Unearthing Bon Treasures : Life and Contested Legacy of a Tibetan Scripture Revealer, with a General Bibliography of Bon

Contents: 1. The historical setting: early Tibet. 2. What bon is. 3. What treasures are. 4. International Buddha. 5. Gshen-chen Klu-dga\': the earliest historical sources. 6. Gshen-chen\'s own narrative. 7. The biography of the Bla-ma Gshen. 8. The biography of his disciple Zhu-yas legs-po. 9. Poisoned dialogue: Gshen-chen Klu-dga\'s final hour. 10. The polemical tradition against Gshen-chen and Bon. 11. References to Bon in early Chos biographical literature. 12. Anti-bon polemic since the thirteenth century. 13. The single intention. 14. A polemic and its object. 15. Conclusions. Appendices. Bibliography. Index.

"The subject of this volume, the Tibetan (treasure revealer) Gshen-chen Kludga\', is a crucial figure in the development of Bon as an organised religion after the eleventh century. Here for the first time he is situated in the context of what was happening in Buddhism during this period. By scruitining his life and gter-ma (treasures), that were to be of much controversy in later ages, the author sheds light on the mechanism of Tibetan polemical tradition and the ways in which sectarianism accords itself legitimacy by resurrecting ancient arguments in a subtly distorted manner.

The exhaustive annotated bibliography of previous works about Bon, forming the second part of the work, can rightly be seen as a legacy of Gshen-chen. Both parts taken together make this an indispensable guide to any student of Bon."