Daga

Daga belongs to the forested Himalayan country of western Bhutan, a landscape of deep valleys, high ridges and monsoon-fed woodland suited to scattered farming and livestock. Bhutan's earliest history remains partly mythological and obscure, although surviving structures suggest settlement possibly as early as the second millennium BCE. From at least the tenth century, outside powers did not occupy or govern the country, even when it occasionally accepted nominal tributary status.

Internal political life developed through relations among religious schools and their monasteries. The Drukpa Kagyupa school was established in the twelfth century and became Bhutan's dominant Buddhist tradition. During the long rivalry between Kagyupa subsects, fortress-monasteries called dzong became centres of both religion and authority. In 1616 Ngawang Namgyal, the Zhabdrung Rinpoche, consolidated power, codified law and created a system of monastic and civil administrators.

His dzong network strengthened central control and resistance to Tibetan invasions. Later civil conflict among rival regional lords left a highland polity shaped profoundly by monasteries. The winter capital at Punakha Dzong, established northeast of Thimphu in 1637, later showed the continuing importance of fortified monastic centres.