Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa

Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa is a mythical monkey-ancestor of the Tibetan people. With

King Gesar and Avalokiteśvara, of whom he is an incarnation, he is one of the most important figures in Tibetan culture.^[1] Pha means "father", Trelgen "old monkey" and Changchup Sempa refers to the bodhisattva

(Changchub meaning "enlightenment" and Sempa meaning "intention").

Birth of the first Tibetans

A very popular Tibetan creation myth holds that in the beginning the world was covered by water, which evaporated little by little, leaving room for animal life. To the flooded land of Tibet came a monkey that had withdrawn there to immerse himself in meditation and to follow a life of asceticism and chastity. He settled on

Bönpo

. Some say that at the top of the mountain he gathered a handful of barley, others that he extracted five cereals from his own body to offer to the monkey father. Then the monkey father learned agriculture and, after a good harvest, could finally feed all his children. As they fed on the cereals, the monkeys gradually lost their hair and their tails. They also started to use bone and stone implements, then made clothes and built houses, forming a civilization from which the Tibetan people descended.

Another version

Another account says that, seeing the world peopled by demons, Avalokiteśvara the bodhisattva of compassion took pity on the Earth, incarnated himself as a monkey and mated with an ogress of the rock. From this union were born six monkeys, which represent the six principal clans of the Tibetan people.[2]

References

^ The myth is attested in the book Maṇi bka' 'bum, allotted to^{[clarification needed]} King Songtsen Gampo.
^ Khar, Rabgong Dorjee (1991). "A Brief Discussion on Tibetan History Prior to Nyatri Tsenpo." Translated by Richard Guard and Sangye Tandar. The Tibet Journal. Vol. XVI No. 3. Autumn 1991, pp. 52-62. (This article originally appeared in the Tibetan quarterly Bod-ljongs zhib-'jug (No. 1, 1986).)

Bibliography

SEGARRA André, Du Singe au Signe ou la figure du Trickster à travers les deux principaux personages du Rāmāyaṇa et du Xīyóu jì : Hanuman et Sun Wukong, mémoire de littérature sous la direction de Valérie Deshoulières, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, 2007.

External links

[1] (in Chinese)
[2] (in English)

Birth of the first Tibetans

Another version

References

Bibliography

External links

See also