Presentation
I was born into a Tibetan Bonpo family in Mustang, Nepal and completed my early education at the Menri Bonpo Monastery in Northern India. After graduating from the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, I moved to the University of Leiden (the Netherlands) to continue my studies. I have worked as a cataloguer for the Johan van Manen collection of Tibetan manuscripts and block prints at the Institute Kern Library in Leiden. In 2011, I completed my PhD at Leiden University on a myth of Tonpa Shenrab Miwo, the founder of Bon, based on his oldest biography, and compared it to similar narratives in the Buddha’s legend. In the same year, I was offered a teaching position to teach Tibetan language and literature at the department of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies (IOA), University of Bonn (Germany).
From 2012 to 2019, I worked in two consecutive ANR-DFG-funded projects (Social History of Tibetan Societies) studying the Tibetan legal document of Ganden Phodrang, focusing mainly on the Tibetan tax system until the mid-20th century. From 2016 to 2022, I also worked as a cataloguer for the project Union Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts in Germany (KOHD) at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. During this project, I became more acquainted about all types of Tibetan books in manuscripts and block prints from all the Tibetan religious traditions, including texts also from non-mainstream Bonpos.
I am very grateful to become a part of this Pagan Tibet project as it allows me to return to my original research topic that I started with my doctoral research. I will also take this opportunity to explore further on the myth of Tonpa Shenrab, using new resources that have become accessible to me since 2018. My main focus in this project will be on the study of the manuscripts from the Eastern Himalayas (Dolanji 2018), which contain about sixty texts of varying sizes, including themes about rituals performed in non-monastic communities, cosmogonic narratives, short accounts of the founder of Bon Tonpa Shenrab, and other related personalities. I hope to shed much clearer light on the problems of understanding the difference between the older popular tradition of Tibet and the Himalayas, the later developed Yungdrung Bon and Tibetan Buddhism.
Research thematics
- a religious myth of the founder of Bon Tonpa Shenrab Miwo
- comparative studies of Bon and Buddhist mythical narratives
- social history of Tibetan societies
- taxation system during Ganden Phodrang rule until the mid-20th century
- study of Tibetan manuscript culture
- Bon rituals performed in monastic and lay communities
- popular tradition of Tibet and the Himalayas
CRCAO research programmes
Partager