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104-657: The Kongka Pass or Kongka La ( Tibetan : དགུན་ཁ་ལ , Wylie : dgun kha la , THL : gün kha la ) is a low mountain pass on the Line of Actual Control between India and China in eastern Ladakh . It lies on a spur of the Karakoram range that intrudes into the Chang Chenmo Valley adjacent to the disputed Aksai Chin region. China claimed the location as its border in a 1956 map, and attacked an Indian patrol party in 1959 killing ten policemen and apprehending ten others. Known as

208-620: A Scottish nobleman , George Bogle , travelled to Shigatse to investigate prospects of trade for the East India Company . His efforts, while largely unsuccessful, established permanent contact between Tibet and the Western world . However, in the 19th century, tensions between foreign powers and Tibet increased. The British Empire was expanding its territories in India into the Himalayas , while

312-774: A "wintertime pass". The Chang Chenmo Valley lies in a depression between the Karakoram Range in the north and the Changchenmo Range in the south. Immediately to the north of the Chang Chenmo Valley, the Karakoram Range splits into multiple branches, with one of the branches (called "Karakoram-I" by some authors) forming a dividing ridge between the Kugrang River in the west and the Changlung and Kyapsang rivers in

416-463: A Central Asian empire until the mid-9th century, when a civil war over succession led to the collapse of imperial Tibet. The period that followed is known traditionally as the Era of Fragmentation , when political control over Tibet became divided between regional warlords and tribes with no dominant centralized authority. An Islamic invasion from Bengal took place in 1206. The Mongol Yuan dynasty , through

520-569: A civil administration which is referred to by historians as the Lhasa state . This Tibetan regime or government is also referred to as the Ganden Phodrang . Qing dynasty rule in Tibet began with their 1720 expedition to the country when they expelled the invading Dzungars . Amdo came under Qing control in 1724, and eastern Kham was incorporated into neighbouring Chinese provinces in 1728. Meanwhile,

624-486: A day earlier at the new border of Kongka Pass and China rejected payment of any compensation. Scholar John Rowland states that, through these means, China obtained the "evidence" it needed to claim that it was India that broke the Panchsheel (peace agreement between the two countries) unprovoked. China however rejected Singh's testimony and charged Indian Government of promoting Sinophobic sentiments. Indian Army castigated

728-512: A degree of political autonomy. The Qing commander publicly executed a number of supporters of the rebels and, as in 1723 and 1728, made changes in the political structure and drew up a formal organization plan. The Qing now restored the Dalai Lama as ruler, leading the governing council called Kashag , but elevated the role of Ambans to include more direct involvement in Tibetan internal affairs. At

832-702: A military invasion. The British expeditionary force, consisting of mostly Indian troops , quickly invaded and captured Lhasa, with the Dalai Lama fleeing to the countryside. Afterwards, the leader of the expedition, Sir Francis Younghusband , negotiated the Convention Between Great Britain and Tibet with the Tibetans, which guaranteed the British great economic influence but ensured the region remained under Chinese control . The Qing imperial resident, known as

936-494: A result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa , there is a great divergence between current spelling, which still reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan, and current pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform , to write Tibetan as it is pronounced ; for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka'-rgyud . The nomadic Amdo Tibetan and

1040-536: A strong following as many people from Tibet looked at him not just as their political leader, but as their spiritual leader. After the Dalai Lama's government fled to Dharamsala , India, during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion , it established a rival government-in-exile . Afterwards, the Central People's Government in Beijing renounced the agreement and began implementation of the halted social and political reforms. During

1144-544: A term usually translated by Chinese media as "the Western section", meaning "Western China". Tibet has some of the world's tallest mountains, with several of them making the top ten list. Mount Everest , located on the border with Nepal , is, at 8,848.86 metres (29,032 ft), the highest mountain on earth. Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These include

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1248-506: A territory stretching from modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. In 821/822   CE, Tibet and China signed a peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty, including details of the borders between the two countries, is inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Tibet continued as

1352-515: A treaty of mutual recognition . The ROC continued to view the former Qing territory as its own, including Tibet. For the next 36 years, the 13th Dalai Lama and the regents who succeeded him governed Tibet. During this time, Tibet fought Chinese warlords for control of the ethnically Tibetan areas in Xikang and Qinghai (parts of Kham and Amdo) along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River . In 1914,

1456-637: A unified Tibet begins with the rule of Songtsen Gampo (604–650   CE), who united parts of the Yarlung River Valley and founded the Tibetan Empire. He also brought in many reforms, and Tibetan power spread rapidly, creating a large and powerful empire. It is traditionally considered that his first wife was the Princess of Nepal, Bhrikuti , and that she played a great role in the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. In 640, he married Princess Wencheng ,

1560-441: A variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet ( Ü-Tsang ) was often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa , Shigatse , or nearby locations. The eastern regions of Kham and Amdo often maintained a more decentralized indigenous political structure, being divided among a number of small principalities and tribal groups, while also often falling under Chinese rule; most of this area

1664-612: Is a partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and contemporary Tibetan populations. The earliest Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the Bön religion. By the 1st century BCE, a neighboring kingdom arose in

1768-450: Is a region in the western part of East Asia , covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi). It is the homeland of the Tibetan people . Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups such as Mongols , Monpa , Tamang , Qiang , Sherpa , Lhoba , and since the 20th century Han Chinese and Hui . After the annexation of Tibet by

1872-525: Is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script . This writing system is used across the Himalayas and Tibet . The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India , Nepal , Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Lepcha , Marchen and

1976-434: Is consistent throughout. This is probably due to the long-standing influence of the Tibetan empire, whose rule embraced (and extended at times far beyond) the present Tibetan linguistic area, which runs from Gilgit Baltistan in the west to Yunnan and Sichuan in the east, and from north of Qinghai Lake south as far as Bhutan. The Tibetan language has its own script which it shares with Ladakhi and Dzongkha , and which

2080-547: Is derived from the ancient Indian Brāhmī script . Starting in 2001, the local deaf sign languages of Tibet were standardized, and Tibetan Sign Language is now being promoted across the country. The first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book was written by Alexander Csoma de Kőrös in 1834. Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China, but there

2184-634: Is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 standards since the initial version. Since

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2288-450: Is employed throughout the Tibetan plateau and Bhutan and is also spoken in parts of Nepal and northern India, such as Sikkim . In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham , Amdo and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects. Other forms, particularly Dzongkha , Sikkimese , Sherpa , and Ladakhi , are considered by their speakers, largely for political reasons, to be separate languages. However, if

2392-633: Is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྲ /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; ཀྱ /ca/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance,

2496-572: Is linked to the China National Highway 219 (G219) via two highways. The Indian government has noted that the original versions of these roads were built during 1959–1962. In addition to these, a Tiankong Highway ( 天空线 ) or Tianwendian–Kongka Highway, appears to have been constructed between 2013 and 2020. It passes through territory marked as being on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control by

2600-473: Is principally led by the Tibetan diaspora . Human rights groups have accused the Chinese government of abuses of human rights in Tibet , including torture , arbitrary arrests, and religious repression, with the Chinese government tightly controlling information and denying external scrutiny. While there are conflicting reports on the scale of human rights violations, including allegations of cultural genocide and

2704-528: Is simply read as it usually is and has no effect on the pronunciation of the consonant to which it is subjoined, for example ཀ་ཝ་ཟུར་ཀྭ (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/). The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/, ཀི /ki/, ཀུ /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels ཨི /i/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while

2808-560: Is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/. The head ( མགོ in Tibetan, Wylie: mgo ) letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/. The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/. In this position they are described as བཏགས (Wylie: btags , IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example བ་ཡ་བཏགས་བྱ (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for ཝ , which

2912-483: Is the largest lake in the People's Republic of China. The climate is severely dry nine months of the year, and average annual snowfall is only 46 cm (18 inches), due to the rain shadow effect . Western passes receive small amounts of fresh snow each year but remain traversible all year round. Low temperatures are prevalent throughout these western regions, where bleak desolation is unrelieved by any vegetation bigger than

3016-746: Is transcribed as: Bhö in Tournadre Phonetic Transcription ; Bö in the THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription ; and Poi in Tibetan pinyin . Some scholars believe the first written reference to Bod ('Tibet') was the ancient Bautai people recorded in the Egyptian-Greek works Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) and Geographia ( Ptolemy , 2nd century CE), itself from the Sanskrit form Bhauṭṭa of

3120-584: The 2008 Tibetan unrest . The central region of Tibet is now an autonomous region within China, the Tibet Autonomous Region . The Tibet Autonomous Region is a province-level entity of the People's Republic of China. It is governed by a People's Government, led by a chairman. In practice, however, the chairman is subordinate to the branch secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2010 it

3224-463: The Amban , publicly repudiated the treaty, while the British government, eager for friendly relations with China, negotiated a new treaty two years later known as the Convention Between Great Britain and China Respecting Tibet . The British agreed not to annex or interfere in Tibet in return for an indemnity from the Chinese government, while China agreed not to permit any other foreign state to interfere with

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3328-590: The Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs , or Xuanzheng Yuan, ruled Tibet through a top-level administrative department. One of the department's purposes was to select a dpon-chen ("great administrator"), usually appointed by the lama and confirmed by the Mongol emperor in Beijing. The Sakya lama retained a degree of autonomy, acting as the political authority of the region, while the dpon-chen held administrative and military power. Mongol rule of Tibet remained separate from

3432-618: The Emirate of Afghanistan and the Russian Empire were both doing likewise in Central Asia . In 1904, a British expedition to Tibet , spurred in part by a fear that Russia was extending its power into Tibet as part of the Great Game , was launched. Although the expedition initially set out with the stated purpose of resolving border disputes between Tibet and Sikkim , it quickly turned into

3536-538: The Great Leap Forward , between 200,000 and 1,000,000 Tibetans may have died and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution —destroying the vast majority of historic Tibetan architecture. In 1980, General Secretary and reformist Hu Yaobang visited Tibet and ushered in a period of social, political, and economic liberalization . At the end of the decade, however, before

3640-658: The Himalayan lands, as well as in the highlands of Southeast Asia and the Sino-Tibetan frontier regions, linguists have generally concluded that there exists a Tibeto-Burman family of languages. More controversial is the theory that the Tibeto-Burman family is itself part of a larger language family, called Sino-Tibetan , and that through it Tibetan and Burmese are distant cousins of Chinese. The language has numerous regional dialects which are generally not mutually intelligible. It

3744-459: The Himalayas , the highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest , Earth's highest mountain, rising 8,848 m (29,000 ft) above sea level. The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century. At its height in the 9th century, the Tibetan Empire extended far beyond the Tibetan Plateau, from the Tarim Basin and Pamirs in the west, to Yunnan and Bengal in the southeast. It then divided into

3848-637: The Kongka Pass incident , the event was a milestone in the escalation of the border dispute between the two countries. In the Ladakhi language, Kongka ( Tibetan : གོང་ཀ , Wylie : gong ka ) means a "low pass or ridge, high point or rise of a plateau". In the first reference we have of this pass, it was called "Salmu Kongka" and explained as a "small pass". A Tibetan name for the pass is now in circulation, as "Kongka La" ( Tibetan : དགུན་ཁ་ལ , Wylie : dgun kha la , THL : gün kha la ), which can be interpreted as

3952-880: The Latin script . Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the Wylie transliteration system is widely used to Romanize Standard Tibetan , others include the Library of Congress system and the IPA-based transliteration (Jacques 2012). Below is a table with Tibetan letters and different Romanization and transliteration system for each letter, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A) and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL). The first version of Microsoft Windows to support

4056-515: The Pabonka Hermitage . This occurred c.  620 , towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by the King which were afterward translated. In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan script was used for the codification of these sacred Buddhist texts, for written civil laws, and for a Tibetan Constitution. A contemporary academic suggests that the script

4160-622: The Sikh Empire invaded and annexed Ladakh , a culturally Tibetan region that was an independent kingdom at the time. Seven years later, a Sikh army led by General Zorawar Singh invaded western Tibet from Ladakh, starting the Sino-Sikh War . A Qing-Tibetan army repelled the invaders but was in turn defeated when it chased the Sikhs into Ladakh. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Chushul between

4264-579: The Sinicization of Tibet , widespread suppression of Tibetan culture and dissent continues to be documented. The dominant religion in Tibet is Tibetan Buddhism ; other religions include Bön , an indigenous religion similar to Tibetan Buddhism, Islam , and Christianity . Tibetan Buddhism is a primary influence on the art , music , and festivals of the region. Tibetan architecture reflects Chinese and Indian influences. Staple foods in Tibet are roasted barley , yak meat, and butter tea . With

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4368-521: The Sino-Indian War in 1962. The Indian border post is located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) to the west of Kongka Pass at Hot Springs . A war-memorial is situated at the place. The Chinese border outpost is located a few kilometers to the east at an elevation of 5,070 metres (16,630 ft). Called Kongka Shankou base, it is located at the junction of the Kyapsang and Chang-Chenmo rivers. The outpost

4472-541: The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 , monks in the Drepung and Sera monasteries started protesting for independence. The government halted reforms and started an anti- separatist campaign. Human rights organisations have been critical of the Beijing and Lhasa governments' approach to human rights in the region when cracking down on separatist convulsions that have occurred around monasteries and cities, most recently in

4576-479: The Tibetan language as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family, although the boundaries between 'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear. According to Matthew Kapstein : From the perspective of historical linguistics, Tibetan most closely resembles Burmese among the major languages of Asia. Grouping these two together with other apparently related languages spoken in

4680-678: The Tsangpa dynasty of Shigatse which expanded its power in different directions of Tibet in the following decades and favoured the Karma Kagyu sect. In 1578, Altan Khan of the Tümed Mongols gave Sonam Gyatso , a high lama of the Gelugpa school, the name Dalai Lama , Dalai being the Mongolian translation of the Tibetan name Gyatso "Ocean". The 5th Dalai Lama (1617–1682) is known for unifying

4784-531: The Yangtze , Yellow River , Indus River , Mekong , Ganges , Salween and the Yarlung Tsangpo River ( Brahmaputra River ). The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon , along the Yarlung Tsangpo River , is among the deepest and longest canyons in the world. Tibet has been called the "Water Tower" of Asia, and China is investing heavily in water projects in Tibet. The Indus and Brahmaputra rivers originate from

4888-655: The Yarlung valley , and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo , attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's Bön priests from Yarlung. He was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. Prior to Songtsen Gampo , the kings of Tibet were more mythological than factual, and there is insufficient evidence of their existence. The history of

4992-426: The "Twenty-Nine Regulations for Better Government in Tibet". Qing military garrisons staffed with Qing troops were now also established near the Nepalese border. Tibet was dominated by the Manchus in various stages in the 18th century, and the years immediately following the 1792 regulations were the peak of the Qing imperial commissioners' authority; but there was no attempt to make Tibet a Chinese province. In 1834,

5096-487: The Chang Chenmo Valley; three years hence, Zhou would note this particular map to be an accurate representation of Chinese position and claim Kongka Pass to be the "traditional customary boundary" of China. Leo E. Rose and Wim van Eekelen find such claims to be inconsistent with the available evidence. In October 1959, an Indian police party was sent to set up posts in three locations — Tsogtsalu , Hot Springs and Shamal Lungpa — which were in undisputed Indian territory per

5200-421: The Chinese and Sikh empires. As the Qing dynasty weakened, its authority over Tibet also gradually declined, and by the mid-19th century, its influence was minuscule. Qing authority over Tibet had become more symbolic than real by the late 19th century, although in the 1860s, the Tibetans still chose for reasons of their own to emphasize the empire's symbolic authority and make it seem substantial. In 1774,

5304-440: The Chinese version of the events these two men had crossed the "traditional border at Kongka Pass", leading to their detention. Later information reveals that the location was on the bank of the Chang Chenmo River, somewhere between the mouth of Silung Barma and that of Silung Kongma. The same evening, Singh dispatched a 10-men-strong party to investigate the disappearance, who returned late night and reported extensive hoof-marks in

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5408-500: The Indian geographical tradition. The best-known medieval Chinese name for Tibet is Tubo (Chinese: 吐蕃 ; or Tǔbō , 土蕃 or Tǔfān , 土番 ). This name first appears in Chinese characters as 土番 in the 7th century ( Li Tai ) and as 吐蕃 in the 10th century ( Old Book of Tang , describing 608–609 emissaries from Tibetan King Namri Songtsen to Emperor Yang of Sui ). In the Middle Chinese language spoken during that period, as reconstructed by William H. Baxter , 土番

5512-412: The Indian subcontinent state that the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages wishing to modernize or to introduce a written tradition. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where Buddhist practitioners initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform of the Ladakhi language was controversial in part because it

5616-506: The Indian-controlled territory and the rest lie in Chinese-controlled territory. Colonial-era British sources state that the traditional boundary between Ladakh and Tibet , accepted by both sides, was at Lanak La , where the Changchenmo River originates. Chinese maps had recognised Lanak La as the boundary at least till 1951. In 1952, Indian patrol teams had reached till Lanak La without encountering any Chinese presence. When enquired in 1954 and again in 1956 about demarcating boundaries in

5720-487: The Intelligence Bureau for causing mindless provocations at the frontiers without bringing them in confidence and from 1 November, took charge of manning all border-posts in the sector. Throughout the time of the detention, China claimed that Kongka Pass was patrolled by their troops ever since liberation of Tibet and that the episode happened only due to unprovoked aggression by Indian side; threats were made to infiltrate NEFA if Indian patrols were to disregard Chinese claims in

5824-437: The Ladakh sector. Public protests called for resignation of defence minister Krishna Menon and abandonment of non-alignment as a strategic policy. Indian media described the event as a "brutal massacre of an Indian police party" with The Indian Express carrying an editorial about how Nehru had ignored the "menace of Han expansionism and Communist Imperialism." The incident contributed to the heightening of tensions that led to

5928-480: The People's Republic of China in 1951, the entire plateau has been under the administration of the People's Republic of China . Tibet is divided administratively into the Tibet Autonomous Region and parts of the Qinghai , Gansu , Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. Tibet is also constitutionally claimed by the Republic of China as the Tibet Area since 1912. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 4,380 m (14,000 ft). Located in

6032-406: The Qing government sent resident commissioners called Ambans to Lhasa. In 1750, the Ambans and the majority of the Han Chinese and Manchus living in Lhasa were killed in a riot , and Qing troops arrived quickly and suppressed the rebels in the next year. Like the preceding Yuan dynasty, the Manchus of the Qing dynasty exerted military and administrative control of the region, while granting it

6136-448: The Tibetan government signed the Simla Convention with Britain, which recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet in return for a border settlement. China refused to sign the convention. Tibet continued to lack clear boundaries or international recognition of its status. When in the 1930s and 1940s the regents displayed negligence in affairs, the Kuomintang Government of the Republic of China took advantage of this to expand its reach into

6240-422: The Tibetan heartland under the control of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism , after defeating the rival Kagyu and Jonang sects and the secular ruler, the Tsangpa prince, in a prolonged civil war. His efforts were successful in part because of aid from Güshi Khan , the Oirat leader of the Khoshut Khanate . With Güshi Khan as a largely uninvolved overlord, the 5th Dalai Lama and his intimates established

6344-613: The Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista . The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007. In Ubuntu 12.04, one can install Tibetan language support through Dash / Language Support / Install/Remove Languages, the input method can be turned on from Dash / Keyboard Layout, adding Tibetan keyboard layout. The layout applies the similar layout as in Microsoft Windows. Mac OS -X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani. The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme

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6448-410: The Tibetan script is that the consonants can be written either as radicals or they can be written in other forms, such as subscript and superscript forming consonant clusters . To understand how this works, one can look at the radical ཀ /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes ཀྲ /kra/ or རྐ /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/

6552-401: The Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter ཨ is also the base for dependent vowel marks. Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal , the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features, they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words. One aspect of

6656-432: The Tibetans had lost almost all of their central Asian possessions to the Chinese . However, after Gao Xianzhi's defeat by the Arabs and Qarluqs at the Battle of Talas (751) and the subsequent civil war known as the An Lushan Rebellion (755), Chinese influence decreased rapidly and Tibetan influence resumed. At its height in the 780s to 790s, the Tibetan Empire reached its highest glory when it ruled and controlled

6760-428: The Turkic Uyghur Khaganate . The Kingdom of Nanzhao (in Yunnan and neighbouring regions) remained under Tibetan control from 750 to 794, when they turned on their Tibetan overlords and helped the Chinese inflict a serious defeat on the Tibetans. In 747, the hold of Tibet was loosened by the campaign of general Gao Xianzhi , who tried to re-open the direct communications between Central Asia and Kashmir . By 750,

6864-545: The US Office of the Geographer in 2013. It is a mountain road that runs till the Tianwendian post in the Depsang Plains . It runs parallel to the Line of Actual Control and passes through Nischu and Heweitan . It also connects to the Wenjia Road ( Chinese : 温加线 ; pinyin : Wēn jiā xiàn ), which leads to the Galwan Valley . Tibetan script The Tibetan script has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali , Nepali and Old Turkic . The printed form

6968-401: The arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongkha (dz) keyboard layout is included in Microsoft Windows, Android, and most distributions of Linux as part of XFree86 . Tibetan was originally one of

7072-407: The basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds. In addition to the use of supplementary graphemes, the rules for constructing consonant clusters are amended, allowing any character to occupy the superscript or subscript position, negating the need for the prescript and postscript positions. Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in

7176-415: The c. 620 date of development of the original Tibetan script. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not been altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters . As

7280-418: The consonants ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/, མ /ma/ and འ /a/ can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants ག /kʰa/, ན /na/, བ /pʰa/, ད /tʰa/, མ /ma/, འ /a/, ར /ra/, ང /ŋa/, ས /sa/, and ལ /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position

7384-401: The detained personnel were put in a storage pit for four days under severe climatic conditions without water, refused medical attention, interrogated in 12 hour stretches for further several days, induced to sign false confessions about them being responsible for the episode, window-dressed for photographs, and finally returned to India on 14 November. The bodies of the dead soldiers were returned

7488-627: The east of here is part of Tibet; the Aksai Chin region to the north is part of Xinjiang. China has a large military base at the bottom of the Kyapsang river valley, called the Kongka Shankou base near a saddle point called Mobdo La . (Map 3) In the Indian-controlled territory immediately to the west of Kongka Pass lie the notable Hot Springs (at a location called Kyam). This location is roughly

7592-606: The east. A spur of this branch extends into the Chang Chenmo Valley for some distance, forcing the Changchenmo river to bend around it. On this spur lies the low pass of Kongka Pass, essentially forming a part of the general depression that is the Chang Chenmo valley. To all appearances, the Kongka Pass was an unimportant saddle point, while the normal travel route followed the course of the Changchenmo river. (Maps 2 and 3) However, it

7696-529: The engagement, one died later of his injuries, and seven were taken prisoner. One Chinese soldier of the rank of "Deputy Squadron Leader" was killed too. It appears that Tyagi's men were informed of the firefight by one of Singh's constables but they were under simultaneous attack and failed to be of any help; however, his team incurred no fatalities despite injuries on several men. On 22 October, Tyagi retreated to Tsogtsalu and four severely injured men were evacuated by air. After release, Karam Singh reported that

7800-583: The founding of the Gelug school (also known as Yellow Hats) by the disciples of Je Tsongkhapa , and the founding of the important Ganden , Drepung and Sera monasteries near Lhasa. However, internal strife within the dynasty and the strong localism of the various fiefs and political-religious factions led to a long series of internal conflicts. The minister family Rinpungpa , based in Tsang (West Central Tibet), dominated politics after 1435. In 1565 they were overthrown by

7904-565: The grounds that Tubote more clearly includes the entire Tibetan plateau rather than simply the Tibet Autonomous Region . The English word Tibet or Thibet dates back to the 18th century. Historical linguists generally agree that "Tibet" names in European languages are loanwords from Semitic Ṭībat or Tūbātt ( Arabic : طيبة، توبات ; Hebrew : טובּה, טובּת ), itself deriving from Turkic Töbäd (plural of töbän ), literally 'The Heights'. Linguists generally classify

8008-415: The growth of tourism in recent years, the service sector has become the largest sector in Tibet, accounting for 50.1% of the local GDP in 2020. The Tibetan name for their land, Bod ( བོད་ ), means 'Tibet' or ' Tibetan Plateau ', although it originally meant the central region around Lhasa , now known in Tibetan as Ü ( དབུས ). The Standard Tibetan pronunciation of Bod ( [pʰøʔ˨˧˨] )

8112-415: The latter group of Tibetan-type languages are included in the calculation, then 'greater Tibetan' is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan is also spoken by approximately 150,000 exile speakers who have fled from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries. Although spoken Tibetan varies according to the region, the written language, based on Classical Tibetan ,

8216-556: The main provinces of China, but the region existed under the administration of the Yuan dynasty . If the Sakya lama ever came into conflict with the dpon-chen , the dpon-chen had the authority to send Chinese troops into the region. Tibet retained nominal power over religious and regional political affairs, while the Mongols managed a structural and administrative rule over the region, reinforced by

8320-402: The multilingual ʼPhags-pa script , and is also closely related to Meitei . According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was developed during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota , who was sent to India with 16 other students to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and written languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at

8424-458: The newly enthroned 14th Dalai Lama 's government, affirming the People's Republic of China's sovereignty but granting the area autonomy. Subsequently, on his journey into exile, the 14th Dalai Lama completely repudiated the agreement, which he has repeated on many occasions. According to the CIA , the Chinese used the Dalai Lama to gain control of the military's training and actions. The Dalai Lama had

8528-525: The niece of the Chinese emperor Taizong of Tang China . Under the next few Tibetan kings, Buddhism became established as the state religion and Tibetan power increased even further over large areas of Central Asia , while major inroads were made into Chinese territory, even reaching the Tang 's capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an ) in late 763. However, the Tibetan occupation of Chang'an only lasted for fifteen days, after which they were defeated by Tang and its ally,

8632-566: The point where the bend in the Changchenmo river ends, and river flows due west. To the northwest of here extends the Kugrang river valley, with the campsite of Gogra at short distance above. At Gogra, the Changlung river flows down and joins the Kugrang river. To the south of the Kongka Pass, three tributaries, all called " Silung ", flow down from the Changchenmo Range to join Changchenmo. From

8736-427: The rare military intervention. This existed as a " diarchic structure" under the Yuan emperor, with power primarily in favor of the Mongols. Mongolian prince Khuden gained temporal power in Tibet in the 1240s and sponsored Sakya Pandita , whose seat became the capital of Tibet. Drogön Chögyal Phagpa , Sakya Pandita's nephew became Imperial Preceptor of Kublai Khan , founder of the Yuan dynasty. Yuan control over

8840-482: The recent Chinese maps. The party was led by an Intelligence Bureau officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent, Karam Singh, who was an experienced patroller in Ladakh. As late as June 1958, Singh had led patrols to Lanak La without incidents. Singh states that they had established a post at Hot Springs and were about to head to Shamal Lungpa when, on 20 October, two men sent out for reconnaissance went missing. According to

8944-566: The region ended with the Ming overthrow of the Yuan and Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen 's revolt against the Mongols. Following the uprising, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen founded the Phagmodrupa dynasty , and sought to reduce Yuan influences over Tibetan culture and politics. Between 1346 and 1354, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen toppled the Sakya and founded the Phagmodrupa dynasty. The following 80 years saw

9048-540: The region suggesting the presence of Chinese cavalry. On the morning of 21 October, a forward search party of 20 men set out on ponies under Singh; the rest was ordered to follow on foot under another commander called Tyagi. Singh chose to follow the hoof-marks near Kongka Pass and lost contact with Tyagi's men. Singh encountered Chinese soldiers on top of a hill, who belonged to the 6th Cavalry Regiment and were well-entrenched in their position. A firefight ensued after negotiations failed. Nine Indian policemen were killed during

9152-530: The same time, the Qing took steps to counterbalance the power of the aristocracy by adding officials recruited from the clergy to key posts. For several decades, peace reigned in Tibet, but in 1792, the Qing Qianlong Emperor sent a large Chinese army into Tibet to push the invading Nepalese out. This prompted yet another Qing reorganization of the Tibetan government, this time through a written plan called

9256-899: The scripts in the first version of the Unicode Standard in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0. The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts: Tibet Tibet ( / t ɪ ˈ b ɛ t / ; Tibetan : བོད , Lhasa dialect : [pʰøːʔ˨˧˩] Böd ; Chinese : 藏区 ; pinyin : Zàngqū ), or Greater Tibet ,

9360-505: The sector, Zhou Enlai replied that the PRC government was still printing Kuomintang maps and had not had the time to prepare their own maps. While maintaining this position, the Chinese would lay the Sianking–Tibet road (now G219 ) through Aksai Chin to Indian objections and even imprison a two-men strong patrol party. In 1956, a map was published that marked Kongka Pass as the boundary in

9464-409: The territory or internal administration of Tibet. In 1910, the Qing government sent a military expedition of its own under Zhao Erfeng to establish direct Manchu-Chinese rule and, in an imperial edict, deposed the Dalai Lama, who fled to British India. Zhao Erfeng defeated the Tibetan military conclusively and expelled the Dalai Lama's forces from the province. His actions were unpopular, and there

9568-592: The territory. On December 20, 1941, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-Shek noted in his diary that Tibet would be among the territories which he would demand as restitution for China following the conclusion of World War II. Emerging with control over most of mainland China after the Chinese Civil War , the People's Republic of China annexed Tibet in 1950 and negotiated the Seventeen Point Agreement with

9672-665: The vicinities of Lake Mapam Yumco in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash . The mountain is a holy pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva . The Tibetan name for Mount Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as tso or co . These include Qinghai Lake , Lake Manasarovar , Namtso , Pangong Tso , Yamdrok Lake , Siling Co , Lhamo La-tso , Lumajangdong Co , Lake Puma Yumco , Lake Paiku , Como Chamling , Lake Rakshastal , Dagze Co and Dong Co . The Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor)

9776-457: The vowel ཨུ /u/ is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanwords , especially transcribed from the Sanskrit . The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti , Chinese and Sanskrit , often has additional and/or modified graphemes taken from

9880-458: The west to east, they are referred to as Silung Yokma , Silung Barma and Silung Kongma (the lower, middle and upper Silungs). Further east is another tributary called Stathrao . On a tributary of Silung Kongma called Nyingri lies the route to the Pangong Lake region, via Kyungang La , which was once regarded as the boundary between Ladakh and Tibet. (Map 3) At present, Silung Yokma lies in

9984-621: The western dialects of the Ladakhi language , as well as the Balti language , come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings. Despite that, the grammar of these dialectical varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the orthography and grammar of Classical Tibetan would be similar to writing Italian according to Latin orthography, or to writing Hindi according to Sanskrit orthogrophy. However, modern Buddhist practitioners in

10088-671: The western part of Xikang . The region maintained its autonomy until 1951 when, following the Battle of Chamdo , Tibet was occupied and annexed by the People's Republic of China. The Tibetan government was abolished after the failure of the 1959 Tibetan uprising . Today, China governs western and central Tibet as the Tibet Autonomous Region while the eastern areas are now mostly autonomous prefectures within Sichuan, Qinghai and other neighbouring provinces. The Tibetan independence movement

10192-494: Was also possible to travel east by ascending the pass, especially in wintertime when the river area might be icy. Arthur Douglas Carey and Andrew Delgleish used the pass in 1885 in travelling from Ladakh to Keriya . Since 1959, the Kongka Pass formed part of the dividing line between India and China, China having extended its claims till this point. (Map 4) Kongka Pass is also on the dividing line between China's Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions. The Chang Chenmo Valley to

10296-631: Was eventually annexed into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Qinghai. The current borders of Tibet were generally established in the 18th century. Following the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing dynasty in 1912, Qing soldiers were disarmed and escorted out of the Tibet Area (Ü-Tsang). The region subsequently declared its independence in 1913, although this was not recognised by the subsequent Chinese Republican government . Later, Lhasa took control of

10400-467: Was first initiated by Christian missionaries. In the Tibetan script, the syllables are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a tsek (་); since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space. Spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. As in other Indic scripts , each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel ; in

10504-428: Was instead developed in the second half of the 11th century. New research and writings also suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to the introduction of the script by Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota . The incomplete Dunhuang manuscripts are their key evidence for their hypothesis, while the few discovered and recorded Old Tibetan Annals manuscripts date from 650 and therefore post-date

10608-477: Was much animosity against him for his mistreatment of civilians and disregard for local culture. After the Xinhai Revolution (1911–1912) toppled the Qing dynasty and the last Qing troops were escorted out of Tibet, the new Republic of China apologized for the actions of the Qing and offered to restore the Dalai Lama's title. The Dalai Lama refused any Chinese title and declared himself ruler of an independent Tibet . In 1913, Tibet and Outer Mongolia concluded

10712-453: Was pronounced thu x -phjon , and 吐蕃 was pronounced thu x -pjon (with the x representing a shang tone ). Other pre-modern Chinese names for Tibet include: American Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has argued in favor of a recent tendency by some authors writing in Chinese to revive the term Tubote (simplified Chinese: 图伯特 ; traditional Chinese: 圖伯特 ; pinyin: Túbótè ) for modern use in place of Xizang , on

10816-495: Was reported that, as a matter of convention, the chairman had almost always been an ethnic Tibetan, while the party secretary had always been ethnically non-Tibetan. All of modern China, including Tibet, is considered a part of East Asia . Historically, some European sources also considered parts of Tibet to lie in Central Asia . Tibet is west of the Central China plain . In China, Tibet is regarded as part of 西部 ( Xībù ),

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