stern, the other in the western part of the town." (_Palladius_, 30.)
--H.C.]

One class of the Tao priests or devotees does marry, but another class
never does. Many of them lead a wandering life, and derive a precarious
subsistence from the sale of charms and medical nostrums. They shave the
sides of the head, and coil the remaining hair in a tuft on the crown, in
the ancient Chinese manner; moreover, says Williams, they "_are recognised
by their slate-coloured robes_." On the feast of one of their divinities
whose title Williams translates as "High Emperor of the Sombre Heavens,"
they assemble before his temple, "and having made a great fire, about 15
or 20 feet in diameter, go over it barefoot, preceded by the priests and
bearing the gods in their arms. They firmly assert that if they possess a
sincere mind they will not be injured by the fire; but both priests and
people get miserably burnt on these occasions." Escayrac de Lauture says
that on those days they leap, dance, and whirl round the fire, striking at
the devils with a straight Roman-like sword, and sometimes wounding
themselves as the priests of Baal and Moloch used to do.

(_Astley_, IV. 671; _Morley_ in _J. R. A. S._ VI. 24; _Semedo_, 111, 114;
_De Mailla_, IX. 410; _J. As._ ser. V. tom. viii. 138; _Schott ueber den
Buddhismus_ etc. 71; _Voyage de Khieou_ in _J. As._ ser. VI. tom. ix. 41;
_Middle Kingdom_, II. 247; _Doolittle_, 192; _Esc. de Lauture, Mem. sur la
Chine, Religion_, 87, 102; _Peler. Boudd._ II. 370, and III. 468.)

Let us now turn to the _Bon-po_. Of this form of religion and its
sectaries not much is known, for it is now confined to the eastern and
least known part of Tibet. It is, however, believed to be a remnant of the
old pre-Buddhistic worship of the powers of nature, though much modified
by the Buddhistic worship with which it has so long been in contact. Mr.
Hodgson also pronounces a collection of drawings of Bonpo divinities,
which were made for him by a mendicant friar of the sect from the
neighbourhood of Tachindu, or Ta-t'sien-lu, to be saturated with _Sakta_
attributes, i.e. with the spirit of the Tantrika worship, a worship which
he tersely defines as "a mixture of lust, ferocity, and mummery," and
which he believes to have originated in an incorporation with the Indian
religions of the rude superstitions of the primitive Turanians. Mr.
Hodgson was told that the Bonpo sect still possessed numerous and wealthy
Vihars (or abbey