Namkhai Norbu (Nam-mkha'i-nor-bu), Drung, De’u and Bön: Narrations, Symbolic Languages and the Bön Tradition in Ancient Tibet, translated from Tibetan into Italian, edited and annotated by Adriano Clemente, translated into English from Italian by Andrew Lukianowicz, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (Dharamsala 1995). Review in Tibet Journal (Dharamsala), vol. 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998), pp. 108-119.
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Drung, De’u and Bön: Narrations, Symbolic Languages and the Bön Tradition in Ancient Tibet, by Namkhai Norbu, translated from Tibetan into Italian, edited and annotated by Adriano Clemente, translated into English from Italian by Andrew Lukianowicz, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, 1995.
This book is heartily recommended to all of you people who ravenously consume English-language books on Tibet, precisely because it is so totally unlike all the rest of those books you have been reading. And it is strictly required reading for the few of you who still think Tibetan culture has nothing more lively to offer than a series of footnotes added to footnotes to the mechanically translated works of Nâgârjuna and Dharmakîrti. It is not always easy reading, but is well worth the effort, even the second effort. The author, a renowned master of the profound Great Completion (rdzogs-chen) teachings with a strong following in Europe and America, Professor at the University of Naples, and one of the most significant Tibetan intellectuals of our times, doesn’t really require any introduction for most of us. This and his previous works have galvanized Tibetan thinkers, not only in the Tibetan diaspora, but in Tibet itself, goading them into fresh and often refreshing ways of understanding their traditions. This book will indeed open many eyes to aspects of Tibetan culture little known to the English-literate public, but perhaps just as important, even if a bit surprising, little known to the large majority of specialists in Tibetan studies.
What the English reader now has in the form of this book is much more than, and yet a little less than, the original Tibetan version published, also by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, in 1989, under the title Sgrung Lde’u Bon Gsum-gyi Gtam E-ma-ho. One thing missing in the English is the Tibetan version’s long foreword (sngon-brjod, on pp. 7-18),[1] in which the author takes rather strong tones against the prejudices many Tibetans have had, and still do have, against Bon. Leaving it out was probably the right decision, given that most Europeans and Americans have not learned to share those prejudices.[2] The two things that make the English version much more than the Tibetan are [1] the annotations added by the translator Adriano Clemente, often truly illuminating, while including a number of further references to the relevant literature and oral information of contemporary Tibetan authorities, including our author (whose notes are marked “A.N.”), and [2] the index of Sanskrit and Tibetan terms and names. The index supplies an important key for those engaged in Tibetan studies, since so many of the Tibetan words (particularly, but not only, those from the vocabulary of ritual) are inadequately defined or undefined in the published lexicons. The work of the translator deserves our highest admiration. It is after all a comparatively simple matter to cite the difficult Tibetan sources in the original language. To translate them into another language takes true talent and courage. I would venture to say that the work of our translator is every bit as courageous and pioneering as that of our author.
The reason for the rather arcane sounding book title is found on p. xix of the Introduction, in three quotations from fourteenth and seventeenth century histories, and later on at pp. 17-18, in six quotations from still other histories (the oldest being the two Lde’u histories from the latter half of the thirteenth century), where drung (sgrung) and de’u (lde’u), often with the addition of bön (bon), are said to have been the basic sources for political rule from, according to one source (the history books are anything but unanimous about the chronology[3]), the time of Dri-gum-btsan-po (a legendary Emperor whose dates would have to fall somewhere near the beginning of the Common Era) up until the seventh century. One of the two oldest sources supplied is that by the Scholar Lde’u, which must date to a time soon after 1261, where it says about the seven Lde Emperors,
It is reported that the royal rule [in those days] was based on Bon, Sgrung and Lde’u. As a presaging of the arrival in Tibet of the [Three] Baskets [of Buddhist scripture, they] practiced Bon, Sgrung and Lde’u.[4]
We could point to one still earlier late-twelfth century reference in the works of Zhang G.yu-brag-pa Brtson-’grus-grags-pa (dates most probably 1123-1193, although his date of birth is sometimes given as 1121 or 1122), who founded the historically very significant, but now extremely rare, by which I mean to say practically non-existent, Bka’-brgyud-pa lineage called the Tshal-pa.
Even sgrung [‘narratives’] and mde’u [i.e., lde’u, ‘riddling’ and other aspects of oral artistry] and mo [‘lots’] and bon, etc., have emerged as significant Vehicles which convey them by degrees, so what need is there to mention [the] other Vehicles? That is why one shouldn’t look down on any of the outer and inner Vehicles such as bon, and so forth.[5]
By far the greater part of the subject-matter of this book is drawn from the four Causal Vehicles of the Bon religion (which broadly speaking might, for want of a more precise and useful English word, be termed ‘shamanic’ under certain of the many definitions of the term, including as they do various divinations, diagnostics, healing rituals and techniques, magical interventions and the like, even if ‘soul travel’ — a necessary ingredient of the ‘shamanic’ for many of the stricter minimalists — has no prominent place in them[6]). This makes one wonder why it is that the Sgrung, Lde’u and Bon formula,[7] as well as the “Twelve Knowledgeable Ones” (shes-pa-can bcu-gnyis),[8] significant as they may be in their contexts in non-Bon historical sources, are here used as the most general frameworks for discussing Bon religious ideas and practices. What I mean by this is, aren’t the four Causal Vehicles an adequate framing device? Do the Bon religious ideas really benefit from this re-framing by categories significant to outsiders?
I believe I can divine what the response to these questions would be. Our author is conscious of speaking to a hostile audience (the foreword of the original Tibetan version makes this more clear) not likely, due to ingrained prejudices to even recognize, let alone appreciate, the profound impact Bon has had on Tibetan culture at large. By using as starting points and framing devices concepts employed in the non-Bon works by Chos authors, they may gradually (through a useful stratagem, an upâya?) be brought around to seeing the Bon religion’s towering presence looming in their own national past. That seems to be what this book is about in a general way, and in this it is quite successful, even apart from the resounding success of its many specific contributions to the English reader’s knowledge of the Bon Causal Vehicles. Framing isn’t everything.
So much remains to be said about the more specific aspects, but I will limit myself to a few comments. Some new sources have already emerged to collaborate or even, possibly, challenge the ideas in this book. The recent publication of three distinct editions of the Bon Kanjur in Chengdu, and the promise of a Bon Tanjur[9] edition, will leave Bonologists with plenty of work in the decades ahead. For example, the second edition, vol. 144 (first edition, vol. 82), contains the main medical scripture of Bon (mentioned in our book on p. 133). A preliminary study, done by a group chaired by Per Kværne at the Center for Advanced Studies in Oslo in 1994-1995, shows that this scripture, entitled Sman Rgyud ’Bum Bzhi, corresponds almost exactly in its four subtitles and their chapter subdivision titles with the famous Rgyud Bzhi well known as the basis for traditional Tibetan medical sciences. Perhaps closer study will succeed in bringing to some dispassionate conclusions those debates, started centuries ago in Tibet, about the ultimate provenance of these important texts. The main questioner in the Bon medical scripture is Dpyad-bu Khri-shes, known to Bon historical tradition as a physical son of Lord Shenrab.[10]
One ought to read with special care the section on bsang ritual (pp. 109-120). Employed to purify various pollutions of the social order as well as ‘poisonous’ mental states, bsang is still today performed on a daily (household level) and annual (communal level) basis by a very large number of people, regardless of sectarian identity. I have been tending more and more to the opinion (although this is not the time to present detailed arguments) that this rite, which on the most obvious level involves the burning of various substances, primarily juniper, is one of the most promising candidates for true antiquity. It is closely allied with the cults of the protective spirits of different clans and localities, chiefly expressed in the cults of particular mountains (the names of the spirits, or deities if you prefer, and the mountains are usually identical). One could even point to near-parallels in the use of juniper smoke inhalation as one method of trance induction among Siberian and Mongolian shamans, and perhaps even more intriguing to the die-hard pan-Babylonianists among us, the use of juniper as a purificatory incense in ancient Mesopotamia.[11] The very fact that the Tibetan rite is a laypeople’s practice, generally requiring neither professional priesthood nor monastic participation, might in large part serve to account for its pervasiveness within the Tibetan plateau, as well as its continuity. Over just how many millennia the gods only know.
Potentially one of the most disturbing chapters for Buddhists as well as most moderns, since it touches on the sensitive subject of blood sacrifice (and therefore, needless to say, animal rights), is that on the Broad Antlered Deer (chap. 13).[12] One would do well to read this chapter together with the account of deer sacrifices current among the northern Nepalese Gurungs, who speak a language belonging to the broader Tibetan family, as described in the late Stan Mumford’s Himalayan Dialogue (Tiwari’s Pilgrim Book House, Kathmandu, 1990, pp. 63-73), based on an earlier doctoral dissertation. Although there are of course many other differences, in both the Bon recitation text and the Gurung oral recitation, the three central roles are played by a deer, a bird and a tree. The Gurung shamans at Tapje, as part of an annual spring agricultural celebration, remove the still-pumping heart from a captive wild deer and lay it as an offering (and source of divinatory signs) on a stone altar at the foot of a tree. The bird alighted at the top of the tree is the ancestral spirit of the clan; in actual practice it is a model bird placed on the altar. The similarity here is quite striking, but so also are the ritual complexes surrounding the deer (and the ibex) in the area of Ladakh. Anyone who has been spectator at the deer dance, and it is usually included in programs of Tibetan monastic dance (’cham), has no doubt sensed the deeply primal dramatic tension crackling through the air when, in an apparent reversal (or is it at the same time in some way a continuation?) of ‘shamanic’ practice, the dancer in stag mask destroys the effigy of a human. All this does seem to bring us quite a distance from the Buddha’s first sermon in Deer Park at Sarnath. In Bon practice of our millennium at least, it would also seem (certainly to judge from the particular ritual text translated here) that the deer was one made of dough, and not, as in the Gurung practice, a living deer. This should not be especially surprising, though, since ritual substitutions for blood sacrifice occur in so many modern religions, particularly those with the largest followings in Europe and the Americas. It is rather surprising that our author (on pp. 185-6) would find at all convincing, would find worthwhile to quote at length, even for the sake of a minor point of argument, a testimony about Bon sacrifices of thousands of living animals in the eighth century, at the Buddhist temple of Bsam-yas of all places, when the biography of Ye-shes-mtsho-rgyal (Tibetan wife of Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava) in which it is found was revealed only in the seventeenth century (by Stag-sham Nus-ldan-rdo-rje, born 1655). Followers of Bon will in any case hardly find this a credible source of evidence for reconstructing their past, and our author does in fact go on to raise the question of probable polemical motivations behind the telling of such stories.[13]
One significant omission in the book needs mentioning. While there are quite a few translated passages from the Chos authored anti-Bon polemics, including the historically most influential one contained in the Textbook of the Single Intention (Dgongs-gcig Yig-cha),[14] we find nothing here about the liberal and accommodating views about Bon expressed, albeit in varying degrees, by such authors as Zhang G.yu-brag-pa Brtson-’grus-grags-pa (1123-1193, Bka’-brgyud-pa), Rdo-rje-gling-pa (also known as G.yung-drung-gling-pa, 1346-1405, Rnying-ma-pa and Bon-po [but note that Bon sources tend to give him a thirteenth century date]), Spyan-snga-ba Blo-gros-rgyal-mtshan (1390-1448?, Dge-lugs-pa), Stag-tshang Lo-tsâ-ba Shes-rab-rin-chen (b. 1405, Sa-skya-pa), Sde-srid Sangs-rgyas-rgya-mtsho (1653-1705, Dge-lugs-pa), ’Jam-dbyangs-mkhyen-brtse’i-dbang-po (1820-1892, Rnying-ma-pa, or non-sectarian) and others closer to our times, including most significantly H.H. the present Dalai Lama. Even if their views might seem exceptional, they certainly need to be heard. Citing only the most negative assessments about Bon leaves the unfortunate, and finally untenable, impression that there was in the past a unity of opinion by all Chos writers on this point.
In closing, as grateful as we are for the book as it is, we may hope that some modern but traditional follower of Bon will find inspiration to write a similar book, but one which will uphold and defend the antiquity of the Vehicles of Result together with the integrity of the Nine Vehicles framework, the international stature of the early Bon movement, and the originality of Bon revelations belonging to all its Vehicles. Even if these things are denied by our author for various reasons,[15] they are widely believed by followers of Bon. There are indeed many of us who are eager to be persuaded to accept, or at least to better understand, or failing that to gain some smaller insights into, what Bon adherents do believe without necessarily having it peering out at us from the frames of reference of others, however sympathetic and unprejudiced they may, in truth, be. But after all, if the Tibetan nation is ever to recover it will have to rediscover and find some way of accommodating its Bon heritage as well as its present tense Bon. This book takes a number of very large steps in that direction.
Reviewer:
Dan Martin,
[1]We should note as well that the publisher’s foreword by Tashi Tsering in the Tibetan version has been replaced with another by Gyatsho Tshering in the English version, where there is also an entirely new translator’s preface.
[2]One shouldn’t neglect that some among the younger generations of diaspora Tibetans today, although fluent Tibetan speakers, prefer to read English. On the views of this group it is quite hazardous to generalize, although in my experience quite a few have learned to detest the sectarian encrustations on the Dharma jewel, and among them the works of Namkhai Norbu have been especially well received. I also know from experience that anti-Bon prejudices do cross the boundaries of age, education, class, wealth, and so on. Most disturbing are the evident limits of the 'tolerance' (bzod-pa) Pâramitâ in so many otherwise highly enlightened teachers, so much so that one learns not to bring up the subject in their presence. For more on this issue, see especially the articles in The Tibetan Review, vol. 15, no. 12, December, 1980.
[3]On this point, see Per K. Sørensen, Tibetan Buddhist Historiography: The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1994, pp. 145-146, n. 391. This and other references to the Tibetological literature given in this review are intended only to supply interested persons with places to look for further information, preferably in a language they are likely to be able to read, and in no way as criticism of our book, especially since in any case almost all of these publications postdate the composition of its original Tibetan version. One earlier, if unpublished, source could have been mentioned, and that is the section on sgrung, lde’u and bon contained in Terry J. Ellingson, The Mandala of Sound: Concepts and Sound Structures in Tibetan Ritual Music, doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1979, pp. 82-111. This reference (perhaps together with the much shorter discussion in David Jackson, The Mollas of Mustang: Historical, Religious and Oratorical Traditions of the Nepalese-Tibetan Borderland, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, 1984, pp. 84-85) really should be added to p. 223, note 32, of our book.
[4]My own translation, although that given on p. 18 of our book is perfectly acceptable. See Mkhas-pa Lde’u, Rgya Bod-kyi Chos-’byung Rgyas-pa, Bod-ljongs Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang, Lhasa, 1987, p. 249. PRC publications are cited here and below for reasons of availability and not of preference (in many cases mistakes are introduced in the process of editing and typesetting, making photographic reproductions of the original manuscripts or woodblock prints to be preferred).
[5]Since this work is not available in published form, I supply the complete citation (in simple Wylie transcription), based on the northern Nepalese manuscript kept in the form of microfilm in the Nepalese National Archives, Samdo A, vol. 2, fol. 78v: sgrung dang mde’u dang mo dang bon la sogs pa rnams kyang rims kyis drangs pa’i don gyi theg par byung ba yin la theg pa gzhan lta smos kyang ci dgos / de’i phyir na bon la sogs pa phyi nang gi theg pa gang la yang smad par mi bya’o. These words are contained in a work included within the more philosophically toned section (the grub-mtha’ section) of his collected works, a work entitled, Chos Spyi’i Stong-thun Gleng-gzhi Chen-mo Rgyas-pa dang Bsdus-pa Gnyis. Judging from the place of its composition, G.yu-brag, it must have been written somewhere in the neighborhood of 1165-1172.
[6]The last part of this statement might beg for clarification, since magical flight on top of a drum or, on occasion, a deer (on the latter, more below) is said to take place in a number of accounts (see pp. 183-185 of our book). Still, it is by no means a prominent feature, and the dividing line between shamanic soul travel and miraculous bodily flight (as well as that between shamanic 'vision quest' and spiritual seeking) is often difficult to draw with clarity. A recent book by Geoffrey Samuel (Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, Smithsonian, Washington D.C., 1993, as well as earlier articles by the same author), although employing the word ‘shamanic’ in a broad sense, as an analytical category current in some anthropological circles, has provoked much discussion about its appropriateness for Tibetological studies. One of the most lucid discussions of this problem is found in Matthew Kapstein, The Illusion of Spiritual Progress, contained in: R. Buswell, et al., eds., Paths to Liberation, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1992, pp. 193-224. For the most strict minimalists, the word 'shaman' must be limited to those Siberian peoples who actually employ the term for their own religious specialists. In the broad social-anthropological sense in which Samuel (op.cit., p. 8) uses the term, it could just as well be replaced by 'living religion' or some similar expression. A long-lived if frequently disputed argument holds that the Siberian word had its origins, by way of Persian, in the Indian-Buddhist (and pre-Buddhist) śramaṇera, but here as in so many other cases, word-origins can tell us very little about the meaning of the word in its later destinations, and we will have to consider as separate issues the real usage of the word in both its Siberian cultural and English social-anthropological contexts.
[7]It is true that the formula is mentioned in the early twentieth century Bon history by Shar-rdza Bkra-shis-rgyal-mtshan (Legs-bshad Rin-po-che’i Gter-mdzod, edited by Tshe-ring-thar, Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang, Beijing, 1985, p. 163; or see S. Karmay's translation cited below, at p. 31), but he explicitly attributes it to some members of the ‘other community’ (gzhan-sde, by which he means followers of the non-Bon schools of Tibetan religion), and goes on to dismiss their argument that, in those days, the Result Vehicles of Bon did not exist, giving testimonies of some Bon scriptures to the contrary. In fact, Shar-rdza shows us quite clearly that he would have approved of neither the framework nor some of the explicit arguments (especially those on pp. xvii-xviii) of the present book. Following is an attempt at a readable translation, for although it has some difficult parts, I believe it is worthwhile to make the effort to hear Shar-rdza’s views, dating from the 1920’s, which form what is in effect a pre-publication review of our book, regardless of any imperfections that might be found in this translation effort, which may be compared with the fine but different translation of S. Karmay (in Shar-rdza Bkra-shis-rgyal-mtshan,The Treasury of Good Sayings: A Tibetan History of Bon, Oxford University Press, London, 1972, pp. 34-35). Gnam-ri-srong-btsan, who lived in the seventh century, was father and imperial predecessor of the much more famous Emperor Srong-btsan-sgam-po:
Some members of the Other Community have said, “For thirty-one royal generations up until Gnam-ri-srong-btsan, political rule was governed by bon, sgrung, lde’u and so forth. Since the four Phya, Snang, ’Phrul, Srid and so forth, meaning the worldly [i.e., Causal] Vehicles, had spread, from this came the saying that the earlier of the doctrinal systems in Tibetan territories was Bon-po.” In saying this, they cover up the sources that would demonstrate the spreading far and wide of Bon teachings of Result [Vehicles] in the reigns of those same Emperors in Tibet, and then with frivolously told stories they see this as explaining the emergence of the Bon-po doctrinal system in Tibet. Having looked in the face the thoughts of those who like to praise and blame themselves and others, who are extremely attached to their own doctrinal systems, it would seem to me that there was a bit of that at work, and I do not agree that [what they have said] is to be taken seriously. If we were to take [what they have said] as being so, [then what would we to do with the following scriptural sources?] The Mdo Dri-med says,
“You, Nam-mkha’-snang-ba’i-mdog-can,
In that time, in the same time as that,
In the land of snowy Tibet,
At the place called Lha-ri Gyang-tho,
Are to equally perform the weekly observance
And the teaching of the Royal Gshen
For the seventh Throne[holder].
Increase the teachings of Secret Mantra.”
The Dbal-ram [a tantric text] says, “The members of [Emperor] Gnya-khri’s government did the practices of Dbal-ram and passed into the sky life.”
The Nyi-sgron says, “[Emperor] Mu-khri-btsan-po requested Snang-mdog for both the mother and son texts of the Khro-bo Dbang-chen Rgyud [a tantric text].”
The Skabs ’Phrin says, “Mu-khri-btsan-po performed the practices of the Spyi-spung at Lha-ri Gyang-ma Gyang-tho.”
Furthermore it is taught, as said in the Byams-ma, how each successive ruler practiced the Bon teachings of the Causal and Result [Vehicles]. So, no matter how much we may esteem ordinary persons as authoritative in their thoughts, they cannot reverse the scriptures of the Enlightened One (sangs-rgyas). Esteeming as authoritative the mental constructions (blo bzo) of persons with worldly concerns over the authority of the scriptures of the Enlightened One is the biography of delusion.
The Spyi-spung mentioned here is a large group of primarily tantric and Great Completion teachings which share the same historical transmission lineage of which Nam-mkha’-snang-ba’i-mdog-can (or, in short form, Snang-mdog; the name means ‘Colored Like Shining Sky’) was an important member, as he was responsible for bringing those teachings to Tibet where he was succeeded in the lineage by the second Tibetan Emperor Mu-khri-btsan-po, son of Gnya’-khri-btsan-po. With the possible exception of the rather obscure texts associated with the wrathful tutelary Dbal-ram (Dbal-chen Ram-pa, to give the fuller form), and of course the Mdo Dri-med (better known as the Gzi-brjid, the twelve-volume biography of Lord Shenrab), all the other texts mentioned by Shar-rdza belong to the Spyi-spung. The Spyi-spung scriptures do claim clearly and unambiguously that they preserve the Bon teachings current during the time of the second through seventh Tibetan Emperors, and this claim is equally made for all the ‘southern treasure’ (lho gter) texts revealed in 1017 by Gshen-chen Klu-dga’.
[8]The Twelve Knowledgeable Ones do appear, it is true, in the important early Bon text known in short as Byams-ma, and in the form of citations from the Byams-ma in a number of later Bon histories (see the present work, p. 49). My point here is that Bon writers (and Chos writers of the past, for that matter) never use it as a framing device or a classification system for Bon teachings in the way our author does. Despite the reservations expressed here, it is still remarkable how closely some of the specialized knowledges of the Twelve Knowledgeable Ones do correspond to specific practices that belong to one or another of the four Causal Vehicles. The Twelve Knowledgeable Ones also appear in the late twelfth century history by the Rnying-ma-pa writer Nyang-ral Nyi-ma-’od-zer (Chos-’byung Me-tog Snying-po Sbrang-rtsi’i Bcud, Bod-ljongs Mi-dmangs Dpe-skrun-khang, Lhasa, 1988, p. 159; here called the shes-pa-mkhan bcu-gnyis). It is entirely possible, although the point would need closer study, that the Byams-ma list was an important source of both the later Bon and the Chos accounts. The Byams-ma group of texts are attributed to the eleventh century Bon treasure revealer Khro-tshang ’Brug-lha. Our author picks out the Twelve Knowledgeable Ones as being “the most ancient classification of the different kinds of Bön practiced ... in Tibet” (p. 48) and “no doubt ... represent the most ancient of the diverse Bön traditions that existed in Tibet” (p. 50), but these assertions are unfortunately not accompanied by arguments to convince us that the classification is any older than the four Causal Vehicles. Evidently this is supposed to be self-evident.
[9]I use the terms ‘Kanjur’ and ‘Tanjur’ (borrowings into English from Tibetan via Mongolian) only for convenience. Bon literature actually knows these collections as the ‘Word’ (bka’) and ‘Word Relying’ (bka’-brten), respectively.
[10]The name Dpyad-bu Khri-shes means ‘he who knows ten thousand diagnostic techniques’ (note that among the Twelve Knowledgeable Ones is one named Phan-shes Sman-dpyad, ‘he who knows how to help [through?] medicinal diagnostics [or, medicine and diagnostics?]’). The main questioner in the Chos version, the Rgyud Bzhi, is called Yid-la[s]-skyes (‘born of [or in] mind [or wish]’). For a valuable historical study of some of the traditional controversies over the origins of the medical texts, see Samten Karmay, “Vairocana and the Rgyud-bzhi,” Tibetan Medicine (Dharamsala), series 12 (1989), pp. 19-31.
[11]On the latter, see Jan E. Wilson, Holiness and Purity in Mesopotamia, Verlag Butzon & Bercker Kevalaer, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1994, p. 36, where juniper smoke is used to sanctify and purify an entire city. I am not arguing for any necessary historical connections with Siberia or Mesopotamia, as it would seem that commonly recognized properties of juniper smoke (as an aromatic, and possibly even a mild psychotropic) could account for the somewhat similar cultural usages. On the Tibetan practice we are also fortunate to have a few illuminating articles by Samten Karmay. Brief, easy to read and most accessible is “Mountain Cults and National Identity in Tibet,” contained in: Robert Barnett and Shirin Akiner, eds., Resistance and Reform in Tibet, Hurst & Company, London, 1994, pp. 112-120; and see also Nalanda Translation Committee, trs., “A Smoke Purification Song,” contained in: Donald Lopez, ed., Religions of Tibet in Practice, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996, pp. 401-405. Those able to read French are especially advised to read Karmay’s “Les dieux des terroirs et les genévriers: un rituel tibétain de purification,” Journal Asiatique, vol. 283, no. 1 (1995), pp. 161-207. As one evidence for the pan-Tibetan nature of the ritual, one may point to the hundreds of brief ritual manuals for bsang scattered in the collected works of authors of various regions and sects. A small ritual handbook recently published under the title Bsang-mchod Bkra-shis ’Khyil-ba, Mtsho-sngon Mi-rigs Dpe-skrun-khang, Xining, 1993, includes bsang works attributed to Padmasambhava together with compositions by the Great Fifth Dalai Lama and a few other Dge-lugs-pa and Rnying-ma-pa authors. Still other published collections link the practice to each of the other Tibetan sects without exception.
[12]A ritual text on the Broad Antlered Deer (together with a group of related texts), exists in the Berthold Laufer Collection at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. For still another study of this ritual, see Anne-Marie Blondeau and Samten Karmay, “Le cerf a la vaste ramure: en guise d’introduction,” contained in: A.-M. Blondeau and K. Schipper, eds., Essais sur le rituel, Volume I (Colloque du centenaire de la section des sciences religieuses de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études), Peeters, Louvain-Paris, 1988, pp. 119-146 (the text they use is exactly the same one studied and translated in our book). Had S. Mumford (in the work to be cited shortly) been aware of the Tibetological studies of the ‘rites of the deer’, he surely would have found it useful for some of his arguments. The Broad Antlered Stag is listed among the texts revealed by Gnyen-ston Shes-rab-rdo-rje (also called Gnyan-’theng Re-ngan), a limping shepherd who happened to stumble across a cave full of ancient books in Upper Nyang (see Shar-rdza, op.cit., p. 279). While their recovery occurred in 1067, the texts did not become well known until two generations later.
[13]For a description of the full gory details, based on the same late biographical source, see the late Dung-dkar Rinpoche’s The Merging of Religious and Secular Rule in Tibet, Foreign Language Press, Beijing, 1991, p. 3. For an English translation, see Nam-mkha’i snying-po, Mother of Knowledge: The Enlightenment of Ye-shes mTsho-rgyal, tr. by Tarthang Tulku, ed. by Jane Wilhelms, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley, 1983, pp. 125-126. Compare the discussion of this and similar passages in Blondeau and Karmay, op. cit., pp. 134-136, where we may see that the story has undergone a great deal of elaboration over the centuries. For one version that is late, but not as late, and that is available in English, see the mid-fourteenth century text as translated in Yeshe Tsogyal (i.e., Ye-shes-mtsho-rgyal), The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, tr. by K. Douglas and G. Bays, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley, 1978, vol. 2, p. 489. Here there are three, not thousands, of sacrificial animals. The sacrifice episode is simply missing from the corresponding narrative section of the Zangs-gling-ma biography, revealed in circa 1200 (see the English translation in Yeshe Tsogyal [i.e., Ye-shes-mtsho-rgyal], The Lotus-Born: The Life Story of Padmasambhava, revealed by Nyang Ral Nyima Öser [Nyang-ral Nyi-ma-’od-zer], tr. by Erik Pema Kunsang, Shambhala, Boston, 1993). Neither is it found as such in the still earlier Statements of Sba (Sba-bzhed), although there is reference to funerary horse sacrifices done by Bon-pos (this is, it ought to be noted, in the context of the controversial and historically highly problematic Bon-Chos debate; see the PRC edition, p. 34 [the identity of the animals differs in the parallel texts, but none mention deer]). Later in the same work is an unconnected story of the live capture of a stag that was put on public display during the festivities immediately following the consecration of Bsam-yas (p. 56). The stag evidently survived the experience. Although we could wish for more Old Tibetan documentary or archaeological evidence, there is one Dunhuang passage (cited in Blondeau and Karmay, op.cit., p. 142), which explicitly links the deer with a ransoming ritual, as well as, evidently, since this point is not as clear as one might wish, the tree and the bird.
[14]This being part of the commentarial material composed by Rdo-rje-shes-rab in about the 1260’s, it is not by the ’Bri-gung Bka’-brgyud-pa founder ’Jig-rten-mgon-po (1143-1217) as stated on p. 38 and elsewhere in the book.
[15]The author shifts from one viewpoint to another on the subject of the antiquity of the Vehicles of Result, expressing strong doubts in the beginning of the book (pp. xvii-xviii), while affirming the antiquity of at least two streams of the mantric and Great Completion Vehicles at the end (from which we could draw the conclusion that he disagrees with the view so universal to followers of Bon that their Mdo-sde, ’Bum-sde, and ’Dul-ba scriptures share the same ancient historical scenarios which our author accepts as somehow valid for some of the rest of Bon scriptures; see p. 218). Here, as in his other books, the author strongly promotes the idea that Bon is solidly rooted in Tibetan (or what for him amounts to the same thing in ancient times, Zhang-zhung) soil, dismissing the ‘universalism’ and extra-Tibetan origins of Bon and its founder (to my knowledge no Bon text ever says Lord Shenrab was a native of Zhang-zhung, although they could if they wished say that he was from Innermost Zhang-zhung [Zhang-zhung Phug, equivalent to ’Ol-mo-lung-ring in Stag-gzig], which they place in the west far beyond the frontiers of Zhang-zhung [equivalent to ‘Gateway Zhang-zhung’, or Zhang-zhung Sgo] and western Tibet; cf. pp. xii, xvi, 23). In effect our author denies that Bon has any right to be Buddhist, and what looks like Buddhism we ought to ignore as not part of Bon’s true essence. Other points of view are clearly conceivable. The Bon ambivalence about Indian Buddhism — on the one hand a late and particularly Indian manifestation of the international Bon movement taught by Íâkyamuni, while on the other hand some or most Indian Buddhists (and their promoters in Tibet) were led astray by the heritage of a false teacher named Nga-min-chos-po who was teaching something he called Chos (‘Dharma’) even before Śâkyamuni — has certain interesting structural resemblances with a number of Hindu and Euro-American ideas about an originally ‘pure’ Buddhism (unknown to Buddhists, but known to the holders of the ideas) which was later betrayed in some way. In our book we also have an account of Bon in which the original purity of its shamanic Vehicles was later contaminated, only in this case by Buddhism itself. All this might provoke perplexing reflections on how inclusivity (or accommodating attitudes) might be placed in the service of exclusivity, in an ego-logical protective process of selective incorporation. For a study of the Bon views on Indian Buddhism, see Per Kværne, Śâkyamuni in the Bon Religion, Temenos, vol. 25, 1989, pp. 33-40. For samples of some recent Hindu and Euro-American/British views incorporating an originally pure Buddhism, see K. Klostermaier, Buddhism Re-evaluated by Prominent 20th Century Hindus, Journal of Dharma, vol. 20, no. 2, 1995, pp. 190-206, and Philip Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988.