Pre-Buddhist Religion in Bhutan

When Guru Rinpoche journeyed through Bhutan in the 8th century CE, he did not arrive in a spiritual vacuum. The valleys and mountain passes of present-day Bhutan were already populated by communities with developed religious practices: animistic traditions centred on the worship of local deities, rivers, mountains, and the spirits of the dead, alongside the Bon religion that had spread across the Himalayan world from its origins further west. Understanding what Guru Rinpoche encountered, and what Buddhism did and did not replace, is essential to understanding Bhutanese religious culture as it exists today.

Bon in Bhutan

Bon was the dominant organised religion across the Himalayan plateau before Buddhism arrived. In Tibet, Bon eventually developed a sophisticated scriptural and monastic tradition in conscious parallel with Buddhism; in Bhutan, it retained a more oral, community-oriented character. Bhutanese Bon — known locally as Bon chos — centred on the propitiation of local territorial deities through community rituals designed to ensure agricultural fertility, protect livestock, and avert calamity. Ritual specialists known as pawo (male) and pamo (female) served as intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds, entering trance states to diagnose illnesses caused by supernatural agents and prescribe remedies.

Bon sites in Bhutan include what were originally Bon monasteries later converted to Drukpa Kagyu Buddhism — such as Kubum and Sewagang — a physical reminder that Buddhist institutions were often built on existing sacred sites rather than entirely new ground. The strategy of converting existing centres of religious power, rather than simply suppressing them, was a consistent feature of Buddhism's advance in Bhutan.

The World of Spirits

Pre-Buddhist Bhutanese religion was populated by an extraordinarily diverse range of invisible beings whose relations with humans required careful management. The spirit world included:

• Yul lha (territorial gods) — deities protecting specific valleys, villages, and districts, who must be propitiated before major communal undertakings
• Lha — sky or divine spirits associated with individual persons and households
• Lu — water spirits inhabiting rivers, lakes, and springs, capable of causing skin diseases and misfortune if disturbed
• Sadag (earth lords) — spirits of the soil who must be appeased before construction or cultivation
• Dre — malevolent ghosts, often of the recently dead, who could afflict the living
• Tsen — fierce red spirits associated with rocky crags and mountain passes

This taxonomy of the invisible world was not systematically organised in the way that a Buddhist or Hindu pantheon might be; it was a living oral tradition, varying by valley and community, maintained by specialists whose knowledge was transmitted through practice rather than text.

The Meeting of Religions

When Buddhism arrived, it did not erase this world — it reinterpreted it. The local deities who had formerly demanded blood sacrifices were reconceived as protector deities (dharmapalas) who had taken refuge in the Buddhist teachings and now guarded them. Guru Rinpoche's legendary battles with local spirits in the Pema Kathang and related texts follow precisely this pattern: the spirit resists, the Buddhist master subdues it through superior power, and the spirit is converted into a protector rather than destroyed. The mountain deity of Jhomolhari, the river goddess of the Paro Chhu, the earth lords of each valley — all were incorporated into the Buddhist cosmology rather than expelled from it.

This integration was not merely theological accommodation. It reflected a social reality: the local deities had their communities of devotees, their sacred sites, their seasonal ritual cycles. Buddhism could spread more effectively by absorbing these structures than by confronting them.

Surviving Pre-Buddhist Elements

Pre-Buddhist traditions have survived in Bhutan to a degree unusual in the Buddhist world. In central Bhutanese communities, hereditary pawo shamans still conduct trance-based rituals rooted in Bon practice, performing exorcisms, treating spirit-induced illness, and influencing weather for agricultural communities. Every mountain pass in Bhutan has a cairn (la dse) where travellers add stones and prayer flags in propitiation of the pass deity — a practice that predates Buddhism but has been absorbed into it. Sacred groves, certain lakes like Mebar Tsho in Bumthang, and numerous mountain peaks remain objects of veneration whose roots extend well beyond the Buddhist period.

Bhutanese Buddhism, as practised, is consequently a layered tradition: Vajrayana forms the doctrinal framework, but beneath it lie older strata of practice whose origins reach back to the Iron Age communities of the Himalayan valleys.

References

1. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. "Bon Religious Practice in Bhutan." oxfordre.com, 2020.
2. Ardussi, John and Pommaret, Françoise, eds. Bhutan: Traditions and Changes. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
3. Bayuel.com. "Yullha and Zhidak: Two Types of Local Deities." bayuel.com, accessed 2026.
4. Mandala Texts, University of Virginia. "Buddhism in Bhutan: The 8th–17th Centuries." texts.mandala.library.virginia.edu.