Tibetans viewed their country as a living entity controlled by srin ma (pronounced "sinma"), a wild demoness who opposed the propagation of Buddhism in the country. To thwart her evil intentions, King Songtsen Gampo (the first king of a unified Tibet)[1] developed a plan to build twelve temples across the country. The temples were built in three stages. In the first stage central Tibet was covered with four temples, known as the "four horns" (ru bzhi). Four more temples, (mtha'dul), were built in the outer areas in the second stage; the last four, the yang'dul, were built on the country's frontiers. The Jokhang temple was finally built in the heart of the srin ma, ensuring her subjugation.[2]

 King Songtsen Gampo

To forge ties with neighboring Nepal, Songtsen Gampo sent envoys to King Amsuvarman seeking his daughter's hand in marriage and the king accepted. His daughter, Bhrikuti, came to Tibet as the king's Nepalese wife (tritsun; belsa in Tibetan). The image of Akshobhya Buddha (or Mikyoba[citation needed]), which she had brought as part of her dowry, was deified in a temple in the middle of a lake known as Ramoche.[3]

Gampo, wishing to obtain a second wife from China, sent his ambassador to Emperor Taizong (627–650) of the Tang dynasty for one of his daughters. Taizong rejected the king's proposal, considering Tibetans "barbarians", and announced the marriage of one of his daughters to the king of Duyu, a Hun. This infuriated Gampo, who mounted attacks on tribal areas affiliated with the Tang dynasty and then attacked the Tang city of Songzhou. Telling the emperor that he would escalate his aggression unless the emperor agreed to his proposal, Gampo sent a conciliatory gift of a gold-studded "suit of armour" with another request for marriage. Taizong conceded, giving Princess Wencheng to the Tibetan king. When Wencheng went to Tibet in 640 as the Chinese wife of the king (known as Gyasa in Tibet), she brought an image of Sakyamuni Buddha as a young prince. The image was deified in a temple originally named Trulnang, which became the Jokhang. The temple became the holiest shrine in Tibet and the image, known as Jowo Rinpoche, has become the country's most-revered statue.[3]

The oldest part of the temple was built in 652 by Songtsen Gampo. To find a location for the temple, the king reportedly tossed his hat (a ring in another version)[4] ahead of him with a promise to build a temple where the hat landed. It landed in a lake, where a white stupa (memorial monument) suddenly emerged[5] over which the temple was built. In another version of the legend, Queen Bhrikuti founded the temple to install the statue she had brought and Queen Wencheng selected the site according to Chinese geomancy and feng shui.[1] The lake was filled, leaving a small pond now visible as a well fed by the ancient lake, and a temple was built on the filled area. Over the next nine centuries, the temple was enlarged; its last renovation was carried out in 1610 by the Fifth Dalai Lama.[5]

The temple's design and construction are attributed to Nepalese craftsmen. After Songtsen Gampo's death, Queen Wencheng reportedly moved the statue of Jowo from the Ramoche temple to the Jokhang temple to secure it from Chinese attack. The part of the temple known as the Chapel was the hiding place of the Jowo Sakyamuni.[6]

During the reign of King Tresang Detsan from 755 to 797, Buddhists were persecuted because the king's minister, Marshang Zongbagyi (a devotee of Bon), was hostile to Buddhism. During this time the image of Akshobya Buddha in the Jokhang temple was hidden underground, reportedly 200 people failed to locate it. The images in the Jokhang and Ramoche temples were moved to Jizong in Ngari, and the monks were persecuted and driven from Jokhang.[7] During the anti-Buddhist activity of the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the Jokhang and Ramoche temples were said to be used as stables.[8] In 1049 Atisha, a renowned teacher of Buddhism from Bengal who taught in Jokhang and died in 1054, found the "Royal Testament of the Pillar" (Bka' chems ka khol ma) in a pillar at Jokhang; the document was said to be the testament of Songtsen Gampo.[8][9]

 Jokhang in the mid-1840s

Beginning in about the 14th century, the temple was associated with the Vajrasana in India. It is said that the image of Buddha deified in the Jokhang is the 12-year-old Buddha earlier located in the Bodh Gaya Temple in India, indicating "historical and ritual" links between India and Tibet. Tibetans call Jokhang the "Vajrasana of Tibet" (Bod yul gyi rDo rje gdani), the "second Vajrasana" (rDo rje gdan pal) and "Vajrasan, the navel of the land of snow" (Gangs can sa yi lte ba rDo rje gdani).[10]

After the occupation of Nepal by the Gorkhas in 1769, during the Gorkha-Tibetan war in 1792 the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty drove the Gorkhas from Tibet and the Tibetans were isolated from their neighbors. The period, lasting for more than a century, has been called "the Dark Age of Tibet". Pilgrimages outside the country were forbidden for Tibetans, and the Qianlong Emperor suggested that it would be equally effective to worship the Jowo Buddha at the Jokhang.[11]

In Chinese development of Lhasa, Barkhor Square was encroached when the walkway around the temple was destroyed. An inner walkway was converted into a plaza, leaving only a short walkway as a pilgrimage route. In the square, religious objects related to the pilgrimage are sold.[5]

During the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards attacked the Jokhang in 1966, starting on August 24,[12][13] and for a decade there was no worship in Tibetan monasteries. Renovation of the Jokhang began in 1972, and was mostly complete by 1980. After this and the end of persecution, the temple was re-consecrated. It is now visited by a large number of Tibetans, who come to worship Jowo in the temple's inner sanctum.[14] During the Revolution, the temple was spared destruction and was reportedly boarded up until 1979.[5] At that time, portions of the Jokhang reportedly housed pigs, a slaughterhouse and Chinese army barracks. Soldiers burned historic Tibetan scriptures. For a time, it was a hotel.[6]

Two flagstone doring (inscribed pillars) outside the temple, flanking its north and south entrances, are worshiped by Tibetans. The first monument, a March 1794 edict known as the "Forever Following Tablet" in Chinese, records advice on hygiene to prevent smallpox; some has been chiseled out by Tibetans who believed that the stone itself had curative powers.[15] The second, far older, pillar is 5.5 metres (18 ft) high with a crown in the shape of a palace and an inscription dated 821 or 822. The tablet has a number of names; "Number One Tablet in Asia", "Lhasa Alliance Tablet", "Changing Alliance Tablet", "Uncle and Nephew Alliance Tablet" and the "Tang Dynasty-Tubo Peace Alliance Tablet".[16][15] Its inscription, in Tibetan and Chinese, is a treaty between the Tibetan king Ralpacan and the Chinese emperor Muzong delineating the boundary between their countries. Both inscriptions were enclosed by brick walls when Barkhor Square was developed in 1985.[17] The Sino-Tibetan treaty reads, "Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of which they are now in occupation. All to the east is the country of Great China; and all to the west is, without question, the country of Great Tibet. Henceforth on neither side shall there be waging of war nor seizing of territory. If any person incurs suspicion he shall be arrested; his business shall be inquired into and he shall be escorted back".[16]

According to the Dalai Lama, among the many images in the temple was an image of Chenrizi, made of clay in the temple, within which the small wooden statue of the Buddha brought from Nepal was hidden. The image was in the temple for 1300 years, and when Songtsen Gampo died his soul was believed to have entered the small wooden statue. During the Cultural Revolution, the clay image was smashed and the smaller Buddha was given by a Tibetan to the Dalai Lama.[6]

In 2000, the Jokhang became a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an extension of the Potala Palace (a World Heritage Site since 1994) to facilitate conservation efforts.[17][18] The temple is listed in the first group of State Cultural Protection Relic Units, and has been categorized as a 4A-level tourist site.[19]

On February 17, 2018, the temple caught fire at 6:40 p.m. (local time), before sunset in Lhasa, with the blaze lasting until late that evening. Although photos and videos about the fire were spread on Chinese social media, which showed the eaved roof of a section of the building lit with roaring yellow flames and emitting a haze of smoke, these images were quickly censored and disappeared. The official newspaper Tibet Daily briefly claimed online that the fire was "quickly extinguished" with "no deaths or injuries" at the late night, while The People's Daily published the same words online and added that there had been "no damage to relics" in the temple; both of these reports contained no photos.[20] The temple was temporarily closed after the fire but were reopened to public on February 18, according to official Xinhua news agency.[21] But the yellow draperies had been newly hung behind the temple's central image, the Jowo statue. And no one was allowed to enter the second floor of the temple, according to the source of Radio Free Asia's Tibetan Service.[22] The fire burned an area of about 50 square meters. The temple's golden cupola had been removed to guard against any collapse and protective supports had been added around the Jowo statue, according to Xinhua.[23] On February 19, 2018, the Dalai Lama's supporters based in India reported eyewitness accounts that "the source of the fire is not the Jowo chapel but from an adjacent chapel within the Jokhang temple premises known in Tibetan as Tsuglakhang" and confirming that there were "no casualties and damage to property is yet to be ascertained".[24]