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A similar thing would happen with a later Buddhist king, Trisong Detsen and the tantric guru, Padmasambhava. One author suggests Padmasambhava’s journey to Tibet in the 7th century, like Weng Chen’s marriage, was an effort to “tame” Tibet. Tibet continued to be an expansionist kingdom and was starting to threaten areas of North India with invasion. This included Padmasambhava’s region, Uddiyana, located in what we know as Kashmir. Like Weng Chen, Padmasambhava sets about taming the resident demons of Tibet to prepare the ground for the practice of Buddhism. To do this, he has to complete 3 circuits of Tibet. He completes two but the third is interrupted, leaving Tibet largely tamed but not completely.

This idea of taming, both for Tibet in general and the individual Buddhist in particular, remains an important theme in Tibetan culture and religion. It’s a theme that appears, not surprisingly, in the epic of Gesar. Gesar descends from the heavens and takes birth as a human to tame the wild land of Ling. The gods of the celestial realm see Ling is overrun with demons and, even worse, the demons reside in the hearts of women and men. On top of this, even Gesar initially requires taming. He appears as Joru, an outrageous wildchild, whose divine gifts give him the unique ability to battle a host of demonic adversaries. Audiences delight in his playful, outrageous antics. Eventually, however, Gesar matures and takes on the more respectable trappings of an actual king. He gets “tamed”. Later, he clears Ling of demons and “tames” the demon kings that surround it.

These days, a deliberate “taming” of sorts is occurring with the introduction of modern Chinese infrastructure in Tibet. The highway I was travelling on with the cousin and his friends was one example. Much of what preserved Tibet’s isolation at the roof of the world resided in the insurmountability of its geography but this changed with the advent of modern vehicles like the car, truck, and airplane. The massive roadworks I saw in Nangchen were the latest example of an effort to tame the “demon” of the Tibetan landscape.