study of autobiographical writing in Tibet, especially by vi-
sionary yogis, is Janet Gyatso’s Apparitions of the Self: The Se-
cret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary (1998).
An excellent work intended as a manual for students is
Religions of Tibet in Practice, edited by Donald Lopez (1997).
In addition, Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, edited by
José Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson (1996), covers mainly
religious literature.
Westerners who went through Tibetan scholastic educa-
tion as monks in the 1970s, including Robert Thurman and
Jeffrey Hopkins, have published numerous books that pro-
vide insight on religious studies in a traditional context. Such
works include Georges Dreyfus’s The Sound of Two Hands
Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (2003).
Each of these authors holds a chair in religious studies in an
American university. Matthieu Ricard, an active monk, con-
tributed to the field with his translation of The Life of Shab-
kar: An Autiobiography of a Tibetan Yogin (1994), as well as
his own books and the archiving of the teachings and writ-
ings of his lama, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910–1991).
In the 1980s, with the importance given to feminist
studies in the West, there was a sudden interest in the role
that female figures played in Tibetan religions as nuns or
partners of lamas, or by themselves. Among the pioneers in
translation of women’s biographies was Keith Dowman with
Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel
(1984), and Tsultrim Allione with Women of Wisdom
(1984). Later, Hanna Havnevik published her dissertation
on Tibetan Buddhist nuns, Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Sisters in
Solitude: Two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for
Women (1996), and Janice Willis edited Feminine Ground:
Essays on Women and Tibet (1995). In Machig Labdrön and
the Foundations of Chöd (1996) Jérôme Edou studied the ex-
traordinary life of this eleventh-century yogin ̄ı, whose teach-
ings are still practiced today; this work was followed by The
Lives and Liberation of Princess Mandarava, translated by
Lama Chonam and Sangye Khandro (1998)
The Bon religion has been much less studied than Bud-
dhism. Its literature and teachers were not accessible, and
some Tibetan Buddhists succeeded in giving early Western
visitors a highly inaccurate view of its origins and practices.
This trend is now reversed, and by the end of the twentieth
century there was great interest in Bon studies, often linked
to the Western Tibetan region of Zhang zhung. The field is
now flourishing under the impetus of pioneers like Per Kva-
erne in Norway and Samten Karmay in France. Bon studies
has become linked to the publications program initiated in
2000 by Yasuhiko Nagano at the Ethnological Museum of
Osaka; published works include New Horizons in Bon Studies
(2000), A Survey of Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibet
and the Himalaya (2003), and The Call of the Blue Cuckoo:
An Anthology of Nine Bonpo Texts on Myths and Rituals
(2002), all edited by Nagano and Karmay. One of the first
valuable contributions to the study of Bon mythology and
a veritable catalog of the Bon pantheon was A. H. Francke’s
gZer mig: A Book of the Tibetan Bonpos, a translation that was
published in five volumes between 1924 and 1949.Where are the origins of Bon to be sought—beyond
Tibet or within? What is its relationship to Buddhism and
other religions, in particular to those of Iran? How did Bon
evolve? What can be called Bon? These questions are still de-
bated by scholars. Studies on Bon that were particularly valu-
able include a lengthy essay in Giuseppe Tucci’s Die Relig-
ionen Tibets; Samten Karmay’s “A General Introduction to
the History and Doctrines of Bon” in Memoirs of the Research
Department of the Toyo Bunko 33 (1975): 171–218; as well
as Karmay’s Treasury of Good Sayings: A Tibetan History of
Bon (1972). An extensive doctrinal text was presented by
David L. Snellgrove in The Nine Ways of Bon: Excerpts from
the gZi-brjid (1967). An important study and the first work
on Bon yoga is Per Kvaerne’s “Bonpo Studies: The A Khrid
System of Meditation,” in Kailash 1 (1973): 19–50 and 247–
332, as well as his important work, The Bon Religion of Tibet:
The Iconography of a Living Tradition (1995). Dan Martin’s
Unearthing Bon Treasures: Life and Contested Legacy of a Ti-
betan Scripture Revealer (2001) deals with a Tibetan “text dis-
coverer” and includes a general bibliography of Bon. Martin
updated this bibliography in “Bon Bibliography: An Anno-
tated List of Recent Publications,” in Revue d’Etudes Tibé-
taines 4 (2003): 61–77, which demonstrates the contempo-
rary strength of Bon studies. Martin joined forces with Per
Kvaerne and Yasuhiko Nagano to edit A Catalogue of the Bon
Kanjur (2003). In addition, Karmay and Nagano edited A
Catalogue of the New Collection of Bonpo Katen Texts (2001).
In France, Jean-Luc Achard is researching the Dzogchen tra-
dition of the Bon and Rnying ma schools. Achard has pub-
lished several articles in the Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, as well
as the book L’Essence perlée du secret: Recherches philologiques
et historiques sur l’origine de la Grande Perfection dans la tradi-
tion rNying ma pa (1999).
The literature and adherents of the normative Bud-
dhism and Bon traditions were the first elements to strike Al-
exander Csoma de Körös and his successors, and they remain
today the center of focus in Tibetology. However, popular
religion and its numerous cultic manifestations have increas-
ingly become the topic of studies, especially in Europe since
the late 1980s. One such study is Françoise Pommaret’s Les
revenants de l’au-delà dans le monde Tibétain: Sources lit-
téraires et traditions vivantes (1989).
Of course, the interest in Tibet’s epic hero, King Gesar,
an important figure in popular Tibetan literature and reli-
gion, dates back to the eighteenth century when Mongolian-
language texts of the epic became known to Western travel-
ers. A comprehensive analysis of the religious and ethno-
graphic data in these materials certainly lies far in the future,
but two works may be cited here that analyze different ver-
sions of Gesar’s life and deeds and thus give an idea of the
variety of information available: A. H. Francke’s Der Frühl-
ings- und Wintermythus der Kesarsage: Beiträge zur Kenntnis
der vorbuddhistishchen Religion Tibets und Ladakhs (1902)9190 TIBETAN RELIGIONS: HISTORY OF STUDY