Part Nineteen: Gyelmo Purgyal Pelmo 'the Scholar' (1114 to 1158 AD) (cont.)
Late in her reign Pelmo would find herself the target of Bön crusades, and not for nothing.
Part Nineteen: Gyelmo Purgyal Pelmo 'the Scholar' (1114 to 1158 AD) (cont.)
Torma II had lived to see the Kingdom of Guge pass to two of her sons. Her eldest surviving son Prince Zindé had taken the throne of Western Tibet in 1077 while still a boy and had grown up to be an impressive young man, strong in body and stronger in mind. Like his famous mother Zindé had combined an intellectual brilliance with a love of the wilds and the hunt. It was on one of his many expeditions in early 1093 that he met his fate at the teeth and claws of a tiger.
The death of Zindé of Guge was a personal tragedy for the Purgyals and a national loss for the people of Guge but few realised at the time it set both Guge and Ü-Tsang along a path to war that would dominate the next six decades. The court in Taktsé always insisted that Pelmo, Zindé's legitimate daughter born three months after his death was the rightful ruler of Guge. The court in Tsaparang, the capital of Guge, had declared for Zindé's half brother Prince Udumsten and his heirs.
Torma had refused to be drawn into a war between her son and her granddaughter and Daktri had also shuddered at the thought of fighting his half-brother, but throughout the years from her birth to her own coronation in Taktsé Pelmo had been seen as the Gyelmo of Guge in exile. The young Gyelmo had even made a point of snubbing envoys from her uncle Udumsten and always referenced him (when she would speak of him at all) as 'the usurper'. Fortunately for the Tibetan Plateau there was no immediate war; the new monarch of Ü-Tsang was finding her feet in Taktsé (and would soon be distracted by religious matters) while Udumsten was growing old and fat and even more well entrenched in Tsaparang. An uneasy peace would last for many years.
The cold war between the two Tibets ended in 1128 with the passing of Udumstem and the rise of his eldest son Jetsun 'the Dragon' to the throne of Guge. The thirty year old Gyalpo Jetsun had provoked the clash by egging on his young brother Prince Yumtän in his ambition to seize Ü-Tsang from their cousin Pelmo. Prince Yumtän was another in the mold of those adventurers who believed they win by the sword what they could not by the law, and was never regarded as a serious threat in Taktsé - indeed far from conquering Ü-Tsang Prince Yumtän's invasion in 1131 and 1132 would end in disaster and defeat and his capture by Pelmo. The ambitious princeling ended up being ransomed back to his brother, who was by that point himself at war with Pelmo.
Prince Yumtän is ransomed, 1132 AD.
Yumtän's humiliation was simply a footnote in the greater clash between Guge and Ü-Tsang, but it was the first throwing down of the gauntlet that gave Pelmo her excuse to war for her stolen throne (as she saw it.) Between November 1129 and March 1137 the cousins would fight one of the most exhausting wars in Tibetan history. Pelmo, ever shrewd had renewed her peace with the Zhao Empire to prevent her cousin from calling in Chinese soldiers. What she could not prevent was the opportunism of others; Prince Yumtän was not the only man who raided Ü-Tsang during the war and time and again Pelmo was forced to deal with barbarian raiders, peasant and Buddhist rebellions and one point even a side war with the Maharaja of Bihar provoked by one of her subjects [1]. All of this trouble prevented the greater population and wealth of Ü-Tsang deciding the fight quickly.
Culturally Eastern and Western Tibet were akin and the forces that faced each other fought in identical fashion. Tibet was often thought of as mountainous by the outside world but in fact most of the land was flat (if at high elevation.) Both major Tibetan kingdoms employed extensive horsemen, mostly light lance and sword armed soldiers; the Tibetans were all too familiar with horse archers from their experience with barbarians but seldom used such themselves. The bulk of the numbers were provided by light infantrymen (a misleading delicate term for the tough and strong minded villagers who eked out a living in the roof of the world), supplemented by archers and more exotic troops. At the Battle of Marpori in May 1130 the Guge army fielded twenty nine war elephants with Indian mahouts; mercenaries recruited at great cost from the South. It didn't win the battle for them but it did impress Pelmo enough to start bringing her own war elephants from Assam [2].
All these soldiers were important but the key to Tibetan armies remained the heavy infantry wielding swords and clad in chain and lamellar, many minor gentry or exceptionally rich peasants at the area were the line blurred. These soldiers were often longserving veterans of the the innumerable small wars that had gripped the plateau even during times of war. Disproportionately they were likely to take the enemy prisoner in exchange for a fat ransom (Prince Yumtän was taken for exactly this reason.)
At least in these early years the issue of religion was less of a factor than might be supposed. The Archpriestess supported the reigning Gyalpo of Guge less for the fact that he was a practicing Bön and more from the fact that Tsaparang had been the religious capital of Tibet for centuries and generations of priests and priestesses had paid temporal fealty to the lord of Guge. Jetsun's soldiers were mostly Bön but he also had Buddhists and Hindus marching beneath his banners. Pelmo had even less desire to make the contest one of faith; not just her soldiers but so many of her generals prayed to different gods. Besides both Purgyal cousins were fighting for what they believed and proclaimed were their legal rights.
The Battle of Coqên, April 11133 AD. Though it did not change the course of the war it did show Ü-Tsang was far from invincible.
Even with the nuisances on her home front Pelmo and her supporters gradually ground down the enemy. Most of the war was fought inside the borders of Guge as Pelmo's armies fought bloody field battles and captured prize towns. The fighting was not one sided, with Tsaparang itself changing hands three times. There were battles that saw Guge emerge triumphant, such as Coqên in April 1133 when the ambushed Eastern Tibetans suffered a rout that undid every gain the last four years of war. Pelmo held on through these grim years and eventually pushed Jetsun to the negotiating table.
The result was a recognition of Pelmo as Gyelmo of Guge, but also left a patchwork of territory still under the rule of Jetsun. In the previous century the rulers of Guge had pushed deep into the Punjab during various Bön holy wars. Those gains had evaporated over the generations but Jetsun was still able to style himself the 'Gyalpo of Punjab' and retain much of his old support. He even managed to keep Tsaparang.
Pelmo had won, but the victory fell far short of her expectations. Had she been able to she might well have rejected her cousin's offers but the situation in Ü-Tsang was becoming desperate with an one stage three seperate barbarian bands raiding the country. Her nobles were growing very restive and she knew well enough that the neighbouring knigdoms had already grown wary of Ü-Tsang ambitions. So with deep reluctance she had signed a peace.
The truce that followed would last for a decade. It wasn't entirely a time of peace. In 1141 Pelmo found herself facing yet another of Jetsun's siblings as Princess Yeshe invaded Ü-Tsang at the head of a host of adventurers and sellswords, eager to win the crown of Guge for herself. Yeshe ended up just like her brother Yumtän, defeated in battle and imprisoned - though this time Pelmo decided against ransoming her. Crafty and charismatic Yeshe was too dangerous a foe to be let loose, though in deference to her blood ties to Pelmo Yeshe was kept under modest house guard in Taktsé.
Pelmo could at least enjoy the satisfaction of clipping her most dangerous cousin's wings. She needed such satisfactions. Her youngest and favourite son Prince Mangyen had died suddenly in September 1139. The sixteen year old prince had, apparently suffered a heart attack. There were whispers (though there were always whispers.) No greater loss could have been felt by Pelmo. For most of her reign her letters to the Patriarch of the East had been dry doctrinal affairs. Those written in the years that followed were much more personal, yearning even. In her grief the Gyelmo turned further to her faith.
There was a certain hardening of the royal religious policy in this stage of Pelmo's long reign. Non-Christian courtiers were still welcome in the monarch's presence and there was no mass persecution of pagans, who at this stage still made up the vast majority of Pelmo's subjects. However the speed of bishops replacing lamas increased and a seat on the council now came with the expectation that the favoured grandee would at least consider changing their religion. The presence of the Archpriestess of the Bön faith in Jetsun's court added a political edge to the personal.
In Austt 1147 the peace collapsed. Neither Purgyal monarch had seen the peace as anything other than a temporary postponement, but for the first time religion openly became a point of conflict. Pelmo alleged that her cousin had sought to suborn her Bön subjects into treason. This two year long war would see Pelmo conquer Purang, including the old capital of Guge, Tsaparang. However as successful as it was the enemy retained enclaves of land in Pelmo's domain that through artful diplomacy or simple military inaccessibility were beyond her reach. The ambition of unifying the Tibetan Empire of Old, so close at times remained an enchanting illusion while these infuriating malcontents remained at large and other elements of Old Tibet remained under foreign control. Pelmo was the strongest ruler Tibet had seen in three centuries but she would never wear the imperial crown.
The final years of Pelmo's reign were clouded by renewed war. In June 1155 the Archpriestess Dagmo declared a Great Holy War for Guge on Pelmo. It was a breathtakingly foolish decision unless Dagmo truly believed Pelmo's Bön subjects would revolt en masse. They did nothing of the sort and though the war ground slowly and cost Pelmo the life of another son the outcome was never in doubt. Indeed the clash might have ended sooner had Pelmo not ordered the execution of Dagmo upon her capture in 1177. The Gyelmo's wrath was officially delivered not to a heretic but to a traitor - as rightful monarch of Guge she considered Dagmo her subject in rebellion, whatever the Bön theologian thought and that she had spread vicious propaganda against Pelmo during and before the war had not encouraged mercy.
It is difficult for later historians to tell how Pelmo's Bön subjects felt about Dagmo going to the stake, as the religiously conservative courtiers and great barons made no public comment. Many of Pelmo's peasant subjects of course were 'Old Bön' who had always rejected the formal clergy that the reformed Bön hierarchy had imposed. Ironically these most stubborn and troublesome (to the Purgyals) traditionalist believers had rejoiced at the downfall of an elite they had seen as arrogant, corrupt and all too inclined to follow Buddhist teachings. If anything the response seems to have been more negative in the religiously diverse towns. There was a general feeling among the merchant classes that Pelmo's uncharacteristic bloodlust was provoked less by her faith and more by the ancient grudge she carried over being cheated out of her inheritance in the first place. Still, it gave even her most enthusiastic supporters pause.
In March 1158 Pelmo died, worn to the marrow by exhaustion and loss though comforted by prayer. Her achievements had been undeniable and she had come within an ace of uniting all Tibet but along the way she had fought more and bloodier wars than any of her predecessors and the Nestorian faith she championed still only had the hearts and minds of one in ten of her people. It would be up to her last surviving son, Selbar, to weld this strange creation of the battlefield and the chapel into a sustainable state.
Tibet in March 1158 AD.
Footnotes:
[1] This side war would eventually be settled by a minor surrender of territory to Bihar.
[2] On both sides the war elephants suffered murderously high casualty rates via accidents, exposure or diseases long before they saw battle. Despite this and there relatively low numbers the sheer size and terror the beasts could produce left a lasting impression in Tibetan folklore and history.
