Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/124

74 Books recovered by Rigzin of Karma Ling-pa, who is held to be an emanation or incarnation of Padma Sambhava, the Founder of Lāmaism.

It was in the eighth century that Lāmaism, which we may define as Tantric Buddhism, took firm root in Tibet. A century earlier, under the first king to rule over a united Tibet, King Srong-Tsan-Gampo (who died in 650), Buddhism itself entered Tibet from two sources: from Nepal, the land of the Buddha’s ancestors, through the Tibetan King’s marriage with a daughter of the royal family of Nepal; and from China, through his marriage—in the year 641—with a princess of the Chinese Imperial Family. The King had been nurtured in the old Bön faith of Tibet, which, with its primitive doctrine of rebirth, was quite capable of serving as an approach to Buddhism; and under the influence of his two Buddhist wives he accepted Buddhism, making it the state religion; but it made little headway in Tibet until a century later, when his powerful successor, Thī-Srong-Detsan, held the throne from 740 to 786, It was Thī-Srong-Detsan who invited Padma Sambhava (Tib. Pēdma Jungnē, i.e. ‘The Lotus-Born’), better known to the Tibetans as Guru Rin-po-ch’e, ‘The Precious Guru’, to come to Tibet. The famous Guru was at that time a Professor of Yoga in the great Buddhist University of Nālanda, India, and far-famed for expert knowledge of the Occult Sciences. He was a native of Udyāna or Swat, in what is now a part of Afghanistan.

The Great Guru saw the wonderful opportunity which the King’s invitation offered, and promptly accepted the call, passing through Nepal and arriving at Samye (Sam-yas), Tibet, in the year 747. It was to Samye that the King had invited him, in order to have exorcized the demons of the locality; for as soon as the walls of a monastery which the King was having erected there were raised they were overthrown by local earthquakes, which the demons opposing Buddhism were believed to have caused. When the Great Guru had driven out the demons, all the local earthquakes ceased, much to the wonder of the people; and he himself supervised the completion of the royal monastery, and