Foundations of the religious culture of Tibet : entangled history

Bibliogr. s. 211-236. Indeksy

Although Buddhism has had a great impact on the culture of Tibet, the author argues that at the basis of the Tibetan religious culture, both ancient and manifested today, lie various, hardly researched folk and pre-Buddhist concepts and practices. While assimilating in Tibet, Buddhism did not eliminate attitudes and behaviours contradictory to its normative system, such as divination practices, rituals bringing auspiciousness, calling the soul or local folk worship, but did the opposite and absorbed as well as adapted to them. The book highlights and examines recurrent narrations, important mythic themes and key ideas as regards the universe and man, such as rainbow light and specific understanding of the soul, forming the concept base for these practices. The author shows their interconnections and overlapping, stressing the centuries-old transculturality of the examined area, pluralism of the ideas and practices found on the Tibetan Upland (such as the ones connected to the earliest beginnings or to worship of the mountains), stemming from the actors’ mobility, frequent contacts and mutual influences between the nomadic peoples, merchants, pilgrims, travellers and neighbouring settled peoples.