The Bon religion of Tibet is sometimes referred to as a form of heterodox Buddhism, or asthe "fifth sect" of Tibetan Buddhism. As an institutionalized religious sect, it has its origins inthe tenth and eleventh centuries. I In its outward appearance, its beliefs, rituals, and iconog-raphy, Bon, to an outside observer, differs little from Tibetan Buddhism. One of the mostvisible differences in this respect, and one that has been noted many times before, is thatwhereas Buddhists circumambulate sacred sites in a clockwise direction, the Bon-po do so ina counterclockwise fashion. Perhaps the greatest difference between Bon and Buddhism liesin their competing approaches to Tibetan history.2 The issue at stake in this contest is theBon religion's claim to antiquity, and, by extension, primacy of place in Tibet's religiouslandscape. Bon-po historiographers claim that the Bon religion was more or less fullyformed when Buddhism took root in Tibet. Further underlining their aspirations to antiquity,the Bon-po claim the Buddha Sakyamuni as a Bon-po teacher within the lineage of thefounder of Bon, Gshen-rab Mi-bo. Although Buddhist historiographers, arguing from thevantage point of reigning orthodoxy, generally concede that Bon is a "pre-Buddhist" reli-gion, they customarily assert that Bon developed in phases, and that the modern Bon secttook form through plagiarism and mimicr*C-of Buddhism. Reciprocally, Bon historiographylays the same charge at the door of the Buddhists.3
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