File:The National Flag of Tibet.png

English: During the reign of the seventh-century great empire, Songtsen Gampo, Tibet was one of the mightiest empires in Central Asia. Tibet, then, had an army of 2,860,000 men. Each regiment of the army had its own banner. The banner of Ya-ru To regiment had a pair of snow lions facing each other, that of Ya-ru Ma a snow lion standing upright, springing upwards towards the sky, and that of U-ru To a white flame against a red background.

This tradition continued until the Thirteenth Dalai Lama re-designed a new banner and issued a proclamation for its adoption by all the military establishments. This banner became the present national flag of Tibet.

Introduced in the year of 1912 by the 13th Dalai Lama, the colorful national flag, known as the "snow lion flag" (Tib: Gangseng), was the national flag of Tibet from 1916 to 1951.

The term "Tibet" here means the whole of Tibet known as Cholka-Sum (U-Tsang, Kham, and Amdo). It includes the present-day Chinese administrative areas of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, two Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures and one Tibetan Autonomous County in Sichuan Province, one Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and one Tibetan Autonomous County in Gansu Province and one Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province.