They Firmly Assert That If They Possess A
Sincere Mind They Will Not Be Injured By The Fire; But Both
Priests and
people get miserably burnt on these occasions." Escayrac de Lauture says
that on those days they leap, dance,
And whirl round the fire, striking at
the devils with a straight Roman-like sword, and sometimes wounding
themselves as the priests of Baal and Moloch used to do.
(Astley, IV. 671; Morley in J. R. A. S. VI. 24; Semedo, 111, 114;
De Mailla, IX. 410; J. As. ser. V. tom. viii. 138; Schott ueber den
Buddhismus etc. 71; Voyage de Khieou in J. As. ser. VI. tom. ix. 41;
Middle Kingdom, II. 247; Doolittle, 192; Esc. de Lauture, Mem. sur la
Chine, Religion, 87, 102; Peler. Boudd. II. 370, and III. 468.)
Let us now turn to the Bon-po. Of this form of religion and its
sectaries not much is known, for it is now confined to the eastern and
least known part of Tibet. It is, however, believed to be a remnant of the
old pre-Buddhistic worship of the powers of nature, though much modified
by the Buddhistic worship with which it has so long been in contact. Mr.
Hodgson also pronounces a collection of drawings of Bonpo divinities,
which were made for him by a mendicant friar of the sect from the
neighbourhood of Tachindu, or Ta-t'sien-lu, to be saturated with Sakta
attributes, i.e. with the spirit of the Tantrika worship, a worship which
he tersely defines as "a mixture of lust, ferocity, and mummery," and
which he believes to have originated in an incorporation with the Indian
religions of the rude superstitions of the primitive Turanians. Mr.
Hodgson was told that the Bonpo sect still possessed numerous and wealthy
Vihars (or abbeys) in Tibet. But from the information of the Catholic
missionaries in Eastern Tibet, who have come into closest contact with the
sect, it appears to be now in a state of great decadence, "oppressed by
the Lamas of other sects, the Peunbo (Bonpo) think only of shaking off
the yoke, and getting deliverance from the vexations which the smallness
of their number forces them to endure." In June, 1863, apparently from
such despairing motives, the Lamas of Tsodam, a Bonpo convent in the
vicinity of the mission settlement of Bonga in E. Tibet, invited the Rev.
Gabriel Durand to come and instruct them. "In this temple," he writes,
"are the monstrous idols of the sect of Peunbo; horrid figures, whose
features only Satan could have inspired. They are disposed about the
enclosure according to their power and their seniority. Above the pagoda
is a loft, the nooks of which are crammed with all kinds of diabolical
trumpery; little idols of wood or copper, hideous masques of men and
animals, superstitious Lama vestments, drums, trumpets of human bones,
sacrificial vessels, in short, all the utensils with which the devil's
servants in Tibet honour their master. And what will become of it all?
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