Nyingma is regarded as the oldest Tibetan Buddhist school because it is rooted in the very first establishment of Buddhism on Tibetan soil, during the reign of the early Dharma kings, especially Trisong Detsen. Its origins are linked to the initial wave of translation and practice that unfolded when Indian masters such as Padmasambhava and Śāntarakṣita came to Tibet, working with Tibetan disciples to found monasteries and render key scriptures into Tibetan. This early phase is known as the “early translation period,” and it predates the later renaissance of Buddhist activity that gave rise to the so‑called “new schools.” In this sense, Nyingma is not merely older in a chronological way; it embodies the formative moment when Buddhist thought and tantric practice first took a distinctly Tibetan shape.

The textual and practice traditions that define Nyingma are based on these earliest translations, often called the “old translations,” completed before the collapse of the Tibetan empire. Later schools such as Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelug drew primarily on a subsequent wave of “new translations,” yet Nyingma continued to rely on and preserve the earlier corpus. This continuity is reflected in the very name “Nyingma,” meaning “ancient” or “old,” which serves to distinguish its inheritance from the “new schools” (Sarma) that emerged from the later diffusion of Buddhism. The school’s identity is thus inseparable from its role as custodian of the first transmission.

A further reason Nyingma is seen as the oldest school lies in its preservation of early tantric and Dzogchen teachings that are explicitly tied to that initial period of transmission. These cycles of practice, along with the broader tantric framework associated with Padmasambhava and his successors, were not simply replaced or retranslated in later centuries, but were maintained as a living lineage. Through this unbroken continuity of doctrine, ritual, and contemplative methods, Nyingma presents itself as the direct heir to Tibet’s earliest Buddhist foundations. To look to Nyingma, therefore, is to look back to the original meeting of Indian Buddhist wisdom and the Tibetan cultural world, a meeting that set the stage for all subsequent Tibetan Buddhist developments.