Tibetan people

The Tibetans are the native people of the high plateau of inner Asia, speakers of the Tibetic languages who call themselves Böpa. In the seventh century the Yarlung king Songtsen Gampo subdued the plateau's rival tribes and founded an empire that at its height garrisoned the Silk Road oases, contested Sichuan with Tang China, and in 763 briefly occupied the Tang capital Chang'an itself. The empire gave its subjects their lasting institutions: a script adapted from Indian models for translating Buddhist scriptures, a legal code, taxation registers, and a state Buddhism proclaimed under Trisong Detsen. When the empire collapsed in the ninth century the plateau fragmented into princely valleys and monastic estates, and out of that fragmentation the Tibetan nationality as it is known today gradually formed around the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Herding, barley farming in the river valleys, and trade in salt, wool and tea sustained a civilisation of monasteries, medical schools, astronomers and epic singers, whose Gesar epic, thangka painting and opera are now recognised as world heritage. Most Tibetans live in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Tibetan districts of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan; others live across the Himalayas in Nepal, Bhutan and Ladakh, and in a worldwide diaspora.