Observing the current geopolitical situation of the Himalayan region, its 3,500 km length can be understood as the world’s most difficult border to cross. The thought may also arise that this mountain range has preserved the ancestral culture of the isolated Tibetan plateau, until China occupied its 2.5 million km² land mass (now comprising a quarter of China’s total territory within its present borders).

Additionally, we may surmise that India must always have had good neighbourly relations with a pacifist Buddhist Tibet which acted as a buffer against the Chinese Empire. After all, such a view is supported by the fact that it was only after its invasion of Tibet that the Chinese attacked India for the first time, in 1962, leading to today’s constant stand-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers along extremely sensitive unsettled borders. From an historical perspective, a perception of a situation that was “peaceful before” and “bellicose after” China’s invasion of Tibet seems natural.

But is it so? Not exactly. In order to understand the roots of these enduring perceptions, one may merely focus on the period corresponding to the Tang Dynasty (618–907). For it was then that stage was set for the relations still active today. First of all, China and India have been much closer than one might think, especially during this era, in which the Chinese Empire reached its greatest extent. China was extremely populous according to the standards of the time, with 50 million people in the 7^th-8^th Centuries and to 80 million by the 9^th Century. Due to this powerful demography, the Tang emperors raised and maintained huge armies and thus controlled the lucrative Silk Road, which extended as far as contemporary Kirghizstan. These trade routes also reached India, with which China enjoyed diplomatic relations characterised by intense cooperation for nearly 300 years.

Here, Indian Buddhism played a key role, especially when the Indian Buddhist Emperor Harsha aka Harshavardhana (590–647), took power and established his throne in Kanauj (the name of which comes from “Kanyakubja” (an epithet of Durga, the invincible aspect of the goddess Shakti, whose abode is said to be Mount Kailash), now located in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, 500km south of Buddha’s birthplace in Lumbini, Nepal. At the height of his power, Harsha’s empire covered the Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bengal, Orissa and the whole of the northern Indo-Gangetic plain. Later in this period, the Tang Emperor Xuanzong (712–56) was extremely open to Buddhism and frequently invited Indian Buddhist monks and philosophers, as well as translators and artists, mainly hailing from northern India (Swat and Kashmir valleys). Since the 7^th Century many Chinese had made pilgrimages to India, and Indian soft power at work full-steam in influencing China.

The famous Chinese itinerant monk Xuanzang (602-664) had been instrumental in the opening of the first Chinese embassy in Kanauj. He praised Harsha’s sense of justice and generosity, reporting to his Emperor how peaceful and prosperous Harsha’s kingdom was. He further described the ability of his cosmopolitan court to attract the best scholars, artists and religious visitors from far afield. But the reasons behind this alliance were not merely religious or cultural. The 7^th Century also saw the victory of Islamic jihad in central Asia, and its progression further East, gaining control of the Chinese Silk Road among other things. Muslims also targeted Buddhism as deadly idolatry and the ancestral Buddhist presence had already been eradicated in areas such as Afghanistan, known for its famous 6^th Century monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan, finally destroyed by Muslim warriors in 2001.

The Chinese ties were so strong with Harsha that when he was forcibly disposed and died, the new rulers subsequently attacked his Chinese allies. The revenge from China was intense. With the help of nearly 9,000 Tibetan and Nepalese mercenaries, they quickly defeated the new Indian rulers. This was the first Chinese battlefield opened in India before 1962, although with a very different motive.

But the danger came not only from Arabs. The great Tibetan kings showed great capacity in wars and conquest. From 635-638, King Songtsen Gampo conquered the regions around Lake Kokonor, north-east of Tibet, and took control of an important trade route to China connected to the Silk Road. He successfully conquered the Kathmandu Valley, the Zhangzhung kingdom (west of Tibet) as well as the Khotan region and the south-east regions (south of Lake Qinghai). Songtsen Gampo’s war against the Tang Empire obliged the Emperor Taizong (626-649) to negotiate peace and offer the Princess Wencheng in marriage to the Tibetan emperor. The state of peace sustained until a vacuum opened in India with the Chinese victory against Harsha’s successors, and the Tibetans’ appetite was re-whetted.

Until a new war with China started in 670, Tibet’s relations with both Indians and Chinese were peaceful, as the stone inscription erected at the Tibet-Nepal border in 658 confirms. The Tibetans were keen to facilitate Indo-Chinese relations and trade, passing directly through Tibet. But Tibet and China fought on and off in the late 720s. In 720 Tibetan troops took an Uighur principality, and the fortress of Guazhou in the Dunhuang oasis in 722. That year the war with China culminated at the battle of Gilgit (Kashmir, now Pakistan). From there, the Tibetans were able to block the road – and the Chinese interests thereof. In 730 a peace treaty with China was signed which established the border east of Kokonor. In 734 a Sino-Tibetan pillar was erected, engraved with a treaty agreed upon by the Tibetan Emperor Me Agtsom and the Chinese Emperor Xuanzong, stating that China and Tibet were equally great kingdoms and wishing for peace to prevail between them.

But already in 747, the hold of Tibet was weakened by the campaign General Gao Xianzhi, of Korean origin, who succeeded against the Tibetans to reopen communications between Central Asia and Kashmir. By 750 the Tibetans had lost almost all influence over central Asia, and even Gilgit was recaptured by the Chinese. However, Gao Xianzhi was defeated by the jihadists at the Battle of Talas (751)… with the help of the Tibetans. Consequently, Chinese influence rapidly declined and Tibetan influence began to increase again. It was during this time that Tibet conquered large sections of northern India.

Although Buddhism played a major role in Indo-Chinese diplomatic ties, it played no role in Tibet-Tang relations during the period preceding the rebellion of An Lushan (755–757). When a 13 year-old Tibetan prince was crowned Emperor with the famous name Trisong Detsen in 756, Sino-Tibetan relations were not yet pacified. His reign allowed Tibet to regain her influence over Central Asia while in the East, the Nanzhao kingdom (now Yunnan) remained under Tibetan control until 794. Tibet and China had to wait until the 821 treaty to achieve a real peace. The stone-inscribed treaty is still visible in Lhasa. Only the Uighurs, allied with Chinese, continued to cause trouble to the Tibetans. They were still Buddhist, having started their conversion to Islam only by the 15th Century, which was not completed until the 17^th Century.