Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/122

72 Each Buddhist Sect in Tibet, according to the opinion of the translator, probably has its own version of the Bardo Thödol more or less changed in some details, but not in essentials, from our version, the version used by the reformed Gelugpa, otherwise known as the Yellow-Hat School, being the most altered, with all references to Padma Sambhava, the Founder of the Ñingmapa, the Red-Hat School of Lāmaism, as well as the names of deities peculiar to the Red-Hats, expurgated.

Major W. L. Campbell, who was the British Political Representative in Sikkim during my residence there, wrote to me, from the Residency in Gangtok, under date of the twelfth of July, 1919, concerning the various versions of the Bardo Thödol, as follows: ‘The Yellow Sect have six, the Red Sect seven, and the Kar-gyut-pas five.’

Our text being of the primitive or Red-Hat School and attributed to the Great Guru Padma Sambhava himself, who introduced Tantric Buddhism into Tibet, has been deemed by us to be substantially representative of the original version, which, on the basis of internal evidence derived from our