Application for publication costs for the social scientific book Source of Life.Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas.

长期以来，不丹和中国西南部之间的喜马拉雅东部和青藏高原边缘地区的研究受到政治限制，这意味着该地区的许多高原社会仍然是亚洲所有民族中科学界最不了解的。它的主要贡献共同证明了该地区不同民族之间迄今未知的跨喜马拉雅文化和祖先联系。第一卷呈现了第一个广泛的文献，任何共享的东喜马拉雅文化习俗和观点存在于一个更大的地区。对这种崇拜的研究使本书的第二个主要贡献得以实现：批判性地重新思考这种公认的文化现象与萨满之间可能存在的关系。苯教和萨满教被认为是该地区最古老的明显文化模式，因此在关于尼泊尔西部和中国西南部以及邻近的青藏高原之间的高原社会的讨论中，苯教和萨满教仍然是重要的特征。然而，在现有文献中，它们之间的任何关系都是肤浅的研究和争议。这本书的新评估揭示了这两种现象更深刻地纠缠在一起，并且与有组织的西藏苯教有着不同的关系，而不是之前所认识到的。本书的前两个贡献为第三个贡献提供了数据：探索关于藏缅门中某些语言分支的民族语言身份和史前史的新假设。向东900公里在中国。这一发现证实了一个关于该地区史前人类的新假说。它提供的证据表明，青藏高原东南部及其边缘地区曾经是一个更大的史前羌语聚居区。

Longstanding political restrictions on research access to the eastern Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau margins between Bhutan and southwest China mean many of the region's highland societies remain among the least known to science of all peoples in Asia. The monograph Source of Life presents three new inquiries into some of these highland societies based upon the first long-term and in-depth ethnographic project to be permitted in eastern Bhutan and western Arunachal Pradesh (India). Its major contributions together demonstrate heretofore unknown trans-Himalayan cultural and ancestral connections between different peoples in the region. Volume I presents the first extensive documentation of any shared eastern Himalayan cultural practices and perspectives existing over a larger area. The focus is a subregional ancestral cult dedicated to revitalisation, procreation and fertility, called bon and led by shamans (bonpo), and evident across eastern Bhutan and far western Arunachal Pradesh. Study of this cult allows for the book's second main contribution: critical reconsideration of possible relationships between such bonidentified cultural phenomena and shamans. Bon and shamans are considered to belong to the region's oldest evident cultural patterns, and so continue to feature in discussions about highland societies between west Nepal and southwest China, as well as the adjacent Tibetan Plateau. Yet, any relationship between them remains both superficially studied and controversial in the existing literature. The book's new assessment reveals these two phenomena are more deeply entangled, and stand in a different relationship to the organised Tibetan Bon religion, than previously realised. The book's first two contributions provide data for the third: Exploring new hypotheses about ethnolinguistic identities and prehistory of speakers of certain language branches within the Tibeto-Burman phylum. Volume II presents dense empirical evidence of ancestral heritage shared between peoples of eastern Bhutan and adjacent western Arunachal Pradesh who speak East Bodish languages, and populations now called Qiang and Naxi dwelling ca. 900 km eastwards in China. This finding addresses a newly emerging hypothesis on prehistoric peopling of the region. It offers evidence indicating the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau and its margins were once a far larger prehistoric settlement zone for speakers of Qiangic languages.