Swastika, religion and magic in the Tibet

Boasted, Iñaki. - Swastika, religion and magic in the Tibet. Oberón. 2003

Swastika is a work dedicated to describing the fundamental aspects of the religion Bon.

One of few Spanish capable of reading and speaking the Tibetan, Valued language penetrates into this work in an arduous and tiring task. To present to the reader the ancient religion Bon. It is thought that this religion is one of the original religions of the Tibet, that until now present survives in some places. Succinctly the Bon might be considered to be as a special type of shamanism, with a priestly caste entrusted to develop a wide ritual variety to obtain the blessing or to appease to the numerous present spirits in our universe.

This religion, as any work humanizes, has suffered a long trasformación throughout the centuries, of such form, that at present the monasteries where the faith survives can be practising a religion very different from the one that was practised originally.

To reconstruct the origins, the history, the development of this religion, is one of the works that we find in this work. To present to the reader his evolution, the most important points of his doctrine and rituals, there are the principal merits of the author.

It is not doubt of the value of the investigation carried out by the author, and the realized effort trying to understand the extract and rituals of the religion Bon.

Along with them it disappoints us that the treatment of such a novel topic, he has not accompanied himself of a less complex way of narrating it, since up to descriptions of scarce complication they are difficult of understanding in consequence in the style of the author, that it turns to the concepts moving away and removing their reader, up to losing completely the perspective about what one speaks.

The work of Boasted, in spite of the intrinsic value that it presents for being the first time that there discuss in Spanish the rudiments of the tradition Bon, it is too on the other hand important defects.

- The principal one is, in my opinion, the abuse of the Chinese sources and the almost finished absence of reference to the modern investigations in western languages. Any reader a little interested in the topic will throw in absence the absence of no reference to the important works of David Snellgrove (especially The nine ways of Bon) or of Per Kvaerne (The Bon religion of Tibet), and others that in the last years have helped to announce this religion in Occident.

- On the other hand the wide enumeration of slightly explained rituals prevents the reader from comprising the extract of the religion that wants to be explained.

- The references to the presence of the Bon, or of his relation with the minorities of the nearby regions, like the Naxi, Moso or Pumi, it is not used to explain not even the form in which the Bon spreads, not as it is transmitted.

- The use of the names of arbitrary form, it creates continuous confusions.

- It is of noticing also the absence of any comparison between the principal characteristics of this religion, and those that peoples become related linguistically to the Tibetan ones profess, and more when the author dares to compare them with those of the ancient Persia and even with Greece. Even in these more well-known comparisons, to have detailed little more union bonds between a few religions and others would have been useful to help the reader to understand the complex world of the religion Bon.

We give the welcome of course to the publication of this book, which we consider to be essential for all the readership interested in Tibet and Central Asia, as well as those who feel interest in the religions, since as soon as there were saved the small difficulties that appear before his reading, already mentioned previously, he will be able to gain access to the camera of the treasure. The most secret rituals of the tradition Bon.

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