The Bon Religion of Tibet: The Iconography of a Living Tradition

Per Kvaerne is a scholar of Tibetan religion, and this Serindia Publications book is his standard academic account of Bon, presenting it as a living Tibetan religious tradition in its own right rather than, as older scholarship sometimes did, as a mere pre-Buddhist survival absorbed into Tibetan Buddhism. Its strength is that reframing itself, grounded in Kvaerne's direct study of Bon's own textual and iconographic tradition, which lets the religion be described on its own institutional and doctrinal terms. Its limit is that it is a survey covering Bon's iconography and general character rather than a detailed history of any one Bon lineage or monastery, so a claim about a specific Bon institution's own particular history needs a more focused source.