Songtsen Gampo

Ingested on the line this batch states in its header: the retrievable material is a story about mapping a demoness onto the terrain of a country, not a reign-chronicle. WENCHENG IS NOT INGESTED HERE: she is a Tang princess with a Chinese historical record, and the corpus files Chinese material under its own key, so she is censused and left for a lane that can weigh both literatures — the same care lane 21 took over Hengist and Vortigern. NO CLAIM IS MADE THAT HE IS AN EMANATION OF AVALOKITESVARA; the tradition makes it and the retrieved sources do not, so the record does not.

Domains

• kingship
• geomancy
• subjugation of the land

Relations

• pinned with temples: the supine demoness
• descendant in the line of: Nyatri Tsenpo

Sources

• Reference treatment of the supine demoness and the thirteen geomantic temples: at the time of King Songtsen Gampo, Tibet was believed to be a supine demoness (srin mo gan rkyal du nal ba'i gzugs), prone to sudden and violent movement and unwelcoming to Buddhism, and the demoness is referred to as senmo (srin mo); Songtsen Gampo, with the help of his Chinese bride Wencheng, who explains the shape Tibet has, mapped the form of the demoness and then constructed temples at all of the key locations above her principal organs and joints; the thirteen geomantic temples - the four Region Subduing temples, the four Extremity Taming temples, the four Farther Taming temples, and the Jokhang in the centre above her heart - were built to tame the demoness lying along the land of Tibet and to guard the country, the temples emanating outwards from the centre in concentric zones; successful geomantic practice became an embodiment of political legitimacy, linking the subjugation of the landscape to the authority established by the king.