According to Tibetan historical records, Tibetans come from a tribe called Yarlung . The earliest king was Nie Chi Zanpu , who was the son of the god of heaven. After that, he passed through the seven kings of Tianchi, the second king of Shangding, the sixth king of Zhonglie, the eighth king of Dide, and the three kings of Xiazan. A total of 27 generations of kings ruled for about 500 years. By the time of the 28th generation Lato Tori Ningxie, Buddhism was introduced to Tubo for the first time. After another four generations of about 110 years, in the Langri Songtsan era, the Yalong tribe, under the leadership of Zanpu, destroyed the northern nomads Supi. The famous Songtsen Gampo is the son of Langri Songtsan.
By the time of Songtsen Gampo, Tubo had become a regional power. Previously, in addition to the Yalong tribe who established Tubo, there were also Supi people in northern Tibet and Zhangzhung people in the west. So far, there are still many Zhangzhung ruins in western and central Tibet. By the time of Songtsen Gampo, the Tubo people had set out from the Yarlung Valley in the Shannan region of modern Tibet, conquered Supi and Shangshung, and became the masters of the vast Tibetan territory.
According to historical records, Songtsen Gampo was born in 617 AD. His father died when he was 13 years old, and he became the new Zampo. During his reign, Tubo carried out a large number of reforms. In addition to unifying Tibet, it also moved the capital to Lhasa, created writing, and carried out economic, military and other reforms, turning Tubo from a tribe into a centralized state.
For modern Tibetans, the two marriages of Songtsen Gampo are what they talk about the most. He first married Princess Chizun from Nibala, and then married Princess Wencheng from Han. These two princesses showed the identity of Tubo: a power sandwiched between India in the south and Han in the north.
But these two marriages were more of a contest and balance of strength than friendship. Taking Nibala as an example, when Songtsen Gampo sent his minister Tunmi Sambuza to Nibala to propose marriage, the Nibala people were not willing. It wasn't until Tibet threatened to send 50,000 troops to destroy Nibala that the other party had to agree to marry off their daughter. Not long after Princess Chizun got married, civil strife broke out in Nibala. The old king was killed by his younger brother. Prince Nalingdepo fled to Tubo to receive asylum. He regained power under the escort of the Tibetan army. From then on, Nibala became a vassal of Tubo. Nibala's surrender meant that the passage from Tibet to India was unblocked. Nibala has always been influenced by India culturally and politically. The smooth flow of this road also created conditions for Tibet to eventually convert to Buddhism.
The marriage of Songtsan Gambo and Princess of Tang Dynasty was not smooth sailing. In 634 AD, when Xuanzang was already traveling in India, the Tang Dynasty court also welcomed an envoy from Tubo for the first time. Tang Taizong immediately sent a man named Feng Dexia to follow him to comfort Tubo. In the first interaction between two civilizations, both sides often had a certain sense of superiority. When Songtsen Gampo heard that the nomadic Turks and Tuyuhuns had married women from the Tang Dynasty's clan, he decided to send people to pay betrothal gifts, but this time, the Tang Dynasty refused.
Songtsen Gampo was furious, thinking that it was Tuyuhun who stood between Tubo and the Tang Dynasty, who was instigating it. He attacked Tuyuhun, and then attacked the border of the Tang Dynasty, but was defeated by the three armies of the Tang Dynasty.
At this time, Songtsan Gampo put down his arrogance and sent an envoy to apologize. At the same time, he also sent his great treatise Ludongzan to Chang'an to request marriage again. This time, Emperor Taizong chose a clan girl, named her a princess, and married Songtsen Gampo. This woman is Princess Wencheng.
In 641 AD, Princess Wencheng officially set out on the road. Under the escort of the famous general King Jiangxia Li Daozong, Princess Wencheng went to Lhasa via Qinghai. Between today's Qinghai and Tibet, there is also a special road called Tangbo Ancient Road to the east. This road starts from Xi'an, passes through Xining, Qinghai Province, crosses Riyue Mountain in the west of Xining, enters the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and then goes south through Gonghe, Maduo, Chengduo, Yushu and other places before entering Tibetan areas. This road got its name because it was the route Princess Wencheng took when she entered Tibet, and later became an important transportation route between the Tang Dynasty and Tibet.
When the princess arrived at the Baihai Sea near the source of the Yellow River , which is now the Jaring Lake and Eling Lake near the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the princess and her entourage camped and waited. Songtsen Gampo personally set out from Lhasa and came thousands of miles away to greet the princess. He met Li Daozong, the king of Jiangxia, and paid homage to him with the courtesy of a son-in-law to his father-in-law. When Princess Wencheng arrived in Lhasa, Songtsen Gampo built a palace and temple for her in this small town that was not long established, and a "huafeng" began to become a local trend.
Princess Wencheng's experience in Tubo will not be mentioned for the time being. Let's say that just when Songtsen Gampo was welcoming her bride, a group of King Harsha's envoys came from India, and they were about to go to the Tang Dynasty.
These envoys may have set out at the end of the previous year, completed their mission the next year, and returned to India with the envoys from the Tang Dynasty. Judging from the time, the Indian envoy could not have taken Xuanzang's west road. He could only have passed through Lhasa and then headed to Chang'an via the newly opened Tang-Tibet ancient road. There is even another possibility. When the Indian envoy came to Lhasa, which was bustling with people to welcome the bride, or when they arrived at Bohai, they met the Tang Dynasty envoy who was escorting Princess Wencheng. The Tang Dynasty's protective team temporarily selected someone as an envoy, and followed the Indian envoy back to Harsha Empire . Only in this way is it possible to explain why the Indians brought back the Tang envoys in such a short period of time.
The Tang Dynasty envoy who followed the Indian envoy to the Harsha Empire was named Liang Huaiyu, and his official position was Yunqi Wei. The envoys of the Tang Dynasty appeared so quickly in Qunu City, the capital of the Harsha Empire, which not only surprised the people, but also did not even occur to King Harsha. He asked the ministers whether any envoys from Mahacatastrophe (i.e. China) had visited the country before, and the ministers replied no. King Harsha then decided to go out of the city to greet the envoy. According to records from the Tang Dynasty, King Harsha adopted the etiquette of "worshiping" and accepting the edict, holding the edict on his head.
History does not record whether Liang Huaiyi met Xuanzang, but the year when Liang Huaiyi arrived happened to be Xuanzang's most prosperous year in India. King Harsha held the "Uncensored Conference" in Qunu City, which pushed Xuanzang's visit to India to a climax.
At the beginning of the second year, Xuanzang left India and continued to follow the route he took, passing through the Western Regions and heading towards the Tang Dynasty. The reason why he chose to continue on this distant road from the Western Regions instead of taking the shortcut newly opened by Nibala may be related to his agreement with Qu Wentai, King of Gaochang. Qu Wentai had helped Xuanzang when he went to India, and hoped that he would bring Buddhism to this small town in the Western Regions when he passed through Gaochang on his return.
After successfully completing his diplomatic mission, Liang Huaiyu returned to Datang with the Indian envoy. After seeing the Indian envoy, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty sent a team to India again. By this time, it was already 643 AD.
The chief envoy of this mission was Wei Wei Cheng Li Yibiao, accompanied by a total of 22 people. In the eyes of later generations, the more famous one was the deputy envoy Wang Xuance in the team, and thus staged a legend in the history of Sino-foreign relations.
Let’s not talk about Wang Xuance’s more legendary experiences since then, but just talk about the travel of Li and Wang’s mission. The mission set out in March of 643 AD, and by December at the end of the year, they arrived in the country where King Harsha was located. Although the Harsha Empire was a new empire, the land it was located on inherited the name of an older country: Magadha. This is just like people living in the Tang Dynasty at that time, but they also called the location of the capital of the Tang Dynasty as Guanzhong or Qin Di . It is the same reason that the Tang Dynasty was called China.
The envoys still used the Tubo-Nibala road to go to Magadha. During their stay in Nibala, they also met Nalingdev, the puppet king of Nibala.
After arriving in India, the Tang envoys began to travel around the country, which took them a whole year. When the Tang envoy stayed in India, Xuanzang had already crossed the Pamir Plateau and returned to Khotan in today's Xinjiang region in March and April of 644 AD. He wrote to the emperor here, asking him to forgive him for traveling to India privately, and waiting for news from the emperor.
He did not arrive in Chang'an until the seventh day of the first lunar month of the second year, with the emperor's permission.On the twenty-seventh day of the first lunar month, 20 days after Xuanzang arrived in Chang'an, the delegations of Li and Wang also arrived at Lingjiu Mountain, one of the holy places of Buddhism in India.
Bodhgaya, the Buddhist holy land in northern India, and its north are a vast plain, but to the east of Bodhgaya, a series of steep peaks stand abruptly. These peaks are so weird that people have to doubt that they are created by gods. What's even more strange is that there is a flat land surrounded by these peaks. There is a city on this flat land called Rajagaha, which was the original capital of the ancient Magadha Kingdom. These peaks constitute another holy place of Buddhism - Lingjiu Mountain.
Vulture Mountain is dotted with holy sites, including the place where the Buddha preached his sermons. There are also many stele and pagodas here, which allowed the envoys to touch the vicissitudes of the Buddha's death for thousands of years. They decided to carve an inscription here.
A dozen days later, on February 11th, they arrived at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, which is the largest sacred site in Buddhism and the place where Buddha attained enlightenment. So, the envoys once again erected a monument, and a man named Wei Cai in the team wrote the inscription. The purpose of the visit was discussed in the inscription, and an inscription was attached.
Although these two stone carvings have been lost in history, they are still regarded as key documents in the exchanges between China and India.
However, since these inscriptions cannot be found, an important question arises for modern people: Since there is a lack of physical evidence, how can we confirm that the records in these documents are reliable? Did the envoys of the Tang Dynasty ever go to India through Nepal ? This question will be answered in the next issue.
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