Bsang
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Bsang; smoke offering; purify with incense; consecrate, bless, cleanse, purify, sanctify, clear away; (incense); purification and payment" offering. smoke-puja [RY]
remove, recover, SA sang ba, consecrate, lift up, SA seng ba, purification, fumigation rite, SA bdud rtsi can gyi shing lnga [JV]
(tha dad pa bsangs pa;, bsang ba, songs,, cleanse, remove, clear [away], come out of grief/ sorrow [IW]
offering of smoke [IW]
offering of smoke [among which are ri bsang klung bsang phye srol.
There is also a tradition that after a great lama khag pheb dus after a smoke offering bsu ma byed [p sangs cleanse, remove, consecrate, bless, purify, sanctify, clear away] [IW]
remove, recover, SA sang ba, consecrate, lift up, SA seng ba, purification, fumigation rite, SA bdud rtsi can gyi shing lnga, cleansing
he notion of ritual purity has an immense importance among the Tibetan societies in general and stems evidently from the early non-Buddhist religious views of Tibetans.
From some early textual sources one can observe that there once existed number of rituals of purification (glud, sel, dug phyung, tshan, etc.) and that several were forming diverse traditions of the particular semi-mythical ritual specialists (gshen/ bon po). The most widespread purification ritual among Tibetans is the bsang fumigation.
Such ritual consists mainly in burning fragrant plants, namely juniper. In such a light an existence of a ritual text describing the burning of fox as a bsang purification ritual seems to be somehow shocking.
The paper will focus on the ritual text of Wa bsang with some detail. This ritual might demonstrate that the great variability of known purification rituals was reduced to a single unified form under the pressure of Buddhism-related norms.
[JV]