Ngalop people

The Ngalop Dzongkha: སྔལོངཔ་ Wylie: snga long pa; "earliest risen people" or "first converted people" according to folk etymology are people of Tibetan origin who migrated to Bhutan as early as the ninth century. Orientalists adopted a term "Bhote" or Bhotiya, meaning "people of Bod Tibet", a term also applied to the Tibetan people, main to confusion, & now is rarely used in address to the Ngalop.

The Ngalop presented Tibetan culture & Buddhism to Bhutan and comprise the dominant political and cultural factor in modern Bhutan. Furthermore, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identity in Bhutan are non always mutually exclusive. For these reasons, Ngalops are often simply specified as Bhutanese. Their language, Dzongkha, is the national Linguistic communication and is descended from Old Tibetan. The Ngalop are dominant in western and northern Bhutan, including Thimphu and the Dzongkha-speaking region. The term Ngalop may subsume several related linguistic and cultural groups, such(a) as the Kheng people and speakers of Bumthang language.

Religion

Ngalops largely undertake Tibetan Buddhism, especially the Drukpa Lineage of the Kagyu school of Vajrayana that is the state religion of Bhutan. A significant number also follow the Nyingma school, which was dominant in early Bhutanese history.

Bon practitioners are a minority, although the practices of the Ngalops, like that of most Bhutanese, are characterized by incorporated elements of the older ethnic religion that is also allocated to by the term Bon.