World of Worldly Gods: The Persistence and Transformation of Shamanic Bon in Buddhist Bhutan

Despite several works published by foreign and Bhutanese authors over the past two decades, Bon practices in Bhutan remains an understudied subject. Here we are not talking about the Yundrung Bon, or “organized Bon,” with its monastic setup, but about what the Bhutanese call Bon, or Bon chos, a series of beliefs and rituals directed to propitiate mundane gods and spirits that inhabit the landscape and, if pleased, bring prosperity to a community. In the Himalayan world, this Bon has been defined by scholars as “nameless religion,” “folk religion,” or “pagan religion.” Because of the contempt and even hostility in which these practices have been held by the official clergy in Bhutan, they have rarely been talked about, much less studied, and are generally confined to remote areas of the country. However, over the last twenty years, the importance of Bon beliefs, also called “local beliefs,” in the preservation of the environment has been making its way into the Bhutanese consciousness. This has been spurred in part by Bhutanese and foreign scholars worried that different “local rituals” might disappear in the face of both the Buddhist wave and rural-urban migration.1It is in this context that Kelzang T. Tashi started his PhD in anthropology at the Australian National University. World of Worldly Gods—which is the revised version of the author's doctoral dissertation in anthropology2—is first of all a monograph on the Bon practices in the remote villages of Goleng and Sholeng in Zhemgang District of south-central Bhutan. However, it goes far beyond that. Tashi uses precise and long ethnographic fieldwork to understand the relevance of Bon and Buddhism for the villagers and what he calls “the tenacity of Bon practices and beliefs” (2). He analyzes the religious and political tensions between Bon and Buddhism and the negotiations that lead to the cohabitation between what he calls the “Little and Great traditions,” and to the syncretism that is a hallmark of spiritual life for many villages of central and eastern Bhutan. Several of the mechanisms through which Bon has received greater acceptance in recent years are examined in detail as well.In the introduction (chapter 1), Tashi covers the spectrum of the term Bon and its multiple identities, emphasizing that the Bon in Bhutan is not the Yundrung Bon, sometimes referred to as “Clerical Bon,” which is organized like a Buddhist religious school. He also discusses his fieldwork and methodology, and although his upbringing in the same region aided him, he asserts that Goleng was by no means “studying home” (25). He used informants and assistants, but his familiarity with the local language and cultural setup certainly helped him.Chapter 2 introduces the Goleng village and its social organization including the remnants of the feudal social structure with its four patrilineal groups related to Bon deities and its matrilineal inheritance system, as well as the matrilocality of residence. This system is still alive throughout the whole of central Bhutan. This chapter also depicts the founding of two Buddhist establishments in the village. Chapter 3 is an ethnographic study of the cosmology of the local people and how it defines the shamanic view of their world, the importance of the five elements in their body, and their constant fear of being harmed by supernatural beings. Chapter 4 examines how these threats, which can endanger their life and welfare, are warded off. These two chapters are complementary.Chapter 5 delves into the political and religious tensions between Bon practitioners, whose training, recruitment, and practices are described in the text, and zealous Buddhist laymen. Bhutan has witnessed over the past thirty years a certain missionary zeal stemming from what is perceived as the correct Buddhist ideology and that is antagonistic to many local practices. This has culminated in the appointment of an official Bonpo by the district administration to counter the influence of local Bonpo priests, and court cases have been filed by the villagers as they resist this intrusion into their customs. Chapter 6 is a detailed description of Rup, the most important Bon festival in the village, and the significance of the ancient Bon god Odé Gungyal. Of Tibetan origin and worshipped in many regions of central Bhutan, during the ritual Odé Gungyal is invited down to earth in order to bless the community and bring prosperity and fertility. Both can be destroyed by pernicious gossip (mi kha), and the anti-gossip Bon rituals, which place emphasis on phallic symbols, are the topic of chapter 7.The acceptance of certain Bon beliefs by Buddhists and the syncretic rituals that lay Buddhists perform is investigated in chapter 8. According to the author, Buddhists need to accommodate the mundane worldview that is essential to the villagers. Therefore, they incorporate Bon rituals and deities into the rituals in order to bypass the Bon practitioners. Chapter 9 elaborates on the relationship between Buddhism and both Shamanic and Clerical Bon, and brings the topic into the wider context of the Himalayas. Finally, Tashi summarizes the view of the villagers toward the great (Buddhist) and little (Bon) traditions. He argues, The high/low distinction is a key idea of great and little traditions in that anything that is structurally and spatially higher, and philosophically otherworldly, is considered great by Golengpas, while everything that is structurally or spatially lower, and philosophically this-worldly, is regarded by them as little. Viewed in this way, Bon as the pragmatic religion of the ordinary people—that is, without transcendental elements—is destined to remain the little tradition whether or not the elements of Bon beliefs are incorporated into the great Buddhist tradition. (228)The reasons for the resilience of Bon practices and beliefs in front of Buddhism in a village is really the core theme of the book. Tashi concludes this rich ethnographic study by asserting that “Bon remains viable, Buddhist censure notwithstanding” (238), because it is concerned “not only with supporting the vitality of people but also with increasing and sustaining the prosperity of the community” (240).Although it deals with a remote village in Bhutan, this book is groundbreaking for the field of Himalayan studies as it describes in detail Bon in Bhutan with its system of beliefs, its practitioners, and its rituals, as well as the pressures of Buddhicization. Well written and rich in anecdotes—and supplemented by a twenty-page appendix, “Phonetic Rendering of Local Terms,” with Dzongkha spelling and Wylie transliteration, in addition to illustrations, tables, and a map—World of Worldly Gods is highly recommended to any religious scholar or anthropologist working in the Himalayas.