The nation currently known as Bhutan has been called by different names, not all of which were used to refer to the same place, or in use at the same time. Unravelling the origins and significance of these names can be intriguing as well as challenging. According to traditional Bhutanese historians, the earliest name for the area roughly covering modern day Bhutan is Mön (མོན་), Mönyul (མོན་ཡུལ་) or Mön country, and Lhömön (ལྷོ་མོན་), Southern Mön. Mön, they explain, is a derivative of mun (མུན་), a Tibetan word for darkness. The inhabitants of the southern borderlands were known to the central Tibetans as mön pa (མོན་པ་) or ‘dark people’ because they were considered to live in a state of socio-spiritual darkness. Unlike central Tibet, where Buddhist civilisation had reached an apogee by the middle of the 8^th century, in the eyes of a central Tibetan, those who resided in the borderlands were groping in darkness, meaning without the light of the Buddha’s wisdom.

The application of the term Mön to areas of Bhutan is attested in many ancient texts written by both Tibetan and Bhutanese authors. However, any suggestion that Mön and Mönyul were used as formal or established nomenclature for one area or ethnic group is highly debatable. Scholars are still at a loss as to what the term mon exactly meant or its origins. It may be related to the Chinese word ‘mán’ which designates barbarians and according to some scholars, was also applied by the Chinese to Tibetan cultural groups. Michael Aris, among the first western historians of Bhutan, speculated that the use of the term for central Bhutan may have a direct link to mán and mong used in eastern Tibet along the Sino-Tibetan frontiers. Interestingly, even as early as the 7^th century, the great Chinese traveller Xuanzang noted that the people in the frontiers north of Kamarupa kingdom (modern Assam) were akin to the mán people of China’s southwestern borderlands.

It is further intriguing that the name Mön was used in many parts of the Himalayas stretching from the Karakoram ranges in the west to Arunachal Pradesh in the east. Even today, one can find groups of people called Mön in Pakistan, Bhutan, Tibet, and eastern India. It is possible that these groups have a common origin and the term mon designated those people who initially inhabited the fertile valleys but were gradually pushed out to remote and rugged areas by dominant groups. Scholars have also speculated that the Mön of Burma and Thailand may be distantly related to the Mön in the Himalayas and that both may have initially started from western China and spread along the sides of the Himalayan watershed. Only further linguistic, archaeological and anthropological study can shed more light on this.

In the case of the name being applied to Bhutan, it is more plausible that the term was used loosely to describe primitive and rustic people from the borderlands rather than as a strict ethnonym. This can be inferred from the use of the term through the centuries. If the Chinese called some Tibetans ‘mán’ or barbarians, the Tibetans certainly used Mön to refer to people from their border areas who they considered ‘dark’ and uncivilized. The use of the term Mön for the ethnic groups in India and Tibet even today carries a connotation of provincialism and the Bhutanese still use the term to refer to a small group of people in a remote part of central Bhutan. To put it simply, Mön and ‘Mönpa’ are names used with no fixed referent. The Tibetans called the people from the borderland Mönpa and these in turn called some other rural minorities Mönpa. It even comes down to using Mönpa as a pejorative nickname for a simpleton in a village.

Read in this context of malleable application with shifting referents, the use of the name Mön for ancient Bhutan and its etymology as seen above are based on a very Tibet-centric world view. Tibet is assumed to be the centre of Buddhist civilisation and Bhutan, as well as other Himalayan hinterlands, to be on the periphery of that civilized world. Applied in this manner, the term also carries a derogatory connotation and it is not surprising that a larger country might describe its smaller neighbours condescendingly. What is interesting is that with persistent use and repetition over a long period of time, even the population to whom the pejorative name was applied has appropriated the name for themselves. Traditional Bhutanese historians, being themselves largely products of Tibetan monastic education, accepted the Tibetan application unquestioningly. They even went so far as to justify the name by providing an etymology; although the etymology they provided may be an arbitrary and recent effort to explain the term.

Today, we see the same scenario in the use of the name Mön for the groups of people in central Bhutan and eastern India. These groups have generally adopted the name in spite of its derogatory connotation and sometimes even perceive themselves inferior to those who refer to them with this name. However, the term is now increasingly used as a neutral ethnonym, as dynamics in Tibet have changed since the Chinese occupation of that country alongside a growing respect for ethnic diversity. An intelligent and convincing alternative to the popular etymology of the name may be found in what some Mönpa elders in central Bhutan have to say. They claim to be the earliest inhabitants of the country and argue the word Mönpa comes from man pa (མན་པ་) the word for ‘old’ in some central and eastern Bhutanese languages.

Karma Phuntsho is a social thinker and worker, the President of the Loden Foundation and the author of many books and articles including The History of Bhutan from which this piece is extracted.