Place · first dzong · Bhutan
Simtokha Dzong
The first dzong Ngawang Namgyal built, in 1629, at the junction where the roads from the west and the south meet below Thimphu — and therefore the prototype for every fortress-monastery after it. It was attacked almost immediately by a coalition of rivals and Tibetan allies, and held. It now houses the country's institute for Dzongkha language and traditional learning, which makes the oldest dzong the place its language is taught.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.438, 89.669
Worth knowing
Three hundred slate carvings of saints are set into the passage behind its central tower, a gallery that predates by a decade the state the dzong was built to create.
Connections (1)
- AnalogueTabo Monastery, Spiti
Two Himalayan buildings that became schools of their own language. Tabo in Spiti, founded in 996, held one of the great translation workshops of the western Himalaya, where Sanskrit texts were rendered into Tibetan under Rinchen Zangpo. Simtokha, Bhutan's first dzong of 1629, now houses the institute where Dzongkha and classical Chöke are taught. At both, the work is the same in outline: an Indian textual corpus kept alive in a mountain language.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Simtokha Dzong”. Bhutan Department of Culture records; Michael Aris, Bhutan (1979).
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