Rethinking 'Provocation'

Unseen Beings, Ecological Health, and the More-than-Human World

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

(This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 edition of the Sowa Rigpa Journal)

‘Provocation disorders,’ or dön-né (gdon nad), are among the most enigmatic and misunderstood pathologies in Sowa Rigpa (Traditional Tibetan Medicine). While most health conditions are understood to be caused by improper diet, behaviour, environmental and temporal conditions, or other ‘mundane’ factors, provocation disorders are unique in that the conditions of their emergence are directly linked to ‘unseen beings’ – what we might call ‘spirits’ or ‘daemons.’ In a traditional context, these beings have long been regarded as external non-human agents who co-inhabit our world. But encounters with Western modernity have caused their identities and roles to be renegotiated and repackaged in numerous ways. While some have argued for a materialist approach, identifying daemons as pathogenic viruses and microorganisms, a far more popular approach has been to reimagine provocation disorders as fundamentally psychological phenomena – a kind of pre-modern approach to clinical psychiatry guided by Buddhist philosophies of the mind. But this approach has many problems, relying upon a wholly ahistorical negotiation of medical and philosophical literature to accommodate the disenchanted tenets of scientific materialism. As Sowa Rigpa seeks greater exposure in the global marketplace of ideas, there is need for alternative and more critical approaches – including those that go beyond the human to highlight the non-human dimensions of provocation and health.

On Terminologies

Finding adequate terminology to discuss this topic is itself highly complicated. Namkha’i Norbu Rinpoche popularised the use of ‘provocation’ as a translation of gdon, which is used to describe the disorders caused by daemonic afflictions as well as the actual daemons or spirits themselves. It has been suggested to me that we should use the term ‘provocateur’ when talking about the spirited agents at the heart of this paradigm – but this raises a rather important question: are spirits really the ones doing the provoking, or are they the ones being provoked? This is an important paradigmatic distinction to make – further complicating attempts at establishing a cohesive framework for translating and discussing gdon.

While attempts to find a perfect approach to translation and terminology is likely futile, I will – for the sake of clarity – either use gdon (untranslated) or ‘provocation’ when discussing the affliction and disease process described by Sowa Rigpa, while I will generally use ‘spirit’ or ‘daemon’ to describe the non-human agents involved in them. The word ‘spirit’ is admittedly very tricky: in modern usage, this word can be used to refer to a dead human, a spectral non-human entity, a divine vital force, a personal quality, the soul, or an animating energy underlying all life. It can even refer to liquor – itself a vestige of the Paracelsian alchemical notion that alcohol is the philosophical ‘spirit’ of organic matter. Many of these applications of the term are relegated to the domain of the ‘supernatural,’ which J.R.R. Tolkien once rightly described as “a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter.”¹ The perceptual divide between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’ (much like the divide between ‘humanity’ and ‘nature’) is both cultural and relatively arbitrary – and thus also highly mutable. If we take ‘nature’ in its grandest sense, then all phenomena that arise in the universe (including ideas) are natural by definition; but even in its narrower sense, sprits have long been closely associated with the so-called ‘natural world’ – hence the popular idea of ‘nature spirits.’ While this is an imperfect term for many reasons, it is useful for highlighting the ecological and environmental dimensions of the kinds of beings we will be discussing, which is why I use it quite liberally.

As for daemon, I take my usage from the Classical world: In Ancient Greece, daimōn (δαίμων) was used for powerful local spirits or guardians who were not ‘gods,’ nor were they entirely benevolent or malevolent. Like the many other ‘nature spirits’ discussed in Greek tradition – like the satyrs (Σατυροι), tritons (Τριτονες), and nymphs (νύμφη) – they were simply other kinds of beings with whom humanity was in dynamic relationship. The Romans later adopted the term daemon to describe the many beings of their own ‘pandaemonium.’ But as Christianity emerged and devoured ‘pagan’ Europe, the horned satyr himself became the blueprint for an embodied Devil, and the old gods and spirits were transformed into infernal ‘demons’ – evil entities wholly dedicated to the perversion of humanity. I argue that the word ‘demon’ is entirely inappropriate when discussing entities like the klu and gnyan, while ‘daemon’ still arguably has some utility. It is for this reason that I refer to this field of research as eco-daemonology, or the study of ‘nature spirits.’

‘Spirit Illness’ in Eurasian Medicine

2500 years ago, one would have been hard-pressed to find a single healer on Earth who didn’t acknowledge daemonic influences on human health. Medicine and spirituality have long been close bedfellows, with priests and shamans routinely serving as medical specialists due to their unique ability to negotiate affairs with the many gods, spirits, animals, plants, and other beings who share our world. Hippocrates (born 460 BCE) was the first to formally challenge this paradigm in the Western world, advocating for a ‘rational’ approach to disease, centred not around gods and daemons but around naturalistic factors like diet and behaviour. This revolution in medical philosophy was greatly expanded upon and refined by Galen of Pergamon (129-216 CE), whose teachings dominated the Afro-Eurasian medical world for over 1300 years. Galen’s influence spread even as far as Tibet, with Imperial Era works like the Lunar King (sMan dpyadzla ba’i rgyal po) and the Yellow Book of the Biji (Bi ji’i po ti kha ser) containing clear Greco-Arabic influences based on Galenic and Hippocratic principles.²

But Tibetan Medicine had many other influences, as well. Due in large part to its privileged position along the eastern branches of the Silk Roads, Tibetan theorists had access to medical knowledge from India, China, and Central Asian traditions, as well as a long lineage of indigenous healing knowledge stretching deep into Tibet’s prehistory. Importantly, very few of these systems agreed with Hippocrates and his contemporaries regarding the triviality of spirits, nor did they regard medical daemonology as mutually exclusive with a ‘rational’ and sophisticated approach to healing. Works like the Lunar King show that daemonic influences remained an important part of early Tibetan medical syntheses in the heyday of the Tibetan Empire. Spirits are also very much present in the Four Tantras (rGyud bzhi), written in the 12^th century, but Yuthok restricts their influence to a more limited range of extraordinary conditions. Not all diseases were regarded as being caused by unseen beings, but some certainly were – and it is argued that they can be treated through a combination of conventional therapies and lifestyle changes with ritual/spiritual methodologies.

Tibet was not alone in this approach. Connections between health and spirits (particularly nature spirits) were widely acknowledged in Chinese medical traditions up until (at least) the mid-20^th century, when Mao Tsetung sought to eliminate all traces of spirituality or ‘superstition’ to position ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine’ (TCM) as a viable state-sponsored alternative to Western biomedicine. Spirit illness was likewise an important component of the Āyurvedic traditions of pre-colonial India, in which materials on daemonology (bhūtavidyā) can be found in all the major Āyurvedic compendia. But as Adam Krug notes, colonial and modernist pressures have caused many propagators and scholars of the tradition to position it as “an outdated medical science from the fringes of the Āyurvedic textual tradition that just happens to have barely reached the “modern” world in the form of fragmented manuscripts.”³ Whether or not this is true, it reflects a largely pragmatic intent to frame Āyurveda as foundationally ‘rational’ – and thus a compatible interlocutor for western medical science on the global stage.

When it comes to Sowa Rigpa, things have transpired quite differently. Even in the face of remarkable political oppression, the Tibetan medical tradition has survived the tumults of the 20^th century with remarkable integrity, and introduction into the global therapeutic and intellectual marketplace has been far more gradual, allowing more space for self-monitored evolution. While modern Tibetan physicians do not always discuss daemonic influences openly with their patients, they remain a standard feature of clinical practice⁴ - and while most modern Āyurvedic colleges completely ignore the topic of bhūtavidyā, students of Tibetan Medicine still learn about gdon nad in much the same way as they have for many centuries. But as the tradition continues to evolve and engage with scientific modernity, it is increasingly important that practitioners, teachers, and scholars of Sowa Rigpa dedicate serious critical thought to this topic, lest it disappears entirely.

Provocation and Conflict in the Four Tantras

Throughout the corpus, the Four Tantras explicitly identifies spirit provocation as a potential conditioning factor in the emergence of disease. In the twelfth chapter of the Explanatory Tantra (Bshad rgyud), all disorders – with the exception of karmic disease – are seen to be divisible into two main categories: disorders arising from internal imbalance of the three humours (nyes pa gsum), and disorders arising due to external factors like poison, physical trauma, and spirit provocation (gdon).⁵ While mentions of spirit influences are scattered throughout works like the Oral Instruction Tantra (Man ngag rgyud), they are primarily discussed in a section known as the ‘Treatment of Provocation Disorders’ (gDon nad gso ba), which consists of five chapters: ‘Byung po’i gdon (Bhūta possession), sMyo byed (psychosis, Skt. unmāda), brJed byed (amnesia, Skt. apasmāra), gZa’i gdon (‘planetary spirit/graha provocation’), and kLu’i gdon (‘chthonic spirit/nāga provocation’).

As demonstrated by the late Dr. Yang Ga Trarong, much of the former three chapters are closely based on Āyurvedic materials like Vagbhata’s Eight Branches on the Heart of Medicine (Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā).⁶ The first chapter, on‘Byung po’i gdon, closely resembles what we might call daemonic ‘possession,’ typified by the abrupt transformation of a patient’s behaviour and personality into the behaviours of a particular kind of spirit. In contrast to nearly every other disease mentioned in the Four Tantras, this disorder is understood to be caused wholly by psychological, moral/karmic, and more-than-human social factors like the disturbance of sensitive places (gnyan sa) or failure to uphold social accords made with the daemons of one’s community, location, family, or lineage. Successful treatment depends upon the physician’s ability to establish which spirit is causing the affliction – with both the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā and the rGyud bzhi offering 18 distinct spirit ‘types’ based on Indic daemonological tradition.

sMyo byed/unmāda (‘insanity’/psychosis) and brjed byed/apasmāra (amnesia) are also discussed in the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā, but Āyurvedic sources do not position them as spirit-related afflictions. Even in the Four Tantras, only one of the seven sMyo byed disorders – and one of the five Brjed byed disorders – are explicitly daemonological, while the rest are based on more mundane factors.⁷ While all these conditions have distinctly psychological and cognitive components, the Four Tantras goes to great lengths to differentiate between daemonic provocation and afflictions like snying rlung or srog rlung, which share many of the same psychological factors without the daemonological underpinnings. Further distinctions between provocation and mental illness become apparent when we turn to the latter two chapters of the gDon nad gso ba, which deal with ostensibly physiological disorders caused by thegza’ (planetary spirits associated with the Indic grahas) and klu (chthonic spirits associated with the Indic nāgas). As Dr. Yang Ga Trarong demonstrates in his extensive assessment of the sources for the Four Tantras, the material in these chapters do not exist in the Ayurvedic classics, nor in any known Chinese or Greco-Arabic texts – and while they speak of spirit beings who have well-established Indian correlates, they remain unique in many respects.

In the kLu Provocation chapter, which deals with mdze nad (leprosy) and similar lymphatic and cutaneous disorders caused by klu spirits, a noteworthy preamble explores the dynamics of ‘provocation and conflict’ (gdon dang ‘gras pa), including an assessment of some specific behaviours that incite provocation:

“The earth gnyan will be attacked and the fields will be ploughed.

The water gnyan will be stirred up and the meadows flooded.

The tree gnyan will be cut down and the stone gnyan will be uprooted.

The hearth will be contaminated by impure substances, and the blood of wild animals will be spilled.

Buddhists and Bönpos, to hastily gain power, will disturb the sensitive places to subdue their enemies.

At that time, the klu, gnyan, sa bdag, lha, and srin will be in turmoil.

Toxicity will spread through touch, sight, the vapour of their breath, and recollection [of their form], ushering in an aeon of blazing Tsi-ti-dzwa-la…”⁸

The prominence of the term gnyan, an indigenous Tibetan spirit class with no Indian correlate, is quite notable, potentially reflecting an ancestral Tibetan paradigm that evolved separately from Indian medical knowledge. This possibility becomes somewhat more compelling when we consider similarities with works like the Nyen Collection (gNyan ‘Bum),⁹ thought by many to be one of the most reliable extant ‘Bönpo’ texts for examining authentic pre-Buddhist nature spirit paradigms in Tibet.¹⁰ Among the many myths and rituals contained in the collection, the sixteenth chapter tells the story of a prehistoric man named Mitsen Ngapa (Mi btsan nga pa), who provokes the distemper of the mighty gnyan with his perilous “actions against nature,” including “cutting down trees; digging up stones from the ground; polluting lakes, springs, and rivers; and hunting wild animals.”¹¹ Mitsen haughtily proclaims:

“I will kill hundreds of thousands of the beasts of the white snow mountain.

I will kill hundreds of thousands of snow cocks and grouse of the blue slate mountain.

I will kill hundreds of thousands of beavers and otters of the rivers.

I will cut the trees of the Nyen.

Dig up the stones of the Nyen.

I will plough the land of the Nyen as my field.

I will irrigate my home land with the water of the Nyen.”¹²

In the myth, these destructive actions provoke the spirits of earth, water, stone, and mountain, causing illness to befall Mitsen and his livestock, and for their souls (bla) to be ‘locked up’ by the gnyan in a fort of nine concentric walls.¹³ To retrieve the souls, Mitsen must consult with a shaman (gshen), who gives him a list of sacrificial offerings to ‘unlock’ the nine ‘padlocks.’ After dedicating all his material possessions and ancestral wealth to this process, the barriers are finally lifted, the souls are restored, and everyone is returned to health.¹⁴ This motif is a recurring ‘charter myth’ found in the Bön tradition – explaining how the first shamans came to Tibet to pacify environmental calamity and teach the Tibetan people how to live in relation with the spirit world. As Samten Karmay explains, these stories establish a “mythic spatio-temporal context” for ritual engagement,¹⁵ and indeed much the same can be said for the preamble of the kLu Provocation chapter in the Four Tantras. Whether or not Yuthok had access to a version of the Nyen Collection itself (it is not impossible¹⁶), he was certainly drawing from indigenous Tibetan systems of knowledge for at least someof his ideas about provocation.

It is worth noting that, even though Indian nāga lore became a dominant influence in Tibetan perceptions of the klu from at least the Imperial Era, these were once two different daemonological ‘types’ from two wholly distinct cultural traditions. The Tibetan klu are not merely semi-divine serpents – they could appear as beautiful nymphs, aquatic monsters, tadpoles, lizards, fish, and even tiny unseen beings which are smaller than the smallest insects.¹⁷ It is not difficult to imagine correlations with pathogens like Mycobacterium leprae, the ground-dwelling bacterium that causes leprosy infections. It is, in any case, quite clear that these are not wispy spectres who only exist in the human mind – they are physically and environmentally embodied in many respects, and their influence stretches far beyond the domain of psychiatry.

Epidemics

The pathological role of spirits is also made evident in the chapters on pestilential and contagious disease (gnyan rims gso ba), where it is again demonstrated that afflictive human behaviours provoke indignancy and conflict amongst the non-human spirits of the world. When a person encounters the toxic ‘vapour’ of their breath, all manner of diseases can arise, which then spread through contagion from patient to patient (rims). Even outside of specialist medical circles, this idea remains firmly rooted in the Tibetan and Himalayan psyche. Pascale Dolfus notes that, in Ladakh, every hamlet has their own vivid memories of disease or cataclysm arising from human disrespect of the klu and other spirits,¹⁸ and many commentators have spoken about the daemonological dynamics underlying disease outbreaks like the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of course, the idea that unseen beings act as agents of disease is clearly not unfamiliar to modern science – this is, in many ways, more-or-less congruent with the biomedical approach. The major philosophical difference between these two theories is that one treats the ‘spirits’ of disease as active and intelligent agents with their own intentionality, while the other tends to view them as unconscious biological automata. Notably, the former approach makes it much easier to conceptualise the relational dynamics underlying epidemic outbreaks, and to identify links between human behaviour, environmental health, and the emergence of infectious disease. This isn’t to say that modern epidemiology is not insightful or useful – indeed, cutting-edge microbiology and virology aptly demonstrates that there is much more to these so-called ‘pathogens’ than we care to admit. Our reluctance to acknowledge their dynamism and intelligence, or our own role in their incitement, is a philosophical shortcoming – not a scientific one. In medieval Europe, Galenism also vehemently rejected the notion that unseen agents have an influence on human health. When it came to epidemics like plague, they instead maintained that it was noxious fumes or ‘bad air’ (miasma) that were chiefly to blame. Notably, it wasn’t really until the 19^th century that English scientists began to understand the dire effects of severe water pollution on human health and disease transmission.

Epidemiologists and climate scientists have been warning about the potential pathological impact of climate change and environmental desecration for decades. Of particular concern is human encroachment upon wild places inhabited by pathogenic organisms and novel viruses to which we have no immunity. Whether caused by development, industry, poaching, or scientific experimentation, the disturbance of ‘sensitive’ habitats is closely linked to the spread of zoonotic infections like SARS, Ebola, and HIV. Research demonstrates that viruses such as these are ‘pastoralists’ of a sort; herding their animal flocks and using their bodies to perpetuate their viral lineage. But in their own accustomed habitats, they have no real need to harm their hosts – their herds are more useful alive than dead, and many viruses are even known to protect their natural hosts from dangerous bacterial invaders and foreign predators – including humans. It should perhaps come as no surprise that most of our infectious diseases emerged during or after the Agricultural Revolution, when humans started removing prey animals out of the wild and impounding them in our homesteads. Exploitation and epidemics often go hand-in-hand – an insight that is very much perceptible (and arguably far more so) in Tibetan medical ontology.

Spirits and Modernity

Even amongst proponents of traditional medicine, spirit illness can be a highly taboo topic. Our presuppositions about daemonology are profoundly influenced by European and Eurocentric perspectives, including the ‘Enlightened’ European notion that abandonment of ‘superstition’ (like the belief in spirits) is a necessary condition of becoming ‘civilised.’ Of course, Europeans rarely applied this logic to their own religiously-sanctioned ‘superstitions’ like a belief in God, the Devil, transubstantiation, or heaven and hell. But so-called ‘subaltern’ paradigms were judged far more harshly, allowing colonisers to portray native and indigenous groups as primitive and underdeveloped, and thus ripe for ‘civilising’ or eradication. While this abhorrent view has long since fallen out of fashion, traces of it continue to permeate our sciences, our politics, and our approaches to the so-called ‘natural world.’ Modernity demands not only a staunch rejection of ‘paranormal’ phenomena, but also a more foundational dedication to anthropocentric instrumentalism. We struggle to extend agency and personhood even to our closest animal kin – nevertheless to trees, forests, and ecosystems. Eco-daemonology affords us a far more diverse and expansive view, one in which the land itself can be regarded as a living entity with whom we are in dynamic relationship.

In Tibetan Buddhist Medicine and Psychiatry (1984), Terry Clifford argued for an approach to gdon nad that treats them as “primarily a psychological phenomenon,” even equating afflictive daemonic forces with “the id trying to obstruct the super-ego’s higher promptings.”¹⁹ While she concedes that traditional perspectives maintain that spirits have a kind of “outer existence” as well, these are mainly characterised as externalised projections of “the forces of [human] life and emotion that can drive the mind insane.”²⁰ Of the numerous approaches to renegotiating provocation disorders in a modern context, this is by far the most common. Some have argued that this is entirely consistent with a ‘rational’ Buddhist worldview, and that the manifold ‘spirits’ of ancient Buddhist literature were intended as symbols or personifications of human mental afflictions. But this is an unsubstantiated and ahistorical claim which grossly mischaracterises historical Buddhist approaches to daemonology,²¹ as well as the lived experiences of many contemporary Asian Buddhists. Spirits have long been regarded as no less ‘real’ than humans or other animals, and to reduce them to mere allegories or symbols robs them of both their socially-afforded personhood and their environmental embeddedness.

While there are areas of overlap between provocation disorders and psychiatric illness, it is abundantly clear that the two are not synonymous in a traditional context, nor is their conflation pragmatically useful in a modern clinical setting. Given the grave outcomes that have transpired from the historical confusion of mental illness with demonic influence in Western history, the reduction of gdon nad to a form of psychopathology is likely something that should be avoided. But that does not mean that the category itself is not a valuable topic of study. Provocation disorders are specifically useful for highlighting the ways that Tibetan Medicine has approached the more-than-human dimensions of health, and the interrelations between environmental, social, and individual wellness.

Bibliography

Andersson, Erik Jampa, Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World is More Than Human (London: Hay House UK, 2023).

Berounský, Daniel, ‘The Nyen Collection (Gnyan ‘bum) and Shenrab Miwo of Nam,’ Archiv Orientálnî Supplementa (2017), 1-43.

Clifford, Terry, Tibetan Buddhist Medicine and Psychiatry: The Diamond Healing (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1984).

DeCaroli, Robert, Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Dolfus, Pascale, ‘Numéro spécial lha srin sde brgyad,’ Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 2 (2003), 4-39.

Karmay, Samten, The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet, revised edition (Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point, 2009).

—, ‘Tibetan Indigenous Myths and Rituals with Reference to the Ancient Bön Text,’ in José Ignacio Cabezón, ed., Tibetan Ritual (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 53-68.

Krug, Adam, ‘Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas,’ Religions, 10(4), 255 (2019) < https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10040255>

Yoeli-Tlalim, Ronit (2012), ‘Re-visiting 'Galen in Tibet',’ Med Hist, 56(3), pp. 355-65. doi: 10.1017/mdh.2012.21.

Tidwell, Tawni L., Nianggajia, and Heidi E. Fjeld, ‘Chasing dön spirits in Tibetan medical encounters: Transcultural affordances and embodied psychiatry in Amdo, Qinghai,’ Transcultural psychiatry, 0(0) (2022), 1-20 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13634615221126058

Tolkien, J. R. R., eds. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, On Fairy-Stories: Expanded edition, with commentary and notes (London: HarperCollins, 2014).

Yang Ga, ‘The Origins of the Four Tantras and an Account of Its Author,’ edited by Theresia Hofer, Bodies and Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014), 154-77.

—, ‘The sources for the writing of the Rgyud bzhi, Tibetan medical classic’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2010).

Yuthok Yönten Gönpo, trans. Thokmay Paljor and Men-Tsee-Khang Translation Department, The Root Tantra and Explanatory Tantra of Tibetan Medicine, second edition (Dharmasala: Men-Tse-Khang Publications, 2015).

—, gDon nad gso ba bcos sgrig ma, ed. Bya mdo klu byams rgyal, eighth edition (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2019).

1. J.R.R. Tolkien (2014), On Fairy-Stories: Expanded edition, with commentary and notes, eds. Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson (London: HarperCollins), p. 28.

2. Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (2012), ‘Re-visiting 'Galen in Tibet',’ Med Hist, 56(3), pp. 355-65.

3. Adam Krug (2019), ‘Buddhist medical demonology in the sūtra of the seven buddhas.’ Religions, 10(4), pp. 9–15.

4. See Tawni L. Tidwell, Nianggajia, and Heidi E. Fjeld (2022), ‘Chasing dön spirits in Tibetan medical encounters: Transcultural affordances and embodied psychiatry in Amdo, Qinghai,’ Transcultural psychiatry, 0(0), p. 6.

5. Yuthok Yönten Gönpo (2015), The Root Tantra and Explanatory Tantra of Tibetan Medicine, second edition, transl. by Thokmay Paljor and Men-Tsee-Khang Translation Department (Dharmasala: Men-Tse-Khang Publications), p. 119.

6. Yang Ga (2010), ‘The sources for the writing of the Rgyud bzhi, Tibetan medical classic’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard), pp. 229-30.

7. Ibid., p. 71.

8. Yuthok Yönten Gönpo (2019), gDon nad gso ba bcos sgrig ma, ed. Bya mdo klu byams rgyal, eighth edition (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang), p. 144.

9. Samten Karmay (2010), ‘Tibetan Indigenous Myths and Rituals with Reference to the Ancient Bön Text,’ in Tibetan Ritual, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 53-68.

10. Ibid., p. 60. As a distinctly autochthonous spirit class with no direct Indic correlate, this text provides a wealth of knowledge that would have necessarily arisen largely outside of Indian Buddhist influence, and which received far less Buddhist augmentation compared to materials on the klu. Indeed, many of the materials even seem to predate the institution of monastic Bön, which was itself greatly influenced by Indian Buddhism.

11. Ibid., p. 59.

12. Ibid., p. 63.

13. Ibid., pp. 55-56.

14. Ibid., p. 65.

15. Samten Karmay (2009), The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet, revised edition (Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point), p. 245.

16. Daniel Berounský (2017), ‘The Nyen Collection (Gnyan ‘bum) and Shenrab Miwo of Nam,’ Archiv Orientálnî Supplementa, pp. 2, 8-9.

17. Pascale Dolfus, ‘Numéro spécial lha srin sde brgyad,’ Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 2, p. 9.

18. Ibid., p. 15.

19. Terry Clifford (1984), Tibetan Buddhist Medicine and Psychiatry: The Diamond Healing (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser), p. 149.

20. Ibid.

21. Robert DeCaroli (2004), Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 8-10, 187.