Protests and uprisings in Tibet since 1950 The minor kingdoms and tribal states of the region were first united under Songtsen Gampo to form the Tibetan Empire in the seventh century CE Under the influence of his Chinese bride and first Nepali wife Bhrikuti, the Emperor converted to Buddhism and established it as the religion of Tibet. An influx of Chinese culture, the Indian alphabet, and Buddhist monks followed, combining with the native customs and animistic religion Bön to give birth to what has become today's ethnic Tibetan people and Tibetan Buddhism, also known as Lamaism, After the break-up of the Tibetan Empire in the mid-9th century,
History of Buddhism well as criticism and competition from Christianity. Modern wars, communism, the growth of capitalism, science and regional political instability are also influential pressures on modern Buddhism. In Sri Lanka under the British, Christian missionaries ran all the state approved schools and strongly criticized Buddhism. By 1865, Buddhist monks began a counter movement against Christian attacks, printing pamphlets and debating Christians in public, such as at the famous Panadura debate in 1873, which saw the monk Gunananda win a debate in front of a crowd of 10,000. During this period a new form of Buddhism began to take shape, termed Buddhist