Historical Events of 1705 in Tibet. Part 1

Abstract

Based on a large corpus of sources in Mongolian, Manchu and Chinese languages from the Chinese archives, the article reconstructs the history of one of the most significant events in the history of Tibet the assassination in 1705 of the Fifth Dalai Lamas regent, Sangye Gyatso, by Lhavsan Khan of the Khoshot court. The author thoroughly reproduces a cruel confrontation between the khan and the regent which ended by the latters execution and shows why the events of 1705 were of great importance for the history of the Mongols and the Tibetans. A series of events that followed, such as the death of the Sixth Dalai Lama, the enthronement of the true Seventh Dalai Lama in Kokonor, the invasion of the Dzungars in Tibet in 1717 and, ultimately, the entry of the Qing army into Tibet eventually led to the establishment of the Qing control over Tibet through the Khoshot Mongols. The author concludes that the events of 1705 became an important historical milestone that had a long-term impact on the formation of a unified multinational state under the Qing rule.