Yungbulakang Palace
Yumbulagang or Yumbu Lakhar is the original palace of the Yarlung kings of Tibet. In the Tibetan mythology, it was the first building in Tibet, and was the palace of the legendary first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo, who is said to have reigned from 127 BCE.
Yumbulagang stands on a hill at a bend along the Yarlung Tsampo River, on the eastern bank of the Yarlung Valley of southeast Lhokha, about southeast of Lhasa and south of Tsetang. The palace and its shrine were demolished during the 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution, and the palace has been partially rebuilt.
History
Yumbulagang was built by the legendary first Tibetan king, Nyatri Tsenpo. He manifested by descending from the sky into a field of yaks, and was made the chief by the nomadic herds people. Chief Nyatri started to rule in 127 BCE, the start of the Tibetan Royal Era.During the reign of the 28th king, Thothori Nyantsen in the fifth century AD, according to legend a golden stupa, a tsa-tsa mold, and a Mahayana sutra, that the king could not read, fell from the sky onto the roof of the Yumbulagang while the king was walking. Another account states that an Indian Buddhist monk brought the relics as gifts for the king, and told him to keep them safe for five generations when their meanings would be understood. Another later account suggests "a voice from the sky announced, 'In five generations one shall come that understands its meaning!' "
Five generations later, Yumbulagang became the palace of the 33rd Tibetan king, Songtsen Gampo, who commissioned the written Tibetan language and alphabet. He introduced Mahayana Buddhism to his court, while two of his foreign wives were already Buddhists: The Nepali queen Bhrikuti and the Chinese queen Wencheng. After Songtsen Gampo built the Red Palace in Lhasa and transferred the seat of his temporal authority to Lhasa, Yumbulagang became a shrine.
During the reign of the 5th Dalai Lama a thousand years later, the Dalai Lama rebuilt the Red Palace as the Potala Palace, and turned Yumbulagang into a monastery for the Gelug school.
The Yumbulagang was destroyed during the Cultural revolution and "only a piece of the original building's base remained in place." The palace was partially reconstructed in 1983.
Again in November 2017, restoration work valuing $1.5m began, to reinforce crumbling wooden foundations and cracked walls. It was reopen to the public in April of 2018.