Spreading Peace, Banning Animal Sacrifice: The Propagation of Buddhism Among Non-Buddhist Minority Groups in Present-Day Bhutan

This paper discusses non-Buddhist animal sacrifice practices carried out by the Lhop and Monpa communities in Bhutan, and the attempts of Buddhist practitioners to ban these based on the Buddhist principle to not take life. Drawing on ethnographic research, the paper looks at the ongoing efforts to prohibit animal sacrifice in the Lhop community, and the abandoning of these practices with the Monpa in the past. It lays out the arguments, the progress of events, and the power relations between the minority groups and members of the mainstream Buddhist culture within the nation state of Bhutan. Understanding animal sacrifice as a key practice to connect to their protective deities, the paper considers the effects of this interruption of human-deity relationships and asks if the banning of animal sacrifice might be the stimulus event for full conversion to Buddhism.