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Introduction
Dantig is a remote valley, accessible only on foot, located at the fringes of the Tibetan cultural area in the modern Chinese province of Qinghai. It is one of the major religious locations in Tibet, a pilgrimage site that is also home to a monastery and a series of cave temples built into the valley's sides. Dantig plays a key role in Tibetan history, as the place where the Buddhist ordination lineage was preserved during Tibet's "dark period" in the late ninth to late tenth centuries. Yet the name Dantig itself has remained something of a mystery. There is no clear etymology for it in Tibetan, and in modern Chinese it is transliterated from the Tibetan in a variety of different ways. Where then did the name Dantig come from? In this article we argue that the name is linked with a Buddhist myth of exile and return, the legend of Prince Sudana, a story that must have resonated with the exile community of Tibetan monks which settled in the region.1
Traditional Tibetan histories of Buddhism tell of a catastrophic persecution of monastic Buddhism by the last great Tibetan emperor, Glang Darma (known in earlier sources as Dar ma U'i dun brtan) in the 840s. According to one of the most popular versions of the story, given in the late fifteenth-century Blue Annals, Darma closed the monasteries and ordered all monks to disrobe. At this time a few monks (three in most versions of the stories), loaded their manuscripts on to pack animals and set out towards Central Asia. After wandering for some time, they settled in Amdo, in the area to the east of Lake Kokonor. In Amdo the refugee monks gained a disciple, a local boy who they agreed to ordain as a monk. The ordination was carried out by the three Tibetans and two Chinese monks, and the boy was given the religious name of Dge ba rab gsal. This figure, also known as Dgongs pa rab gsal, is given the dates of 892-975 in the Blue Annals.2Dge ba rab gsal settled in Dantig, where he taught and became famous in the area. When a...