Maintenance of the Bonpo Monastic Community in Contemporary Tibetan Society: With Special Reference to Performance of ‘Cham in Amdo Shar-khog (original) (raw)

PHOTO ESSAY: RELIGIOUS LIFE IN BON SKOR, AN A MDO TIBETAN COMMUNITY, PR CHINA

ASIAN HIGHLANDS PERSPECTIVES, 2023

Rdo rje dpal 'byor རྡོ ་རྗེ ་དཔལ་འབྱྡོ ར། (Duojihuanjiao 多吉环角). 2023. Photo Essay: Religious Life in Bon Skor, an A mdo Tibetan Community, PR China. Asian Highlands Perspectives 63:288-314. This photo essay documents religious activities and sites in Bon skor (Wangshenke) Community, Bya mdo (Shagou) Township, Mang ra (Guinan) County, Mtsho lho (Hainan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Mtsho sngon (Qinghai) Province, PR China. Key aspects of community religious life include creating Buddhist clay images for stupas, turning prayer wheels, and offering butter lamps and water at a local ma Ni Hall where annual community religious rituals are held. Changes in local religious rituals are rapid, highlighting the value of this essay and its twentythree images in recording local religious life in the first and second decades of the twenty-first century.

Worship of a Mountain Deity in the Shadow of Shar-dungri: Adaptation and Survival of the Sakya Community in Shar-khog area of Amdo

This paper highlights the propitiation of Palgon (Dpal-mgon), a local mountain deity who is worshipped by the followers of the Sakya sect in the shadow of Shar-dungri (Eastern Conch Mountain) in eastern Tibet. The Sakya community, who are a minority in this region, have incorporated the Bon tradition of La-btsas ritual into their own practices. In order to understand how and why this has happened, the paper reviews the region’s political and socio-cultural history in the wider context of the Tibetan cosmological worldview, and the pattern of conflict, assimilation and adaptation that has influenced relationships between local Bonpos and Buddhists.

AHP 35 Review: Monastic and Lay Traditions of NorthEastern Tibet

Weiner, Benno. 2014. Review: Monastic and Lay Traditions of North-Eastern Tibet. Asian Highlands Perspectives 35:237-242. Review of Yangdon Dhondup, Ulrich Pagel, and Geoffrey Samuel (eds). 2013. Monastic and Lay Traditions of North-Eastern Tibet. Leiden and Boston: Brill. viii. +244. Four Maps, fifteen illustrations, preface, index. Volume 33, Brill's Tibetan Studies Library. ISBN: 9789004255692 (hardcover, 112.50USD). ______ Monastic and Lay Traditions in North-Eastern Tibet, edited by Yangdon Dhondup, Ulrich Pagel, and Geoffrey Samuel, is the product of a 2011 workshop convened at St. Michael's College, Llandaff, Cardiff. Although the conference's focus was the tantric practitioner community of the Reb kong region (Ch. Tongren), the resultant volume expands the scope of inquiry to include surrounding areas as well as monastic communities. The editors have organized the volume's nine chapters into three sections, the first on the Dge lugs pa monastic establishment, the second on Rnying ma pa and Bon tantric communities, and finally 'Ritual and Performance in Contemporary Reb kong'. While the chapters are all informative and scholarly, providing new, important empirical detail on an under researched subject, several tend toward the descriptive. The most successful contributions, however, present their findings within larger analytical and contextual frameworks, giving their chapters explanatory weight beyond the more narrow confines of their studies.

An A mdo Smyung gnas: Yo lag Tibetan Community, Thun rin (Reb gong, Tongren) City, Mtsho sngon (Qinghai) Province, PR China

2021

Personal experiences, observations, preparations, daily activities, including recreational events, and interviews with locals, inform this study of a community A mdo Tibetan Smyung gnas held on the fourteenth to sixteenth days of the fourth (Chinese lunisolar calendar) in Yo lag (Zhiyue) Village, Mdo ba (Duowa) Town, Thun rin (Reb gong, Tongren) City, Mtsho sngon (Qinghai) Province, PR China during the mid-twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries. Cultural preservation is served by this study, which is also a model of how local rituals might be presented at a time of rapid cultural transformation. Why are many locals intimately and regularly involved in religious practice? As a local community member, I share my own experiences and interactions over the years with my maternal grandmother (Sgro b+ha, 1923-2010), sister (Bzung 'dus mtsho, b. 1985), sister-in-law (G.yang mo, b. 1985), and neighbor women. They are quietly confident that religious practice on sacred dates leads ...

Between Indigenous Religion and Religious Minorities : Bonpos' Attempts to Continue Tradition in Contemporary China

2013

This paper clarifies how the Bonpos maintain their traditions in the contemporary context through anthropological field research in Amdo Shar-khog (Shar khog). It concerns what tradition really means for them, and using the practice of Sngon 'gro as an example, we discuss that transcending their own local history and the lama-disciple relationship is one of the essential aspects of maintaining their tradition in the local context. Many scholars, including both Western Tibetologists and Tibetan scholars, have tried to clarify the actual meaning of Bon and its position among the vast Tibetan religious culture. As Kvaerne (1985: 9-10) indicated, the word Bon has had at least three meanings: 1) "ancient Bon," which includes various rituals and worships before the spread of Buddhism, 2) "yungdrung (G.yung drung) Bon," which gradually systematized their doctrine and monastic system, which was believed to be historically connected with ancient Bon, and 3) "nameless religion," as mentioned by Stein (1993), which includes various non-systematized ritual traditions from around the Himalayan region. These meanings cannot be clearly divided or placed in straightforward historical order. From the viewpoint of Tibetan Buddhist history, contemporary Bonpo tradition has been constructed through the constant influence of Buddhism, for example, Bon's three phases of transformation: Rdol-bon, 'Khyar-bon, and Bsgyur-bon. However, as Snellgrove (2010: 1-2) emphasized, the distinction between "old" Bon and "systematized" Bon (e.g., Hoffman 1961) should not be simply paralleled with that between pre-Buddhist religion and Buddhist-influenced Bon; various elements have continuously interacted with one another to gradually form the vast complex of Tibetan religion. Shifting focus from doctrine to the practice of Bon in the contemporary world, the 219 Bonpos' identity has been broadly discussed. Bonpos are referred as religious minorities because of their small number and limited political presence compared with Buddhists among the Tibetan population. With the spread of Tibetans beyond the national borders in the last century, Bonpos needed to establish their own identity that would be compatible with the Tibetan identity connected with being Buddhist. In this process, based on both the knowledge brought by Tibetology and restored textual and oral knowledge, Bonpo intellectuals have defined Bon as the indigenous religion or tradition of Tibet (e.g., Cech 2008; Tsering Thar 2006). Although this definition involves some problem of the actual origin of Bon, which concerns the transmission of knowledge from outside Tibet such as 'Ol mo lung ring, it has become one of the important Bonpo identity markers in contemporary Tibetan society. This paper tries to clarify what Bonpos in Amdo transmit and preserve through religious practice in the recent socioeconomic context of western China. Bonpos have experienced the age of destruction and the restoration of their religion in the last 60 years, and under rapid economic development, they are seeking the way to maintain their own traditions. In this paper, we define "tradition" not only as the transmission of religious knowledge by professionals but as what monks and laypeople together consider valuable and intend to continue. 1 Focusing on the level of actual religious practice by laypeople and monks in a local community, this paper tries to approach the aspect of religious value shared among them, which is also an essential element of their living as Bonpos. 2. Bonpo in Shar-khog in the age of reform and opening 2.1 Shar-khog and Bon Shar-khog corresponds to the northern part of Songpan (Zung chu) County in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. As shown in the map, it is situated in the mountainous area of Sichuan Province. The population of Songpan County is 74,213, which includes 32,286 Tibetans (Aba zhou difanzhi bianweihui 2011: 404). Villages in Shar-khog are situated in the wide valley of the Minjiang River and mostly consist of Tibetan residents called Shar-ba (Shar ba). This area is historically a borderland between the residences of the Han people and Tibetans. Several villages made federations called sho khag, which were governed). Northern Studies Association Bulletin 13: 4-12.

AHP 36 Rka gsar, a Monguor (Tu) Village in Reb Gong (Tongren): Communal Rituals and Everyday Life

Tshe ring skyid. 2015. Rka gsar, a Monguor (Tu) Village in Reb Gong (Tongren): Communal Rituals and Everyday Life IN Gerald Roche and CK Stuart (eds) Asian Highlands Perspectives 36: Mapping the Monguor, 251-275, 301-332. ABSTRACT This article introduces Rka gsar, one of four villages in Reb gong (Rma lho [Huangnan] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Mtsho sgnon [Qinghai] Province) where the Mongolic Bonan (aka Bao'an, Manikacha, Dor skad) language is spoken. The text provides information on the village's location and population; language; livelihood; clothing; and religion and communal festivals, focusing particularly on elements that distinguish Rka gsar from nearby Tibetan-speaking communities. The final section provides information about a significant event in recent local history – a landslide that occurred in 2009. A map and twenty-seven images are provided. KEYWORDS Bao'an, Bonan, Monguor, Qinghai, Reb gong, Tongren, Tuzu