SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
and a seal of office to the ruler of Bhutan seems to have been claimed by China at an early date. It was revived by the Emperor Chien Lung in 1736, and when Bogle visited Bhutan forty years later he found that the introduction of the imperial seal of China was still a vexed question in the country.”
In 1891 the Paro Penlop wrote to Paul to inform him that officers of the Chinese Amban had visited him at Paro on November 21, 1891, and left with him a golden letter, with the seal of the Emperor of China, for the Tongsa Penlop. It is not quite clear whether there was only the one letter, or whether the Paro Penlop received another one for himself.
The connection of Bhutan with Tibet has been much
closer, although since the establishment of the Chinese power
at Lhasa Tibetan control in Bhutan has been exercised in
concert with or under the orders of the Chinese Ambans.
The Deb Raja, in his conversation with Rampini in 1874, repudiated the idea of his State being tributary to Tibet any more than to China, but the whole course of Bhutan history shows that though the chain which binds Bhutan to Tibet may be a loose one, it is held nevertheless by Tibet, and tightened on occasions.
Horna Della Penna, in his “Brief Account of the Kingdom of Thibet,” written in 1830, says that the kingdom of Dukpa (Bhutan), along with Ladak and Nepal, were then subject to and had voluntarily made themselves tributary to Tibet, after the Emperor of China had made himself master of it.
From researches made in old Tibetan manuscripts, it is clear that the present State of Bhutan originated in a colony of Tibetans, and that the first Dharma Raja, Shabdung Nga-wang Namgyal, who introduced order and government into this colony, was a lama from Tibet, as well as the next Dharma Raja, Gyaltsap Tenzing Robgay.
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