The lives of Pho-lha-nas and Khang-chen-nas are well known, most importantly from
Luciano Petech’s seminal study of early 18th-century Tibet. Since the publication of that
study, the appearance of several previously inaccessible sources has allowed us to form
a fuller image of the situation in Tibet before and during their lifetimes, a period that
coincided with the last era of Mongol dominion in Tibet. The effects of this domination
and the concomitant integration of Tibetans and Mongols in military, political and other
spheres of Tibetan life were observable decades after the end of Pho-lha-nas’s rule. As
a result, while the Dga’-ldan pho-brang government of the Dalai Lamas is a useful lens
through which to view Tibet’s history at this time, it is equally useful to construct a view
of Tibet as simultaneously a Mongol realm, a “Qanate of Tibet.
