Thought Of King Thang Stong

This paper is about King Thang stong and is consisted by four chapters. The first chapter is about the history of King Thang stong, the reason I have chosen this topic at the beginning is that there are three different ideas about his date; I have thus discussed his date according to the standard materials. In addition, I also discuss his history and social background. Second chapter discusses about whether Tibetan society had iron bridge before King Thang stong, and through the discussion about the characteristics, architectural manufactures, and sources of the budgets of his iron bridges, and the meaning of building iron bridges to make conclusion about how iron buildings affected Tibetan politics, economy and culture. Third chapter firstly discuss Tibetan opera situation before King Thang stong, then the origin and development of Ache lha mo, the characteristics of the art, and how they influence the Tibetan opera later on. At the end it focuses on King Thang stong’s contribution to the Tibetan opera on whole. Chapter four discusses the shrine objects of Body, Speech and Mind that King Thang stong built to Tibet, specifically, through analyzing his famous literary works such as Gsang spyod snyan brgyuad, Tshe sgrub’ chi med dpal ster, Grub thob ril dkar dang ril dmar, Tang stong thugs thig, I discusses his dharma instructional contribution to Tibetans. At the very last, I discuss Tibetans’ evaluation about King Thang stong and his contribution to Tibetan people.