The Influence of Tibetan Bon Religion on Dongba Mythology
This 1999 study by Bai Gengsheng argues that Tibetan Bon religion exerted the single most important foreign influence on Naxi Dongba mythology, more so than Indian or Han Chinese influence. Bon missionaries who fled Buddhist-dominated central Tibet after Bon's defeat there (post-9th century) reinterpreted existing Naxi shamanic belief and translated Bon scripture into the Naxi "Moxie" language, gradually fusing with indigenous shamanism to produce Dongba religion; the article traces linguistic and narrative parallels between Bon's founder Tonpa Shenrab and the Dongba patriarch Dongba Shilo (matching births from the mother's right side, twelve deeds, combat with the demon Chapalari/Chabalali), and between several Dongba deities/creatures (the war-god Youma, the naga-like Shu spirits, the sacred turtle, and the garuda-like bird Xiuqu) and their Bon counterparts (Wermo, Lu/klu nagas, a turtle shot by Manjushri, and the "Khyung" garuda). It concludes Bon supplied Dongba mythology with ideas (dualistic good/evil cosmology, the three-tier/five-direction cosmos), narrative material, systematization, richer symbolism, and mature literary technique (parallelism, characterization), transforming oral Naxi myth into the written Dongba mythological corpus — while Bon's own mythology is traced back, more speculatively, to Central Asian Zoroastrianism and ancient Indian religion.
This page publishes the bibliographic record and the project's summary. The scanned article text belongs to its publisher and is shown to readers under a research-use policy; it is not reproduced in this record.