In Divination in Exile, Alexander K. Smith offers the first comprehensive scholarly introduction to the performance of divination in Tibetan speaking communities, both past and present. While Smith surveys a variety of ritual practices, the volume focuses on divination and its associated rites in the contemporary Tibetan Bon tradition. Drawing from multi-site ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Himachal Pradesh and the translation of previously unpublished Tibetan language materials, Divination in Exile offers a valuable, social scientific contribution to our understanding of the perception and usage of ritual manuscripts in contemporary Tibetan cultural milieus.

Divination in Exile: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ritual Prognostication in the Tibetan Bon Tradition, Alexander Kingsbury Smith, Brill, Hardcover, 195 pp, $116.00

Alexander K. Smith holds a doctorate in the anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas from the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes (2016). Until recently, he was a deputy professor of social anthropology at Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg.

CONTENTS: Divination in Exile
	Acknowledgements		vii
	List of Figures and Tables		viii
	Introduction: Interdisciplinary Perspectives		1
1	The Study of Tibetan Divination		8
	1	Introduction	8
	2	The Study of Tibetan Divination in the West	9
	3	Divination in European and American Scholarship	29
	4	Divination Eliminates Anxiety and Facilitates Decision Making	31
	5	Divination, Dialogue, and Rationality	33
2	Tibetan Divination and the Bon Tradition		37
	1	A Brief Introduction to Tibetan Divination	37
	2	Remarks on Tibetan Buddhist Historiography and the Origins of Divination	41
	3	General Remarks on the Bon Religion	47
	4	Bonpos in the Contemporary Diaspora Community	53
	5	Two Classifications of Bon Religious Teachings: the sGo bzhi mdzod lnga and Theg pa rim pa dgu	56
	6	The Classification of Divination and Its Origins in the Bon Tradition: Excerpts from the gZi brjid	59
	7	Divination Manuscripts in the Bon Canon	66
3	lDe'u 'phrul Divination		70
	1	Introduction	70
	2	lDe'u 'phrul Divination	72
	3	lDe'u 'phrul Origin Narratives	75
	4	Location	78
	5	Outline of the lDe'u 'phrul Rite	79
	6	lDe'u 'phrul Prognostics: Major and Minor Results	87
	7	The Interpretation of Prognostics	93
4	The Divination of sMra ba'i seng ge		105
	1	Introduction to the sMra seng rdel mo gsal ba'i me long	105
	2	Transliteration Guidelines	107
	3	Translation of MS	107
	Conclusion: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Tibetan Divination?		137
	Appendix 1: The Divination Gods: Excerpts from the MSAP		143
	Appendix 2: Facsimilies of MSED		150
	Bibliography		169
	Index		193