The Old Tibetan Ru and the Thousand District

In Tibet proper during the age of the Tu fan 吐蕃, units of military organization known as ru, originally meaning horn and signifying a banner, were instituted across the seventh to the ninth century. Each ru included eight stong sde (a thousand district), a single stong bu chung (a small thousand district), and a single sku srung gi stong sde (a thousand district of royal bodyguards). The ru formed the basis of Tu fan military strength. As a number of scholars have previously noted, the origin of this organization is thought to be found in the northern nomadic states, and as the high plateaus of Tibet are crisscrossed by mountains and ravines, unlike the grassy plains of the nomadic peoples, it is difficult to imagine that the ru was a development solely of the Tu fan. In this article I consider how the ru actually functioned in regard to the following two points. 1. The ru system as it appears in post Tu fan Tibetan literature. In Tibetan-language literature there are now known to be five works that contain detailed information on the ru system, i.e., the Blon po bka' thang, the Mkhas pa'i dga' ston, the Me tog phreng ba, and two versions of the Lde'u chos 'byung. They divide the ru system into two archetypes, a stable form, composed of eight thousand districts, and an unstable type. The discrepancy in the information concerning the two types suggests that over a certain period of time the boundaries of the ru had shifted, and it is thought that this reflects a clear transformation of the character of the ru system from that of a military organization to that of an administrative district. 2. The ru system as it appears in old Tibetan documents originating in Central Asia. A large number of old Tibetan documents have been recovered from the remains of the Tu fan fortresses of Miran I, a site of in the Lob region, and from Mazar Tagh near Khotan. According to these sources, the Tu fan forces were dispersed to various destinations in the field according to the ru. and it appears that the district of a thousand was the basic unit of the ru. However, the smallest unit of four soldiers was formed without regard to membership in a district of a thousand. In other words, it can be surmised that the Tu fan soldier was conscripted from central Tibet and dispatched to defend the frontier regions, and it appears that the district of a thousand was no more than a unit designating his origin