M A N U S C R I P T S & C A L L I G R A P H Y
T I B E T A N A L P H A B E T - During the time of Songtsen Gampo (5th-6th Century), who was Tibet’s most powerful emperor, there was no written language in Tibetan. He had two queens, one Nepalese and one Chinese. Because his wives were Buddhist, and wanted the Sanskrit Dharma texts translated into Tibetan, he agreed to send his minister Thonmi Sambhota to India in order to create an alphabet to translate Buddhist texts into Tibetan.
After twenty years, Thonmi Sambhota returned to Tibet with an alphabet based on a Kashmiri model and translations of Buddhist texts began. Most of the texts were written in Uchen style with ink and bamboo pen on heavy, handmade paper. Uchen is comparable to the uppercase style of Roman capital letters. Some texts (or pecha as they are called in Tibetan), are written in Ume, which is similar to our lowercase letters, and used primarily for correspondence and cursive writing. The Lantsha alphabet, which sometimes appears in books and texts, is mostly used in architectural situations, prayer wheels, and jewelry.
