"On local and mountain deities in Bhutan"

International audienceIn Bhutan, one hears of btsan, dge bsnyen, yul lha, "nep" (gnas pa), gter bdag and gzhi bdag. These deities, which play an important role in the lives of the Bhutanese, live in sacred places, often mountains and have to be propitiated by the people at regular intervals. However, it was never particularly clear to me what these names referred to exactly, and how these deities related to one another. In this paper, I would like to present some preliminary remarks on Bhutanese material related to mountain and local deities, and at the same time try to place them in the more general context of methodology and classification