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Rangdum

village in Kargil district, Ladakh, India

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ4389861
Source-derived summary

Rangdum is a village located in the Suru Valley of Zanskar district in the union territory of Ladakh in Northern India. On one side are the colourful hills while on the other side are rocky mountains and glaciers, notably Drang-drung.

It is located on the NH301 Kargil-Padum Highway.

Geography

Rangdum is located midway between Kargil and Padum. It is about 100 kilometres (62 mi) from Kargil.

"Rangdum, with its gompa and the attendant village of Juliodok, is the last inhabited region in the Suru valley; it is also the destination of the nomadic herds people called Bakarwals, who trek up every year from the Himalayan foothills near Jammu, bringing their flocks of sheep and goats to grow fat on the rich summer growth of grass. From Rangdum the valley rises to 4400 metres and the Pensi-la, the gateway into Zanskar."

The country surrounding Rangdum Monastery is very bleak and crops sometimes cannot ripen in the brief summer. The locals depend on their flocks and supplies from lower down the Suru Valley or over the pass from Zanskar.

Demography

The population of the Suru Valley as far as Parkachik are all Muslim. The valley is, however, practically uninhabited past Parkachik other than a couple of tiny settlements.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rangdum” is village in Kargil district, Ladakh, India. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rangdum, village and Kargil, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost useful as a place-based finding aid connecting the present description to earlier jurisdictions, maps and built evidence. The current 206-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Rangdum, village and Kargil is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “village in Kargil district, Ladakh, India” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4389861. Authority coordinates are 34.056, 76.325. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Rangdum”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Rangdum primary sources, Rangdum archive and Rangdum research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Rangdum”?
  2. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Rangdum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.