A Historical Atlas of TibetCradled among the world’s highest mountains—and sheltering one of its most devout religious communities—Tibet is, for many of us, an ultimate destination, a place that touches the heavens, a place only barely in our world, at its very end. In recent decades Western fascination with Tibet has soared, from the rise of Tibetan studies in academia to the rock concerts aimed at supporting its independence to the simple fact that most of us—far from any base camp—know exactly what a sherpa is. And yet any sustained look into Tibet as a place, any attempt to find one’s way around its high plateaus and through its deep history, will yield this surprising fact: we have barely mapped it. With this atlas, Karl E. Ryavec rights that wrong, sweeping aside the image of Tibet as Shangri-La and putting in its place a comprehensive vision of the region as it really is, a civilization in its own right. And the results are absolutely stunning. |
Contents
Part 1 The prehistorical and ancient periods circa 30000 BCE to 600 CE | 33 |
Part 2 The Imperial Period circa 600900 | 43 |
Part 3 The Period of Disunion circa 9001642 | 59 |
Part 4 The Ganden Podrang Period Kingdom of the Dalai Lamas | 127 |
Conclusion | 169 |