Pho-lha-nas, Khang-chen-nas, and the Last Era of Mongol Domination in Tibet

Abstract

The lives of Pho-lha-nas and Khang-chen-nas are well known, most importantly from Luciano Petech’s seminal study of early 18th-century Tibet. Since the publication of that study, the appearance of several previously inaccessible sources has allowed us to form a fuller image of the situation in Tibet before and during their lifetimes, a period that coincided with the last era of Mongol dominion in Tibet. The effects of this domination and the concomitant integration of Tibetans and Mongols in military, political and other spheres of Tibetan life were observable decades after the end of Pho-lha-nas’s rule. As a result, while the Dga’-ldan pho-brang government of the Dalai Lamas is a useful lens through which to view Tibet’s history at this time, it is equally useful to construct a view of Tibet as simultaneously a Mongol realm, a “Qanate of Tibet.”