Kingship and Religion in Tibet
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Tibetan Kingship in the Earliest Sources

Theme 1The first theme of the project called for an in-depth analysis of the most reliable epigraphic, manuscript, architectural, and iconographic sources on kingship during the period of the Tibetan Empire, with an eye to drafting an accurate description of the Tibetan kingship. This was intended as a philological corrective within the field of Tibetan Studies, where very few scholars work with Old Tibetan material, and where many incautiously adopt the traditional received histories written in Classical Tibetan language from the twelfth century onward. These later Buddhist histories effectively texture Tibet’s rich cultural and religious memory, but they can also have the effect of filtering scholars’ interpretations of earlier material, whose edges are often quite rough in comparison.