Bal-po and Lho-bal

Abstract

In current Tibetan Nepal is Bal-po, Bal-po'i yul or Bal-yul. Bal-yul is found in early MSS from Tun-huang: in Choix de documents tibétains conservés à la Bibliothéque Nationals, Pelliot Tibétain (Pell T.), no. 44, mentions Padmasambhava in Bal-yul which may reasonably be seen as Nepal; Bal-yul is named also in Pell T. 1040 and 1285 in an apparently mythical setting Bal-po meaning Nepal appears in the Tibetan Annals in Documents de Touenhouang relatifs à I'histoire du Tibet by Bacot, Thomas and Toussaint (DTH), p. 13, 1. 2, and also, in my opinion, on p. 19, 1. 23. But in other instances, of which there are fourteen between the years A.D. 600 and 723, Professor Tucci considers the identification untenable because of the improbability that Tibetans, who liked to spend the summer and to hunt in high cool places, would choose to spend that time of year in Nepal (Minor Buddhist texts, II, 34, 35). That argument assumes that Bal-po implied only the valley of Kathmandu, but Hsuan Tsang, travelling about A.D. 630, attributed a much larger area—4,000 li—to Nepal and one specific place name in Bal-po—'Bri-'u-tang— mentioned in the years 699 and 725 appears to have been in reach of Zhangzhung which is generally held to be in Western Tibet around Lake Manasarowar. The possibility that all references to Bal-po are to Nepal cannot, therefore, be dismissed too readily.