Literature on Dolpo
Anthropologist Dr. Marietta Kind
Books and articles by anthropologist Dr. Marietta Kind Furger. Marietta Kind has lived and researched in Dolpo repeatedly since 1990. She has been particularly concerned with the culture and Bön tradition in Dolpo and has written several articles and books about it. During her research, in conversation with the local population, the idea for the Tapriza School was born in 1997 and has since been realized on site by her together with Semduk Lama.
Enclosed you will find some articles and links to books by Dr. Marietta Kind on Dolpo, local culture, and the Bön religion. In addition, you will find individual articles by others about the region.
The Bon Landscape of Dolpo - Pilgrimages, Monasteries, Biographies and the Emergence of Bon
The reader is taken on a journey to Dolpo, one of Nepal’s remotest Tibetan enclaves with a large community that follow the Bon religion. The present ethnography regards the landscape of Dolpo as the temporary result of an ongoing cumulative cultural process that emerges from the interaction of the natural environment and the communities that inhabit it and endow it with meaning. Pilgrimage provides the key to structuring the book, which is based on anthropological research and the study of the textual legacy. Along the extensive and richly illustrated Bon pilgrimages through Dolpo, the various strands of the written and the oral, the local and the general, the past and present are unrolled step by step and woven into a pattern that provides a first insight into the partial shift from a landscape inhabited by territorial deities to a Bon landscape. In addition, it presents an overview of the main protagonists who discovered the sacred sites, opened pilgrimages, founded monasteries and disseminated the crucial Bon teachings. A number of well-known Tibetan figures emerge among these players thanks to translations of biographies that have survived in rare and unpublished manuscripts. This book sheds light on how Bon religion emerged in Dolpo and has remained alive.
The anthropologist MARIETTA KIND gained her PhD at the Universities of Zurich and Oxford. She has worked as a lecturer and research fellow at the Ethnographic Museum of Zurich University. With her Tapriza NGO she supports a school in Dolpo and the cultural heritage of this region. Her latest research project at Bern University is concerned with second generation Tibetans in Switzerland and their relation to Buddhism.
The book is available at Peter Lang Publisher.
The book is available in Switzerland at Garuda Publisher and in Nepal, the book is available at Vajra Books.
Mendrub - a Bonpo ritual for the benefit of all living beings and for the empowerment of medicine
This book takes us to an ancient enclave of Tibetan culture in Nepal – the region of Dolpo in the north-west. After outlining the key geographical, historical and religious features of the region, one exemplary case among the various ritual practices of the local Bon society is placed under closer scrutiny: the Mendrub ritual. The ceremony centres on a communal blessing bestowed by means of medicinal pills that have undergone ceremonial treatment during the ten days of the ritual. The benefits that can be gained by attending the ceremony and by consuming the consecrated medicine attract a large audience from all over Dolpo. Mask dances lead up to the climax of the initiation and blessing, which is followed by the social part of the festival with songs and village dances around the fire.
The study of the Mendrub ritual reveals a fascinating interplay of religious practices, ranging from popular beliefs to monastic traditions in the Bon community of Dolpo. Furthermore, this account not only describes the ritual itself, it also gives a clear insight into the daily life of the local society.
MARIETTA KIND, born in 1967 in Switzerland, studied Anthropology at the University of Zurich and wrote her thesis on the Mendrub ritual in Dolpo, Nepal. She has worked as an assistant to Professor Michael Oppitz at the Ethnographic Museum in Zurich and as a lecturer at Zurich University in Switzerland. Repeatedly she has returned to Dolpo to further her research and to assist the locally-run Tapriza School dedicated to the Bon culture.
Further articles on Dolpo
Marietta Kind. 2021. Biographical Thanka on the life of Treton Namkha Gyaltsen from Dolpo. Tibetan Mandalas, Arts and Traditions. Geneva: Enlightened Vision Association (EVA). Article about a biographical Thangka describing the life of Treton Namkha Gyaltsen.
Marietta Kind. 2015. Der Kristallberg im Drachengebrüll - Pilgerreise um einen heiligen Berg in Nepal. Die Alpen. 2015/2: p.35-43.
For the people of Dolpo, it is the holiest mountain: the Crystal Mountain of Shey. When it is the Year of the Dragon in the Tibetan calendar, thousands circumambulate the sacred mountain. Both Buddhists and followers of the ancient Bön religion. Description of the pilgrimage and the trek via Phoksundo to Shey.
Marietta Kind. 2015. Das braune Goldrausch - Schatzgräberstimmung in Dolpo. Die Alpen. 2015/2: p.44-45.
In China it is considered the "Viagra of the Himalayas": The rare fungus Yartsa Gunbu attracts tens of thousands of fortune seekers to Dolpo every year. Violence and crime are finding their way in.
'Jag 'dul: A Bon Mountain Pilgrimage in Dolpo, Nepal. 2007. AMY HELLER & GIACOMELLA OROFINO (EDS.): Discoveries in Western Tibet and the Western
Himalayas: Essays on History, Literature, Archaeology and Art. Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan
Studies, Oxford, 2003: 199–214. Leiden: Brill.
The Abduction of the Divine Bride: Territory and Identity among the Bonpo Community in Phoksumdo, Dolpo. 2002. KATIA BUFFETRILLE & HILDEGARD
DIEMBERGER (EDS.): Territory and Identity in Tibet and the Himalayas, 271–
288, 346–347. Leiden: Brill. The article deals with the animated landscape, marriage, and identity in Phoksundo, Dolpo.
Die Entführung der Berggöttin: Beseelte Landschaft, Heirat und Identität in Phoksumdo, Dolpo. 2003. Nepal Information, No. 91: 33–36.
Bonpo Monasteries and Temples of the Himalayan Region. 2003. SAMTEN G. KARMAY & YASUHIKO NAGANO (EDS.): A Survey of Bonpo Monasteries and Temples in Tibet and the Himalaya, 669–752. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
