BONZES, Indian priests, who, in order to distinguish themselves from the laity, wear a chaplet round their necks, consisting of an hundred beads, and carry a staff, at the end of which is a wooden bird. They live upon the alms of the people, and yet are very charitably disposed, maintaining several orphans and widows out of their own collections. The Tonquinese have a pagod, or temple, in each town, and every pagod has at least two bonzes belonging to it; some have thirty or forty. The bonzes of China are the priests of the Fohists, or sects of Foh; and it is one of their established tenets, that there are rewards allotted for the righteous, and punishments for the wicked in the other world; and that there are various mansions, in which the souls of men will reside, according to their different degrees of merit. The bonzes of Pegu are generally gentlemen of the highest extraction.