Porcelain saucer with SanskritThe physical map indicates that western China comprises the great Tibetan plateau and the vast area of mainly desert and mountain to its north. The plateau is divided into the Autonomous People's Region of Tibet (in Chinese, Xizang) and the province of Qinghai. To its east and north, the modern provinces of Gansu and Xinjiang lie along the route that once formed the Silk Road, travelled by merchants and pilgrims on their way to and from the Middle East and India. In traditional times, the Chinese knew this as the 'Western Regions'. Governments in the Han and Tang dynasties established military colonies as far away as Kashgar and Samarkand to extend Chinese influence and protect Chinese interests beyond the termination of the Great Wall. It was only in the 18th century, however, that the region began to come under regular control from Beijing, and Xinjiang ('New Territories') only became a Chinese province in 1884. It is the homeland of one of China's principal ethnic minorities, the Uyghur Muslims.

Tibetan LandscapeSome believed that it was above the mountains and skies to the west that lay the Pure Land heaven of the Amitabha Buddha. Daoists in the Han dynasty also located the heaven of the Queen Mother of the West in this direction. It must not be assumed, however, that these beliefs were connected in any way with the later association in the Chinese mind of Tibet with the Lama religion. They long preceded it, for Lama Buddhism was only introduced to China during the Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang in the 8th century, and, more significantly, during the brief Mongol period in the 13th century. The chief significance of the latter was that Mongol absorption of both Tibet and China into their own empire, ruled from Dadu (Beijing), subsequently strengthened already extant Chinese claims to suzerainty over its neighbouring state. In return, the religious leaders of Tibet offered Kublai Khan and his successors spiritual guidance and leadership.

Political ups and downs at home meant that for long periods of time Beijing failed to implement its claim to control over Tibet. The early Manchu monarchs of the 17th and 18th centuries, however, appointed special representatives (called Amban) to both Xinjiang and Tibet, and involved themselves more actively in these distant regions. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as the empires of Britain, Russia, and Germany impinged on their own western frontiers, the Qing authorities were aware of their strategic significance and reiterated their territorial claims, even if the growing impotence of their administration once again hindered their ability to play a dominant part in regional affairs. Viewed from Beijing, when the armies of the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet in 1950, they were reasserting authority which they had claimed ever since the 7th century CE.

Tibetans, of course, have always seen things differently. In early times Tibet was an independent and powerful kingdom. It had, and still has, its own script. Its people practised a shamanistic religion known as Bn, of which vestiges also still survive. When its greatest king, Songtsen Gampo (r.618-641, 646-9), married princesses from India and China they brought the Buddhist faith with them, and so firmly did it take root that it dominated social and cultural habits through the Middle Ages. When later kings failed to uphold the power of the monarchy, sects associated with powerful monasteries also assumed temporal authority over their lands and tenant serfs. The Mongols did a deal with one particular sect, the Sakyapa, which recognised its supremacy over its rivals but put an end to Tibetan independence by asserting their own military rights on the plateau. The Chinese rulers of the subsequent Ming dynasty, however, were less adept at handling relations with their troublesome vassals, and during the 16th century the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect emerged as both political and spiritual rulers of the country. The Tibetan monarchy dwindled into insignificance and the Lama church became the unchallenged source of political power, establishing a theocracy which survived until the Chinese imposed their own means of control after 1950. Perhaps nowhere else in the world has religion so permeated all aspects of life as it did for so long in Tibet.

A Wheel of Life thangkaClimate, limitations on resources, and the ubiquitous hand of the church were all significant in determining the nature of Tibetan art. Religious images, which abounded, were made of stone, bronze, and wood. Low temperatures and the nomadic way of life, rearing goats, sheep and yaks, encouraged weaving and textile design. Fierce rivalry among tribesmen led them to value their swords and daggers, which they decorated with inlaid semi-precious stones. The hardness of the soil, allied to the belief that the all-important soul vacated the body on death, meant that the kind of rites associated elsewhere, especially in imperial China, with burial, were not important in Tibet. Consequently, the carving of bones and even skulls of the deceased for making objects was considered acceptable.

Above all, Tibetan art was dominated by the tradition of painting. This was the supreme art form, practised and patronised almost exclusively by the church, and used as one of its main methods of education and inspiration. Pictures covered the walls of temples and monasteries and illuminated manuscripts. Fearsome deities stared down from ceilings above altars, frightening away evil spirits. The dying were confronted by their own effigies as a lama prayed for the re-birth of their soul. Paintings mounted on silk scrolls (thangka) were rolled up and carried around by itinerant monks as visual aids when they went out to preach in the market-place. Thangka also hung from walls as aids to worship and contemplation. They depicted infinite numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, including not only the best known universal deities such as Sakyamuni, Amitabha, and Guan Yin (known in Tibet as Chenrezi) but also major Tibetan figures. Among these were the Green and White Taras, the spirits of Songtsen Gampo's two princesses who were later canonised as the patron deities of Tibet. 'Wheel of Life' paintings provided a graphic description of human life and temptations, and the series of heavens and hells through which an individual might have to pass before attaining everlasting enlightenment in Nirvana.