The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1583 page)

 
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Part of Buddhist ordination ceremony, especially in China. It involves burning marks on to the head of the monk or nun. This became a more general practice for developing reliance on the help of a
bodhisattva
, in overcoming pain.

 
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Mozarabic rite
.

The form of Christian liturgy (
rite
) which was in use in Spain before the Islamic conquest of the 8th cent. It is the only non-Roman rite still in use in the
Roman Catholic Church
, though it survives in regular use only in one chapel in the cathedral of Toledo.

 
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M
tyu
.

Death, the Hindu personification of death. In the Vedic period, there was no belief in an immortal life beyond death.
Praj
pati
made his body ‘undecaying’ through sacrifice and by practising
tapas
(austerities), and he then taught the remaining gods how to do the same (
atapatha Br
hma
a
10. 4). M
tyu complained that he would have no food if this skill was passed on to humans, and he pointed out that heaven would become overcrowded. The gods decreed that only those humans who surrender to M
tyu voluntarily will attain immortality; the rest will remain ‘the food of death’.