Ralpacan

[3] The death of Ralpachen in 838 ended the imperial patronage of Tibetan Buddhism, which had begun about eighty years earlier around 755 with Padmasambhava, Shantirakshita and Trisong Detsen.

Afterwards, Langdarma, Ralpachen's brother and successor, proceeded to nearly destroy Buddhism in Tibet, together with the 13 Buddhist monasteries, and their ordained monastics, which were built during the reign of Trisong Detsen.

[4] The Tibetan Empire reached its greatest extent under his rule, and included parts of China, India, Nepal, the Kingdom of Khotan, Balti, Bruzha (Gilgit and Hunza), Zhangzhung, Hor-yul, Sog-yul, Yugur, and Kamilog (roughly equivalent to present-day Sichuan),[2] as well as almost all of modern Xinjiang and Gansu.

In 819 he attacked the Chinese town of Yanzhou, in the southern Ordos Desert close to the Great Wall of China,[9][10] when he was referred to as "First Minister".

[12] A bilingual account of the treaty with China, including details of the borders between the two countries is inscribed on a stone pillar, erected in 823, which stands outside the Jokhang in Lhasa.

[13] There was also a pillar with the treaty inscribed on it erected in China and a third was apparently placed at Gugu Meru at the border (which is said by locals to have been stolen by a party of French Tibetologists).

[14] Ralpachen was a generous supporter of Buddhism and invited many craftsmen, scholars and translators to Tibet from China, Nepal, Kashmir and the Kingdom of Khotan.

He enforced the Indian canonical regulations for the clergy and organised many classes of priesthood, assigning a revenue from seven families for each Buddhist monk and proscribed strict penalties for anyone showing disrespect to them.

[15][21] His royal summer camp near modern Lhasa was "a palatial military pavilion", "wonderfully decorated with golden figures of tigers, panthers, and dragons.

Ralpachen, then, died late in 838 and was buried near the Yarlung Valley; his tomb decorated with "a remarkable stone lion carved in a style said by some modern scholars to be Persian.