Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/119

Rh manuscript was in a very ragged and worn condition, now remedied by each folio being inserted in a protective frame of Tibetan paper of the same sort as that upon which the manuscript is written. Fortunately, all of the illuminated folios, though faded, were in a fair state of preservation. One of the ordinary folios, folio number 111, was missing, but this has now been replaced by a faithful copy of the same passage found in a Block-Print version of the Bardo Thödol belonging to Dr. Johan Van Manen, Secretary of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, well known as a Tibetan scholar. Reference to this Block-Print version is made throughout our translation. In all essentials, and, generally, word for word, our manuscript and Dr. Van Manen’s Block-Print were found to be identical. In some spellings of proper names of deities of Sanskrit origin there are variations in the two versions, and in both books a number of clerical errors. The manuscript is far older than the modern Block-Print and seems to have been copied from an earlier manuscript.

The manuscript itself is undated, but the translator judged it to be from 150 to 200 years old. It has seen very much service, having been read many times over the dead; its ragged and worn condition is, therefore, no criterion—as it might seem to be—of its age. It is written in an excellent hand on the ordinary paper used for manuscripts among the Tibetans and Himalayan peoples, made from the pulped bark of the Hdal (pronounced Dāā), otherwise known as Daphne, a kind of laurel of which one species bears a purplish white blossom, another a yellowish white. It is usually by lāmas in a monastery that the paper is manufactured. On account of the bark of the Hdal being extremely tough, the Sikkimese used it as ropes.

The total number of folios composing the manuscript is 137, each measuring about 9$1⁄2$ by 3$1⁄4$ inches. Excepting the first folio and the first half of the second, the space actually occupied by the text on each measures on an average 8$1⁄4$ by 2$1⁄4$ inches. Most of the folios contain five lines of matter, a few contain four lines. The title-page contains two lines