SMC 28

The present volume offers a dozen studies of manuscripts of the Tibetan Bon and Naxi Dongba traditions across time and space. While some of the contributions focus on particular features of manuscripts from either tradition, others explicitly bridge the two by considering common codicological and material aspects of selected examples or common themes in the content of the texts. This is the first primarily object-based study to deal with the cultural history and technology of books from the two traditions. It discusses collections of Bon and Naxi manuscripts, the concepts and history of both traditions, the science and technology of book studies as it relates to these collections, the relationship between text and image, writing materials, and the historical and archaeological context of the manuscripts’ places of origin. The authors are specialists in different fields including philology, anthropology, art history, codicology and archaeometry. The contributions shed light on trade routes, materials and technologies as well as on reading practices and ritual usage of Bon and Naxi manuscripts.

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FrontmatterI

ContentsV

Introduction1

A Tibetan Book of Spells
15Sam van Schaik

Magical Recipes from the Grimoire of a Tibetan Bonpo Priest35
J. F. Marc des Jardins

Notes on a Bonpo Manual for the Production of Manuscript Amulets 61
Charles Ramble

Earth and Wind, Water and Fire: Book Binding and Preservation in pre-Mongol Bon Ritual Manuals for Consecrations87
Dan Martin

Preliminary Remarks on the Drangsong Collection of Bon Manuscripts in Mustang, Nepal107
Agnieszka Helman-Ważny und Charles Ramble

Preliminary Remarks on Bonpo Manuscripts in Dolpo133
Amy Heller

Towards a Definition of Local Orthographies of Bon Manuscripts: A Pilot Study 147
Henk W. A. Blezer

An Old Tibetan Myth on Retribution for Killing the Nyen (Gnyan stong): Manuscripts Scattered between Naxi, Tanguts, Eastern and Western Tibet169
Daniel Berounský

A Newly-Discovered Manuscript of the Bonpo Klu ’bum and its Canonical Transformation213
Bazhen Zeren

The Lungyig Texts of the Leu Scriptures from the Phenchu Area, in Amdo245
Ngöndzin Ngawang Gyatso

Lost in Translation? A Brief History of the Study of Dongba Manuscripts from its Beginnings to 1945269
Michael Friedrich

A ‘Key’ to the Dongba Script? A Re-Appraisal of a Set of Four Dongba Manuscripts, Held by the John Rylands Library  349
Dan Petersen

Paper in Dongba Manuscripts from the Weltmuseum in Vienna  389
Agnieszka Helman-Ważny und Mengling Cai

Indices415