Tibet's First King
( 2005-10-14 )

At the time when Tibetans were ruled by 12 petty cheiftans, there was great discontent and fighting since they had no overall leader and were a country divided.

It is said one day in 237 BC, a dozen Tibetan priests came across a strange young man, and they declared him a god. It happened after they asked him who he was, and he answered that he was a "mighty one." When they asked where he had come from he pointed to India across the mountains, but the priests thought he was pointing to the heavens.

The priests thought him to the "son of the God," and seated him on a "chair" held up by the necks of four men. The priests declared, "We shall make him our lord," and so he was known as "the neck chair, mighty one" and was the first king of all Tibet.

There is another tale that has been handed down for the ages: A woman in Boyu (today's Bomi) area had nine children. The youngest son was not a normal child, for he was born with turquoise eyebrows, overhanging eyelids, and his fingers were webbed. The family was most distressed and frightened by the child. They wanted to be rid of the boy so they placed him in a lead box and threw it into the river Ganges.

The boy, however, did not die, and was found by a peasant. When the man opened the box, he discovered the strange child and was filled with much love for him and took him home to live as one of his family. So the boy spent a happy childhood, loved and cared for by the peasant and his wife.

As the child reached adulthood, the peasant thought it was time the boy knew about his strange beginnings, and so he related the story about how he was found in a lead box by the river Ganges. So that the boy would not feel that he had been abandoned, the peasant tried to convince him that he was a very special person, in truth a "mighty one" of high birth. The boy, however, was saddened when he heard the peasant's story, for he had always believed that he was a part of the peasant's family and looked upon the man as his father. In grief, the boy fled to the Himalayas and crossed the border of Tibet, wanting to spend his days alone in the shelter of the mountains. But it was there he met the above 12 Tibetan priests. The boy later became the first king of all Tibet.