# Lhomon and Monyul, Early Names for Bhutan (c. 500 BCE)

URL: https://allhistories.com/bhutan/timeline/-500-lhomon-and-monyul-early-names-for-bhutan
Location: Bhutan
Themes: main-event

Historians have theorised that a state called Lhomon, 'southern darkness', or Monyul, 'dark land', existed in what is now Bhutan from about 500 BCE to about 600 CE. Ancient Bhutanese and Tibetan chronicles also record the names Lhomon Tsendenjong, 'sandalwood country', and Lhomon Khashi, 'country of four approaches'. The evidence is thin. One Wikipedia article gives 1000 BCE as the start, another cites 500 BCE, and the latter flags its source as weak. Tibetan texts use Monyul more broadly for the lowland strip below the Himalayan crest, from eastern Bhutan and western Sikkim to the Tawang area. The names suggest that Tibetans saw the southern slopes as a distinct, non-Tibetan land, and they persist in the ethnonym Monpa. Whether a unified state ever existed is uncertain; early Bhutan is better understood as scattered communities. Later chronicles used the labels to give the country an ancient identity. At this point in the timeline (c. 500 BCE), no individual ruler is securely recorded; local chiefdoms of the Lhomon / Monyul valleys are known only from later Tibetan and Bhutanese tradition (c. 1000 BCE – c. 620 CE), and the dating is approximate.

## Why it matters
These names are the earliest labels for Bhutan's territory, and still shape debates about its pre-Buddhist past. Whether a real state lay behind them is unproven.

Ruler at the Time: [Lhomon / Monyul local chiefdoms (no recorded rulers)](https://allhistories.com/bhutan/rulers/lhomon-monyul-local-chiefdoms-no-recorded-rulers--1000)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — History of Bhutan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bhutan)
- [Wikipedia — Monpa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monpa)