The Cultural Synthesis in Ladakh

Abstract

Ladakh was an independent kingdom, generally oriented in its sympathies towards Tibet. One often reads in general histories that Ladakh was formerly part of Tibet. Used in a broad cultural sense the term Tibet covers a far wider territory than was ever subject to the Dalai Lama’s administration in Lhasa.

In the eastern Tibet there were several independent principalities, over which the Chinese claimed and were generally acknowledged by interested western government to exercise a far more direct control than they exercised in central Tibet. To the south, the kingdom of Bhutan maintained its political independence of the Dalai Lama’s regime ever since its inception in the mid 17^th century. Nevertheless Bhutan belongs to the Tibetan cultural world.