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 demonessIn-batch and reciprocated.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. (secondary)
• descendant in the line of: Nyatri TsenpoIn-batch. A RELATION and not parentIds, for the reason given on Nyatri Tsenpo's record.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. (secondary)

Sources

• The king in whose time Tibet was held to be a supine demoness, and who — with the help of his Chinese bride Wencheng, who explains the shape the land has — mapped the demoness and built temples above her principal organs and joints to pin her.: 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. (secondary)