ABSTRACT
The Political Geography of South East Zanskar, and a Reconsideration of the Royal Chronologies of Zanskar and Ladakh in the 15th century.
N. F. Howard
South-east Zanskar, originally part of the political and cultural world of greater Ladakh, is now a small sub-district of Jammu and Kashmir State. It had a historical population of less than 9500 people divided, throughout most of the last millennium, between two small indigenous kingdoms whose rulers were related to each other and to the rulers of Ladakh and the old states of western Tibet. The author believes that such small kingdoms were a characteristic feature of the region's history, but in almost all cases we have no records of them.
By chance, documents giving a detailed account of the establishment and evolution of the kingdom occupying south-east Zanskar in the 15th century have survived and are in the Phugtal monastery. This paper attempts, for the first time, to define the boundaries of this kingdom and those of its sub-divisions. An attempt to date this evolution leads to a reassessment of the chronologies of the introduction of Gelugpa Buddhism into the western Himalaya and of the royal house of Ladakh at a time of critical obscurity in its history.