1hEpybB

The Two Conquests of Zhang zhung and the Many Lig-Kings of Bon 21
which Baumann gathered his ideas about a gradual conquest; in any case, his
text strikingly matches the data given by Bellezza in Divine Dyads.
Considering the references and the intellectual milieu of the publications,
one may safely assume that Yongs ’dzin Rin po che is the most immediate
source for these historiographical constructs. All mentioned publications
seem to have been informed, directly or indirectly, by his reading of seemingly
conflicting sources on the fall of Zhang zhung and Lig myi rhya. I am
not sure whether Rinpoche has ever publicised his ‘synthetic’ views on the
issue in any of his historical writings; he may merely have shared them with
his clients in oral communications. I am also not aware of any other bon po
writers who have attempted such a synthesis earlier.
However, scholars familiar with older academic publication may recall
that a similar suggestion was already forwarded by Uray Géza, as early as the
late 1960s (1968:295f.). He speculates whether the murder of Lig myi rhya
and the conquest of Zhang zhung were only the prelude of the subsequent
decline during the reign of Khri Srong lde btsan and created the conditions
for the later oppression of Bon.
As far as I can reconstruct from sparse references, Yongs ’dzin Rin po
che, based on late Bon scholarly tradition, indeed prefers to read the Zhang
zhung title Lig myi rhya as a general royal title 4 that all the Zhang zhung
kings after a presumed earlier Bya ru can line of kings carried. 5 Given that
assumption, harmonising the conflicting accounts in Bon and Buddhist
sources regarding the fall of Zhang zhung indeed is relatively easy. In fact, it
resonates well with time-tested strategies for creating an ancient pedigree:
postulate two persons (casu quo, a lineage) with the same name or title, or
make one of them live very long (the latter is what Baumann seems to imply).
6 Rinpoche, by assuming a Lig myi rhya dynasty, is able to accommodate
the extant conflicting accounts of the demise of Zhang zhung and
the defeat of Lig snya shur or Lig myi rhya in a wider time frame of two
consecutive conquests. In his view, after Zhang zhung and the Lig myi rhya
line of kings had been defeated by Srong btsan sgam po in 643/44 AD,
Zhang zhung forces have had to relinquish Khyung lung dngul mkhar and
relocate their power centre from the ‘royal pleasure grove’ in Garuḍa Valley
to Dvangs ra Khyung rdzong. In 1957, when due to well-known political
problems in Central Tibet, things started to get rough in sMan ri (in
gTsang), Rinpoche withdrew from his duties as a sMan ri teacher (slob dpon)
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4
Indeed, ‘King of men’, corresponding to Tibetan: srid pa’i rje.
5
See, e.g., dKa ru grub dbang and Vitali (2008 and forthc.) on the Bya ru can and Lig
myi rhya kings.
6
See the historiographical strategies formulated elsewhere, in Blezer, “The Bon of Bon:
Forever Old”.