After the Tibetan empire
When the Tibetan empire collapsed in the ninth century, members of the royal line moved west into the upper Indus and founded kingdoms — Guge and Purang in western Tibet, and Maryul in Ladakh under Lhachen Palgyigon. Ladakh's Tibetan character dates from this settlement.
The kingdom sat on the trade route between Central Asia, Tibet and Kashmir, and its prosperity depended on the caravans carrying pashmina wool, salt and Central Asian goods over the Karakoram.
The second diffusion
The revival of Buddhism in western Tibet after the persecution of the ninth century was organised from these kingdoms. Rinchen Zangpo, the great translator, was sent from Guge to India for training and returned to found monasteries across the region — Tabo in Spiti, Alchi in Ladakh, and others in the Guge country.
The Alchi complex in Ladakh, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, preserves wall paintings in a Kashmiri idiom that survive nowhere else: Kashmir's own Buddhist art was destroyed, and Alchi, in a valley bypassed by later monastic reconstruction, is the fullest surviving record of it.
The Lhachen line gave way around 1600 to the Namgyals, who unified Ladakh and ruled it into the colonial period.
Further reading
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Asher, Catherine B. India Before Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2006
- Behrendt, Kurt A. The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007
- Dehejia, Vidya. Art of the Imperial Cholas. Columbia University Press, 1990
- Dehejia, Vidya. Early Buddhist Rock Temples. Cornell University Press, 1972
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.