When a cave house burns with all its contents, very little damage is done to the structure but a relatively uniform covering of soot covers every surface. Some of these houses were lavishly decorated with furniture well preserved over many centuries from time and peoples unheard of in the places they once lived. And there was never a time when people were left in caves to rot because of their own consensual actions, though it isn't wrong to say it was due to what they believed or practiced. I wonder what would have happened if National Geographic had sent a crew to Auschwitz and remains of Jews were handled like that.
Most people in the surrounding areas had no idea what our people were doing in our spare time or in our serious pursuits but they would leave us alone pretty much if we sold them some kind of charm or listened to them tell us about their recent bad luck for a while and gave them something for it. Sometimes we would really help them somehow but many times they were the causes of their own misfortunes and again we could help them somehow but there was no way of getting any compensation for this unless they had some material thing to carry away with them.
Originally people used this situation as a means of practicing memorization and reinforcement procedures and the things given out would be hand drawn, but some places got such a reputation that it was necessary to make a quicker process so stamps of popular designs were made.
When the death squads began coming for the people who were helping the people confused by Buddhism regain their moorings the people who made the hand drawn amulets had no escape, because it was obvious they were really doing forbidden practices, but the ones who used stamps were able to say that they feared the superstitions of simple folks and that if they didn't put stamps on their paper for them they would come at them with pitchforks and torches but they could claim they didn't understand what they were saying or doing and that is was no different than putting on an opera performance in the style liked by the locals. As long as they said that they were usually safe as the people trying to kill them really couldn't tell the difference.
