Tibetan ten thousand

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Tibetan name
Tibetan script :
ཁྲི་ སྐོར་
Wylie transliteration :
khri skor
Official transcription of the PRCh :
Chigor
THDL transcription :
Tricor
Other spellings:
Thrikor
Chinese name
Traditional :
萬戶
Simplified :
万户
Pinyin :
wànhù

Ten thousandships were political territorial units in western and central Tibet at the time of the Yuan Dynasty , which are roughly comparable to provinces.

The 13 tens of thousands of central ( dbus ) and western Tibet ( gtsang and mnga 'ris ) were each administered by so-called ten thousand leaders ( khri dpon ), who were directly under the throne of Sakya .

The fall of the Yuan Dynasty in 1368 also meant the end of this division of territory in Tibet.

Historical background

In the years 1246 to 1250 n. Chr. Became largely clear the Tibetans that a submission to the claims to power of emerging great empire of the Mongols was inevitable. The fact that the classification of Tibet then went relatively bloodless was ultimately thanks to the mediation efforts of Tibetan clergymen, especially Sakya Pandita . His efforts were rewarded by the fact that his nephew Chögyel Phagpa and his successors in the office of the holder of the throne ( Sakya Thridzin ) were de facto granted feudal rule over Tibet by Sakya . For the period of the fifties of the 13th century one can observe the participation of Tibetan princes in the military expeditions of the Mongols. As a reward, they were not infrequently awarded important positions in the regional administration of the politically reorganized Tibet.

Territorial reorganization of Tibet

With the appointment of the Mongolian Prince Kublai Khan as Great Khan of the Mongol Empire in 1260, the reorganization of Tibet began.

The three major military districts

Tibet was initially divided into three so-called military districts, the three Chölkha (Tib .: chol kha ). The Tibetan word chol kha corresponds to the Mongolian ciγulγan , with which the Mongols referred to the largest military unit in their army.

The first of these three Chölkha was known as the “Chölkha of Dharma ” (Tib. Chos kyi chol kha ) and encompassed in particular central Tibet and the rest of western Tibet.

The second unit was called “Chölkha of the People” (Tib. Mi'i chol kha ) and comprised the historical region of Dotö (Tib. Mdo stod ). It thus extended roughly over the area later known as Kham .

The third unit was called "Chölkha of Horses" ( T. rta'i chol kha ) and comprised the historical region of Dome ( T. mdo smad ). It extended over the area later known as Amdo .

All three military districts were assigned to the throne holders of Sakya, which was also reflected in the fact that they appointed administrators in these three areas.

Establishment of the Ten Thousands

The division of the Chölkha into ten thousand communities has only been handed down for the western Chölkha, which included the areas of central and western Tibet and Ngari . The term also comes from the Mongolian army division and corresponds to the Mongolian Tümen . This was a military unit that numbered ten thousand men. However, the tens of thousands of Tibetans varied in size and typically comprised only a few thousand families.

Number and political structure of the tens of thousands

The western Chölkha of Tibet (Chölkha des Dharma) consisted of 13 tens of thousands, all of which arose from already existing, usually essentially smaller, principalities through territorial expansion. This is (Tib. Especially on the example of Tshel Gungthang tshal supply thang) clear whose secular leaders Ringyelwa (Tib .: rin ba rgyal ) in the fifties of the 13th century in the campaign of Khublai Khan against the Nanzhao -Königreich involved in Yunnan . After the enthronement of Khublai Khan as Great Khan, he was appointed leader (Tib .: khri dpon , "Thripön") of the ten thousand Tshel Gungthang , whose territory was considerably expanded by the assignment of further parts of central Tibet.

The office of Thripön was passed on by inheritance. The Thripön were subject to the instructions of the Pönchen (Tib .: dpon chen ) of Sakya, who regulated the political affairs of the throne holders of Sakya. But within their ten thousand they had almost unlimited administrative sovereignty. When changing the office of Thripön, it was almost mandatory that the new incumbents traveled to the court of the Yuan emperor to have their office confirmed by the emperor.

The most important tens of thousands in western central Tibet were Mangyül Gungthang , Latö Lho , Latö Chang , Chumig and Zhalu . For eastern central Tibet, Phagmo Dru (tib .: phag gru khri skor) , Tshel Gungthang (tib .: tshal pa khri skor), Gyama (tib .: rgya-ma khri skor ), Chayül (tib .: bya yul khri skor ), Drigung and Yasang (Tib .: g.ya 'bzangs khri skor ).

After the end of the supremacy of Sakya in Tibet (1354), these tens of thousands were either absorbed into the expanding domain of the Phagmo-Dru rulers or continued to exist as independent rulers.

literature

  • Luciano Petech: Central Tibet and the Mongols. The Yüan-Sa-skya Period of Tibetan History . Rome 1990.
  • Giuseppe Tucci: Tibetan Painted Scrolls . Roma 1949.
  • Karl-Heinz Everding: The Gung thang dkar chag. The history of the Tibetan ruling family of Tshal Gung thang and the Tshal pa bKa 'brgyud pa school. A contribution to the history of the Lhasa Valley in the 12th-19th centuries. Century . Tibetan text in edition and translation. Second edition. VGH Wissenschaftsverlag GmbH, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3882800593 .
  • Per K. Sørensen, Guntram Hazod, Tsering Gyalpo: Rulers on the Celestial Plain. Ecclesiastic and Secular Hegemony in Medieval Tibet. A Study of Tshal Gung-thang . 2 vols., Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2007, ISBN 978-3-7001-3828-0 .

See also