Still The Orthodox Yellow Lamas Professedly Repudiate And Despise The
Grosser Exhibitions Of Common Magic And Charlatanism Which The Reds Still
Practise, Such As Knife-Swallowing, Blowing Fire, Cutting Off Their Own
Heads, Etc.
But as the vulgar will not dispense with these marvels, every
great orthodox monastery in Tibet keeps a conjuror,
Who is a member of
the unreformed, and does not belong to the brotherhood of the convent, but
lives in a particular part of it, bearing the name of Choichong, or
protector of religion, and is allowed to marry. The magic of these
Choichong is in theory and practice different from the orthodox Tantrist
magic. The practitioners possess no literature, and hand down their
mysteries only by tradition. Their fantastic equipments, their frantic
bearing, and their cries and howls, seem to identify them with the
grossest Shamanist devil dancers.
Sanang Setzen enumerates a variety of the wonderful acts which could be
performed through the Dharani. Such were, sticking a peg into solid
rock; restoring the dead to life; turning a dead body into gold;
penetrating everywhere as air does; flying; catching wild beasts with the
hand; reading thoughts; making water flow backwards; eating tiles; sitting
in the air with the legs doubled under, etc. Some of these are precisely
the powers ascribed to Medea, Empedocles, and Simon Magus, in passages
already cited. Friar Ricold says on this subject: "There are certain men
whom the Tartars honour above all in the world, viz. the Baxitae (i.e.
Bakhshis), who are a kind of idol-priests.
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