but I do not know how far any two of these are independent testimonies.  General Cunningham, however, fully accepts the identity, and writes to me:  “Fahian (ch. xxiii.) calls the heretics who assembled at Ramagrama Taosse,[12] thus identifying them with the Chinese Finitimists.  The Taosse are, therefore, the same as the Swastikas, or worshippers of the mystic cross Swasti, who are also Tirthakaras, or ‘Pure-doers.’  The synonymous word Punya is probably the origin of Pon or Bon, the Tibetan Finitimists.  From the same word comes the Burmese P’ungyi or Pungi.”  I may add that the Chinese envoy to Cambodia in 1296, whose narrative Remusat has translated, describes a sect which he encountered there, apparently Brahminical, as Taosse.  And even if the Bonpo and the Taosse were not fundamentally identical, it is extremely probable that the Tibetan and Mongol Buddhists should have applied to them one name and character.  Each played towards them the same part in Tibet and in China respectively; both were heretic sects and hated rivals; both made high pretensions to asceticism and supernatural powers; both, I think we see reason to believe, affected the dark clothing which Polo assigns to the Sensin; both, we may add, had “great idols and plenty of them.”  We have seen in the account of the Taosse the ground that certain of their ceremonies afford for the allegation that they “sometimes also worship fire,” whilst the whole account of that rite and of others mentioned by Duhalde,[13] shows what a powerful element of the old devil-dancing Shamanism there is in their practice.  The French Jesuit, on the other hand, shows us what a prominent place female divinities occupied in the Bon-po Pantheon,[14] though we cannot say of either sect that “their idols are all feminine.”  A strong symptom of relation between the two religions, by the way, occurs in M. Durand’s account of the Bon Temple.  We see there that Shen-rabs, the great doctor of the sect, occupies a chief and central place among the idols.  Now in the Chinese temples of the Taosse the figure of their Doctor Lao-tseu is one member of the triad called the “Three Pure Ones,” which constitute the chief objects of worship.  This very title recalls General Cunningham’s etymology of Bonpo.

[Illustration:  Tibetan Bacsi]

[At the quarterly fair (yueh kai) of Ta-li (Yun-Nan), Mr. E. C. Baber (Travels, 158-159) says:  “A Fakir with a praying machine, which he twirled for the salvation of the pious at the price of a few cash, was at once recognised by us; he was our old acquaintance, the Bakhsi, whose portrait is given in Colonel Yule’s Marco Polo.”—­H.  C.]

(Hodgson, in J.  R. A. S. XVIII. 396 seqq.; Ann. de la Prop, de la Foi, XXXVI. 301-302, 424-427; E.  Schlagintweit, Ueber die Bon-pa Sekte in Tibet, in the Sitzensberichte of the Munich Acad. for 1866, Heft I. pp. 1-12; Koeppen, II. 260; Ladak, p. 358; J.  As. ser.  II. tom. i. 411-412; Remusat.  Nouv.  Mel.  Asiat. I. 112; Astley, IV. 205; Doolittle, 191.)