Copyright

Bendi Tso, Marnyi Gyatso, Naljor Tsering and Mark Turin acting as Trustees for the Members of the Choné Tibetan Community

Published On

2023-10-04

Page Range

pp. 275–340

Language

  • Chinese
  • English
  • Tibetan

Print Length

66 pages

Rübel / རུས་སྦལ། / 龟说

  • Bendi Tso (author)
  • Marnyi Gyatso (author)
  • Naljor Tsering (author)
  • Mark Turin (author)
  • Members of the Choné Tibetan Community (author)
Chapter of: Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné(pp. 275–340)
This chapter delves into Rübel, a tortoise-shaped deity that appears in both Bon and Buddhist traditions. It provides a detailed account of Rübel’s life and residence in the sea, followed by how Mañjuśrī tamed Rübel and transformed it into the foundation of the world. The narration also explores the divinatory schemes embodied in Rübel, such as the five elements, eight trigrams, nine magic squares, and Zodiac animals that play an indispensable role in Tibetan astrology.

Contributors

Bendi Tso

(author)
PhD student in Anthropology at University of British Columbia

Bendi Tso is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include oral tradition documentation, Indigenous knowledge mobilization, and linguistic and cultural identities on the Sino-Tibetan borderland. Her work has been published in Book 2.0 and two peer-reviewed edited volumes.

Marnyi Gyatso

(author)
Postdoctoral Associate at the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University

Marnyi Gyatso is a historian of empires and frontiers in East Asia. He is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Council on East Asian Studies of Yale University. His research focuses on the interaction and exchange between China and Inner Asia from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. He is currently working on a book project that examines China’s transition from empire to nation-state in Inner Asia between 1862 and 1962. He is also editing a book that explores how different ethnic groups along the rivers of the eastern Tibetan Plateau have adapted to, negotiated with, transformed, and interpreted their natural surroundings.

Naljor Tsering

(author)
PhD student in Ethnology, Southwest Minzu University, and in Tibetan History and Philology at École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL

Naljor Tsering is a Ph.D. student at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. His research interests include early tantric ritual of the Tibetan Bon religion. His forthcoming Ph.D. thesis is entitled ‘dBal Chu: A Study of the Texts and Performance of a Ritual in the Cycle of the Bon Divinity Gekhod.’ He currently participates in two projects: Protecting the Kingdom with Tibetan Manuscripts: Codicological and Historical Analysis of the Royal Drangsong Collection from Mustang, Nepal, and Tibetan Social History and Archives Research in rGyal rong (Jia rong) of Sichuan, China. He has been involved in translating and editing four books.

Mark Turin

(author)
Associate Professor, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and Department of Anthropology at University of British Columbia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2262-0986

Mark Turin is an anthropologist, linguist and occasional radio presenter, and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. His research area is ethnolinguistic, language endangerment, linguistic diversity, visual anthropology, digital archives, and field methodology. His numerous publications appeared in Journal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology, Language in Society, Museum Anthropology, Oral Tradition, among other journals, as well as in many edited volumes. He is the author or co-author of four books, three travel guides, the editor of nine volume, and he edits the World Oral Literature Series with Open Book Publishers.

Members of the Choné Tibetan Community

(author)