Reconstructing the Pagan Religion of Tibet

Introduction

Buddhism was introduced to Tibet in the 7th century CE and became the official national religion in the 8th. A small percentage of Tibetans are followers of a religion called Bön, which its adherents (Bönpos) and Buddhists alike consider to be the country’s indigenous faith.

Bön and Tibetan Pagan Religion

Bön came to acquire many Buddhist features but retained a strand of more archaic traditions. Since there is no evidence that these traditions were actually called Bön prior to the establishment of Buddhism, we refer to them collectively as Tibetan Pagan religion.

Historical Context

Until now, all we knew about this religion came from a small number of early (mainly 8-11th c.) manuscripts from the Silk Road, a small cache from southern Tibet, and some ritual narratives in the literature of “reformed” Bön.

Recent Discoveries

This situation changed dramatically in 2005 with the discovery of a large number of manuscripts constituting the ritual repertoire of a class of priests, called Leyu, in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands.

Current Research Challenges

Although facsimiles of some 35,000 folios of these manuscripts have now been, or are due shortly to be, published in China, other than the PI and members of his team, no one has worked on them owing to difficulties of script, language, and the concepts conveyed.

Preliminary Findings

Preliminary investigations suggest that these texts contain genuinely archaic non-Buddhist rituals and narratives closely resembling those of the early sources that are already known.

Project Goals

Using state-of-the-art computational humanities tools such as Handwritten Text Recognition and Natural Language Processing in conjunction with the methods of philology, comparative religion, and anthropology, PaganTibet proposes to undertake a systematic study of the Leyu manuscripts. The project aims to:

1. Produce a searchable database of the entire corpus.
2. Create an annotated catalogue of its contents.
3. Provide translations and extended summaries of a selection of its works.

This will provide the first-ever reconstruction of Tibetan Pagan religion.