Günsa

Gar Günsa (Tibetan: སྒར་དགུན་ས, Wylie: sgar dgun sa), Günsa (Tibetan: དགུན་ས) or Kunsa, (simplified Chinese: 昆沙乡; traditional Chinese: 昆沙鄉; pinyin: Kūnshā Xiāng) is a township consisting of three administrative villages in Gar County in the Ngari Prefecture of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, viz., Sogmai (སོག་སྨད) and Gar Chongsar (སྒར་གྲོང་གསར) and Namru (གནམ་རུ)^[1][2] The modern Ngari Gunsa Airport is within the township.

Günsa 昆沙乡
Township
Günsa Location in the Tibet Autonomous Region
Coordinates: 32°06′51″N 80°03′37″E
Country	People's Republic of China
Autonomous region	Tibet
Prefecture	Ngari
County	Gar
Elevation	4,270 m (14,010 ft)
Time zone	UTC+8 (CST)

Gar Günsa is situated on the bank of the Gartang River, one of the headwaters of the Indus River, at the base of the Kailash Range, at an elevation of 4,270 metres (14,010 ft). Gar Günsa, along with its sister encampment Gar Yarsa used to be the administrative headquarters for Western Tibet (Ngari). The headquarters was moved to Shiquanhe in 1965.

Name

Gar Valley

Map of the Gar valley by Strachey (1851) showing Gar Gunsa and Gar Yarsa. The Gartang river joins Sengge Zangbo at a location called Tagle, with Langmar and Rala nearby.

Map of the Gar valley in a Survey of India map (1936), showing Gartok (Gar Yarsa) and Gar Dzong (Gar Gunsa)

Gar (Wylie: sGar) means "encampment". During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Karma Kagyu lamas moved through the length and breadth of Tibet in "Great Encampments" or garchen.^[3][4] The term is also used often for military camps.^[5][6]

Gar Günsa means the "winter camp".^[7][8] The ninth century bilingual text Mahāvyutpatti translated günsa as Sanskrit हैमन्तिकावासः (haimantikāvāsaḥ), literally, the residence of the winter season.^[9] Even though Gar Yarsa has acquired the name "Gartok" in popular parlance, officially, "Gartok" consisted of both Gar Günsa and Gar Yarsa (the "summer camp"). The latter is forty miles upstream on Gartang at a higher altitude.^[10]

History

Tibetan administration

Gar Günsa, along with its sister encampment Gar Yarsa, was referred to as Gartok, and served as Lhasa's administrative headquarters for Western Tibet (Ngari) after it was conquered from Ladakh in 1684. A senior official called Garpön was stationed here.^[10][11] The Garpöns lived in Gar Gunsa for nine months in the year, and stayed at Gar Yarsa during August–October.^[12]

But in the British nomenclature, the name "Gartok" was applied only to Gar Yarsa and the practice continues till date.^[10]

Chinese administration

After the Chinese annexation of Tibet, Gar Günsa continued to function as the headquarters of Western Tibet till 1965, after which it was moved to Shiquanhe. It was felt that the living conditions in Gar Günsa were extremely difficult.^[13]

See also

• List of towns and villages in Tibet

References

1. "2019 Nián tǒngjì yòng qūhuà dàimǎ hé chéngxiāng huàfēn dàimǎ: Kūn shā xiāng" 2019年统计用区划代码和城乡划分代码：昆沙乡 [Division code and urban-rural division code for statistics in 2019: Kunsha Township]. National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China.
2. "2019 Nián tǒngjì yòng qūhuà dàimǎ hé chéngxiāng huàfēn dàimǎ: Gá ěr xiàn" 2019年统计用区划代码和城乡划分代码：噶尔县 [Division code and urban-rural division code for statistics in 2019: Gar County]. National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China.
3. Sullivan, Brenton (2020), Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 37–38, ISBN 978-0-8122-5267-5: "During this pivotal period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, [Gyelwang Karmapa's] power was manifest in his Great Encampment, garchen in Tibetan. The garchen's influence included even outposts in Ngari of far western Tibet and it maintained a significant presence at the major pilgrimage site of Tsari, or Crystal Mountain, along the border with Arunachal Pradesh."
4. Chakraverty, Anjan (1998), Sacred Buddhist Painting, Lustre Press, p. 66, ISBN 978-81-7436-042-7: "Karmapa lamas who used to be on the move constantly lived in large tent cities with great pomp. The mobile Karmapa encampments were known as Karma Garchen and thus the style patronised in the encampments was labelled the Karma Gadri style (the style of the Karma encampment)."
5. Stein, R. A. (1972). Tibetan Civilization. London: Faber and Faber. pp. 122–123 – via archive.org.
6. Eric Teichman, Travels of a Consular Officer in Eastern Tibet: Together with a History of the Relations Between China, Tibet and India (Cambridge: The University Press, 1922), p. 130.
7. Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 10 (Encyclopædia Britannica, 1973; ISBN 0852291736), p. 3.
8. John Keay, History of World Exploration (The Royal Geographical Society; Mallard Press, 1991), p. 76.
9. Mahāvyutpatti: 5600-5699, Eyes of Worlds website, retrieved 20 July 2021.
10. Rawling, The Great Plateau (1905), p. 272: "Gartok in reality consists of two distinct places situated forty miles apart. The one we visited is known as Gar Yarsa or Summer Quarters, and the other, which is also on the Indus but at a lower altitude, Gar Gunsa or Winter Quarters."
11. Waller, Derek (2015), The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia, University Press of Kentucky, pp. 100–101, ISBN 978-0-8131-4904-2
12. Rawling, The Great Plateau (1905), p. 272.
13. Ngari, China's Tibet (in French), China Intercontinental Press, 2001, pp. 14–18, ISBN 7-80113-835-X (This book uses SASM/GNC/SRC transcriptions)

• Wu, Zhenhua (武振华) (1996). 西藏地名 [Place Names in Tibet] (in Chinese (China)). 中国藏学出版社 [China Tibetology Press]. ISBN 7-80057-284-6.

Bibliography

• Handa, O. C. (2001), Buddhist Western Himalaya: A politico-religious history, Indus Publishing, ISBN 978-81-7387-124-5
• Lange, Diana (2020), An Atlas of the Himalayas by a 19th Century Tibetan Lama: A Journey of Discovery, BRILL, ISBN 978-90-04-41688-8
• Meyer, Karl E.; Brysac, Shareen Blair (2009), Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia, Basic Books, ISBN 978-0-7867-3678-2
• Moorcroft, William; Trebeck, George (2004), Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Punjab in Ladakh and Kashmir: In Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz and Bokhara from 1819 to 1825, Volume 1, London: John Murray, ISBN 978-81-206-0497-1 – via archive.org
• Petech, Luciano (September 1947), "The Tibetan-Ladakhi Moghul War of 1681-83", The Indian Historical Quarterly, 23 (3): 169– – via archive.org
• Petech, Luciano (1977), The Kingdom of Ladakh, c. 950–1842 A.D. (PDF), Instituto Italiano Per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente – via academia.edu^{[dead link]}
• Rawling, C. G. (1905), The Great Plateau, being an Account of Exploration in Central Tibet, 1903, and of the Gartok Expedition, 1904—1905, London: E. Arnold – via archive.org

External links

• Günsa Township, OpenStreetMap, retrieved 21 July 2021.