The Tibetan Book of the Dead — ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz

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ArH ACh BE TAIN
BOOK OF FHE DEAD

Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen
New York Toronto Melbourne Capetown
Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai
Humphrey Milford Publisher to the University

THE TRANSLATOR (right) AND THE EDITOR
IN GANGTOK, SIKKIM

Described on page xvii

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THE TIBETAN
BOOK OF THE DEAD

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The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s

English Rendering

By

W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ
WEA, D.Lire, Bsc.
Jesus College, Oxford; Author of
“The Fairy-Faith in Celtic

Countries’

With Foreword by Sir John Woodroffe jar

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
1927

IN MEMORY OF
MY DECEASED FATHER AND MOTHER
I DEDICATE
THIS BOOK TO MY TEACHERS
BOTH SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS
IN EUROPE AND AMERICA
AND THROUGHOUT
THE ORIENT

‘Thou shalt understand that it is a science most profitable, and passing all other sciences, for to learn to die. Fora man to know that he shall die, that is common to all men; as much as there is no man that may ever live or he hath hope or trust thereof; but thou shalt find full few that have this cunning to learn to die... . I shall give thee the mystery of this doctrine ; the which shall profit thee greatly to the beginning of ghostly health, and to a stable fundament of all virtues.’— Orologtum Saptentiae.

‘ Against his will he dieth that hath not learned to die. Learn to die and thou shalt learn to live, for there shall none learn to live that hath not learned to die.’”—Toure of all Toures: and Teacheth a Man for to Die.

The Book of the Craft of Dying (Comper’s Edition).

“Whatever is here, that is there ; what is there, the same is here. He who seeth here as different, meeteth death after death.

‘By mind alone this is to be realized, and [then] there is no difference here, From death to death he goeth, who seeth as if there is difference here.’—Katha Upantshad, iv, 10-11 (Swami Sharvananda’s Translation).

ieee,

In this book I am seeking—so far as possible—to suppress my own views and to act simply as the mouthpiece of a Tibetan sage, of whom I was a recognized disciple.

ieee,

In this book I am seeking—so far as possible—to suppress my own views and to act simply as the mouthpiece of a Tibetan sage, of whom I was a recognized disciple.

He was quite willing that I should make known his interpretation of the higher /amazc teachings and of the subtle esotericism underlying the Bardo Thédol, following the private and orally transmitted instructions which he as a young man had received when living the life of an ascetic with his late hermit-g¢ru in Bhutan. Being himself a man who possessed a considerable amount of Western learning, he took great trouble to enable me to reproduce Oriental ideas in a form which would be intelligible to the European mind. If, in amplification, I have frequently referred to Occidental parallels of various mystic or occult doctrines current in the Orient, I have done so largely because in my wanderings there, chiefly in the high Himalayas and on the Tibetan frontiers of Kashmir, Garhwal, and Sikkim, I had come across learned philosophers and holy men who have found or thought they had found beliefs and religious practices—some recorded in books, some preserved by oral tradition alone—not only analogous to their own, but so closely akin to those of the Occident as to imply some historical connexion therewith. Whether the supposed influence passed from East to West or from West to East, was not so clear to their minds. A certain similarity does, however, seem to attach to the culture of these geographically divided provinces.

I have spent more than five years in such research, wandering from the palm-wreathed shores of Ceylon, and thence through the wonder-land of the Hindus, to the glacier-clad heights of the Himalayan Ranges, seeking out the Wise Men of the East. Sometimes I lived among city dwellers, sometimes in jungle and mountain solitudes among yogis, sometimes in

3069 b x PREFACE monasteries with monks; sometimes I went on pilgrimages, as one of the salvation-seeking multitude. The Introduction —which in its unusual lengthiness is intended to serve as a very necessary commentary to the translation—and the annotations to the text record the more important results of this research, more especially in relation to Northern or Mahayana Buddhism.

Nevertheless, I have been really little more than a compiler and editor of ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’. To the deceased translator—who combined in himself a greater knowledge of the Occult Sciences of Tibet and of Western Science than any Tibetan scholar of this epoch-—the chict credit for its production very naturally belongs.

To the deceased translator—who combined in himself a greater knowledge of the Occult Sciences of Tibet and of Western Science than any Tibetan scholar of this epoch-—the chict credit for its production very naturally belongs.

In addition to that greatest of all debts which the student ever owes to his preceptor, I acknowledge my indebtedness to each of my many good friends and helpers who have personally aided me herewith. Some of them are of one Faith, some of another; some are far away in Japan and in China, some in the land of my birth, America; many are in Ceylon and in India; a few are in Tibet.

Here in England I think first of all of Dr. R. R. Marett, Reader in Social Anthropology in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Exeter College, who ever since I first came up to Oxford, in the year 1907, has faithfully guided my anthropological research. Sir John Woodroffe, late a Judge of the High Court, Calcutta, now Reader in Indian Law in the University of Oxford, and the foremost authority in the West on the Yantras, has read through our translation, chiefly in relation to the character of the work as a ritual more or less Tantric, and offered important advice. I am also very grateful to him for the Foreword.

To Sj. Atal Bihari Ghosh, of Calcutta, Joint Honorary Secretary with Sir John Woodroffe of the Agamanusandhana Samiti, as to Sir E. Denison Ross, Director of the School of Oriental Studies, London Institution, and to Dr. F. W. Thomas, Librarian of the India Office, London, I am under a special

PREFACE xi

obligation for important constructive criticism on the book as a whole. To Major W. L. Campbell, British Political Representative in Tibet, Bhutan, and Sikkim during my sojourn in Gangtok, Iam indebted for much encouragement and scholarly aid, and for the gift of two valuable paintings prepared by his orders in the chief monastery of Gyantse, Tibet, to illustrate the symbolism of the Bardo Thédol text, and herein reproduced. To his predecessor and successor in the same post, Sir Charles Bell, I am also a debtor for important advice at the outset of my Tibetan research, when in Darjeeling. To Mr. E. S. Bouchier, M.A. (Oxon.), F. R. Hist. S., author of Syria as a Roman Province, A Short flistory of Antioch, &c., my heartiest thanks are due for the assistance which he has so kindly rendered in reading the whole of this book when in proof.