“The Myth of Rudra’s Subjugation According to the bsGrags pa gling grags. Some Observations on the Beginning of a Historiographical Tradition”,

The myth of Rudra’s subjugation acquired extraordinary popularity in Buddhist Indian and Chinese literature since the 4th CE. Later on, it spread in the Buddhist tantras, and became the classical etiological tale of the Buddhist esoteric revelation in India and later in Tibet. It served to explain the origins of the secret tantra literature. Various versions of this narration appear in several Sanskrit Buddhist tantric texts. In this paper I analyse the Tibetan Bon rewriting of this myth, according to the bsGrags pa gling grags which evidentiates traces of a tradition that preceded the formation of the later g.Yung drung Bon school. This ancient Bon tradition was far from the dichotomous, polarized forms that evolved in later times, around the14th century, corresponding to a clear political agenda and a strong reaction to the gSar ma pa hegemony.