Agents of the btsan po: Women in Diplomatic Activities of the Tibetan Imperial Court
Résumé
Historically, women seldom acted as diplomats or emissaries for a ruler or his court. This is also the case in Tibetan diplomatic history, where women were and are still today rarely appointed as official representatives of the Tibetan government. However, in premodern Asia, ladies were circulating between courts by means of intra-dynastic marriages. In this context, women often acted as diplomatic proxies of their original court and took part to official negotiations with their host court. In this peculiar context, the Imperial Tibetan court (7th-9th century) was not an exception: princesses who were sent out of the Tibetan court to marry foreign rulers, as well as women accepted as bride by the btsan po, played a pivotal role in diplomatic activities. The old Tibetan documents from Dunhuang and Chinese official sources attest the agency of several of these women: Princess Khri mo stengs sent to Dags po to practice state power or Princess Khri dbangs sent to ‘A zha territory where she acted as representative of the btsan po in hosting Princess of Jincheng and her retinue on their way to Central Tibet at the beginning of the 8th century. The two Chinese princesses who married Tibetan rulers also played an important role in Sino-Tibetan diplomacy: Princess Wencheng took part to a demand for a further Sino-Tibetan matrimonial alliance at the end of the 7th century and Princess of Jincheng, by means of a rich correspondence with the Chinese court, was particularly active in diplomatic negotiations such as the Sino-Tibetan peace treaty of 732/733. By crossing different Tibetan documents (the Old Tibetan Annals, the Old Tibetan Chronicle and the ‘A Zha Annals) and Chinese sources (Official histories, Cefu yuangui, Tang huiyao), this paper aims at exploring the authority of these women and the role that they played in the Tibetan diplomatic strategies placing them in the wider fertile ground that premodern Asia was for women agency.