This groundbreaking study focuses on a village called Te in a "Tibetanized" region of northern Nepal. While Te's people are nominally Buddhist, and engage the services of resident Tibetan Tantric priests for a range of rituals, they are also exponents of a local religion that involves blood sacrifices to wild, unconverted territorial gods and goddesses. The village is unusual in the extent to which it has maintained its local autonomy and also in the degree to which both Buddhism and the cults of local gods have been subordinated to the pragmatic demands of the village community. Charles Ramble draws on extensive fieldwork, as well as 300 years' worth of local historical archives (in Tibetan and Nepali), to re-examine the subject of confrontation between Buddhism and indigenous popular traditions in the Tibetan cultural sphere. He argues that Buddhist ritual and sacrificial cults are just two elements in a complex system of self-government that has evolved over the centuries and has developed the character of a civil religion. This civil religion, he shows, is remarkably well adapted to the preservation of the community against the constant threats posed by external attack and the self-interest of its own members. The beliefs and practices of the local popular religion, a highly developed legal tradition, and a form of government that is both democratic and accountable to its people all these are shown to have developed to promote survival in the face of past and present dangers. Ramble's account of how both secular and religious institutions serve as the building blocks of civil society opens up vistas with important implications for Tibetan culture as a whole.

The Navel of the Demoness: Tibetan Buddhism and Civil Religion in Highland Nepal

History

Ramble, Charles

Asia

Oxford University Press

This spiritual adventure is the first book to document the living tradition of B+¦n. What makes this narrative so compelling is that the voice and perspective of Gelek, a young B+¦n monk, lends an intimacy and knowledge of B+¦n not found in religious texts. According to the Tibetan calendar, 2002 was a holy year for pilgrimages, and in the holiest month of that year, Gelek set out from his monastery in Nepal with some hardy companions and photographer Thomas Kelly to travel to Kailash, a sacred mountain in western Tibet. He was also on a quest to seek out the long-vanished kingdom of Zhangzhung. At the end of the journey, Gelek finds little that resembles the B+¦n kingdom. He comes upon crumbling ruins that have all but reverted to their native dust and earth. From this experience Gelek understands that the essence of his faith is built not on these shifting sands but on the bedrock of the changeless B+¦n teachings. This extraordinary trek is illustrated by 160 stunningly beautiful color photographs of the unknown landscapes, as well as travelers and local people. Accompanying the images is the authorsGÇÖ vivid description of their journey, which is especially evocative as it includes translated excerpts from GelekGÇÖs personal diary.

Sacred Landscape And Pilgrimage in Tibet: In Search of the Lost Kingdom of Bon

Dunham, Carroll

Jinpa, Gesha Gelek

Religion & Spirituality

Abbeville Press

Where the mountains can be gods it seems obvious to talk about the sacredness of landscape: The proceedings of an international seminar at Heidelberg in May 1998 presents nine case studies covering the entire range of the Himalaya, from Ladakh and Garhwal in India, to Humla and Mustang in Nepal as well as Bhutan. The focus is on space-related architectural and/or anthropological analysis of the built environment and its location in landscape - a term that denotes the uniqueness and singularity of a certain place. The presented cases document how on various scales territories are identified with protective deities, a quality that requires ritual renewal through processions and physical acts like colouring. Actions and perceptions allow the reader to understand landscape as a process rather than an essence of space. Based on original fieldwork of seven architects, three anthropologists and one Tibetologist carried out during the decade preceding the conference, this volume presents - for the first time - Himalayan settlements with detailed maps of villages and architectural drawings of houses. The extensive visual presentation allows the reader to enter into the complex world of valleys that construct the mountains as the realm of the gods.

Sacred Landscape of the Himalaya: Proceedings of an International Conference at Heidelberg 22-27 May, 1998

Michaels, Axel

Gutschow, Niels

Steinkellner, Ernst

Austrian Academy of Sciences Press

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