VI.] THE SOUTHERN MONGOLS. I Si 



Great ethnical importance has been attached by some distin- 

 guished anthropologists to the treatment of the dead. 

 But, as in the New Stone and Metal Ages crema- to ^s rial Cus " 

 tion and burial were undoubtedly practised by the 

 same race, so in Tibet the dead are now simultaneously disposed 

 of in diverse ways. It is a question not so much of race as of 

 caste or social classes, or of the lama's pleasure, who, when the 

 head has been shaved to facilitate the transmigration of the soul, 

 may order the body to be burnt, buried, cast into the river, or even 

 thrown to carrion birds or beasts of prey. Strange to say, the last 

 method, carried out with certain formalities, is one of the most 

 honourable, although the lamas are generally buried in a seated 

 posture, and high officials burnt, and (in Ladakh) the ashes, mixed 

 with a little clay, kneaded into much venerated effigies doubtless 

 a survival of ancestry-worship. 



Reference was above made to the primitive Shamanistic ideas 

 which still survive beneath the Buddhist and the later lamaistic 

 systems. In the central and eastern provinces of 

 Ui and Tsang this pre-Buddhist religion has again R^^O^ 

 struggled to the surface, or rather persisted under the 

 name of Bonbo (Boa-hd) side by side with the national creed, from 

 which it has even borrowed many of its present rites. From the 

 colour of the robes usually worn by its priests, it is known as the 

 sect of the "Blacks," in contradistinction to the orthodox "Yel- 

 low" and dissenting "Red" lamaists, and as now constituted, its 

 origin is attributed to Shen-rab (Gsen-rabs), who flourished about 

 the fifth century before the new era, and is venerated as the equal 

 of Buddha himself. His followers, who were powerful enough to 

 drive Buddhism from Tibet in the loth century, worship 18 chief 

 deities, the best known being the red and black demons, the snake 

 devil, and especially the fiery tiger-god, father of all the secondary 

 members of this truly " diabolical pantheon." It is curious to 

 note that the sacred symbol of the Bonbo sect is the ubiquitous 

 svastika, only with the hooks of the cross reversed, j=| instead 

 of ' I i. This change, which appears to have escaped the dili- 

 gent research of Mr Thomas Wilson 1 , was caused by the practice 



1 At least no reference is made to the Bonbo practice in his almost ex- 

 haustive monograph on The Swastika, Washington, 1896. The reversed form, 



