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52-634: Yadong County is coextensive with the Chumbi valley that extends south into the Himalayas between Sikkim and Bhutan . It shares boundaries with both India and Bhutan. It covers about 4,306 square kilometers with a population of 10,000. Its headquarters is Yatung (also called Shasima). The Yadong County mainly consists of the Chumbi Valley , called Dromo/Tromo in Tibetan. The valley is bordered by Dongkya Range in

104-517: A Bhutanese attack in 1780, a settlement was reached, which resulted in the transfer of the Haa valley and the Kalimpong area to Bhutan. The Doklam plateau sandwiched between these regions is likely to have been part of these territories. The Chumbi Valley was still said to have been under the control of Sikkim at this point. Historians qualify this narrative, Saul Mullard states that the early kingdom of Sikkim

156-786: A commanding view of the Chumbi valley itself. Second, it outflanks the Indian defences in Sikkim which are currently oriented northeast towards the Dongkya range. Third, it overlooks the strategic Siliguri Corridor to the south. A claim to the Mount Gipmochi and the Zompelri ridge would bring the Chinese to the very edge of the Himalayas, from where the slopes descend into the southern foothills of Bhutan and India. From here,

208-559: A decisive entry of China into the Himalayan politics. The victorious Chinese General ordered a land survey, in the process of which the Chumbi valley was declared as part of Tibet. The Sikkimese resented the losses forced on them in the aftermath of the war. In the following decades, Sikkim established relations with the British East India Company and regained some of its lost territory after an Anglo-Nepalese War . However,

260-518: A feast in Phari and have them all killed. After this, these regions came under his control and he is said to have constructed a dzong and trade marts at Phari, appointing his younger brother Phakpa Rinchen ( ’Phags-pa-rin-chen ) as the first district governor. There is no further mention of control over western Bhutan after this, but the Phari trade mart has persisted well into the 18th century. In 1206 A.D, Bakhtiyar Khilji led an invasion of Tibet through

312-494: 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

364-600: A war indemnity. China agreed to pay the indemnity owed by the Tibetans in three installments and the Chumbi Valley was transferred back to Tibet on 8 February 1908. The Tibetan name of the region is spelt Gromo ( Tibetan : ་གྲོ་མོ , Wylie : gro mo , THL : dro mo , ZYPY : chomo ) and pronounced Dromo or Tromo . In the Dzongkha language of Bhutan, the name is apparently written Gyumo and pronounced J'umo . J'umbi

416-559: Is a segmental writing system, or abugida , derived from Brahmic scripts and Gupta script , and used to write certain Tibetic languages , including Tibetan , Dzongkha , Sikkimese , Ladakhi , Jirel and Balti . It was originally developed c.  620 by Tibetan minister Thonmi Sambhota for King Songtsen Gampo . 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

468-460: Is also of key strategic significance to Bhutan, containing the main supply routes into the country. Historically, both Siliguri and Chumbi Valley were part of a highway of trade between India and Tibet. In the 19th century, the British Indian government sought to open up the route to British trade, leading to their suzerainty over Sikkim with its strategic Nathu La and Jelep La passes into

520-576: 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

572-493: Is coextensive with the administrative unit Yadong County in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. The Chumbi Valley is connected to Sikkim to the southwest via the mountain passes of Nathu La and Jelep La . The valley is at an altitude of 3,000 m (9,800 ft), and being on the south side of the Himalayas, enjoys a wetter and more temperate climate than most of Tibet. The valley supports some vegetation in

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624-634: 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

676-633: 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,

728-530: Is said to be its adjective, meaning "of or pertaining to [ J'umo ]". Linguist George van Driem states that "Chumbi" is a derivative of J'umbi . The term "Chumbi" to describe the region first appeared in the writings of Joseph Dalton Hooker , the first European to write about the region. Some sources specialising in Tibet translate "Chumbi Valley" as Lho Dromo ( Tibetan : ལྷོ་གྲོ་མོ , Wylie : Lho gro mo , THL : lho dro mo ), or southern Dromo, implying that

780-528: 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

832-560: 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

884-513: The Indian subcontinent or South Asia, with Sikkim now integrated as a state of India. Scholar Susan Walcott counts China's Chumbi Valley and India's Siliguri Corridor to its south among "strategic mountain chokepoints critical in global power competition". John Garver has called the Chumbi Valley "the single most strategically important piece of real estate in the entire Himalayan region". The Chumbi Valley intervenes between Sikkim and Bhutan south of

936-880: 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

988-515: 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

1040-566: The Qinghai–Tibet Railway from Lhasa to Yatung. According to the Convention of Calcutta of 1890–94 signed by Great Britain and Qing dynasty China , the market at Old Yatung was opened to India in the valley coming down from the Jelep La pass. At that time there was a wall-like structure across the valley's stream extending part way up each side of the valley thus blocking the road to

1092-505: The Chinese military is believed to be in a weak position in the Chumbi Valley because the Indian and Bhutanese forces control the heights surrounding the valley. The desire for heights is thought to bring China to the Doklam plateau at the southern border of the Chumbi Valley. Indian security experts mention three strategic benefits to China from a control of the Doklam plateau. First, it gives it

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1144-415: The Chinese would be able to monitor the Indian troop movements in the plains or launch an attack on the vital Siliguri corridor in the event of a war. To New Delhi, this represents a "strategic redline". Scholar Caroline Brassard states, "its strategic significance for the Indian military is obvious." There is telltale evidence of the Chumbi Valley being used as a trade route between Tibet and India in

1196-473: The Chumbi Valley as a triangular region with the broader opening to the north. It was said to be bounded on the west by the Chola Range upto " Gipmochi ", and the "Kamphee or Chakoong range" on the east, which he believed to be continuous with "Chumulari" ( Chomolhari ). These names do not appear in later literature, but maps in mid-20th century mark the eastern border as the "Masang Kyungdu Range" (Map 2), with

1248-660: The Chumbi Valley where he was defeated by the Tibetans and forced to retreat. According to the Sikkimese tradition, when the Kingdom of Sikkim was founded in 1642, it included the Chumbi Valley, the Haa Valley to the east as well as the Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas to the south. During the 18th century, Sikkim faced repeated raids from Bhutan and these areas often changed hands. After

1300-460: The Chumbi Valley, building many garrisons and converting the valley into a strong military base. In 1967, border clashes occurred at Nathu La and Cho La passes, when the Chinese contested the Indian demarcations of the border on the Dongkya range. In the ensuing artillery fire, states scholar Taylor Fravel , many Chinese fortifications were destroyed as the Indians controlled the high ground. In fact,

1352-504: The Chumbi Valley. Following the Anglo-Chinese treaty of 1890 and Younghusband expedition , the British established trading posts at Yatung and Lhasa , along with military detachments to protect them. These trade relations continued till 1959, when the Chinese government terminated them. Indian intelligence officials state that China had been carrying out a steady military build-up in

1404-461: 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

1456-452: The Khundugang peak ( 27°32′38″N 89°06′57″E  /  27.5438°N 89.1159°E  / 27.5438; 89.1159  ( Khungdugang ) ) as its second prominent peak (after Chomolhari). The Chumbi valley, belonging to Tibet (now part of PRC ), is sandwiched between two Himalayan states: Sikkim to the west and Bhutan to the east. Sikkim and Bhutan are considered part of

1508-720: 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

1560-410: 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/

1612-401: 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

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1664-500: 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

1716-407: 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

1768-638: The border between Sikkim and Tibet as the northern watershed of the Teesta River (on the Dongkya range), starting at "Mount Gipmochi ". In 1904, the British signed another treaty with Tibet, which confirmed the terms of the Anglo-Chinese treaty. The boundary established between Sikkim and Tibet in the treaty still survives today, according to scholar John Prescott. 27°29′N 88°54′E  /  27.483°N 88.900°E  / 27.483; 88.900 Tibetan script The Tibetan script

1820-415: 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

1872-418: 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

1924-466: The first millennium CE. A lotsawa named Yontendrak ( Yon tan grags , b. 973) is said to have been given control over the road to India by an Indian teacher "Aryadeva". The mention of this fact occurs in texts from the 14th century. A more graphic development is stated under the name of a Sakya governor Phakpa Balzang (' Phags-pa-dpal-bzang ) in the mid-14th century, who is said to have invited 150 chiefs and teachers from Paro , Haa and other places for

1976-516: The form of the Eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests and transitions to the Eastern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows in the north. The plant Pedicularis chumbica ( 春丕马先蒿 ) is named after the valley. The 1904 Younghusband Expedition of British India passed through the Chumbi Vally on its way to Lhasa. At the end of the expedition, the British took control of the Chumbi Valley in lieu of

2028-540: The high Himalayas, pointing towards India's Siliguri Corridor like a "dagger". The latter is a narrow 24 kilometer-wide corridor between Nepal and Bangladesh in India's West Bengal state, which connects the central parts of India with the northeastern states including the contested state of Arunachal Pradesh . Often referred to as the "chicken's neck", the Siliguri Corridor represents a strategic vulnerability for India. It

2080-491: The interior of the county. This was a demarcation line that the British subjects were forbidden to cross. It was manned by 20 Tibetan soldiers under a sergeant along with three Chinese officials. The construction of the wall was reported to be one of the reasons that led to the British expedition to Tibet in 1904. According to the resulting Convention of Lhasa , a British trade-agent was to be stationed at "Yatung". The British picked

2132-456: The location of the present Yatung town for the trade agency. (Two more trade agencies were also located at Gyantse and Gartok as part of the same Convention.) Yadong County administers the following two towns and five townships : Chumbi valley The Chumbi Valley , called Dromo or Tromo in Tibetan, is a valley in the Himalayas that projects southwards from the Tibetan plateau, intervening between Sikkim and Bhutan . It

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2184-402: 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

2236-531: The northern part of the valley around Phari is not referred to by the name of Chumbi by the Tibetans. In the English usage, however, "Chumbi Valley" refers to both the parts. "Chumbi" is also the name of the most prominent town in the southern part of the valley. Some English writers claim that "Chumbi Valley" is named after the town, but there is no such indication in Hooker's writings. Joseph Dalton Hooker described

2288-470: The relations with the British remained rocky and the Sikkimese retained loyalties to Tibet. The British attempted to enforce their suzerainty via the Treaty of Tumlong in 1861. In 1890, they sought to exclude the Tibetans from Sikkim by establishing a treaty with the Chinese, who were presumed to be exercising suzerainty over Tibet. The Anglo-Chinese treaty recognised Sikkim as a British protectorate and defined

2340-507: 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

2392-444: The west and Massong-Chungdung range in the east. (See map.) Two rivers Khambu Machu and Tromo Chu arise within the valley and join at the town of Yatung. The joint river is known in English by its Bhutanese name Amo Chu . (Tibetans continue to call it Khambu Machu.) The town of Yatung (also called Shasima), is the headquarters of the county. It is close to the borders of both the Indian state of Sikkim and also Bhutan . In 1986, it

2444-572: 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

2496-508: Was eliminated from the contest by an Anglo-Bhutanese treaty in 1774. Tibet enforced a settlement between Sikkim and Nepal, which is said to have irked Nepal. Following this, by 1788, Nepal occupied all of the Sikkim areas to the west of the Teesta river as well as four provinces of Tibet. Tibet eventually sought the help of China, resulting in the Sino-Nepalese War of 1792. This proved to be

2548-467: 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

2600-428: 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

2652-530: Was reported to have had a hotel, a guest house, some government offices and army barracks. Yadong is connected to the Indian state of Sikkim via the Nathu La pass. Local specialities include Dromo fish and barley wine while the main tourist sites are Donggar Monastery, Kagyu Monastery and Khangbu Hotspring. As part of the China Western Development strategy, the Chinese government planned to extend

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2704-572: Was very much limited to the western part of modern Sikkim. The eastern part was under the control of independent chiefs, who did face border conflicts with the Bhutanese, losing the Kalimpong area. The possession of the Chumbi Valley by the Sikkimese is uncertain, but the Tibetans are known to have fended off Bhutanese incursions there. After the unification of Nepal under the Gorkhas in 1756, Nepal and Bhutan had coordinated their attacks on Sikkim. Bhutan

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