Abstract
This paper discusses the possible origins of the Tibetan gter ma tradition from outside its own testimonies and narratives, making use of other written historical documents (such as chronicles and genealogies) and recent fieldwork in East Tibet. The paper focuses on Tibetan indigenous religious notions, particularly on local, and mainly mountain, deities (variously called gzhi bdag, yul lha, gzhi bdag yul ha, also sa bdag, etc.), and their relationship to the concept of a hidden treasure, gter. Such a treasure gter is an offering to the deities of land, acquires various functions, and is employed at different social and religious occasions. It represents a coherent part of indigenous cosmological perceptions and linked ancestral worship, at least in the studied case of certain areas in East Tibet. The paper aims to examine in which ways the gter is related to gter ma, if it eventually might have stood at its origins, and if, for instance, the latter might be an outcome of the Buddhicisation of the former.
Publication
(i) Sehnalova, Anna, 2019. "Powerful Deity or National Geopark?: the Pilgrimage to A-myes-rma-chen in 2014/2015, Transformations of Modernisation, State Secularism, and Environmental Change". In: Inner Asia 21(2): 216-282.
(ii) Sehnalova, Anna. 2022. “Tombs and Treasures: Tibetan Empire and Ancestor Cults in Present East Tibet”. In: Hazod, Guntram, Christian Jahoda, and Mathias Fermer (eds.). The Social and the Religious in the Making of Tibetan Societies. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 221-282.
