The Mysterious Bon Religious Culture
Bon is the main aboriginal religion during the prehistoric civilization on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which was established in the fifth century B.C. by Shenrab Miwoche, the prince of Zhang-zhung kingdom in western Tibet. Around the first century A.D. the religion began to spread eastward until fully distributed in Tsang region and Lhasa region. This marked its first zenith when it almost dominated the political, economic and cultural life in the early stage of the Tubo Kingdom. Bon advocated pantheism and believed that ??every thing has soul??. The deities, the supernatural powers of mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, the sun, the moon, stars, wind, rain, thunder, lightening, birds and beast, etc. as many as one can enumerate, govern the birth, ageing, sickness, death, events and fortune of people, who could not predict and control their own destinies, Because people are believed to be created by the deities. Tsanpo, the ruler of the Tubo Kingdom, was regarded as ??the Son of the Heavenly Deity??, who had been sent for ruling the human world and would return to the heaven along the heavenly ladder after death. Two deities, the War and the Life, who attach on the body of each person, decide his or her desting. A person, who losses protection from either deities, will leave the living world permanently. According to Bon doctrines, there are two worlds for a person, the living world and the after-death world, the latter is full of darkness and suffer. Therefore after the death of a person, people would hold an offering ritual to redeem his or her soul from the dark and suffer-ridden world and guide it to the heaven. Based on these concepts, ??Yung-drung??, the early sect of Bon developed a series of deity and devil system as well as the rituals for consecrating deities and driving devils, which are the cardinal contents of the four portals in the theories and activities of the famous Nine Ways of Bon. Specifically speaking, they are for fortune-telling, consecrating deities, driving devils, praying for happiness and avoiding form disaster to ensure a prosperous, rich and steady human world. There theories and activities not only brought an extensive and in-depth influence to the society of the time, but also were reflected in the prehistoric arts.

The No.1 rock painting, discovered in Rimodong, Risum District, Rutog County in Nagri Prefecture, is the most typical one. The painting is 2.7 meters high, 1.4 meters wide and 12 meters away from above the ground, in a shape of irregular triangle. There is a horse on the right top. Lower on the left there is yak with long hairs on its back and belly and an up-rolling tail. Two persons are on the left sides of the yak. On of them wears a long gown and bears something on the back, with his right hand holding his waist, and the left hand holding a long pole; another one is riding on the back of a sheep, also with his right hand holding his waist, and the left hand holding a long pole. Between the two persons, there is a ??Yung-drung lucky sign. Below the person, there are the Sun, the Moon, a genital of the male and a genital of the female from left to right in sequence. On the right of the yak, there is a bog fish, bowing in a circle, with its mouth touching its tail and with its belly hiding 10 small fish. On the left bottom of the big fish, there are four dancing people with bird??s head or bird??s mask. There are three small fish on the top or bottom of the dancers. Between the dancers and fish, there is a trapezoid symbol. On the left bottom of the dancers, there are 10 jars of the same shape in a row: big opening, long neck, round belly and round bottom, with decoration of vertical rope patterns. On the left side of the jars, there are person, riding on sheep and stretching their arms and holding branches or feathers. The person on the left wears a feather on the head. On the bottom of the painting, there are 125 sheep in nine rows. From the layout of the painting, we can see two parts divided by a row of patterns of the Sun, Moon and genitals. From the Yung-drung lucky sign, the feather wearing man, who resembled an aimingat Bon shaman and, the scene of the offering ritual, we can infer that this painting has something to do with the aboriginal Bon religion, because sacrificing of yak, goat, sheep and deer to the deities, as the painting depicted, is one of the core events of the early Bon.

In addition, the consecration was also the important event aiming at prosperousness of the community. The main role of the tsanpo??s shaman is to hold the rituals for elimination disasters and bringing in happiness. According to a cliff inscription in Gongbo area, after Drigum Tsanpo was assassinated, Pude Gungyal. the then hire apparent and the next tsanpo, held a large-scale ritual, sacrificing a lot of animals prying for ??stabilizing the tribe??. From the on, all generations of tsanpos had held consecrating rituals as major events. Besides, before military action, such rituals also were held to pray for victory. Descriptions for such kind of events can be frequently seen in the Epic ??of The King Gesar. Thus we can see, the consecration events were held both for the life and production of the ordinary people and for the major state affairs and military event.

In the seventh century A.D., Buddhism was introduced to Tubo Kingdom in a large scale. From then on the history has witnessed age-long conflicting between Bon and Buddhism. Though Bon lost its dominance in the middle eighth century, it was far from being eradicated. Buddhism won land-sliding victory and widely accepted by the Tubo society. However it has assimilated quite a lot canons and rites of Bon and passed them down till today. The theories and conventions of Bon have been represented by people of later generations.