tamang culture

Subjugated and abused by Nepal’s first Hindu monarch, willfully referred to as ‘Tamangs’, this community has suffered much and continues to worry about what else must come, writes Furba Lama

MAHAYANA is one type of Buddhism and the other, Nyingmapa, was created by Gurupadmasamva, affectionately called Guru Rinpoche by Tibetans in Tibet, in the seventh century. Before this, there no Buddhism in Tibet and all Tibetan communities and sub-sects were followers of Bon Dharma. The Tamags were the first Tibetan sub-sect to embrace Nyingmapa Buddhism in Tibet at Palyul, where the first Nyingmapa Buddhist gompas (monasteries) were built. The word Tamang is wrong; neither is it a Nepali nor a Tibetan word. In fact, Tamag is the correct word and its pronounciation is correctly mentioned in the Tibetan-to-English dictionary (page 980) prepared and published by Sarat Chandra Das of Lhasa Villa, Darjeeling, in 1834 and it is also mentioned in the same dictionary (pages 780 and 781) that fifth Panchen Rinpoche invited Das to Tibet in 1879 and 1881. It also mentions that Panchen Rinpoche died of smallpox in 1882 and that the sixth Panchen Rinpoche took over as an infant in 1883.

The veracity of the word Tamag can be proven from its meaning: Ra-ta-ta=Ta; Dau-ma-ga-mag=Mag; therefore, the letter or word Ta, meaning horse, and Mag meaning army, gives the word Tamag, meaning Mounted Army (in Nepali Ghorchari Sena, Risalla, Aswarohi Sena). There were so many Tibetan sub-sects of which the Tamags were the main security and protection force of the palace and king. That is why Tamag is a Tibetan word that was willfully mispronounced and intentionally changed to Tamang by the so-called first Hindu monarch just after the creation of Nepal. Tamang is neither a Nepali word nor a Tibetan one.