Bön
A grouping whose distinctness is itself disputed within Vajrayāna. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Bön is recorded within Vajrayāna. Whether it constitutes a distinct tradition is itself disputed in the sources. Also written Bon, g.Yung drung Bon (Eternal Bön).
Origin
Founder named in the sources: Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche (traditional founder figure). No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. The Encyclopedia of Religion entry states that the common description of Bön as Tibet's indigenous pre-Buddhist religion 'is misleading', and that organised Bön as known today developed 'in close interaction with Buddhism from the eighth century onward' and is deeply influenced by Mahāyāna. It dates documented historical Bön to c. 1017 (with scripture 'rediscoveries'), the founding of Menri (Sman ri) monastery to 1405, and the fixing of the canon to no later than c. 1450, the latter following the Bön specialist Per Kværne.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Bön.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-bon.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-bon-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Bön},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-bon},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.