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Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Chapter XV. Worship of the Deities, and Religious Ceremonies

19th Century BuddhologyBuddhist IconographyTibetan Buddhism

Connected to
Chapter VIII. The Sacred Literature Shares 3 topics Chapter XVI. The Systems of Reckoning Time Shares 3 topics Chapter III. The Religious System of Sakyamuni Shares 3 topics Chapter VII. Historical Account of the Introduction of Buddhism into Tibet Shares 3 topics
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This is a 19th-century ethnographic account — likely a chapter from a Western scholarly survey of Tibetan Buddhism — describing the ritual practices, material culture, and ceremonial life of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. It covers the structure of daily worship services (three times daily, involving hymns, offerings of flour and butter, and instrumental music), the instruments used in those services (notably trumpets made from human thigh bones), and the mechanics and theological rationale of prayer cylinders (prayer wheels), which the author argues originated as a practical accommodation for illiterate laypeople. A distinctive claim is the author's interpretive theory that prayer wheels were a clerical invention to extend the spiritual merit of scripture-reading to those who could not read, by equating the physical act of turning a manuscript with reading it. The text also describes religious dramas performed by Lamas, with masked actors representing protective deities, malignant spirits, and men in moralistic theatrical conflicts. The perspective is that of an outside observer — likely a European missionary or scholar — who relies partly on a brother's firsthand account and acknowledges the limits of his native informants, giving the work a tone of careful but culturally distant documentation.

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