The Fluid Lives of Tibetan Ritual Narrations during the Imperial and Post-Imperial Period By daniel berounsky

https://www.academia.edu/117345549/The_Fluid_Lives_of_Tibetan_Ritual_Narrations_during_the_Imperial_and_Post_Imperial_Period?email_work_card=title An important element of ritual performance was voicing (Tib. gyer) the ritual narrations (Tib. smrang), in order to infuse the ritual with meaning. Surviving origination myth accounts (Tib. rabs, related to ‘lineage/succession’) probably reflect a later tendency to assemble various originally locally based myths within single collections of such narrations spanning larger areas of Tibetan Plateau. Through this process, qualitatively different ritual traditions were crystallised, giving some traditions prominence whilst silencing others. Post-imperial texts of monastic Bön (Tib. bon) lineages associate the tradition of orating various origin myths with the terms lore or wisdom (Tib. gtsug lag). It is possible to speculate that the great variety of ritual narratives were organised under such umbrella terms. One can observe a certain divide between Central Tibetan ritual traditions and those found across large areas of Western, Northern, and Eastern Tibet. The paper eventually introduces the ’Bum bzhi [Fourfold Collection] that survive in the Bon bka’ ’gyur [Bön Kangyur]. These voluminous texts mostly contain origin myths and tales dealing with four kinds of spirits— (1) chthonic spirits (Tib. klu), (2) fierce spirits (Tib. gnyan), (3) earth-lords (Tib. sa bdag) and (4) rock spirits (Tib. gtod)—and are difficult to date in their current forms. They contain traces of stages of development reflecting monastic Bön religion and evidence of absorbing Buddhist elements. However, they also preserve some features characterising eastern non-Buddhist ritual traditions, although an attempt to include local Eastern-Tibetan lore in pan-Tibetan ritual tradition likely lies behind their compilation.