Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/127

Rh be his own incarnations. According to this account, the Terton of our own book, the Bardo Thödol, is the fifth, named after the place called Karma Land, thus confirming the Block-Print of the Bardo Thödol; and Karma Land is in the northern quarter of Tibet. We have been unable to ascertain the exact time in which this Terton lived, although he is a popular figure in the traditional history of Tibet. The name Rigzin, given to him in the Block-Print first above quoted, meaning ‘Knowledge-Holder’, refers to his character as a religious devotee or lāma; Karma ling-pa, as given in both accounts, refers also to an ancient Tibetan monastery of primitive Lāmaism in the Kams Province, northern Tibet.

According to our view, the best attitude to take touching the uncertain history and origin of the Bardo Thödol is that of a critical truth-seeker who recognizes the anthropological significance of the passing of time, and of the almost inevitable reshaping of ancient teachings handed down at first orally and then, after having crystallized, being recorded in writing. As in the case of the Egyptian Bardo Thödol, popularly known as ‘The Egyptian Book of the Dead’, so in ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’, there is, no doubt, the record of the belief of innumerable generations in a state of existence after death. No one scribe could have been its author and no one generation its creator; its history as a book, if completely known, could only be the history of its compilation and recording; and the question, Whether this compilation and recording were done within comparatively recent times, or in the time of Padma Sambhava or earlier? could not fundamentally affect the ancient teachings upon which it is based.

Although it is remarkably scientific in its essentials, there is no need to consider it as being accurate in all its details; for, undoubtedly, considerable corruption has crept into the text. In its broad outlines, however, it seems to convey a sublime truth, heretofore veiled to many students of religion, a philosophy as subtle as that of Plato, and a psychical science far in advance of that, still in its infancy, which forms the study of the Society for Psychical Research. And, as such, it deserves the serious attention of the Western World, now