances through marriage. Thus, Buddhism first gained royal patronage and a foothold on the Tibetan plateau. The king even passed a law making it illegal not to be a Buddhist.
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For two centuries after the reign of Songtsen Gampo, Tibet continued to grow in power and influence. During the reign of King Trisong Detsen (755-97), its influence extended across Turkestan, northern Pakistan, Nepal and India. In 783, Tibetan armies overran Chang'an (present day Xi'an), the Chinese capital, forcing the Chinese to conclude a treaty that recognized new borders incorporating most of the Tibetan conquests. Trisong Detsen was responsible for founding Samye Monastery, the first institution to carry out the systematic translation of Buddhist scriptures and the training of Tibetan monks.
Contention over the path that Buddhism was to take in Tibet culminated in the Great Debate of Samye, in which King Detsen is said to have adjudicated in favor of Indian teachers who advocated a gradual approach to enlightenment that was founded in scholastic study and moral precepts. There was, however, much opposition to this institutionalized, clerical Buddhism, largely from supporters of the Bön faith. The next Tibetan king, Tritsug Detsen Ralpachen, fell victim to this opposition and was assassinated by his brother Langdharma, who launched an attack on Buddhism. In 842, Langdharma was assassinated during a festival -- by a Buddhist monk disguised as a Black Hat dancer -- and the Tibetan state quickly collapsed into a number of warring principalities. In the confusion that followed, support for Buddhism dwindled and clerical monastic Buddhism experienced a 150-year hiatus.
The collapse of the Tibetan state in 842 put a stop to Tibetan expansion in Asia. Overwhelmed initially by local power struggles, Buddhism gradually began to again exert its influence. As the tide of Buddhist faith receded in India, Nepal and China, Tibet slowly emerged as the most devoutly Buddhist nation in the world. The so-called Second Diffusion of the Dharma (sometimes translated as 'Law') in the late 10th century led to a resurgence of Buddhist influence in the 11th century. Many Tibetans traveled to India to study. The new ideas that they brought back had a revitalizing effect on Tibetan thought and produced new schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
By the time the Tang Dynasty reached the end of its days in 907, China had recovered almost all the territory it had lost to the Tibetans. Through the Song Dynasty (960-1276) the two nations had virtually no contact with each other, and Tibet's sole foreign contacts were with its southern Buddhist neighbors. This changed when Genghis Khan launched a series of conquests in 1206 that led to Mongol supremacy in the form of a vast empire that straddled Central Asia and China. The Mongols did not give Tibet serious attention until 1239, when they sent a number of raiding parties into the country. They almost reached Lhasa before turning back.
Tibetan accounts have it that returning Mongol troops related the spiritual eminence of Tibetan Lamas to Godan Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, and in response Godan summoned Sakya Pandita, the head of Sakya Monastery, to his court. The outcome was the beginning of a priest-patron relationship between the deeply religious Tibetans and the militarily adventurous Mongols. Tibetan Buddhism became the state religion of the Mongol Empire in East Asia and the head Sakya Lama became its spiritual leader, a position that also entailed temporal authority over Tibet. The Sakyapa ascendancy lasted less than 100 years. By 1350 Changchub Gyaltsen -- a monk who had once trained in Sakya -- sought to defeat the Sakyapas. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China lost its grip on power 18 years later and the Chinese Ming Dynasty was established.
When the Mongol Empire disintegrated, both China and Tibet regained their independence. Sino-Tibetan relations took on the form of regular exchanges of diplomatic courtesies by two independent governments. Changchub Gyaltsen's effort to remove all traces of the Mongol administration was nothing short of a declaration of Tibet's independence from foreign interference and a search for national identity.
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