In the first centuries of the second millennium CE, Buddhist authors on the Tibetan Plateau crafted historical narratives that would attain tremendous cultural staying power. These foundational Tibetan Buddhist myths painted an illustrious vision of a common Tibetan religious and political past, set in the days before and during the Tibetan Empire (ca. 600–850 CE). These stories, centred on Tibet’s patron deity Avalokiteśvara and the Emperor Songtsen the Wise (d. 649/50, Tib. Srong btsan sgam po), would come to durably mark the Tibetan Plateau’s cultural, religious and political landscape, and reverberate well beyond the Tibetan Highlands as well. Influential notions of Buddhist kingship (later adopted by the Dalai Lamas as well as a Mongol khan) owe much to these early compositions, as do perceptions of Tibet as a preordained Buddhist land, the country’s relationship to the transcendental bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, tales of the Tibetan people’s origins and their place in the world, and more.

This narrative literature and related traditions are subject to sustained research at the IKGA. These studies are currently being pursued under the banner of the ERC-funded project “The Narrative Foundations of Tibetan Buddhist Culture” (FOUNT, 2026–2031) and the FWF Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations.” This research area developed out of an earlier focus on origin narratives, pursued under the FWF-funded projects “Visions of Community” (2011–2019) and “Buddhist Narratives and ‘Tibetan’ Ethnogenesis” (2021–2025).

Related publications

Reinier Langelaar and Joanna Bialek, 2025a. “Translating ‘Tibet’: The Geographic Extent of Bod in Tibetan Historiographies.” In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 35(3): 539–59.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186325000069 

Tsering Drongshar and Reinier Langelaar, 2025b. “Bod mi rigs ’byung khungs kyi gtam rgyud ’phel rim skor la zhib ’jug byas pa” [in Tibetan: “Research on the Development of an Origin Narrative of the Tibetan People”]. In: Chos dung dkar po/ Sa skya’i rtsom rig dus deb 18: 17–28. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19065696

Reinier Langelaar, 2024a. “Replacing a Pillar of Tibetan Buddhist Historiography: On the Redactions of the So-called Pillar Testament (bKa'-chems-ka-khol-ma).” In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 87(3): 489–517. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X24000363

Reinier Langelaar, 2024b. “Avalokiteśvara in Dunhuang and Tibet: The Development of the Bodhisattva’s Tibetan Cult (with a Study of the History of the Ma ṇi bka’ ’bum).” BuddhistRoad 7.4: 1–57. https://doi.org/10.46586/rub.br.326

Reinier Langelaar, 2018. “Chasing the Colours of the Rainbow: Tibetan Ethnogenealogies in Flux.” In: The Medieval History Journal, vol 21(2): 328–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971945818775455