Songtsen Gampo

Songtsen Gampo (c. 605–650 CE): king traditionally credited with unifying the Yarlung dynasty into the Tibetan Empire, moving the capital to Lhasa and introducing writing and Buddhism.

Tibetan

Overview

Tibetan tradition holds that Songtsen Gampo expanded Yarlung power across the plateau and that his minister Thonmi Sambhota created the Tibetan script, adapted from an Indic model, around the 640s. The marriages to the Nepalese princess Bhrikuti and the Tang princess Wencheng are central to later Buddhist accounts of how the faith arrived.

Much of the detail comes from later Buddhist chronicles; contemporary evidence is thin, so dates and the scale of his personal role are approximate.