• 1 The topic of mdos is addressed in at least two more recent articles by the same author. One is ‘Le (...)

1This landmark study by one of the foremost Tibetologists of our time should perhaps be understood as the second in a trilogy of articles that appeared respectively in 1988, 1990 and 2002. The first, authored jointly with Samten Karmay, was ‘Le cerf à la vaste ramure: en guise d’introduction’ (Deer with large antlers: by way of an introduction) and the third ‘The mKha’ klong gsang mdos: some questions on ritual structure and cosmology’, the only one of the three to have been originally published in English. The common theme that unites these three articles is that they are all concerned with the enigmatic category of ritual known as mdos (pronounced dö) and, together, they constitute the most thorough exploration of the topic that has been undertaken to this day.1 In contrast with ‘The deer’ and ‘The mKha’ klong gsang mdos’, which deal with particular rituals in the category, the present article takes the form of a more general reflection on the spectrum of performances that the mdos designates, its affiliation to Buddhism and Bon, its relationship with other apparently similar rituals and its possible origins. If, as the author remarks at the outset, with the caution for which she is well known, the article raises more questions than it provides answers, there can be little doubt that these are the right questions, while convincing answers are by no means lacking. For example, it is in this article that we are told categorically what a mdos is not. For many earlier authors, their qualities as first-class researchers notwithstanding – René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz among them – a mdos is a thread cross. These constructions will be well known to anyone who has visited Tibet or practically any culturally Tibetan area, since they are to be seen over door lintels as part of the apotropaic constructions known as ‘sky doors’ (gnam sgo) and ‘earth doors’ (sa sgo), or at crossroads where they have been deposited, with the dough effigies that they adorn, at the conclusion of ‘ransom’ (glud) rituals. It is no doubt because the crosses, which often have highly elaborate forms, are an especially conspicuous element of mdos constructions, that it has been assumed that these are what the term mdos designates. In fact, as Mme Blondeau makes very clear, the thread crosses are known as nam mkha’, while the mdos of which they form a part is a far more complex construction. While this fact may have been appreciated by a few previous authors, among them Giuseppe Tucci and Ariane Macdonald, their characterisation of the mdos remained limited: Mme Blondeau regrets (for example) Tucci’s apparent failure to grasp that the mdos may be ‘simultaneously the palace of the deity invited to preside over the cosmos and the abode of the demon one wants to expel’.

• 2 Concerning the likely etymology of the name No bwe ka, see van Schaik (2023: 20–21, fn6).
• 3 Mme Blondeau refers to a tantra with this title that features in the rNying ma rgyud ’bum, having (...)

2While research on the subject of mdos may not have advanced greatly since the original article appeared, the proliferation of published Tibetan sources has made available a number of previously little-known works that may help with our understanding of the topic. Perhaps the single most important of these for our purposes is a work that appeared in the second edition of the Bonpo bKa’ brten, a large and somewhat random assemblage of works that derives its name from the assertion that they ‘depend (brten) upon the word (bka’)’ of gShen rab mi bo, the legendary founder of the Bon religion, rather than forming a corpus of canonical commentaries, as is the case of the Buddhist bKa’ ’gyur. The work in question is entitled Phyi nang gsang ba’i mdos kyi byung khungs gsal byed lag khrid no bwe ka’i lag len, ‘Practical procedures of the No bwe ka, a set of pragmatic instructions that clarify the outer, inner and secret mdos’ (No bwe ka).2 This work, which – as the title suggests – contains detailed information about the form and function of mdos and other constructions, such as nam mkha’ and the ‘tree symbols’ known as rgyang bu, classifies the mdos broadly into three groups, outer, inner and secret, gives examples of each, and apportions them to a particular set of scriptures and doctrinal class in the scheme known as the sGo bzhi mdzod lnga, the ‘Four Portals and the Treasury, the Fifth’. Thus the origins of all ‘outer’ mdos are to be found in the lHa ’dre stong gi drwa ba,3 and they belong to the class of teachings known as ’Phan yul – the first of the ‘portals’ in the above-mentioned scheme; ‘inner’ mdos are based on the Ma mo ’bum gyi bem chag, and they belong to the ‘Black Water Bon of the Phenomenal World’ (Chab nag srid pa rgyud kyi bon); all ‘secret’ mdos are to be found in the Great mKha’ klong gsang mdos – the subject of Mme Blondeau’s 1992 article – and the Gal po mtha’ sel mdos, and they belong to the ‘class of destructive tantras known as the “White Water”’ (Chab dkar drag po sngags kyi rgyud). All the litanies are to be found in the gSal byed me long ’phrul gyi dgu skor and the Rin chen sgron ma rnam gsum, and they belong to the ‘system of the teachings and transmissions in the “Master Sage” class’ (dPon gsas man ngag lung gi bon). The varieties of yas stag[s] offerings are set out in the Srid pa gsum gyi bem bzhag, while the full spectrum of major and minor mdos, with explanations of the purposes for which they are appropriate, are be found in the No bwe ka Tantra – a work that is referred to in several texts but is considered to have been lost (No bwe ka, fol 1v–2v/p256–58). The text goes on to set out the polyvalent nature of mdos that has been noted by Mme Blondeau: we are told that ‘outer mdos are to be understood as ransoms; inner mdos as divinities and secret mdos as offerings; mdos of repulsion should be understood as armies, and “striking” mdos as weapons – these are the five ways in which mdos are to be understood’ (No bwe ka, fol 3r/p259).

• 4 Scans of only the first dozen or so folios are available to me at the time of writing, and I do no (...)

3If Mme Blondeau had had access to this text at the time she wrote the article that is presented here, would it have significantly affected her understanding of mdos? I do not think so. Although the date of the composition of the No bwe ka is unknown to me,4 its allocation of the different categories of mdos to different ‘ways’ in the Bonpos scheme of doctrinal classification seems contrived, and appears to be a relatively recent effort to establish order in a little-understood domain by aligning the mdos with the categories of Buddhicised Yungdrung (‘Everlasting’) Bon. Writing of the attempts to categorise mdos and gto in the fourteenth-century gZi brjid, David Snellgrove observed that the original nature of these concepts may well already have been forgotten even at this relatively early time (Snellgrove 1967: 9–10). The exegeses contained in the No bwe ka are certainly of great value for our understanding of the ways in which the later Bon tradition has sought to assimilate archaic beliefs and practices, but they tell us little about the place they occupied in the ritual complexes of early Tibet.

• 5 Protecting the Kingdom with Tibetan Mansucripts, Project No2018/30/M/HS3/00372 funded by the Natio (...)

4Mme Blondeau addresses the question of whether the mdos is fundamentally a Buddhist or a Bon account. Buddhist mdos texts seem generally to be more abundant and there are even several sizeable compilations of such works that are cited in the article. One of these texts explicitly states that it was originally taught in India by the Buddha Shakyamuni. However, as Mme Blondeau recognises, these observations cannot of course be taken as reliable indications of a Buddhist provenance. While Buddhists may have been more proactive in their adaptation and organisation of such works – witness Mi pham’s classification of gto rituals (Lin 2005) – claims of Indian origins are certainly spurious. We are reminded of Berthold Laufer’s dismissal of such a claim in the version of the Klu ’bum that featured in his pioneering nineteenth-century study of that quintessentially Bonpo work as an attempt to legitimise it for a Buddhist readership (Laufer 1898: 15). An important observation in the present article that has been substantiated by recent research is the fact that, in many texts that are classified as mdos, the titles do not feature this term, which may appear only in the colophon or mentioned in passing in the instructions intercalated between the passages to be recited. An ongoing study of a collection of ritual texts belonging to the family of the former Bonpo chaplains of the kings of Mustang reveals that a significant number of these rituals – which include a variety of offerings, exorcisms and other apotropaic procedures – are identified as mdos in the body of the text, although no such indication is given in the title.5

• 6 Wandejia forthcoming. The Prommi people referred to by Wandejia are closely related to those gener (...)

7The other example that may be cited is drawn from the Prommi people, a minority Tibetan-speaking population in China’s Sichuan province who have been extensively studied by our colleague Wandejia (Ban de skyabs) of Sichuan University.6 The elaborate funeral rituals of the Prommi include effigies featuring nam mkha’, consisting in this case of thread crosses backed with layers of coloured cloths and displaying in front a drawing representing the face of the deceased. These nam mkha’ are said to be supports for the soul (bla) of the deceased, and their particular form represents that individual’s social status or identity. These two cases do not of course prove Mme Blondeau’s hypothesis of a connection between mdos rituals and royal funerals, but they do at least show that, for certain Tibetan populations, an association between death rituals and certain aspects of the mdos complex would not seem outlandish at all; they also underscore the author’s advocacy of ethnographic studies in the Tibetan borderlands, since it is here that we may find traces of rituals that, ‘if only by analogy, shed light on the conceptual world from which the non-Buddhist manuscripts of Dunhuang originate’.