Amdo

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For other uses, see Amdo County.
Situation of the east Tibetan region of Amdo

Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ༌མདོ, Chinese transliteration: 安多, Pinyin: Ānduō) is one of the three traditional states of Tibet, the other two being Ü-Tsang and Kham; it is also the birth place of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu River (Yellow River) to the Drichu river (Yangtze River). While culturally and ethnically a Tibetan area, Amdo has been administered by a series of local rulers in recent centuries. After the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Amdo was divided and incorporated into the Chinese provices of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai. While identically named, the sparsely-populated Amdo County in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is not part of the Amdo cultural province. It was directly administered by the Dalai Lama from Lhasa and is today a part of the Changthang region administered by Nagqu in the northern part of the TAR.

Amdo was and is the home of many important Tibetan Buddhist monks (or lamas), scholars who had a major influence on both politics and religious development of Tibet like the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama, and the great reformer Je Tsongkhapa.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] 9th Century

After the break-up of the central Tibetan kingdom in the ninth century, Amdo and Kham retained close cultural and religious links to central Tibet. Politically, however, they were organized as small kingdoms and tribes nominally under Chinese and Tibetan authority but actually controlled by leaders who held allegiance to neither[1].

[edit] 13th Century

The Mongols conquered eastern Amdo in the early 13th century and made both Tibet and China subject nations of their empire[2][3]. While some historians see this incorporation as the legal incorporation of Tibet, including Amdo, into the Chinese state from the Yuan Dynasty onwards,[4] the Tibetan Government in Exile see the relationship between Tibetan religious leaders and Mongol Khans as a "patron-priest" relationship, whereby Tibetan religious leaders exchanged political control for religious submission.[5] This began in 1253 when a Tibetan priest, Phagspa, visited Kublai Khan he became so popular that he was made Kublai’s spiritual guide and later appointed by him to the rank of priest king of Tibet and constituted ruler of (1) Tibet Proper, comprising the thirteen states of U-Tsang Province; (2) Kham, and (3) Amdo[6].Long before China regained its own independence from the Mongol Khans (in1386), Tibet had broken it’s political ties with the Empire, but the unique priest/patron relationship with the Mongols endured[7].

Under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty of Kublai Khan, Amdo and Kham were split into two commandaries, which, along with Ü-Tsang, were collectively referred to as the three commandaries of Tibet.

[edit] 17th Century

The following Ming Dynasty nominally largely maintained the Mongol divisions of Tibet with some sub-division. However, from the middle of the Ming era, the Chinese government lost control in Tibet, and the Mongols again seized political control.[8] Power struggles among various Mongol factions in Tibet and Amdo led to a period alternating between the supremacy of the Dalai Lama (nominally) and Mongol overlords.In 1642 the independent Mongol king, Gushri Khan, conferred temporal, as well as spiritual, authority on the fifth Dalai Lama, establishing a dominance for the Gelugpa Buddhist sect and the Dalai Lama that persists to this day. The Mongols also conferred parts of Eastern Tibet (Kham) on the Tibetans, while the Mongols continued to rule the Tibetan Amdo provide – raising present day questions as to which areas in Eastern Tibet the Tibetan government consistently ruled[9].

[edit] 18th Century

In 1705, with the approval of the Kangxi Emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Lobzang Khan of the Khoshud deposed the regent and sent the 6th Dalai Lama to Beijing; the 6th Dalai Lama died soon after, probably near Qinghai Lake (Koko nur) in Amdo. The Dzungar Mongols invaded Tibet during the chaos, and held the entire region until their final defeat by the Qing imperial army in 1720.[10][11] The Qing forces withdrew from Tibet proper, but not from Amdo, most of which became Kokonor, or Xining Prefecture, under Gansu province.

When the Manchu Qing dynasty rose to power in the early eighteenth century it established Xining, a town to the north of Amdo, as the administrative base for the area. The rule of their administrator, the Amban, was light, however, and allowed relative autonomy to be retained by the monasteries and other local rulers[12].

As the Qing Empire expanded in the eighteenth century it would intrude more and more on Tibetan autonomy, frequently invading Eastern Tibet and occasionally Central Tibet[9].


The Yongzheng Emperor seized full control of Tibet from 1726-1728. The boundaries of Xining Prefecture, which contains most of Amdo, with Sichuan and Tibet-proper was established following this. The boundary of Xining Prefecture and Xizang, or central Tibet, was the Dangla Mountains. This roughly corresponds with the modern boundary of Qinghai with the Tibet Autonomous Region. The boundary of Xining Prefecture with Sichuan was also set at this time, dividing the Ngaba area of the former Amdo into Sichuan. This boundary also roughly corresponds with the modern boundary of Qinghai with Sichuan. Other parts of old Amdo was administered by the Administrator of Qinghai. Kokonor Mongols from northern Xinjiang moved into Qinghai in this period.


In all these predominantly culturally Tibetan areas, the Qing Empire used a system of administration relying on local, Tibetan, rulers. A 1977 University of Chicago PhD. thesis, described the political history of the Tibetan region in Gansu (which was historically one part of Amdo) during the Qing dynasty as follows:

Shadzong Ritro near Taktser in Amdo

In the time of the Manchu dynasty, the entire region was administered by a viceroy of the Imperial Government. That portion of the country occupied by Chinese Moslems and some other, smaller, racial units was under traditional Chinese law. The Tibetans enjoyed almost complete independence and varying degrees of prestige. The Chone Prince ruled over the forty-eight "banners" of one group of Tibetans; other Tibetan rulers or chiefs held grants or commissions- some of them hundreds of years old- from the Imperial Government. At that time the ethnic frontier corresponded almost exactly with the administrative frontier.[13]

[edit] 20th Century

The power of the Qing waned in the early twentieth century and its control over Amdo was replaced by that of the Hui Muslims. Their administrative influence was also largely confined to the agricultural areas in the north and east of the region, however[12].

By this stage a number of powerful local rulers had emerged in Amdo. Monasteries such as Labrang, Repkong and Taktsang Lhamo appointed headmen, gowa (go ba), to the tribes within their areas, these tribes being groups consisting of several thousand nomads[12].In other areas, such as Sokwo, Ngawa and Choni, secular leaders achieved the status of kings, similarly presiding over a group of tribes while certain tribes had their own hereditary gowa. The latter included the tribes beyond Labrang's influence in Machu[12].


In the 1930s, the Muslim warlord Ma Bufang seized the northeast corner of Amdo in the name of Chiang Kai-shek's weak central government and incorporated it into the Chinese province of Qinghai. [14] Amdo was officially incorporated into the Chinese provincial system, with the major portion of it becoming part of Qinghai province in 1928[15]. In May 1949, Ma Bufang was appointed Military Governor of Northwest China, making him the highest-ranked administrator of the Amdo region. However, by August 1949, the advancing People's Liberation Army had annihilated Ma's army, though residual forces took several years to defeat. By 1952, the region was fully under the control of People's Republic of China.[16] By 1949, advance units of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (the PLA) had taken much of Amdo from the Nationalists[7].

In 1958, Communists assumed control of Tibetan regions in Kham and Amdo. Many of the nomads of Amdo revolted. Some areas were reported virtually empty of men: they either had been killed or imprisoned or had fled. The largest monastery in Amdo was forced to close. Of its three thousand monks, two thousand were arrested.[17]

[edit] Monasteries

Amdo was traditionally a place of great learning and scholarship and contains many great monasteries including Kumbum Jampa Ling (Chin. Ta'er Si) near Xining, Labrang Tashi Khyil south of Lanzhou, and the Kirti Monasteries of Ngaba and Taktsang Lhamo in Dzoge County (Ch: Ruanggui /Zoige Xian)[18].

Panoramic view of Kumbum Monastery in Amdo

[edit] Language

Main article: Amdo Tibetan language

There are many dialects of the Tibetan language spoke in Amdo due to the traditional geographical isolation of many tribal groups, however the written Tibetan language is the same throughout Tibet. The Tibetan inhabitants of Amdo are referred to as Amdowa (amdo pa) as a regional distinction from the Tibetans of Kham (Khampa) and U-Tsang (Central Tibet), however, they are all considered ethnically Tibetan.

[edit] Present demographics

Today, ethnic Tibetans predominate in the western and southern parts of Amdo, which are now administered as various Tibetan, Tibetan-Qiang, or Mongol-Tibetan autonomous prefectures. The Han Chinese are a majority in the eastern part of Qinghai and the provincial capital Xining. While geographically small compared to the rest of Qinghai, this area has the largest population density, with the result that the Han Chinese outnumber other ethnicities in Qinghai generally. The northern part of Qinghai has a Mongol majority. For details on the demographics of various Tibetan entities in Amdo and Tibet generally, see Tibet - Major ethnic groups in Greater Tibet by region, 2000 census.

The majority of Amdo Tibetans live in the larger part of Qinghai Province, including the Mtsho byang (Chin. Haibai) TAP, Mtsho lho (Hainan) TAP, Rma lho (Huangnan) TAP, and Mgo log (Guoluo) TAP, as well as in the Kan lho (Gannan) TAP of the southwest Gansu province, and sections of the Rnga ba (Aba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous prefecture of north-west Sichuan Province. Additionally, a great many Amdo Tibetans live within the Haidong (Tib. Mtsho Shar) Prefecture of Qinghai which is located to the east of the Blue Lake (Mtsho sngon, Kokonor) and around Xining city, but they constitute only a minority (ca. 8.5%) of the total population there and so the region did not attain TAP status. The vast Haixi (Mstho nub) Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, to the west of the Blue Lake, also has a minority Tibetan population (ca. 10%), and only those Tibetans in the eastern parts of this Prefecture are Amdo inhabitants[19].

Mongols too have been long-term settlers in A mdo, arriving first during the time of Genghiz Khan, but particularly in a series of settlement waves during the Ming period. Over the centuries, most of the A mdo Mongols have become highly Tibetanised and, superficially at least, it is now difficult to discern their original non-Tibetan ethnicity[19].

Labrang Monastery in Amdo

[edit] Local Government

After 1949, the Chinese communists inherited and adopted the earlier Republican county system, and the basic arrangements of local government in A mdo have changed little up to the present day. With the advent of communist administrators in A mdo during the 1950s, a series of larger Tibetan autonomous prefectures were newly established on top of the existing county system in those places where Tibetans formed the majority of the population. This development was in line with the policy towards minority nationalities set down in the new constitution of the PRC[19].

[edit] References and notes

  1. ^ Yeh, E.T. (2003). Tibetan Range Wars: Spatial Politics and Authority on the Grasslands of Amdo. Development and Change. 34(3): 499–523 (2003).
  2. ^ Petech, L. Central Tibet and The Mongols. (Serie Orientale Roma 65). Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente 1990: 6. Shakabpa, 61.
  3. ^ Shirokauer, Conrad. A Brief History of Chinese Civilization Thompson Higher Education, (c) 2006. ISBN 0-534-64305-1, 174.
  4. ^ Laird, T., The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. Grove Press. 2006. ISBN 0802118275 at 108
  5. ^ The Three Dharma Kings of Tibet
  6. ^ Patterson, G.N., China and Tibet: Background to the Revolt. The China Quarterly, No.1 (Jan- Mar., 1960), pp 87-102.
  7. ^ a b Craig, M., 1992. Tears Of Blood, A Cry For Tibet. Harper-Collins, London.
  8. ^ Petech, L. Central Tibet and The Mongols. (Serie Orientale Roma 65). Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente 1990: 85-143
  9. ^ a b Davis, M 2008, ‘Establishing a workable Autonomy in Tibet’. Human Rights Quarterly. Volume 30, Iss.2; pg 227-258.
  10. ^ Richardson, Hugh E. (1984). Tibet and its History. Second Edition, Revised and Updated, pp. 48-9. Shambhala. Boston & London. ISBN 0-87773-376-7 (pbk)
  11. ^ Schirokauer, 242
  12. ^ a b c d Pirie, F 2005 ‘Segmentation within the state: the reconfiguration of Tibetan tribes in China's reform period’ Nomadic Peoples. 9.1-2 (June-Dec 2005): 83(20).
  13. ^ [1]
  14. ^ Laird, T., The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. Grove Press. 2006. ISBN 0802118275 pg 262
  15. ^ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/94/A-mdo
  16. ^ 青海解放：1950年1月1日青海省人民政府正式成立中央任命赵寿山为主席 (Liberation of Qinghai: January 1, 1950: Qinghai Provincial People's Government established. Central government appoints Zhao Shoushan as Governor)
  17. ^ Laird, T., The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. Grove Press. 2006. ISBN 0802118275 pg 382
  18. ^ http://www.tchrd.org/press/2008/pr20080417b.html
  19. ^ a b c Huber, T. (ed). 2002. Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era, Brill Academic Publishers. The Netherlands. ISBN 90-04-12596-5

[edit] External links

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Traditional provinces and regions of Tibet
Ü-Tsang (Ü · Tsang · Ngari) · Kham · Amdo
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