Monpa

The Monpa are the people of Monyul, the Tibetan name for the humid lower country south of the Himalayan crest, stretching from eastern Bhutan to the Tawang and Kameng valleys. A kingdom called Lhomon or Monyul is held to have flourished there from 500 BC to AD 600. In the eleventh century the Monpa of Tawang came under Nyingma and Kagyu Buddhist influence and adopted the Tibetan alphabet for their Tibeto-Burman language.

Drukpa missionaries followed in the thirteenth century and Gelugpa in the seventeenth, when most Monpa became Gelug followers. Long autonomous under Tawang monks, Monyul accepted direct rule from Lhasa during the seventeenth century.

In the same century Tsangyang Gyatso, a Monpa born near Tawang, became the sixth Dalai Lama. Monpa society kept six regional speech groups while sharing Tibetan letters and Buddhist rites with its northern neighbour.