a clue is supplied to several disputed doctrinal points of fundamental importance, as for example the formula of the Causal Nexus. And it interprets much of the interesting Mahāyāna and Tāntrik developments in the later Indian Buddhism of Magadha.
It attempts to disentangle the early history of Lāmaism from the chaotic growth of fable which has invested it. With this view the nebulous Tibetan "history" so-called of the earlier periods has been somewhat critically examined in the light afforded by some scholarly Lāmas and contemporary history; and all fictitious chronicles, such as the Maṇi-kah-’bum, hitherto treated usually as historical, are rejected as authoritative for events which happened a thousand years before they were written and for a time when writing was admittedly unknown in Tibet. If, after rejecting these manifestly fictitious "histories" and whatever is supernatural, the residue cannot be accepted as altogether trustworthy history, it at least affords a fairly probable historical basis, which seems consistent and in harmony with known facts and unwritten tradition.
It will be seen that I consider the founder of Lāmaism to be Padma-sambhava—a person to whom previous writers arc wont to refer in too incidental a manner. Indeed, some careful writers[1] omit all mention of his name, although he is considered by the Lamas of all sects to be the founder of their order, and by the majority of them to be greater and more deserving of worship than Buddha himself.
Most of the chief internal movements of Lāmaism are now for the first time presented in an intelligible and systematic form. Thus, for example, my account of its
- ↑ E.g. W. R. S. Ralston in his Tibetan Tales.
