BON. - Also Bonpo: it is the name of the autochthonous 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 Heaven-
Earth god, a solar god Ke-sar, whose conflicts with his wife A Bru-gu-ma are recalled in the songs of spring. 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 quite scanty because it was absorbed by Buddhism, though not so completely that no traces of it remain in the practice of present-day Lamaism (v.).
In practice the 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 revelation from them after having entered into a state of trance thanks to suitable practices of concentration and mystical excitation; and of rendering placable those who dominate the mountain passes, thus exposed to the snares of the winds in those rugged regions. The cult of the ancestors is also associated with that of the spirits, and both form the fundamental basis of the religiosity 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 inhabited by spirits, and of depositing on them scraps of cloth or other votive gifts.
The B. religion was around the 7th century A.D. absorbed, but in a wholly superficial manner, by the Mahayanic Buddhism introduced into the country by the prince Sron btsan sgam po, on the advice of his two wives, one Chinese and the other Nepalese, followers of the Mahayanic doctrine.
Bibliography4 works
Nicola Turchi