The Fifth Dalai Lama's Chronicle of Tibet (1643)
A Tibetan history by the ruler who allied with the Mongol Gushri Khan, covering antiquity to 1642.
Full title Chronicle of Tibet: Song of the Queen of Spring (1643)
བོད་ཀྱི་དེབ་ཐེར་དཔྱིད་ཀྱི་རྒྱལ་མོའི་གླུ་དབྱངས།
The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682)
The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617 to 1682) wrote this history in 1643, known as the Song of the Queen of Spring. It runs from early times to 1642. For the Mongol Khoshut intervention of 1637 to 1642 it is a witness to events the author lived through, as the ally of Gushri Khan. The card lists a modern Serthar edition of 205 pages, scanned at BDRC, and notes partial English translations by Tucci (1949) and Ahmad (1995). The atlas does not hold the text of this edition: the corpus lists it but stores no text of it, under its rights rule, so nothing from it was read for this guide.
- How they knew
- Part eyewitness
- Who “Tartar” means here
- Not recorded. The card names the Mongols in view: Altan Khan, Gushri Khan and the Khoshut.
- Why read it
- It is the Tibetan view of the Mongol and Tibetan relationship from the Yuan down to the Khoshut conquest, written by one of its central figures.
- Watch out
- The modern edition has no apparatus, and older Lhasa block prints exist. The earlier centuries are retrospective, while the last years are contemporary.
What it says
No quotes from this one yet. Its text is out of reach for now, or the scan could not be read.
The fine print
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
retrospective history with contemporary sections on the Mongol (Khoshut) intervention of 1637-1642 that the author witnessed
Research notes
- Modern Serthar edition without apparatus; older Lhasa block prints exist. Tucci's Tibetan Painted Scrolls vol. 2 (IA dli.pahar.2915) gives excerpts in translation.
Why it matters
Tibetan view of the Mongol-Tibetan relationship from the Yuan to the Khoshut conquest, written by the ruler who allied with Gushri Khan; English translations by Tucci (partial, 1949) and Ahmad (1995).
Places named
Tibet; Kokonor; Mongolia
Peoples named
Tibetan polities (Phag mo gru, Rin spungs, gTsang pa); Mongols (Altan Khan, Gushri Khan, Khoshut); Yuan