To practising bonpos, Bon simply means the true religion of Tibet, while to Tibetan Buddhists, Bon refers to the false teachings and practices that were prevalent before Buddhism finally succeeded in gaining a firm hold on the country. The present study resulted from a period during which the author, a renowned scholar of Asian languages and cultures, was engaged in intense contact with practicing bonpos. It consists of the translation of fundamental texts of Bon, based on a manuscript of some 400 years of age, in which the entire Bon tantric practice is summarized. In many ways remarkably parallel to the early Buddhist teachings, much of the Bon tradition was subsequently incorporated back into Buddhism when that religion was formally adopted into Tibetan culture. This important study, first published in the 1960s and long out of print, will be welcomed by all with interest in the religions of the Himalayas.

The Bon religion claims to be the original and authentic religion of the Tibetan people, and to have been firmly established in the Land of Snows long before Buddhism was introduced in the seventh century AD. Although its adherents were gradually reduced to a minority, Bon has nevertheless continued to flourish in many areas up to the present day in Tibet, especially in the eastern and north-eastern regions where a reconstruction and renaissance is taking place, as well as within the Bon community in exile in India. The iconography of the Bon religion is presented through a series of thangkas, miniatures and bronzes from public and private collections in the West, as well as from communities within Tibet and in exile. With a few exceptions they are hitherto unpublished and date from the late fourteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. The peaceful, tutelary, protector and local deities as well as the Bon siddhas, lamas and dakinis are identified and fully described by means of excerpts from ritual or biographical texts which are translated here for the first time.

The practice of fumigation and offering of sacred smoke, known as sang, uses smoke created according to the instructions of an ancient ritual to purify contamination of the environment and its seen and unseen inhabitants. This contamination is caused by the negative activity of humanity and results in many types of calamity and misfortune. The ritual of sacred smoke purifies this contamination and its negative consequences and create a basis for good fortune and prosperity, and supports positive and harmonious circumstances for spiritual practice and development.

Tantric Revisionings presents stimulating new perspectives on Hindu and Buddhist religion, particularly their Tantric versions, in India, Tibet or in modern Western societies. Geoffrey Samuel adopts an historically and textually informed anthropological approach, seeking to locate and understand religion in its social and cultural context. The question of the relation between 'popular' (folk, domestic, village, 'shamanic') religion and elite (literary, textual, monastic) religion forms a recurring theme through these studies. Six chapters have not been previously published; the previously published studies included are in publications which are difficult to locate outside major specialist libraries.

The Tibetan Gesar epic has known countless retellings, translations, and academic studies. The Many Faces of Ling Gesar, presents its historical, cultural, and literary aspects for the first time in a single volume for both general readers and specialists.

The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems by Thuken Losang Chökyi Nyima (1737-1802) is probably the widest-ranging account of religious philosophies ever written in pre-modern Tibet. Thuken was a cosmopolitan Buddhist monk from Amdo, Mongol by heritage, Tibetan in education, and equally comfortable in a central Tibetan monastery or at the imperial court in Beijing. Like most texts on philosophical systems, his Crystal Mirror covers the major schools of India, both non-Buddhist and Buddhist, but then goes on to discuss in detail the entire range of Tibetan traditions as well, with separate chapters on the Nyingma, Kadam, Kagyü, Shijé, Sakya, Jonang, Geluk, and Bön. Not resting there, Thuken goes on to describe the major traditions of China-Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist-as well as those of Mongolia, Khotan, and Shambhala. The Crystal Mirror is unusual, too, in its concern not just to describe and analyze doctrines, but to trace the historical development of the various traditions. All this makes the Crystal Mirror an eloquent, erudite, and informative textbook on the religious history and philosophical systems of an array of Asian cultures-and provides evidence that serious and sympathetic study of the history of religions has not been a monopoly of Western scholarship.