Indian priests. The Tonquinese have a pagod or temple in each town; and each pagod has at least two bonzes belonging to it; some have 30 or 40. These bonzes, in order to distinguish themselves from the laity, wear a chaplet about their necks consisting of 100 beads; and carry a staff, at the end of which is a wooden bird. They live upon the alms of the people; yet are very charitably disposed, and maintain several orphans and widows out of their own collections. The bonzes of China are the priests of the Fohists or feet of Fohit. It is one of their established tenets that there are rewards allotted for the righteous, and punishments for the wicked, in the next world; and that there are various mansions in which the souls of men will reside, according to their different degrees of merit. But, in order to deserve the favour of heaven, the bonzes instruct the people to treat the priests with respect and reverence, to support and maintain them, and to erect temples and monasteries for them. They tell them, that, unless they comply with these injunctions, they will be cruelly tormented after death, and pass through a disagreeable variety of transmigrations; in short, that they will be changed into mules, asses, rats, and mice.

The Chinese bonzes, according to F. le Compte, are no better than a gang of dissolute idle fellows. All their aim is to incite people to commiserate their abject condition: to which end they have recourse to several tricks and impostures. When the common arts of address fail them, they try what public acts of penance will do. Some of them drag heavy chains 30 feet long after them; some fit in the highway knocking their heads against flint stones; others set particular drugs on fire upon their heads: all these are several ways of drawing the attention and exciting the compassion of the people, and they seldom fail of success.

The bonzes of Japan are generally gentlemen of the highest extraction; for when a gentleman of quality finds his family grow too numerous, nay, when he has only two sons, he very often makes the youngest a bonze, to prevent all domestic broils and confusions. These priests are dressed in various colours; their apartments are very commodious, and situated in the healthiest parts of the country.

F. Navarette tells us, that the bonzes are obliged to chastity; and that, on the 2d of April 1667, a petty king of Canton had condemned 11 of them to be burnt alive for incontinence. He adds, that it was reported of an empress of the last reigning family, who had a particular kindness for the bonzes, that she granted them a dispensation for the use of women during three days. The bonzes of China, according to the same author, are computed at 50,000.