Around 1440 the Tibetan princess, Chokyi Dronma, was sent as a bride to the neighbouring kingdom, the polity of Southern Lato. She would have preferred a religious life, but she had no option but to follow the wish of her father, the King of Gungthang, and the custom of her time. As in early modern Europe, in fifteenth-century Tibet marriage alliances were important to guarantee stable political relations and maintain peaceful relations in a politically fragmented world. According to her biography (Plate 3.1) Chokyi Dronma had spent her childhood in her homeland, the Kingdom of Mangyul Gungthang in south-western Tibet, where she had led a very devout and scholarly life with the support of her mother, and had learnt to respect books. After arriving in her new home as a bride, she discovered a collection of holy scriptures that had been taken there from her homeland – a gift or, more likely, war booty. Distressed at finding them in a neglected condition, she took care to restore them. These items were more than passive objects to her; these literary artefacts affected her in the most intimate way and exercised significant moral pressure on her as sacred objects. She believed they had the power to give blessing to her and the community and that their mistreatment was profoundly inauspicious. She accordingly restored the collection, provided the customary cloth to wrap them, and ensured that there was a caretaker to look after them and perform rituals in their honour.