Wen Cheng

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Statue of Princess Wencheng in Potala Palace (Lhasa)

Wen Cheng or Wencheng ( Tib . : mun chang kung co , Tibetan : མུན་ ཆང་ ཀུང་ ཅོ; Chin . : 文 成 公主; Pinyin : Wénchéng Gōngzhǔ) was a princess of the Chinese Tang dynasty who, as part of the marriage policy in Year 641 AD to the royal court of Songtsen Gampo to Lhasa ( Tibet ).

Such marriages were common at that time, there are historical documents in which rulers of the steppe and highland peoples around China demand princesses as tribute and legitimation.

The marriage served several purposes: On the one hand, Wen Cheng was an ambassador for the court of Chang'an (now Xi'an ) in Lhasa. At the same time, this alliance was intended to prevent the then militarily strong Tibetans from raiding the Chinese plains.

In order to enable Wen Cheng to hold an appropriate court “beyond civilization”, the emperor gave her an entire court, musicians, ladies-in-waiting, but also books and Buddhist monks. She brought a large statue of Buddha Shakyamuni with her to Tibet , which has since been venerated in Tibet as Jowo Shakyamuni and first found its place in the Ramoche Temple and later in the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.

By this time, Buddhism had spread to large parts south and east of Tibet. According to traditional beliefs, he came to the remote highlands of Tibet with Wen Cheng - 1000 years after the historical Buddha . According to legendary tradition, the first contact with Buddhism had already taken place at the time of King Lha Thothori Nyantsen (5th century), but had no consequences. In connection with the autochthonous shamanistic rites of the Tibetans, Vajrayana Buddhism , a form of Mahayana Buddhism , developed a few centuries later with the beginning of the first phase of translation of Buddhist scriptures from India to Tibet .

Wen Cheng is still politically relevant today. For example, some historians - especially Chinese - see their marriage to Songtsen Gampo as evidence of Tibet's dependence on China at the time. The problem is that most of the sources are of Chinese origin and therefore only represent the perspective of the empire . From the Tibetan point of view, Wen Cheng was one of several wives of the king and merely an expression of the good foreign relations.

She is worshiped by the Tibetans as the white Tara (Tib .: Dölkar, Dölma Karpo) as a Bodhisattva .

literature

  • Andreas Gruschke (Hrsg.): Myths and legends of the Tibetans. About warriors, monks, demons and the origin of the world. Diederichs, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-424-01309-9 ( Diederichs yellow series 124 Tibet ).
  • Monika Countess von Borries: The White Tara. Wencheng - Chinese princess, Tibetan queen. Logophon, Mainz 1998, ISBN 3-922514-89-8 .
Wen Cheng (alternative names of the lemma)
Munchang, chin .: 文 成 公主, Wénchéng gōngzhǔ