Bon is one of the pre-Buddhist religions of Tibet. It has been defined in a variety of ways, but regardless of how we define it, we can properly say that its culture has penetrated Tibetan culture from ancient times to the present day. For our deeper understanding of Tibetan culture, Bon is thus indispensable. This volume is a part of the results of the International Symposium entitled New Horizons Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan. The purpose of this symposium was to discuss the Bon related themes from all aspects such as anthropology, Folklore, Buddhist studies, religious studies, cosmology, philosophy and linguistics to establish interfaces among various disciplines and to construct a common groundwork for the Bon Studies. The edited fruits of the symposium are shown in this book, which are categorized as Bon and its relationship to Buddhism, rDzogs-chen, myths and rituals, social and anthropological approach to the Bonpo monasteries and their lay communities, and above all Bon in a more wider context. The linguistic studies on Zhangzhung and related Himalayan languages will separately appear as the next issue of this series.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Samten G. Karmay
Born in Amdo, North Eastern Tibet, and educated in a Bonpo Monastery, Samten G. Karmay studied Buddhist philosophy at Drepung, a monastic university in Central Tibet, till 1959. He was also Visitiing Scholar or the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he had obtained M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees. He has been visiting Scholar in a number of academic institutions; Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, paris; Toyo Bonko, University of Tokyo and the University of Kyoto, Japan. In 1981, he became Charge de Recherche in the Centre national de la recherche scientique (C.N.R.S.), Paris and a member of Laboratoire d’ethnologie et de sociologie comparative, Universite de sociologie comparative, Universite de Paris-X. From 1989, he became a Directeeur de Recherche in C.N.R.S. and was awarded the 1990 silver Medal of the C.N.R.S. For “Toriginalite et la qualite†in his research. He has carried out several research missions in Tibet: Amdo in 1985, Central Tibet in 1987 and 1991; Khams and Amdo in 1993; Central Tibet in 1995; India and Nepal in 1996. In 1995 he was elected President of the International Association for Tibetan Studies at its 7th Congress in Graz, Austria. He is the author of several books including The Great Perfecton, A Philosophical and Meditative Teaching of Tibetan Buddhism, and Secret Visions if the Fifth Dalai Lama. He has also published over forty articles on various aspects of Tibetan civilization in English, French and Tibetan.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Yasuhiko Nagano
Yashuhiko Nagano born in 1946 in Saitama, Japan. He studied French linguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and continued his study at the Graduate School, University of Tokyo until he was nominated as a fellow of the Tibetan Seminar at the Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library). He left there in 1977 when he joined the Ph.D. program in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1983 he obtained his doctoral degree. His major research is Tibeto-Burman historical linguistics, with special focus on Tibetan and Gyalrong. His main publications are: A Historical Study of the rGyarong Verb System, A Morphological Index of Classical Tibetan, New Horizons in Tibeto-Burman Morphosyntax, and Time, Language and Cognition. He is a professor of linguistics at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, and has been leading an international project on Bon studies, in partnership with Dr. Samten G. Karmay of CNRS, Paris.
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