BON. — Also Bonpo: this is the name of the indigenous religion of the Tibetans, before the introduction of Buddhism into the country. It is also called I Ha-chos, that is, “religion of the ancient gods.” B. mythology knows a “king of heaven,” Srid-pa, who stands at the head of the celestial spirits, toward whom the souls of the good ascend after death. There is a Sky-Earth god, a solar god Ke-sar, whose conflicts with his wife A Bru-gu-ma are recalled in the spring songs. There is, as in China, a local god of the soil, Sa-dag-po, and a spirit of the hearth, T'ab lha. Knowledge of it is very scanty because it was absorbed by Buddhism, though not so completely that traces of it do not remain Lamaism (v.).
In practice, B. religion is a shamanistic animism (v. SCIAMANISMO): the shaman knows the art of entering into communion with the spirits, called Lha, and of receiving their revelation after entering a state of trance through suitable practices of concentration and mystical excitation; and of appeasing those who control the mountain passes, so exposed to the dangers of the winds in those inaccessible regions. The cult of the ancestors, too, is associated with that of the spirits, and together they form the fundamental basis of the religious life proper to the Mongoloid family.
A characteristic cultic practice was, and has remained, that of piling up heaps of stones (vdo bum) in the places most frequented by the spirits, and of laying upon them scraps of cloth or other votive offerings.
B. religion was absorbed around the 7th century A.D., though in an entirely superficial manner, by Mahayana Buddhism introduced into the country by Prince Sron btsan sgam po, on the advice of his two wives, one Chinese and the other Nepalese, followers of the Mahayana doctrine.