Chapter - 08 Bon Po Religion - Jain Library

Shri Ashtapad Maha Tirth - II
Kinauri. Thus, it was not some artificial creation fabricated by the Bon Po's in order to
have an ancient source language corresponding to the Indian Sanskrit of the Buddhist
scriptures. [20]
Beginning with the reign of the second king of Tibet, Mutri Tsanpo, it is said that
certain Bon Po texts, in particular the Father Tantras (pha rgyud), were brought from
Zhang-Zhung to Central Tibet and translated into the Tibetan language. [21] Thus the
Bon Po's assert that Tibetan acquired a system of writing at this time, based on the
sMar-yig script used in Zhang-Zhung which would, therefore, have been ancestral to
the dbus-med script now often used for composing Tibetan manuscripts, especially
among the Bon Po's. [22] The Bon Po's subsequently experienced two persecutions in
Central Tibet, the first under the eighth king of Tibet, Drigum Tsanpo, and later the
second under the great Buddhist king of Tibet, Trisong Detsan in the eighth century
of our era. According to the tradition, on both occasions, the persecuted Bon Po sages
concealed their books in various places in Tibet and adjacent regions such as Bhutan.
These caches of texts were rediscovered beginning in the tenth century. Thus they are
known as rediscovered texts or as "hidden treasures" (gter-ma). [23] Certain other texts
were never concealed, but remained in circulation and were passed down from the time
of the eighth century in a continuous lineage. These are known as snyan-rgyud, literally
"oral transmission", even though they are usually said to have existed as written texts
even from the early period. One example of such an "oral tradition" is the Zhang-Zhung
snyan-rgyud, which, in the eighth century, the master Tapihritsa gave permission to
his disciple Gyerpungpa to write down in the form of his pithy secret oral instructions
(man-ngag, Skt. upadesha). Or else, the texts were dictated during the course of ecstatic
visions or altered states of consciousness by certain ancient sages or certain deities to
Lamas who lived in later centuries. One such example of this was the famous lengthy
hagiography of Tonpa Shenrab known as the gZi-brjid, dictated to Lodan Nyingpo
(bLoldan snying-po, b.1360) by certain mountain spirits. This classification is rather
similar to the Nyingmapa classification of its scriptures into bka'-ma and gter-ma. [24]
This form of Old Bon flourished in Western and Central Tibet down to our own day.
The teachings of Bon revealed by Tonpa Shenrab are classified differently in the three
traditional hagiographical accounts of his life. In general, Tonpa Shenrab was said to
have expounded Bon in three cycles of teachings:
I. The Nine Successive Vehicles to Enlightenment (theg-pa rim dgu);
II. The Four Portals of Bon and the fifth which is the Treasury (sgo bzhi mdzod
Inga); and
III. The Three Cycles of Precepts that are Outer, Inner, and Secret (bka’ phyi nang
gsang skor gsum).
These Nine Ways or Nine Successive Vehicles to Enlightenment are delineated according to three
different systems of hidden treasure texts (gter-ma) that were put into concealment during the
earlier persecutions of Bon and were rediscovered in later centuries. These treasure systems are
designated according to the locations where the hidden treasure texts were discovered.
The Bon Po Traditions of Dzogchen
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