The Three Great True Mantras of Bön in Naxi Dongba Script, and a Study Thereof
This article presents a Dongba-script archive held at the Harvard-Yenching Library (catalogue no. zhi ma 20; A-43; 450; 1732), part of a text titled "The Life-Attainment Liturgy and Ritual of Teacher Shenrab," and shows that it contains three Bon dharani-mantras — Om Mati Muye Sale Du, Duti Su, and A dkar sale — transcribed syllable by syllable into Dongba pictographs chosen purely to reproduce Tibetan pronunciation, not Dongba meaning. Working through each syllable with IPA transcription and Tibetan equivalents, the authors identify five special Dongba writing conventions used for this purpose (letter-shaped characters, near-Tibetan readings, phonetic-loan combinations, abbreviated characters, and dialect-specific characters). They conclude that the Naxi Dongba religion absorbed influence from both very early ("primordial") Bon and the later, Buddhist-influenced Yungdrung Bon at different historical periods, and that influence likely ran in both directions between Bon and the Dongba religion, refining earlier one-directional accounts of the relationship.
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