Bon

Bon or Bön (Tibetan: བོན་, Wylie: bon, Lhasa dialect IPA: [pʰø̃̀] ) is a Tibetan religious tradition or sect, being distinct from Buddhist ones in its particular myths, although many of its teachings, terminology and rituals resemble Tibetan Buddhism. It arose in the eleventh century and established its scriptures mainly from termas and visions by tertöns such as Loden Nyingpo. Though Bon terma contain myths of Bon existing before the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet, "in truth the 'old religion' was a new religion."

Definitions of Bon

As Bon only arose in the eleventh century through the work of tertons, Sam van Schaik states it is improper to refer to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet as Bon:

History

Foundation

Three Bon scriptures--mdo 'dus, gzer mig, and gzi brjid--relate the mythos of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche. The Bonpos regard the first two as gter ma rediscovered around the eleventh century and the last as nyan brgyud (oral transmission) dictated by Loden Nyingpo, who lived in the fourteenth century. In the fourteenth century, Loden Nyingpo revealed a terma known as The Brilliance (Wylie: gzi brjid ), which contained the story of Tonpa Shenrab. He was not the first Bonpo tertön, but his terma became one of the definitive scriptures of Bon religion. It states that Shenrab established the Bon religion while searching for a horse stolen by a demon. Tradition also tells that he was born in the land of Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring (considered an axis mundi) which is traditionally identified as Mount Yung-drung Gu-tzeg (“Edifice of Nine Sauwastikas”), possibly Mount Kailash, in western Tibet. Due to the sacredness of Tagzig Olmo Lungting and Mount Kailash, the Bonpo regard both the swastika and the number nine as auspicious and as of great significance.

Aweer language

Aweer (Aweera), also known as Boni (Bon, Bonta), is a Cushitic language spoken in Kenya. Historically known in the literature by the derogatory term Boni, the Aweer people are foragers traditionally subsisting on hunting, gathering, and collecting honey. Their ancestral lands range along the Kenyan coast from the Lamu and Ijara Districts into Southern Somalia's Badaade District.

According to Ethnologue, there are around 8,000 speakers of Aweer or Boni. Aweer has similarities with the Garre. However, its speakers are physically and culturally distinct from the Aweer people.

Evidence suggests that the Aweer/Boni are remnants of the early hunter-gatherer inhabitants of Eastern Africa. According to linguistic, anthropological and other data, these groups later came under the influence and adopted the Afro-Asiatic languages of the Eastern and Southern Cushitic peoples who moved into the area.

References

External links

Bon (surname)

See also

Geography

Geography (from Greek γεωγραφία, geographia, lit. "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or picture or write about the earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). Four historical traditions in geographical research are spatial analysis of the natural and the human phenomena (geography as the study of distribution), area studies (places and regions), study of the human-land relationship, and research in the Earth sciences. Nonetheless, modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline that foremost seeks to understand the Earth and all of its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical science". Geography is divided into two main branches: human geography and physical geography.

Word chain

Word chain, also known as Grab on Behind, Last and First, Alpha and Omega, and The Name Game. is a word game in which players come up with words that begin with the letter or letters that the previous word ended with. A category of words is usually chosen, there is a time limit such as five seconds, and words may not be repeated in the same game. An example chain for food would be: Soup - Peas - Sugar - Rice.

It is used as a tool for teaching English as a second language and as a car game.

The version of the game in which cities are used is called Geography.

Related games

A similar Japanese game is Shiritori, in which the word must begin with the last syllable, or kana, of the previous word. It includes a rule for loss: words ending with N may not be used since the kana is never used in the beginning of words. The game Antakshari (ant means end, akshar means letter), played in India, Pakistan and Nepal also involves chaining, but with verses of movie songs (usually Bollywood songs). In Russia a game similar to the Word chain is called Words (Russian: слова).

Geography (Ptolemy)

The Geography (Greek: Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις, Geōgraphikḕ Hyphḗgēsis, lit. "Geographical Guidance"), also known by its Latin names as the Geographia and the Cosmographia, is a gazeteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, compiling the geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. Originally written by Ptolemy in Greek at Alexandria around AD 150, the work was a revision of a now-lost atlas by Marinus of Tyre using additional Roman and Persian gazetteers and new principles. Its translation into Arabic in the 9th century and Latin in 1406 was highly influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the medieval Caliphate and Renaissance Europe.

Manuscripts

Versions of Ptolemy's work in antiquity were probably proper atlases with attached maps, although some scholars aver that the references to maps in the text were later additions.

No Greek manuscript of the Geography survives from earlier than the 13th century. A letter written by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes records that he searched for one for Chora Monastery in the summer of 1295; one of the earliest surviving texts may have been one of those he then assembled. In Europe, maps were sometimes made redrawn using the coördinates provided by the text, as Planudes was forced to do. Later scribes and publishers could then copy these new maps, as Athanasius did for the emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus. The three earliest surviving texts with maps are those from Constantinople (Istanbul) based on Planudes's work.