Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/68

18 to a consideration of our manuscript, its history, the origin of the Bardo Thödol texts, and our translating and editing.

In addition to these fifteen sections, there are, as Addenda (see pp. 211–41), six complementary sections, addressed chiefly to the student, who, more than the ordinary reader, will be interested in certain of the more abstruse doctrines and problems which arise from a careful study of the translation and its annotations.

When the death-symptoms, as described in the first sections of our text, are completed, a white cloth is thrown over the face of the corpse; and no person then touches the corpse, in order that the culminating process of death, which ends only upon the complete separation of the Bardo body from its earth-plane counterpart, shall not be interfered with. It is commonly held that normally the process takes from three and one-half to four days, unless assisted by a priest called the hpho-bo (pron. pho-o) or ‘extractor of the consciousness-principle’; and that, even if the priest be successful in the extracting, the deceased ordinarily does not wake up to the fact of being separated from the human body until the said period of time has expired.

The hpho-bo, upon his arrival, takes a seat on a mat or chair at the head of the corpse; he dismisses all lament-making relatives from the death-chamber and orders its doors and windows to be closed, so as to secure the silence necessary for the right performance of the hpho-bo service. This consists of a mystic chant containing directions for the spirit of the deceased to find its way to the Western Paradise of Amitabha, and thus escape—if karma permits—the undesirable Intermediate State. After commanding the spirit to quit the body and its attachment to living relatives and goods, the lāma examines the crown of the head of the corpse at the line of the sagittal suture, where the two parietal bones articulate, called the ‘Aperture of Brahma’ (Skt. Brāhma-randhra), to determine if the spirit has departed thence, as it should have done; and, if the scalp be not bald, he pulls out a few of the hairs directly over the aperture. If through accident or