Part 1: Political expansion and the beginnings of Tibetan Buddhist culture (seventh to tenth centuries). Tibet in medieval Chinese, Islamic, and western sources. ; Imperial records from Dunhuang ; Imperial edicts from central and far eastern Tibet ; Institutions and knowledge under the Tibetan Empire ; Early religion and the beginnings of Buddhism.
Part 2: Tibet in fragments: From empire to monastic principalities (eleventh to twelfth centuries). Renewal and rediscovery: the later diffusion of Buddhism and the response of the "ancients" ; The proliferation of new lineages ; The Bön tradition ; The development of the medical tradition.
Part 3: The age of monastic and aristocratic hegemonies: The florescence of Tibetan culture (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries). Elaborating the narratives of Tibetan antiquity ; Historians and historical documents of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries ; Exploration of Buddhist doctrine ; Literary developments ; Writings on death and dying ; The growth of the arts and sciences.
Part 4: The age of centralization: the rise of the ganden government and its bid for cultural hegemony (seventeenth to twentieth centuries). The beginnings of the gandenpa school ; The fifth Dalai Lama and the ganden government ; Aristocrats, monks, and hermits ; Religious and political developments in Eastern Tibet ; Encountering other cultures ; Religious writers in Amdo and Kham.
Part 5: Expanding horizons in the early twentieth century. Early twentieth-century Tibetan encounters with the West ; Tibetans addressing modern political issues.