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88-495: Bon or Bön ( Tibetan : བོན་ , Wylie : bon , ZYPY : Pön , Lhasa dialect : [pʰø̃̀] ), also known as Yungdrung Bon ( Tibetan : གཡུང་དྲུང་བོན་ , Wylie : gyung drung bon , ZYPY : Yungchung Pön , lit.   ' eternal Bon ' ), is the indigenous Tibetan religion which shares many similarities and influences with Tibetan Buddhism . It initially developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries but retains elements from earlier Tibetan religious traditions . Bon

176-534: A "court religion" instituted "around 100 BCE" by King Pudegungyal, ninth king of the Yarlung dynasty , "perhaps derived from Iranian models", mixed with existing native traditions. It was focused on "the support of the divine legitimacy of an organized state", still relatively new in Tibet. Prominent features were "great sacrificial rituals", especially around royal coronations and burials, and "oracular rites derived from

264-542: A class of priests known as kushen ( sku gshen , “Priests of the Body”, i.e., the king's body). This religion was eventually marginalised with the coming of Buddhism and Buddhists wrote critiques and polemics of this religion, some of which survive in manuscripts found in Dunhuang (which refer to these practices as "Bon"). Likewise, Powers notes that early historical evidence indicates that the term "bon" originally referred to

352-470: A form of Buddhism , albeit a heterodox kind. Similarly, John Powers writes that "historical evidence indicates that Bön only developed as a self-conscious religious system under the influence of Buddhism". Followers of Bon, known as "Bonpos" (Wylie: bon po ), believe that the religion originated in a kingdom called Zhangzhung , located around Mount Kailash in the Himalayas . Bonpos hold that Bon

440-727: A heterodox form of Buddhism, transmitted separately from the two transmissions from India to Tibet that formed the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. With the translation of Bonpo histories into Western languages as well as increased engagement between Bonpos and Western scholars, a shift took place in Bon studies towards engaging more thoroughly Bonpos' own histories and self-identification, recognising Bon as an independent religious tradition worthy of academic study. The term Bon has been used to refer to several different phenomena. Drawing from Buddhist sources, early Western commentators on Bon used

528-635: A number of Buddhist histories. The Rimé movement within Tibetan Buddhism encouraged more ecumenical attitudes between Bonpos and Buddhists. Western scholars began to take Bon seriously as a religious tradition worthy of study in the 1960s, in large part inspired by the work of English scholar David Snellgrove . Following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, Bonpo scholars began to arrive in Europe and North America , encouraging interest in Bon in

616-502: A result, in all modern Tibetan dialects and in particular in the Standard Tibetan of Lhasa , there is a great divergence between current spelling, which still reflects the 9th-century spoken Tibetan, and current pronunciation. This divergence is the basis of an argument in favour of spelling reform , to write Tibetan as it is pronounced ; for example, writing Kagyu instead of Bka'-rgyud . The nomadic Amdo Tibetan and

704-403: A tradition he dates from tenth and eleventh centuries CE, the tradition which developed into the modern Bon religion. Kvaerne identifies this tradition as "an unorthodox form of Buddhism," but other scholars such as Samten G. Karmay take seriously Bonpo narratives which define Bon as a separate tradition with an origin in the land of 'Olmo Lungring. The term Yungdrung Bon (Wylie: g.yung drung bon )

792-546: A type of priest who conducted various ceremonies, including priests of the Yarlung kings. Their rituals included propitiating local spirits and guiding the dead through ceremonies to ensure a good afterlife. Their rituals may have involved animal sacrifice, making offerings with food and drink, and burying the dead with precious jewels. The most elaborate rituals involved the Tibetan kings which had special tombs made for them. Robert Thurman describes at least one type of Bon as

880-401: A vast " cosmic egg ", from which a primordial being, Belchen Kékhö, was born. Little is known about the pre-Buddhist religion of ancient Tibet and scholars of Bon disagree on its nature. Some think that Bon evolved from Zoroastrianism and others say Kashmiri Buddhism. Bon may have referred to a kind of ritual, a type of priest, or a local religion. In ancient Tibet, there seem to have been

968-431: Is a form of state religion in which an emperor or a dynasty of emperors (or rulers of another title) are worshipped as demigods or deities . " Cult " here is used to mean "worship", not in the modern pejorative sense. The cult may be one of personality in the case of a newly arisen Euhemerus figure, or one of national identity (e.g., Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh or Empire of Japan ) or supranational identity in

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1056-619: Is a more recent development in the Bon tradition, which is closely related to both Eternal Bon and the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. It is centered on the figures of Drenpa Namkha , Tsewang Rigdzin and Padmasambhava , which in this school are considered to have transmitted and written commentaries on the works of Tonpa Shenrab in around the 8th century. According to Jean Luc Achard, the New Bon movement begins in Eastern Tibet with

1144-454: Is a significant minority religion in Tibet, especially in the east, as well as in the surrounding Himalayan regions . The relationship between Bon and Tibetan Buddhism has been a subject of debate. According to the modern scholar Geoffrey Samuel , while Bon is "essentially a variant of Tibetan Buddhism" with many resemblances to Nyingma , it also preserves some genuinely ancient pre-Buddhist elements. David Snellgrove likewise sees Bon as

1232-455: Is also believed to have led numerous campaigns against evil forces. Tonpa Shenrab is held to have visited the kingdom of Zhangzhung (an area in western Tibet around Mount Kailash ), where he found a people whose practice involved spiritual appeasement with animal sacrifice . He taught them to substitute offerings with symbolic animal forms made from barley flour. He only taught according to the student's capability and thus he taught these people

1320-572: Is as follows: Dmitry Ermakov also adds an extra category which he terms "mixed Bon" and which he defines as: ...   a blend of these three types of Bön in different proportions, often with the addition of elements from other religions such as Hinduism, Taoism, Himalayan Tribal religions, Native Siberian belief systems etc. Mixed Bön would include Secular Bön or the civil religion of the Himalayan borderlands studied by Charles Ramble in his The Navel of Demoness, as well as Buryatian Bѳ Murgel, from

1408-533: Is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script . This writing system is used across the Himalayas and Tibet . The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India , Nepal , Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Lepcha , Marchen and

1496-666: Is designed as a simple means for inputting Dzongkha text on computers. This keyboard layout was standardized by the Dzongkha Development Commission (DDC) and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Royal Government of Bhutan in 2000. It was updated in 2009 to accommodate additional characters added to the Unicode & ISO 10646 standards since the initial version. Since

1584-436: Is evidence of anti-Bon polemics. Some sources claim that a debate between Bonpos and Buddhists was held, and that a Tibetan king ruled Buddhism the winner, banishing Bon priests to border regions. However, Gorvine also mentions that in some cases, Bon priests and Buddhist monks would perform rituals together, and thus there was also some collaboration during the initial period of Buddhist dissemination in Tibet. Bon sources place

1672-448: Is good and virtuous. He created the sun and moon, and taught humans religion. These two forces remain in the world in an ongoing struggle of good and evil which is also fought in the heart of every person. Powers also writes that according to Bon scriptures, in the beginning, there was only emptiness , which is not a blank void but a pure potentiality. This produced five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and space) which came together into

1760-633: Is in the middle of the consonant and vowel, it is added as a subscript. On the other hand, when the ར /ra/ comes before the consonant and vowel, it is added as a superscript. ར /ra/ actually changes form when it is above most other consonants, thus རྐ rka. However, an exception to this is the cluster རྙ /ɲa/. Similarly, the consonants ར /ra/, and ཡ /ja/ change form when they are beneath other consonants, thus ཀྲ /ʈ ~ ʈʂa/; ཀྱ /ca/. Besides being written as subscripts and superscripts, some consonants can also be placed in prescript, postscript, or post-postscript positions. For instance,

1848-662: Is one on the western outskirts of Kathmandu . Bon's leading monastery in India is the refounded Menri Monastery in Dolanji , Himachal Pradesh . Bonpos remained a stigmatised and marginalised group until 1979, when they sent representatives to Dharamshala and the 14th Dalai Lama , who advised the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration to accept Bon members. Before this recognition, during

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1936-528: Is simply read as it usually is and has no effect on the pronunciation of the consonant to which it is subjoined, for example ཀ་ཝ་ཟུར་ཀྭ (IPA: /ka.wa.suː.ka/). The vowels used in the alphabet are ཨ /a/, ཨི /i/, ཨུ /u/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/. While the vowel /a/ is included in each consonant, the other vowels are indicated by marks; thus ཀ /ka/, ཀི /ki/, ཀུ /ku/, ཀེ /ke/, ཀོ /ko/. The vowels ཨི /i/, ཨེ /e/, and ཨོ /o/ are placed above consonants as diacritics, while

2024-560: Is solely for the consonants ད /tʰa/ and ས /sa/. The head ( མགོ in Tibetan, Wylie: mgo ) letter, or superscript, position above a radical is reserved for the consonants ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ས /sa/. The subscript position under a radical can only be occupied by the consonants ཡ /ja/, ར /ra/, ལ /la/, and ཝ /wa/. In this position they are described as བཏགས (Wylie: btags , IPA: /taʔ/), in Tibetan meaning "hung on/affixed/appended", for example བ་ཡ་བཏགས་བྱ (IPA: /pʰa.ja.taʔ.t͡ʃʰa/), except for ཝ , which

2112-433: Is sometimes used to describe this tradition. "Yungdrung" refers to the left-facing swastika , a symbol which occupies in Bon a similar place as the vajra (Wylie: rdo rje ) in Tibetan Buddhism, symbolising indestructibility and eternity. Yungdrung Bon is a universal religion , although it is mainly limited to Tibetans, with some non-Tibetan converts. There is also a kind of local village priests which are common throughout

2200-661: Is the Dzogchen master and translator Vairotsana , who according to some sources also translated Bon texts into Tibetan and also hid some Bon termas before leaving Tibet. While Yungdrung Bon and Nyingma originated in similar circles of pre-Sarma era ritual tantric practitioners, they adopted different approaches to legitimate their traditions. Nyingma looked back to the Tibetan Empire period, and Indian Buddhist figures like Padmasambhava. Bonpos meanwhile looked further back, to Tibet's pre-Buddhist heritage, to another Buddha who

2288-593: The proskynesis and adopted the adjective sacrum for all things pertaining to the imperial person. The deification of emperors was gradually abandoned after the Emperor Constantine I started supporting Christianity . However, the concept of the imperial person as "sacred" carried over, in a Christianized form, into the Byzantine Empire . In ancient Japan , it was customary for every clan to claim descendance from gods ( ujigami ) and

2376-607: The Imperial Family tended to define their ancestor as the dominant or most important kami of the time. Later in history, this was considered common practice by noble families, and the head members of the family, including that of the Imperial Family, were not seen to be divine. Rather than establish sovereignty by the manner of claimed godhood over the nation however, the Emperor and the Imperial Family stood as

2464-470: The King was a spiritual and patrician figure and ranked higher than the flamines (priestly order), while later on in history only a shadow of the primordial condition was left with the sacrificial rex sacrorum linked closely to the plebeian orders. King Numitor corresponds to the regal-sacred principle in early Roman history. Romulus , the legendary founder of Rome , was heroized into Quirinus ,

2552-898: The Latin script . Multiple Romanization and transliteration systems have been created in recent years, but do not fully represent the true phonetic sound. While the Wylie transliteration system is widely used to Romanize Standard Tibetan , others include the Library of Congress system and the IPA-based transliteration (Jacques 2012). Below is a table with Tibetan letters and different Romanization and transliteration system for each letter, listed below systems are: Wylie transliteration (W), Tibetan pinyin (TP), Dzongkha phonetic (DP), ALA-LC Romanization (A) and THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription (THL). The first version of Microsoft Windows to support

2640-527: The Pabonka Hermitage . This occurred c.  620 , towards the beginning of the king's reign. There were 21 Sutra texts held by the King which were afterward translated. In the first half of the 7th century, the Tibetan script was used for the codification of these sacred Buddhist texts, for written civil laws, and for a Tibetan Constitution. A contemporary academic suggests that the script

2728-524: The Pumi people are both believed to have originated from Bon. As noted by Dmitry Ermakov, "the word Bön is used to denote many diverse religious and cultural traditions." Bon sources acknowledge this and Bon authors like Shardza Rinpoche (1859–1935), Pelden Tsultrim (1902–1973) and Lopön Tenzin Namdak use a classification of three types of "Bon". Modern scholars also sometimes rely on this classification, which

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2816-656: The Roman Empire developed, the Imperial cult gradually developed more formally and constituted the worship of the Roman Emperor as a god. This practice began at the start of the Empire under Augustus , and became a prominent element of Roman religion . The cult spread over the whole Empire within a few decades, more strongly in the east than in the west. Emperor Diocletian further reinforced it when he demanded

2904-476: The Sipe D zop ’ug ) in which a creator deity, Trigyel Kugpa, also known as Shenlha Okar , creates two eggs, a dark egg and a light egg. According to Bon scriptures, in the beginning, these two forces, light and dark, created two persons. The black man, called Nyelwa Nakpo (“Black Suffering”), created the stars and all the demons, and is responsible for evil things like droughts. The white man, Öserden (“Radiant One”),

2992-527: The deity Horus ; thereby derived by being the son of Osiris , the afterlife deity, and Isis , goddess of marriage. The Ptolemaic dynasty based its own legitimacy in the eyes of its Greek subjects on their association with, and incorporation into, the imperial cult of Alexander the Great . In Imperial China , the Emperor was considered the Son of Heaven . The scion and representative of heaven on earth, he

3080-455: The monarch (king) as the living god, the incarnation of the supreme god, often attributed to Shiva or Vishnu , on Earth. The concept is closely related to Indian concept of Chakravartin (wheel turning monarch). In politics, it is viewed as the divine justification of a king's rule. The concept gained its elaborate manifestations in ancient Java and Cambodia , where monuments such as Prambanan and Angkor Wat were erected to celebrate

3168-434: The pre-dynastic era before 618 CE; a classical Bon tradition (also called Yungdrung Bon – Wylie : g.yung drung bon ) which emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries; and "New Bon" or Bon Sar ( Wylie : bon gsar ), a late syncretic movement dating back to the 14th century and active in eastern Tibet. Tibetan Buddhist scholarship tends to cast Bon in a negative, adversarial light, with derogatory stories about Bon appearing in

3256-531: The "undefeated god", with whom the later emperors identified and of whom they considered themselves incarnations. Varro spoke of the initiatory mystery and power of Roman regality ( adytum et initia regis ), inaccessible to the exoteric communality. In Plutarch 's Phyrro , 19.5, the Greek ambassador declared amid the Roman Senate he felt instead like being in the midst of "a whole assembly of Kings". As

3344-460: The Bon religion, but in all Tibetan sciences. More than three hundred Bon monasteries had been established in Tibet before Chinese occupation. Of these, Menri Monastery and Shurishing Yungdrung Dungdrakling Monastery were the two principal monastic universities for the study and practice of Bon. In 2019, scholars estimate that there were 400,000 Bon followers in the Tibetan plateau . When Tibet

3432-636: The Fifth Dalai Lama, Bon was also officially recognised as a Tibetan religion. Bon suffered extensively during the Dzungar invasion of Tibet in 1717, when many Nyingmapas and Bonpos were executed. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bon tradition (both New Bon and Eternal Bon lineages) flourished in Eastern Tibet, led by charismatic Bonpo lamas like bDe ch en gling pa, d Bal gter sTag s lag can (bsTan 'dzin dbang rgyal), gSang sngags gling pa, and Shardza Rinpoche. Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen (1859–1933)

3520-677: The Himalayas that are called "bon", "lhabon" or "aya" (and bombo in Nepal). These are not part of the Bon religion proper, but are lay ritual specialists, often on a part time basis. Samuel states that it is unclear if these "bon" priests go back to the ancient period or if the term developed after Yungdrung Bon. Furthermore, the Dongba (东巴) practices of the Nakhi people and the Hangui (韩规) religion of

3608-519: The Indian subcontinent state that the classical orthography should not be altered even when used for lay purposes. This became an obstacle for many modern Tibetic languages wishing to modernize or to introduce a written tradition. Amdo Tibetan was one of a few examples where Buddhist practitioners initiated a spelling reform. A spelling reform of the Ladakhi language was controversial in part because it

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3696-732: The Tibetan keyboard layout is MS Windows Vista . The layout has been available in Linux since September 2007. In Ubuntu 12.04, one can install Tibetan language support through Dash / Language Support / Install/Remove Languages, the input method can be turned on from Dash / Keyboard Layout, adding Tibetan keyboard layout. The layout applies the similar layout as in Microsoft Windows. Mac OS -X introduced Tibetan Unicode support with OS-X version 10.5 and later, now with three different keyboard layouts available: Tibetan-Wylie, Tibetan QWERTY and Tibetan-Otani. The Dzongkha keyboard layout scheme

3784-410: The Tibetan script is that the consonants can be written either as radicals or they can be written in other forms, such as subscript and superscript forming consonant clusters . To understand how this works, one can look at the radical ཀ /ka/ and see what happens when it becomes ཀྲ /kra/ or རྐ /rka/ (pronounced /ka/). In both cases, the symbol for ཀ /ka/ is used, but when the ར /ra/

3872-401: The Tibetan script it is /a/. The letter ཨ is also the base for dependent vowel marks. Although some Tibetan dialects are tonal , the language had no tone at the time of the script's invention, and there are no dedicated symbols for tone. However, since tones developed from segmental features, they can usually be correctly predicted by the archaic spelling of Tibetan words. One aspect of

3960-591: The West . Today, a proportion of Tibetans – both in Tibet and in the Tibetan diaspora – practise Bon, and there are Bonpo centers in cities around the world. Early Western studies of Bon relied heavily on Buddhist sources, and used the word to refer to the pre-Buddhist religion over which it was thought Buddhism triumphed. Helmut Hoffmann's 1950 study of Bon characterised this religion as "animism" and "shamanism"; these characterisations have been controversial. Hoffmann contrasted this animistic-shamanistic folk religion with

4048-509: The arrangement of keys essentially follows the usual order of the Dzongkha and Tibetan alphabet, the layout can be quickly learned by anyone familiar with this alphabet. Subjoined (combining) consonants are entered using the Shift key. The Dzongkha (dz) keyboard layout is included in Microsoft Windows, Android, and most distributions of Linux as part of XFree86 . Tibetan was originally one of

4136-407: The basic Tibetan alphabet to represent different sounds. In addition to the use of supplementary graphemes, the rules for constructing consonant clusters are amended, allowing any character to occupy the superscript or subscript position, negating the need for the prescript and postscript positions. Romanization and transliteration of the Tibetan script is the representation of the Tibetan script in

4224-663: The blame of the decline of Bon on two persecutions by two Tibetan kings, Drigum Tsenpo and the Buddhist King Tri Songdetsen (r. 740–797). They also state that at this time, Bon terma texts were concealed all over Tibet. Bon sources generally see the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet and the subsequent period of Buddhist religious dominance as a catastrophe for the true doctrine of Bon. They see this as having been caused by demonic forces. However, other more conciliatory sources also state that Tonpa Shenrab and Sakyamuni were cousins and that their teachings are essentially

4312-769: The bond between the heavens and the Earth by claims of descending from the Goddess Amaterasu , instead dealing in affairs related with the gods than any major secular political event, with few cases scattered about history. It was not until the Meiji period and the establishment of the Empire , that the Emperor began to be venerated along with a growing sense of nationalism . In the 16th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Japanese nationalist philosophers paid special attention to

4400-415: The c. 620 date of development of the original Tibetan script. Three orthographic standardisations were developed. The most important, an official orthography aimed to facilitate the translation of Buddhist scriptures emerged during the early 9th century. Standard orthography has not been altered since then, while the spoken language has changed by, for example, losing complex consonant clusters . As

4488-432: The case of a multinational state (e.g., Imperial China , Roman Empire ). A divine king is a monarch who is held in a special religious significance by his subjects, and serves as both head of state and a deity or head religious figure. This system of government combines theocracy with an absolute monarchy . The Ancient Egyptian pharaohs were, throughout ancient Egyptian history, believed to be incarnations of

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4576-418: The consonants ག /kʰa/, ད /tʰa/, བ /pʰa/, མ /ma/ and འ /a/ can be used in the prescript position to the left of other radicals, while the position after a radical (the postscript position), can be held by the ten consonants ག /kʰa/, ན /na/, བ /pʰa/, ད /tʰa/, མ /ma/, འ /a/, ར /ra/, ང /ŋa/, ས /sa/, and ལ /la/. The third position, the post-postscript position

4664-699: The emperor and believed devotion to him and other political causes that furthered the Japanese state was "the greatest virtue". However, in the 14th century, most religious figures and philosophers in Japan thought that excessive veneration of the state and the emperor would consign one to hell. Devaraja is the Hindu - Buddhist cult of deified royalty in Southeast Asia . It is simply described as Southeast Asian concept of divine king . The concept viewed

4752-545: The flourishing of New Bon in Eastern Tibet. Some Tibetan tertons like Dorje Lingpa were known to have revealed New Bon termas as well as Nyingma termas. Lobsang Yeshe (1663–1737), recognised as the 5th Panchen Lama by the 5th Dalai Lama (1617–1682), was a member of the Dru family, an important Bon family. Samten Karmay sees this choice as a gesture of reconciliation with Bon by the Fifth Dalai Lama (who had previously converted some Bon monasteries to Gelug ones by force). Under

4840-649: The folk religion, especially magical possessions and healings that required the priests to exhibit shamanic powers". The king was symbolised by the mountain and the priest/shaman by the sky. The religion was "somewhere between the previous "primitive animism", and the much changed later types of Bon. According to David Snellgrove, the claim that Bon came from the West into Tibet is possible, since Buddhism had already been introduced to other areas surrounding Tibet (in Central Asia ) before its introduction into Tibet. As Powers writes, "since much of Central Asia at one time

4928-477: The full backing of Indian Buddhist scholarship. Both Nyingmapas and Bonpos used the concept of the terma to develop and expand their traditions in competition with the Sarma schools and also to defend their school as being grounded in an authentic ancient tradition. Thus, Bonpo tertons (treasure finders) like Shenchen Luga and Meuton Gongdzad Ritrod Chenpo revealed important Bon termas. An interesting figure of this era

5016-451: The human realm with the purpose of teaching and liberating beings from the cycle of rebirth. He attained Buddhahood several hundred years before Sakyamuni Buddha , in a country west of Tibet, called Olmo Lungring or Tazig (Tasi), which is difficult to identify and acts as a semi-mythical holy land in Bon (like Shambala ). Various dates are given for his birth date, one of which corresponds to 1917 BCE. Some Bon texts also state that Sakyamuni

5104-514: The king's divine rule on earth. In the Mataram kingdom, it was customary to erect a candi (temple) to honor the soul of a deceased king. The image inside the garbhagriha (innermost sanctum) of the temple often portrayed the king as a god, since the soul was thought to be united with the god referred to, in svargaloka (heaven). It is suggested that the cult was the fusion of Hinduism with native Austronesian ancestor worship . In Java,

5192-432: The lower vehicles to prepare them for the study of sutra , tantra and Dzogchen in later lives. It is only later in life that he became a celibate ascetic and it is during this time that he defeated his main enemy, the prince of the demons. After Tonpa Shenrab's paranirvana , his works were preserved in the language of Zhangzhung by ancient Bon siddhas. Most of these teachings were said to have been lost in Tibet after

5280-402: The multilingual ʼPhags-pa script , and is also closely related to Meitei . According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was developed during the reign of King Songtsen Gampo by his minister Thonmi Sambhota , who was sent to India with 16 other students to study Buddhism along with Sanskrit and written languages. They developed the Tibetan script from the Gupta script while at

5368-510: The now traditional approach of practice in most Bon po monasteries." His tradition emphasises the importance of combining the study of sutra, tantra and Dzogchen. The most important Bon monastery is Menri monastery , which was built in 1405 in Tsang . Bon monks, like their Buddhist counterparts, study scripture, train in philosophical debate and perform rituals. However, Bon also has a strong tradition of lay yogis. "New Bon" ( bonsar , or sarma Bon)

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5456-450: The organised priesthood of Bonpos which developed later, Shaivism , Buddhist tantras . Hoffman also argued that Gnosticism from the West influenced the systematised Bön religion. Hoffmann's study was foundational for Western understandings of Bon, but was challenged by a later generation of scholars influenced by David Snellgrove, who collaborated with Bonpo masters and translated Bonpo canonical texts. These scholars tended to view Bon as

5544-495: The origins of modern Yungdrung Bon have much in common with that of the Nyingma school. Samuel traces both traditions to groups of "hereditary ritual practitioners" in Tibet which drew on Buddhist Tantra and "elements of earlier court and village-level ritual" during the 10th and 11th centuries. These figures were threatened by the arrival of new Buddhist traditions from India which had greater prestige, new ritual repertoires and

5632-567: The orthodox Manri tradition of Eternal Bon, while also holding New Bon terma lineages. Shardza Rinpoche is also known to have had connections with the non-sectarian Buddhist lamas of the Rime movement and to have taught both Buddhists and Bonpos. Shardza Rinpoche had many disciples, including his nephew Lodro Gyatso (1915–1954) who led the lineage and Shardza's hermitage and college, after Shardza's passing. His disciple Kagya Khyungtrul Jigmey Namkha trained many practitioners to be learned in not only

5720-420: The persecutions against Bon, such as during the time of Trisong Detsen . Bon histories hold that some of Tonpa Shenrab's teachings were hidden away as termas and later re-discovered by Bon treasure revealers ( tertons ), the most important of which is Shenchen Luga (c. early 11th century). In the fourteenth century, Loden Nyingpo revealed a terma known as The Brilliance ( Wylie : gzi brjid ), which contained

5808-482: The previous twenty years, the Bon community had received none of the financial support which was channelled through the Dalai Lama's office and were often neglected and treated dismissively in the Tibetan refugee community. Tibetan script The Tibetan script has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali , Nepali and Old Turkic . The printed form

5896-460: The same. The most influential historical figure of this period is the Bon lama Drenpa Namkha . Buddhist sources mention this figure as well and there is little doubt he was a real historical figure. He is known for having ordained himself into Bon during a time when the religion was in decline and for having hidden away many Bon termas. Bon tradition holds that he was the father of another important figure, Tsewang Rigzin and some sources also claim he

5984-755: The scripts in the first version of the Unicode Standard in 1991, in the Unicode block U+1000–U+104F. However, in 1993, in version 1.1, it was removed (the code points it took up would later be used for the Burmese script in version 3.0). The Tibetan script was re-added in July, 1996 with the release of version 2.0. The Unicode block for Tibetan is U+0F00–U+0FFF. It includes letters, digits and various punctuation marks and special symbols used in religious texts: Imperial cult An imperial cult

6072-474: The sense that they do not see their revelations as being ultimately different from Yungdrung Bon. However, some followers of more orthodox Yundrung Bon lineages, like the Manri tradition, saw these termas as being influenced by Buddhism. Later New Bon figures like Shardza Rinpoche (1859–1934) responded to these critiques (see his Treasury of Good Sayings , legs bshad mdzod ). The work of these New Bon figures led to

6160-538: The shores of Lake Baikal, the religion of the Nakhi in Yunnan, and so on. From the traditional point of view of the Bon religion, Bon was the original religion of Tibet and Zhangzhung which was taught there by various Buddhas, including Tonpa Shenrab (whose name means “Supreme Holy Man”). Tonpa Shenrab is believed to have received the teaching from the transcendent deity Shenlha Okar in a pure realm before being reborn in

6248-472: The story of Tonpa Shenrab. He was not the first Bonpo tertön , but his terma became one of the definitive scriptures of Bon. Bon histories also discuss the lives of other important religious figures, such as the Zhangzhung Dzogchen master Tapihritsa . Bon myth also includes other elements which are more obviously pre-Buddhist. According to Samuel, Bonpo texts include a creation narrative (in

6336-499: The term for the pre-Buddhist religious practices of Tibet. These include folk religious practices, cults surrounding royalty , and divination practices. However, scholars have debated whether the term Bon should be used for all of these practices, and what their relationship is to the modern Bon religion. In an influential article, R. A. Stein used the term "the nameless religion" to refer to folk religious practices, distinguishing them from Bon. Per Kvaerne uses Bon solely to refer to

6424-695: The thirty-fourth Abbot of Menri Monastery (destroyed in the Cultural Revolution , but now rebuilt), who now presides over Pal Shen-ten Menri Ling in Dolanji in Himachal Pradesh , India. The 33rd lineage holder of Menri Monastery , Menri Trizin Lungtog Tenpei Nyima and Lopön Tenzin Namdak are important current lineage holders of Bon. A number of Bon establishments also exist in Nepal ; Triten Norbutse Bonpo Monastery

6512-512: The vowel ཨུ /u/ is placed underneath consonants. Old Tibetan included a reversed form of the mark for /i/, the gigu 'verso', of uncertain meaning. There is no distinction between long and short vowels in written Tibetan, except in loanwords , especially transcribed from the Sanskrit . The Tibetan alphabet, when used to write other languages such as Balti , Chinese and Sanskrit , often has additional and/or modified graphemes taken from

6600-582: The western dialects of the Ladakhi language , as well as the Balti language , come very close to the Old Tibetan spellings. Despite that, the grammar of these dialectical varieties has considerably changed. To write the modern varieties according to the orthography and grammar of Classical Tibetan would be similar to writing Italian according to Latin orthography, or to writing Hindi according to Sanskrit orthogrophy. However, modern Buddhist practitioners in

6688-535: The works of Tulku Loden Nyingpo (1360–1385), a terton who discovered the Zibji ( gzi brjid ), a famous Tonpa Shenrab biography. His reincarnation, Techen Mishik Dorje is also known for his terma revelations. The movement continued to develop, with new Bon terma texts being revealed well into the 18th century by influential tertons like Tulku Sangye Lingpa (b. 1705) and the first Kundrol Drakpa (b. 1700). New Bon figures do not consider their revelations to be truly "new", in

6776-419: Was Buddhist , it is very plausible that a form of Buddhism could have been transmitted to western Tibet prior to the arrival of Buddhist missionaries in the central provinces. Once established, it might then have absorbed elements of the local folk religion, eventually developing into a distinctive system incorporating features of Central Asian Buddhism and Tibetan folk religion." According to Powers, ancient Bon

6864-563: Was a later manifestation of Tonpa Shenrab. Tonpa Shenrab is said to have been born to the Tazig royal family and to have eventually become the king of the realm. He is said to be the main Buddha of our era. He had numerous wives and children, constructed numerous temples and performed many rituals in order to spread Bon. Like Padmasambhava, he is also held to have defeated and subjugated many demons through his magical feats, and like King Gesar , he

6952-601: Was a particularly important Bon master of this era, whose collected writings comprise up to eighteen volumes (or sometimes twenty). According to William M. Gorvine, this figure is "the Bon religion's most renowned and influential luminary of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." He was associated with the orthodox Eternal Bon Manri monastery tradition as well as with New Bon figures like the 5th and 6th Kun grol incarnations, gSang sngags gling pa (b. 1864) and bDe chen gling pa (1833–1893) as well as with dBal bon sTag lag ca n, bsTan ' d zin dbang rgyal (b. 1832). These figures maintained

7040-711: Was also during this era of Bonpo renewal that the Bon Kanjur and Tenjur were compiled. Just like all forms of Tibetan Buddhism, Yungdrung Bon eventually developed a monastic tradition, with celibate monks living in various monasteries. Bon monks are called trangsong , a term that translates the Sanskrit rishi (seer, or sage). A key figure in the establishment of Bon monasticism was Nyamme Sherab Gyaltsen (mNyam med Shes rab rgyal mtshan, c. 1356–1415). According to Jean Luc Achard, "his insistence on Madhyamaka , logic, gradual path ( lamrim ) and philosophical studies has modeled

7128-471: Was brought first to Zhangzhung, and then to Tibet. Bonpos identify the Buddha Shenrab Miwo (Wylie: gshen rab mi bo ) as Bon's founder, although no available sources establish this figure's historicity. Western scholars have posited several origins for Bon, and have used the term "Bon" in many ways. A distinction is sometimes made between an ancient Bon ( Wylie : bon rnying ), dating back to

7216-399: Was closely associated with the royal cult of the kings during the early Tibetan Empire period and they performed "ceremonies to ensure the well-being of the country, guard against evil, protect the king, and enlist the help of spirits in Tibet's military ventures." As Buddhism began to become a more important part of Tibet's religious life, ancient Bon and Buddhism came into conflict and there

7304-467: Was first initiated by Christian missionaries. In the Tibetan script, the syllables are written from left to right. Syllables are separated by a tsek (་); since many Tibetan words are monosyllabic, this mark often functions almost as a space. Spaces are not used to divide words. The Tibetan alphabet has thirty basic letters, sometimes known as "radicals", for consonants. As in other Indic scripts , each consonant letter assumes an inherent vowel ; in

7392-428: Was instead developed in the second half of the 11th century. New research and writings also suggest that there were one or more Tibetan scripts in use prior to the introduction of the script by Songtsen Gampo and Thonmi Sambhota . The incomplete Dunhuang manuscripts are their key evidence for their hypothesis, while the few discovered and recorded Old Tibetan Annals manuscripts date from 650 and therefore post-date

7480-580: Was invaded by the People's Republic of China , there were approximately 300 Bon monasteries in Tibet and the rest of western China . Bon suffered the same fate as Tibetan Buddhism did during the Chinese Cultural revolution , though their monasteries were allowed to rebuild after 1980. The present spiritual head of the Bon is Menri Trizin Rinpoché , successor of Lungtok Tenpai Nyima (1929–2017),

7568-581: Was said to have lived before Sakyamuni, as well as to other masters from the kingdom of Zhangzhung. The main Bonpo figures of the Tibetan renaissance period were tertons (treasure revealers) who are said to have discovered Bon texts that had been hidden away during the era of persecution. These figures include Shenchen Luga (gShen chen Klu dga'), Khutsa Dawo (Khu tsha zla 'od, b. 1024), Gyermi Nyi O (Gyer mi nyi 'od), and Zhoton Ngodrup (bZhod ston d Ngos grub, c. 12th century). Most of these figures were also laymen. It

7656-545: Was the father of Padmasambhava , which is unlikely as the great majority of sources say Padmasambhava was born in Swat, Pakistan . A great cult developed around Drenpa Namkha and there is a vast literature about this figure. Yungdrung Bon (Eternal Bon) is a living tradition that developed in Tibet in the 10th and 11th centuries during the later dissemination of Buddhism (sometimes called the renaissance period) and contains many similarities to Tibetan Buddhism. According to Samuel,

7744-690: Was the ruler of all under heaven , the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven , his commands considered sacred edicts. A number of legendary figures preceding the proper imperial era of China also hold the honorific title of emperor, such as the Yellow Emperor and the Jade Emperor . Even before the rise of the Caesars, there are traces of a "regal spirituality" in Roman society. In earliest Roman times

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