Sources for the History of Bhutan

Michael Aris

Association for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna

203

1986

9797001323481

History

1 total, 1 available

Translated from Tibetan and Portuguese; includes Tibetan in romanized Tibetan. From the translator's Background to the Texts: The works selected for inclusion (by Wa-gindra, Byar-gyi-bende; Bstan-?dzin-chos-rgyal; and Rje Mkhan-po X) "have been chosen because of their value as crucial source material on the formative era of Bhutanese history, as they cover the entire period leading to the full emergence of the Bhutanese theocracy. Their relative brevity as compared with the other major works relevant to this period further suggested the convenience of presenting them here as a group of inter-related 'minor' texts. While the first two works in this collection have never before been available to modern scholarship, and are indeed hardly known even in Bhutan, the next two (which include a text translated from Portuguese) have been partially known from the work of White (1909) and Wessels (1924). Although these earlier writers fully realised their importance, neither of them were able to fit these works into the historical context with any degree of success, and the translations they provided were incomplete. To form something of a chronological sequence the works have to be read in the order: I, IV, II, III. The present order was determined by the close relationship of I and II and by the nature of IV as 'odd man out'.".