The Path of Light. Ritual Music of the Tibetan Bon

A work devoted to the ritual music of Bon, the prebuddhist religion of Tibet

Before Buddhism was officially introduced in Tibet, around the seventh century CE, Tibetans professed an autochthonous religion, generally known as Bon.

Ancient religious texts trace Bon’s origins back to the figure and doctrines of the Buddha Tonpa Shenrab, who appeared in Olmo Lungring, the invisible realm of light identified with the regions of Central Asia, perceptible and accessible only to Enlightened Beings through the da’ lam, the mystic “arrow way”.

Nowadays the Bon religion still survives, and has seen an extraordinary revival in the past few years thanks the indefatigable work of Tibetan refugees living in India and Nepal.

Beyond its apparent resemblance to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (especially to the ancient school of Nyingmapa), the Bon religion has a specific and autonomous ritual and doctrinal identity, almost wholly unknown to the western world.
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The musical ritual tradition of Bon

In bonpo religious culture, the reciting of liturgical texts – almost always accompanied by or with the intercalation of instrumental music – is the main pillar on which monastic ritual practice is founded.

As a rule, recitation follows three different patterns: the recto-tono form without any specific intonation (sar don), the kind requiring intonation formulae (ke) and, lastly, the one involving the use of singing (gyer).

As far as the instrumental dimension itself is concerned, bonpo tradition employs a series of musical instruments – most of which also found in the corresponding Buddhist rituality – that can be split into three main categories: instruments made to resound (trol wa), instruments played by striking (drung wa), and by blowing (bü pa).

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