National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

the festival of Shar-rgan which was distinguished by a human sacrifice, was apparently
celebrated in her honour.¹ A little above the old dancing place, the remains of a pit into
which the victims were thrown, are shown to the traveller. The pit is said to have been
of considerable depth, but now-a-days it is only a yard or so deep. Every year a child of
eight years of age was thus sacrificed. Now-a-days a goat is offered instead. This happens
at the new Shar-rgan place. Old people in the village say that their own grand-
mothers were witnesses of human sacrifices in their young days. Behind the pit, there
are several terraces, on which people used to sit on the occasion of such sacrifices. The
Shar-rgan festival, Mr. Schnabel tells me, as celebrated now-a-days, is a kind of
thank-offering by those parents who have been blessed with a son during the past
year.
On the occasion of the festival, 'songs of the Shar-rgan festival,' are sung. I discov-
ered a manuscript containing these songs in the village, and had it copied. Although their
meaning is not yet intelligible to me in every part, I can see that they are of great import-
ance, with regard to the study of the pre-Buddhist religion of Kanāwar as well as of
Tibet in general. The first songs of the collection remind me strongly of songs of the
pre-Buddhist religion, as we find them in Ladakh, the Ling-glu and the 'Marriage ritu-
al,' some of which have been published by me. It is of great importance that the relig-
ion they represent is spoken of as Lha-chos and Bon-chos in the Poo songs.² I have all
along been of opinion that in the gLing-chos we have remnants of the earliest type of the
Bon-chos, called Jo-la-Bon in the Grub-mtha-skel-gyi-me-long. This has been ridiculed by
men like Dr. B. Laufer who know the Bon religion only from its latest productions, when
it took sides with various forms of Hinduism, in antagonism to Buddhism. Literary pro-
ductions like the "Songs of the Shar-rgan festival" go far to prove that the gLing-chos as
brought to light by my efforts, is precisely the Jo-la-Bon religion of Tibet. But the songs
of the Shar-rgan festival do not only speak of deities of the Bon religion, Gung-sngon-
snyan-lha, the god of heaven, sPang-dmar-lha, the god of the red meadow, the earth, Bya-
rgod, the sun, King Ke-sar, etc., but make also mention of new deities, the pho-lha and the
mo-lha, the deities of the 'male and female creative principle.'² These are unmistakably
the Tibetan names of Śiva and Kāli, the gods of the pre-Tibetan population of the Sat-
luj valley. And it is very probable that the human sacrifices which used to form part of
the Shar-rgan festival, belong to the religion of this aboriginal population, and not to the