The county seat is Xangda, built in a side valley and on the right bank of the Dza Chu (upper reaches of the Mekong). In 2000, the county's population amounted to 57,387 people, inhabiting a surface of 11,539 km2 (4,455 sq mi).
History
Tana Monastery (Jang Tana)
The county's name is derived from the former king (nang chen rgyal po) and Kingdom of Nangchen, a tribal confederation that emerged as a unified Buddhist kingdom in the 13th century.[3] The present-day's county comprises the core area of the old kingdom of Nangchen.
Memories of the Kingdom of Nangchen play a role in local politics, and among Tibetan refugees who came to India from the area. Scholar Maria Turek reported that in 2015 she heard about “a man who went to various Tibetan communities in India, introducing himself as ‘the king of Nangchen’ not without some success, even though he had no credentials to prove his claim.”[4]
A Yelpa Kagyu monastery, Tana Monastery (Jang Tana), was founded by Yelpa Yeshe Tsek in 1068. It is considered a branch monastery of Tsurpu.[5][6][7][8]
Administrative divisions
Nangqên County is divided to 1 town and 9 townships.
^Maria Turek, “Return of the Good King: Kingship and Identity among Yushu Tibetans since 1951,” in Frontier Tibet: Patterns of Change in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland, ed. by Stéphane Gros, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019, 453-488.
^Maria Turek, “Return of the Good King: Kingship and Identity among Yushu Tibetans since 1951,” in Frontier Tibet: Patterns of Change in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland, ed. by Stéphane Gros, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019, 453-488 (482).
^"Jang Tana". The Treasury of Lives. Retrieved 2017-08-05.
^"Tana Sengge Nam Dzong" - the Monastery of Ling, in: Andreas Gruschke, The Cultural Monuments of Tibet's Outer Provinces: Kham vol. 2 - The Qinghai Part of Kham (Yushu Autonomous Prefecture), Bangkok 2004, pp.110-115.
^Tanma Jamyang Tsultrim: "Cultural Relics of the Tana Monastery in Yushu and Gesar", in: Tibet Studies, 1991, No.1, S. 184-190.
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