Frontier town · Self-governing peoples of Tibet and the Himalaya · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Lhuntse (Lhunze)

Lhunze (Lhuntse) is the seat of a county on the upper Subansiri, north of the McMahon line, where the Tibetan villages of the Tsari and Mon country begin.

The Tsari pilgrimage (to the sacred mountain Takpa Siri) is a feature of the Kagyu tradition that Gotsangpa and Lorepa open in the thirteenth century (recalled); it is outside the game's horizon. This is not the Bhutanese Lhuntse (Lhuentse, in Kurtoe), which has its own record. No source we opened names a lord.

Who holds it

Title
Headman of the Lhuntse valley
Since
not pinned
Confidence
low

No source we could open names the holder for the winter of 1199-1200.

Overlord

none: no one rules Tibet in 1200; the house answers to its own patrons and to the custom of the valleys

How things stand that morning

Border valley; lord not known.

Wealth

No source we could open gives figures; the usual base is estates and serfs, herds, pass tolls, trade in salt, wool, tea and barley, and the gifts of patrons.

Military

No standing army; the house or lord calls on retainers, tenants and kin. No troop numbers are given by any source we could open.

Council

none known; the place is governed by its lord or house, and no source we could open names a headman or judge

Communities

Tibetan; no other community is attested here

Fairs and markets

none known; pilgrims and caravans meet at the feasts of the temples, but no fair is dated

Walls and castle

none known; the dzong (fort) as an institution of the district lord belongs to the fourteenth century

Trade and crafts

not described by any source we could open

Where the sources disagree

  • Two Lhuntses on this sheet: this one is Lhunze in Tibet (28.41 N, 92.47 E); the other is Lhuentse in Bhutan.

Evidence: Gazetteer coordinates only. Treasury of Lives, the Blue Annals, the Red Annals, Petech, Sorensen and Hazod and Davidson could not be opened in this session (treasuryoflives.org and rigpawiki.org refused the fetch; the archive.org full texts were refused or cut off), so facts marked 'recalled' are from memory of those works and unchecked.

Sources and studies

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.