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0265 Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1
Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 / Page 265 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000231
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CHAPTER XIII

RELIGION

IN Tibet there are two religious bodies; the Bud-
dhists, whom we now generally call Lamaists,
and the Pon-bo. These two have a common basis
in the ancient worship of a medley of gods, repre-
senting more or less obviously the forces of nature.
Connected with this mythology was a burdensome
belief in magic. Much of all these tyrannical fears
has survived even in Lamaism, while the Pon-bo
creed of to-day, which does not profess Buddha at
all, is substantially the ancient cult, still held by
those whose ancestors, for various reasons, failed to
"go over" in the days when the newly imported re-
ligion was covering the land. The lower, grosser
elements of Lamaism are substantially repeated
among the Pon-bo; or rather we may say that the
vulgar Lamaist has the Pon-bo creed plus some
vague notion of Gautama's high abstractions.
The relation between the two bodies is similar to
that which might have been seen in Europe as late
as the sixth century A.D., when there still existed
communities professing the ancient paganism, while
enthroned Christianity had not been able to free
itself from a heritage of magic, witch and devil cult,
and had shifted the worship of the Finite from demi-
gods to saints. But then in Europe, as now in Tibet

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