Residence of the Early Tibetan Kings and Sacred Shrine

The famous castle of Yumbu Lagang1 is located in Yarlung, the valley in southern central Tibet that, together with the western side valley of Chongpo, formed the core area of the early Yarlung Kingdom. From this area, the unification of the Tibetan territories began under the Yarlung king Tri Lontsen (also known as Namri Lontsen; d. ca. 618), which ultimately led to the formation of the Tibetan Empire (ca. 600–850).

The castle is situated prominently on a cliff, a spur of Mount Tashitseri, on the east side of Lower Yarlung, overlooking much of the fertile valley where the Yarlung River and the Chongpo River converge. Legend has it that the wide valley floor was once covered by a lake, probably a reminder of the regular flooding that hit the area before the water was tamed by canals. In this legend the flood is the work of a naga monster who was overwhelmed by a bird of prey; this was the “thundering falcon” (trandruk), which gave its name to the temple. Built in the middle of the former lake, under Emperor Songtsen Gampo (ca. 605–649), even before the Lhasa Jokhang, it is considered Tibet’s first vihara, or Buddhist temple. It is alleged that a shrine was also established in Yumbu Lagang at this time.2

The story of Trandruk is part of a series of “first events” that Buddhist history locates in Yarlung—the “oldest of (Tibet’s) lands” (yulla ngaba): the origin of “Tibet’s first human beings,” the development of the “first (agricultural) field” (situated below Yumbu Lagang) (fig. 3), and, not least, the arrival of “Tibet’s first king,” Nyatri Tsenpo; he is said to have built the Yumbu Lagang residence, Tibet’s “first castle” (kharla ngaba), following his heavenly descent onto a hill in the west of the valley. A parallel and probably older tradition contradicts this legend and describes Yumbu Lagang as one of four “personal castles” (kukhar) of the early kings of the Yarlung house, which were built on the four sides of the valley. Only Yumbu Lagang, the latest of the four residences, remained; it was the kukhar of the king named Lha Totori Nyentsen.3

Under this king, who is ranked in the royal genealogy five generations before Songtsen Gampo, another first event is said to have happened in Lower Yarlung: the first contact with Buddhism, known in classical Tibetan Buddhist history as the “advent of the sublime dharma” (dampei chokyi unye).

The “Advent of the Sublime Dharma”

The story goes that one day a set of Buddhist (basically Avalokiteshvara-specific) objects fell from the sky onto the roof of this king’s castle—a cubit-sized golden chaitya (stupa), a drinking bowl with jewels, and texts of sutras, including the Karandavyuha Sutra and the somewhat obscure prayer text Pangkong chakgyapa.4 At the same time, a voice from heaven announced that after five generations a king would understand the meaning of these items and texts—a reference to Songtsen Gampo, the celebrated emperor and Buddhist king under whom the texts were supposedly translated.5 Lha Totori Nyentsen called these foreign objects “secret Nyenpo” (Nyenpo Sangwa), with nyenpo apparently being an allusion to the nyen spirits commonly associated with the mountain and with ancestry.6 And although the king did not understand the objects and texts, he kept them in a separate place resembling a sanctuary inside the castle, the “nyen treasury,” and made regular offerings to them. This prolonged his life in a miraculous way, perhaps leading to further miracles: later, a prince born blind followed the advice of his father and worshipped the Nyenpo Sangwa (fig. 4), which reportedly gave him the ability to see.

The story, which has been in circulation in written form since the eleventh century, used the old motif of heavenly descent as exemplified in the legend of the arrival of the progenitor king (Nyatri Tsenpo), a phenomenon that not all Tibetan Buddhists accepted. A well-known chronicle from the thirteenth century names this origin polemically as a falsification on the part of the Bonpos and asserts instead that an Indian pandita brought the texts to Tibet. The latter, however, could not teach the king because there was no knowledge of writing in Tibet at that time, so he moved on to China, leaving the objects with the king. Later authors also tended toward this version of the Nyenpo Sangwa origin, before the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682), in his authoritative chronicle, declared the original (miraculous) version to be the correct one.7

It is not implausible to see a historical early contact with India and Buddhism in the fifth century CE behind the Nyenpo Sangwa story, although the figure of King Lha Totori Nyentsen cannot be ascertained as a historical figure. He remains in the semidarkness of the “mythical period” of the royal genealogy.

The Temple of Yumbu Lagang and Its Treasures

Yumbu Lagang has been restored many times in its long history, but it is believed that the basic structure has essentially been preserved: a square tower with four lookouts in the upper part, to which a residential building was attached, which was later rebuilt and expanded to become a temple (lhakhang) with adjoining monastic accommodation. A very similar, albeit somewhat smaller building is the still preserved Gyelpo Khang in Gyama (east of Lhasa), where Emperor Songtsen Gampo is said to have grown up.

Yumbu Lagang Castle was apparently continuously used as a (temporary) residence for members of the royal family during the empire, finally by Tri Wosung, the last pretender to the throne (ca. 843–ca. 893), who was born in Yumbu Lagang. After the death of Tri Udumtsen (the last emperor, popularly known as Langdarma, d. 842), Tri Wosung sought to maintain a remnant of the former imperial power from Yarlung. Even in the postimperial period the castle functioned as a royal residence, until the late thirteenth century, as one of the seats of the Yarlung Jowo, descendants of Tri Wosung, before its transformation into a temple gradually took place under the subsequent rule of Pakmodrupa (1350–1481). Associated with this was its establishment as a place of pilgrimage with the status of a national symbol, which was further strengthened under the Fifth Dalai Lama, not least externally, through the attachment of the characteristic golden canopy roof.8 This led to the tradition of the temple’s care being taken over by lamas from Riwo Cholung, the neighboring Gelukpa monastery, founded in the fifteenth century.

What we see today goes back to the reconstruction of castle and temple in 1982, which largely removed the destructive traces of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and included a restoration and partial replication of the original inventory. Some new components, such as the spacious driveway to the castle, and other adaptations were added to the site as a tourist attraction.

The temple is a three-story building, with the central shrine, an eight-pillar chapel, situated on the lower floor. The main statue is the crowned buddha known as the “Lord of the wish-granting jewel” (Jowo Norbu Sampel). The head of the original statue was made of stone, the rest of clay, and it had sported a jewel the size of a bird’s egg in the chest area. Emperor Songtsen Gampo supposedly offered the gilt-bronze ornaments. The statue is flanked by clay statues of King Nyatri Tsenpo (left) and Emperor Songtsen Gampo (right), followed by statues of other representatives of the glorious royal past, such as Minister Tonmi Sambhota, Emperor Tri Songdetsen, Lha Totori Nyentsen (left wall); Emperor Tri Relpachen, Tri Wosung, and Minister Gar (right wall). The temple’s murals include the legend of Nyatri Tsenpo’s arrival in Yarlung, the story of the Nyenpo Sangwa, and other key events of early Tibetan Buddhist history. Among other things, the floor above housed a sandalwood statue of Lokeshvara almost twenty inches (fifty centimeters) high, reportedly from the seventh century, which was stolen in a burglary in 1999. The third floor has a passage to the tower, with an entrance for pilgrims to the central pillar, locally known as the “world pillar” (sikyi kawa).9

The original chamber (drubkhang) of Nyatri Tsenpo is said to have been situated behind the altar in the first-floor chapel. It is assumed that the old treasury of the castle, of which the sources speak—the norbu bangso (“sepulchre with the precious objects”)—was found below it. The treasury included royal heirlooms related to kings before the time of Lha Totori Nyentsen, which were resealed as “hidden treasures” (terma) under Mutik Tsenpo (that is, Emperor Tri Desongtsen, d. 815)—described as the “thirteen precious treasures of the (Yarlung) kings” (gyelpo korcha rinchen chusum). They were under the special protection of Yarlha Shampo, the ancient territorial god of Yarlung and protector of the early kings. The objects of the Nyenpo Sangwa, the contents of the stated original sanctuary of Yumbu Lagang, are not mentioned among these objects. They appear in Trandruk, in terma lists related to events of the early ninth century, where they were said to have been hidden in one of this temple’s treasure caves.10 It is quite possible that the myth of the Nyenpo Sangwa and its association with Yumbu Lagang was first formulated at this time—at the height of the empire’s Buddhist period—in the local milieu of Trandruk and Lower Yarlung.