The Ngalop ( dz, སྔལོངཔ་ ; "earliest risen people" or "first converted people" according to

folk etymology Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...

) are people of

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

an origin who migrated to

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous ...

as early as the ninth century. Orientalists adopted the term "Bhote" or

Bhotiya Bhotiya or Bhot ( ne, भोटिया, ) are groups of ethno-linguistically related Tibetan people living in the Transhimalayan region that divides India from Tibet. The word ''Bhotiya'' comes from the classical Tibetan name for Tibet, , . ...

, meaning "people of Bod (

)", a term also applied to the

Tibetan people The Tibetan people (; ) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6.7 million. In addition to the majority living in Tibet Autonomous Region of China, significant numbers of Tibetans live ...

, leading to confusion, and now is rarely used in reference to the Ngalop. The Ngalop introduced

Tibetan culture Tibet developed a distinct culture due to its geographic and climatic conditions. While influenced by neighboring cultures from China, India, and Nepal, the Himalayan region's remoteness and inaccessibility have preserved distinct local i ...

and

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

to Bhutan and comprise the dominant political and cultural element in modern Bhutan. Furthermore, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identity in Bhutan are not always mutually exclusive. For these reasons, Ngalops are often simply identified as Bhutanese. Their language, Dzongkha, is the national language and is descended from

Old Tibetan Old Tibetan refers to the period of Tibetan language reflected in documents from the adoption of writing by the Tibetan Empire in the mid-7th century to works of the early 11th century. In 816 CE, during the reign of Sadnalegs, literary Tibetan u ...

. The Ngalop are dominant in western and northern Bhutan, including

Thimphu Thimphu (; dz, ཐིམ་ཕུག ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of Bhutan. It is situated in the western central part of Bhutan, and the surrounding valley is one of Bhutan's ''dzongkhags'', the Thimphu District. The ancient ...

and the Dzongkha-speaking region. The term Ngalop may subsume several related linguistic and cultural groups, such as the

Kheng people The Kheng people are found primarily in the Zhemgang, Trongsa, Bumthang, Dagana, and Mongar Districts of central Bhutan. They speak the Kheng language, a member of the extended Tibetan language family belonging to the East Bodish languages group ...

and speakers of

Bumthang language The Bumthang language ( dz, བུམ་ཐང་ཁ་, ); also called "Bhumtam", "Bumtang(kha)", "Bumtanp", "Bumthapkha", and "Kebumtamp") is an East Bodish language spoken by about 20,000 people in Bumthang and surrounding districts of Bhutan. ...

Population

The Ngalop are concentrated in the western and central valleys of Bhutan, whose total population in 2010 was about 708,500 (This is the total population of Bhutan, not the population of Ngalops. The population of Ngalops could be less than 250000) . Together the Ngalop, Sharchops and tribal groups constituted up to 72 percent of the population in the late 1980s according to official Bhutanese statistics. The 1981 census claimed Sharchops represented 30% of the population and Ngalops about 17%. ''

The World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is available ...

'', however, estimates the "Bhote" Ngalop and Sharchop populations together to total about 50 percent, or 354,200.Bhutan
''

''.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

Language

Ngalops speak Dzongkha. As Ngalops are politically and culturally dominant in Bhutan, Dzongkha is the language of government and education throughout the kingdom. Other groups that identify as culturally Ngalop speak the Kheng and

s. To a large extent, even the Sharchops of eastern Bhutan, who speak

Tshangla Tshangla is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Bodish branch closely related to the Tibetic languages. Tshangla is primarily spoken in Eastern Bhutan and acts as a lingua franca in the region; it is also spoken in the adjoining Tawang tract in the I ...

, have adopted Ngalop culture and may identify as Ngalop.

Religion

Ngalops largely follow

Tibetan Buddhism Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...

, particularly the

Drukpa Lineage The Drukpa Kagyu (), or simply Drukpa, sometimes called either Dugpa or "Red Hat sect" in older sources,

of the

Kagyu The ''Kagyu'' school, also transliterated as ''Kagyü'', or ''Kagyud'' (), which translates to "Oral Lineage" or "Whispered Transmission" school, is one of the main schools (''chos lugs'') of Tibetan (or Himalayan) Buddhism. The Kagyu lineag ...

school of

Vajrayana Vajrayāna ( sa, वज्रयान, "thunderbolt vehicle", "diamond vehicle", or "indestructible vehicle"), along with Mantrayāna, Guhyamantrayāna, Tantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Tantric Buddhism, and Esoteric Buddhism, are names referring t ...

that is the

state religion A state religion (also called religious state or official religion) is a religion or creed officially endorsed by a sovereign state. A state with an official religion (also known as confessional state), while not secular state, secular, is not n ...

of Bhutan. A significant number also follow the

Nyingma Nyingma (literally 'old school') is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It is also often referred to as ''Ngangyur'' (, ), "order of the ancient translations". The Nyingma school is founded on the first lineages and transl ...

school, which was dominant in early Bhutanese history.

Bon

Bon ''Bon'', also spelled Bön () and also known as Yungdrung Bon (, "eternal Bon"), is a Tibetan religious tradition with many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism and also many unique features.Samuel 2012, pp. 220-221. Bon initially developed in t ...

practitioners are a minority, although the practices of the Ngalops, like that of most Bhutanese, are characterized by incorporated elements of the older

ethnic religion In religious studies, an ethnic religion is a religion or belief associated with a particular ethnic group. Ethnic religions are often distinguished from universal religions, such as Christianity or Islam, in which gaining converts is a pri ...

that is also referred to by the term ''Bon''.

Lifestyle

The primary agricultural crops are Bhutanese red rice,

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es,

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley pr ...

, and other temperate climate crops. Ngalop people build houses out of timber, stone, clay, and brick. The Ngalop are also known for building large fortress-monasteries known as

dzong Dzong architecture is used for dzongs, a distinctive type of fortified monastery ( dz, རྫོང, , ) architecture found mainly in Bhutan and Tibet. The architecture is massive in style with towering exterior walls surrounding a complex of cou ...

s that now serve as government offices. The

Druk Gyalpo The Druk Gyalpo (; 'Dragon King') is the head of state of the Bhutan, Kingdom of Bhutan. In the Dzongkha, Dzongkha language, Bhutan is known as ''Drukyul'' which translates as "The Land of the Thunder Dragon". Thus, while kings of Bhutan are ...

and most of the government are Ngalop, and all citizens of the country are required to follow the national dress code, the

driglam namzha The Driglam Namzha () is the official code of etiquette and dress code of Bhutan. It governs how citizens should dress in public as well as how they should behave in formal settings. It also regulates a number of cultural assets such as art and arc ...

, which is Ngalop in origin. The Ngalops follow

matrilineal Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's Lineage (anthropology), lineage – and which can in ...

lines in the inheritance of land and livestock.

References

{{Bhutanese society Ethnic groups in Bhutan Ethnic groups in Tibet

Population

Language

Religion

Bon

Lifestyle

See also

References