Talk:Songtsen Gampo

Change of dates
Why was his birth-year changed about 10 years earlier, actually there are no water-tight arguments around his birth, so it is probably left as a range of years, or with a circa.
 * According to the text, he was born in 605. But the data-box on the right gives his birth in 617. Now what to believe? I know that both are years of ox, but every logical being capable of calculating that if he really way 13 at dawn of his rulership in 618 (after the death of his father), it must be 605. If he was born in 617, he'd have taken the throne in 629,okay, but what in the years between 618 and 629????? There's something wrong here. - Aresius, Freelance-writer, 05.05.20,08; 19:53 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.89.32.245 (talk) 17:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested move
Could anyone move this article back to Songtsen Gampo? Srong-brtsan sgam-po is the Tibetan romanization of his Tibetan name. Anyway, look at Requested moves.

I would suggest that editors would edit in accordance to my style:.

Mr Tan 15:15, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the article should be renamed Songsten Gampo. --Lhamo2008 (talk) 22:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I have no complaints - especially as Songtsen Gampo is probably more widely used in English and does not need an accented letter to search for it. But, please remember, "Songsten" is incorrect - it should be spelled "Songtsen". John Hill (talk) 23:58, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Some time ago a number of us users decided to use the Tournadre transcription system, and because Lhasa dialect has a phonemic distinction between e and ä, it is necessarz to use the accent in his name. Tibetologist (talk) 00:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Srong-brtsan Sgam-po
I am finding your reverts rather irritating. The article I had first written cites the Tang Annals and the Old Tibetan Chroncile. It is well known among those of us who work on Tibetan history that Srong-brtsan Sgam-po (the second emperor of Tibet) did not marry a Nepalese Princess, and did not introduce Buddhism to Tibet. These stories are first mentioned in the Me-long and the Bka'-bum as I had mentioned in the article. (Incidentally, these are citations, just because you can't read Tibetan doesn't excuse pretending that citations of Tibetan sources are not citations). If you can find an earlier citation for these stories then I will retract my position that they are late medieval fantasies, but I doubt you will. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.2.147.103 (talk • contribs) 16:30, 12 July 2005

--Mel Etitis ( &Mu;&epsilon;&lambda; &Epsilon;&tau;&eta;&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; ) 16:49, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Could you always 'sign' your comments (with four tildes: ~ )?
 * 2) Your addition, aside from anything else, used a version of the subject's name that was completely different from the title of the article. I personally think that your version should be the article title, but as it isn't, your text was confusing.
 * 3) Citations of Tibetan sources are useful, but they're not enough here; you need to give citations that allow other editors (and readers) to verify your claims (No original research).

I've tried to tidy the English and style of the new material, but there's one stumbling block; the article now contains a confusing mix of different transliteration systems. Could someone with expertise make them consistent? If it's to the Tibetan romanisation scheme, I'll move the article in accord. --Mel Etitis ( &Mu;&epsilon;&lambda; &Epsilon;&tau;&eta;&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; ) 13:09, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

-- rudy 20:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC) I don't know much about Tibetan, but if Thonmi Sambhota has not invented it, who did? What is the reason for doubting the traditional explanation?

Objection to heavy-handed editing
Dear "Tibetologist":

I noticed you have removed a lot of material (including a photo) from this page and given as your (unsourced) reasons that you believe that it is largely legendary and of "late medieval origins" and not "historical." When I wrote those notes I thought I had added quite a number of qualifiers to show where uncertainty existed. I will now rewrite them with even more qualifiers, but I must point out that your comments seem to have little or no real evidence to back them.

It should be noted that quite a number of early Tibetan traditions which were previously dismissed as later legends (for example, the famous religious debates in the late 8th century) have been, in fact, confirmed by archaeological finds from Dunhuang and elsewhere. Should this not give you some pause for dismissing such Tibetan traditions? Sure, they should be appropriately qualified - but not, I think, dismissed out of hand, unless you have really strong evidence to show they are untrue.

Please contact me if you have any queries - perhaps together we can make this a better, more accurate article. John Hill 11:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It is normal practice in history to more ore less disregard hagiographic material that was compiled several centuries after the events described. It is not clear to my why this standard should be relaxed in Tibetan studies. While of course this material will contain some true material not found elsewhere it takes a lot of spade work to figure out what these nuggets of historicity are, and after all Wikipedia is not the place for orignal research. The Samye debates are a good example. No debate occured, and nothing occured at Samye. There was no winner and no loser, and Chinese style Buddhism (whatever that might be) was never surpressed in Tibet. Hoshan Mahayana was a real person, and was involved in scholarly discussion with his contemporaries. Some details e.g. the Nepali wife, are clearly made up, for starters her name Brkhuti (sp?) is the name of Avalokitesvara's second consort. Clearly someone thought along these lines -- Avalokitesvara is Songtsän Gampo, therefore Wencheng must be Tara and there must have been a second wife who was Nepalese named Brkhuti. Tibetologist 13:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Tibetologist's comments are incomprehensible. 103.146.218.84 (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Tanguts and Songstän Gampo
It was my impression that the Tanguts didnt really immerge as historical until around 900, so I am rather surprized to read that Songtsän Gampo fought with them. Cam this poiht be elaborated any further? Also, can we cut out some of the wierd spellings at the very begining, redirects exist in all those places anyhow? Tibetologist 05:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Tuyuhun
I notice someone has changed "Tüyühün" from being attributed as Chinese to being attributed as Mongolian but the reference stays the same - to p. 22 of Beckwith's wonderful book. Is it true that "Tüyühün" is the Mongolian form of their name? Beckwith only mentions, on p. 17 of his book, that the name can be T'u-yü-hun, T'ui-hu or A-ch'ai in Chinese (which would be Tuyuhun, Tuihu, or Achai in Pinyin) and Togon or 'Aźa in Tibetan. As far as I can see he doesn't give any Mongolian form - although he does mention that they were "Mongolic-speaking". Can anyone help get this right for us, please? John Hill 00:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Tuyuhun is definately not Mongolian. Tibetologist 09:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * "Tüyühün" with all the umlauts is also definitely not Chinese, although I imagine this is a misspelling of Tuyuhun, which is the pinyin equivalent of "T'u-yü-hun". That is, it is Chinese.&mdash;Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 19:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The proper Pinyin spelling of the word is indeed Tuyuhun (without the umlauts) as Nat Krause has said and as I indicated above. This spelling is the one now used in the article. John Hill 22:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Chinese characters
Why is the Chinese version of this Tibetan person's name featured so prominently in this article? I think they should be removed. Bertport (talk) 00:32, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. The characters are also in the infobox and that seems plenty.&mdash;Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 01:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Why are they even in the infobox? They don't belong in the article at all. Bertport (talk) 04:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * because he was signifigantly involved in the history of china, AND his chinese name isnt a recent cooked up name by the CCP, it came from ancient chinese records. stop sticking your nose into where you dont belong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.84.167.23 (talk) 05:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Songtsän Gampo vs Songtsen Gampo
I see that there was a request for move to Songtsen Gampo, according to Wikipedia guidelines WP:UE the article Songtsen should be the preferred spelling. A look into Google Books give more results for Songtsen Gampo than Songtsän Gampo (which also gave Songtsan in the search results), therefore Songtsen Gampo is the preferred one per Wikipedia guidelines as it is the more common one. Hzh (talk) 10:15, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: move the page to Songtsen Gampo. THL standard, no diacritics, NGRAM says current title, "Songtsän Gampo", is not found in the literature.
 * Move The THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription ("THL") is becoming the scholarly standard for Standard Tibetan romanisation: in fact, it's a switch in the  template ("s="). If we are going to go the way of "how do Modern Lhasa speakers sound" instead of "let's use the actual spelling", we should go with Songtsen Gampo. In case you are ever curious, the THL-romaniser machine is http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/phconverter.php here]. Ogress smash!  01:12, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * : Don't Move. If we are going to go the way of "how do Modern Lhasa speakers sound"then Songtsän Gampo is correct, the vowels ä and e are phonemically distinct in Lhasa dialect. The THL system is certainly not becoming a scholarly standard. In the US and France most scholarship uses Wylie transliteration. The Germans still use the Library of Congress system. THL system is not used in any serious scholarship. (btw. the man's name was Khri srong brtsan, and he would have pronounced every letter of it, so probably best to move it to that page). Tibetologist (talk) 21:24, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * How a name is pronounced by Lhasa speakers is irrelevant to what title should be used in Wikipedia, same for academic usage (and you have not produced any evidence that what you said is true, given that Google Books says otherwise). What is relevant is common usage in English. As already shown Songtsen Gampo is the more common term in Google books, if you search for Songtsän Gampo you get fewer hits, in fact the search result included Songtsan Gampo, making Songtsän an even less commonly-used term. A search in Google Scholars yielded even greater proportion of usage of Songtsen Gampo, 792 vs 104 for Songtsän Gampo (and it included hits for Songtsan, which might halve the hits for Songtsän). Songtsän is very much a minor usage, whether in common usage or in academic circle.Hzh (talk)


 * Move I would choose whichever spelling that is most common. Hzh (talk)
 * I vote recuse. I very respectfully disagree with User:Tibetologist; I think we should take pity on our readers and provide them with something along the lines of a modern phonetic spelling. I really wish that the old Tournadre romanisation, which gives us Songtsän, would catch on, but that does not seem to be happening. I don't think it's the case that THL system is not used in any serious scholarship&mdash;I've seen a few authors use it, which is more than one can say for any other modern pronunciation-based system (it certainly is the case THL does not predominate). THL does give "Songtsen" (it simply does not pretend to make all the distinctions that Tibetans do when speaking), which has the additional advantage of being more common than "Songtsän" in English writing. – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 22:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Move - Most used spelling should prevail.VictoriaGraysonTalk 23:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Move - Songtsän is not English spelling and does not help English-speaking readers pronounce the name. CorinneSD (talk) 01:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * No new contribution for a month, and the majority opinion is for a move, so I have moved the page. Anyone who objects to the move please discuss it first before moving again. Hzh (talk) 15:16, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

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This article is insufferable
It repeats the same information over and over for no apparent reason and is just a mess. Is incredibly confusing to try to understand what order stuff actually happened in. 118.208.224.199 (talk) 10:22, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree. I will try and repair the mess 103.146.218.84 (talk) 16:28, 13 April 2024 (UTC)