The example of the grave fields of Bcom mdo and Thang mgo (#0195, #0196, #0197, #0351; #0194) in the region of Dbu ru Byang, and of Zing ba and Ka’u (#0245, #0246) in Lower ’Phan po – all part of our current tumulus map of the area of present-day Lhun grub County, with more than 70 tumulus fields.

In its description of the geomantic characteristics of the place of Rva sgreng (Map 1), the first monastic seat of the Bka’ gdams pa school founded by ’Brom ston Rgyal ba’i ’byung gnas (1005-1064), it says in a 13th-cent. text that “in former times the wise people had seen it as being endowed with good qualities because it had been a burial siteof the Cog ro clan” (Roesler 2007: 130). We assume the characteristics more generally refer to the area around the monastery, including the side valley behind Bcom mdo township where the impressive necropolis of “Bcom mdo-2” (#0196) is located. Such an explicit mention of a lineage in connection with burial sites is rather rarely found in the sources; the information is here confirmed by the list of imperial districts kept in post-dynastic chronicles, which mention the Cog ro as the leading lineage of the Bcom mdo Thousand District (stong sde) one of the 40 stong sde of imperial Central Tibet (Hazod 2009: 200, 208).

There are indications of another lineage association with the area of the Bcom mdo graves (and the solitary tomb of Thang mgo, respectively; see site #0194). Thus it appears from the founding history of Rva sgreng that the actual place of the monastery was part of a (branch) territory of the ’Phrang kha (= Bran[g] ka), the lineage of ’Phrang kha Ber chung, who invited ’Brom ston pa to found his monastery in Ber chung’s homeland in Dbu ru Byang (BA 363; Roesler 2007: 226; BA 363). The original Bran ka territory was in Lower ’Phan po, however (Map 2). It was part of the ancient district of Yung ba, which in a list of clan territories related to the 7th-cent. is registered as the land of the Bran ka, known as the lineage of the famous monk minister Bran ka Dpal gyi yon tan (fl. early 9th cent.). The clan's one-time presence in this area is among other things reflected in the toponym “Bänka” (Bran ka), which refers to an abandoned village described by the locals as the birthplace of this minister. It is located next to the grave fields of Zing ba (a toponym supposed to be related to a pre-7th cent. ruler entitled Zing po che) and Ka’u. (For a brief description of the latter field, see Hazod 2009: 184-85.)

Similarly to the Bran ka the Cog ro is also registered in connection with different areas (often mentioned in tandem with the ’Bro, the lineage of the Rva sgreng founder if we read ’Brom (in ’Brom ston, the “master of the ’Brom”) as a variant spelling of ’Bro). This points to the characteristic of the transregional nature of the Tibetan clans, according to which the lineages in a wide-spread spatial distribution were present in various local historical contexts – in the imperial time often associated with the allocation of certain administrative and military posts (Hazod 2010). There are a number of burial sites in Central Tibet, where similarly to the examples presented here the data from the sources make it possible to narrow down the possible clan historical links of the sites in question; on the other hand it is often exactly this regional multi-presence in the history of the clans that makes it difficult to identify a lineage’s principal home territory and place of its (chief) burial ground.