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In ancient Tibet, the use of coins was insignificant.Tibet's main neighbours, India, Nepal and China had had their own coinage since time immemorial. Ancient Tibet however had no locally-struck coinage, although a certain number of coins from Nepal, Chinese Turkestan and China had reached Tibet by way of trade, or as donations to important monasteries.
In 1954, a silver coin was struck for distribution to monks. Although this coin was the last tangka issue, it was valued at 5 srang and was the last silver coin to be struck in Tibet. The last Tibetan copper coins (5 sho = 1/2 srang) were issued in 1953, while 100 srang notes were issued in large numbers until 1959.
The Tibetan tangka was an official currency of Tibet for three centuries. It was introduced by Lhasa Newar merchants from Nepal in the 16th century. The merchants used Nepalese tanka on the Silk Road. The Tibetan government began to mint the tangka in the 18th century. The first Tibetan tangka was minted in 1763/64.
Writing for the Economic and Political Weekly, Abanti Bhattacharya of the University of Delhi writes, "[The Book] stands out from the rest of the genre on Tibet’s history not simply because it makes an attempt to look at the status of Tibet as many other studies do, but because it essentially narrates the story of Tibet as it is." [1]
The traders and artisans who accompanied Bhrikuti to Lhasa as part of her retinue established commercial and cultural ties between Nepal and Tibet. In the 1640s, a treaty was negotiated under which Newar merchants were allowed to establish 32 business houses in Lhasa. It was also agreed that Nepal would mint coins for Tibet. [6]
His second non-fiction book, a history of Tibet entitled The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama draws on over 60 hours of intimate conversations with the 14th Dalai Lama, whom he first met in 1993. [10] Spanning 2,000 years of Himalayan civilization, the book is a popular history of Tibet—seen through the eyes of the Dalai Lama.
A History of Tibet by the Fifth Dalai Lama of Tibet (Tibetan: བོད་ཀྱི་དེབ་ཐེར་དཔྱིད་ཀྱི་རྒྱལ་མོའི་གླུ་དབྱངས་, Wylie: bod kyi deb ther dpyid kyi rgyal mo'i glu dbyangs) is a historical work written by Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, the 5th Dalai Lama who ruled Tibet from 1617 to 1682.
Pico Iyer, in his book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, writes: “Thomas Laird’s book, The Story of Tibet, in which the author gets the Dalai Lama to travel through the whole of Tibetan history from his perspective, already seems to me one of the essential and irreplaceable books in the field, and allows one to hear and feel the Dalai Lama’s particular voice ...