Drigum Tsenpo

HIS DEATH IS THE TIBETAN TRADITION'S OWN ACCOUNT OF WHY THERE ARE TOMBS: the legend marks the transition from mythological divine kings who went back up the rope to historical rulers with physical burial sites. The corpus held neither the king nor the transition.

Domains

• kingship
• the first death

Relations

• eighth in the line of: Nyatri Tsenpo
• killed by: Lo-Ngam

Sources

• Reference treatment of the Yarlung kings and the sky-rope: Nyatri Tsenpo was the first king of Tibet and the legendary progenitor of the Yarlung dynasty, said to have descended from the heavens on a rope of light and to have begun ruling the people of the valley around the second century BCE; legend states that the rulers of Tibet descended from heaven to earth on a cord and were pulled back up when their time came, and that Nyatri Tsenpo at his death ascended to heaven by this 'sky rope', as did his successors for the next six generations; Drigum Tsenpo, the eighth king of Tibet, was the first to lose his immortality when he angered his stable master Lo-Ngam, who cut the cord, leading to Drigum Tsenpo's death; he thus became the first Tibetan ruler to be buried on earth, and the legend marks the transition from mythological divine kings to historical rulers with physical burial sites.