Padma Sambhava (he being an initiate of the semi-reformed sect known as Kargyutpa, founded by the great yogīs Marpa and Milarepa), his practical knowledge of the Occult Sciences as taught to him by his late Guru in Bhutan, and his marvellous command both of English and of Tibetan, lead me to think that rarely, if ever again in this century, is there likely to arise a scholar more competent to render the Bardo Thödol than the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the actual translator. To him each reader of this book owes a debt of gratitude; for herein he has, in part, opened to the peoples of the West the treasure-house, so long tightly locked, of Tibetan Literature and Northern Buddhism.
As his close disciple for many months, I hereby formally acknowledge that debt of gratitude and respect which is ever due from the disciple to the teacher.
Though the translation was completed and revised by the translator during the year 1919, whilst he was the Head Master of the Maharaja’s Bhutia Boarding School, chiefly for Sikkimese boys of good Tibetan ancestry, near Gangtok, Sikkim (formerly a part of Tibet), it is unfortunate for us that he is not now in this world to read the printer’s proofs of it as he had hoped to do.
As to the transliterations, it may rightly be objected by philologists that they are in some instances less technically exact than they might be. The editor, however, preferring to preserve the simpler transliterations according to the old-fashioned style—to which ordinary readers are more accustomed—just as the translator dictated them to him, has left them unchanged save for the correcting of a few obvious errors which had crept in.
The editor himself cannot expect, in a book of this nature, that his own interpretations of controversial problems will meet with universal acceptance; nor can he hope to have escaped all error. He trusts, however, that critics, in recognizing the pioneer character of the work, will be prepared to concede to the editor, as to the translator, such measure of indulgence as it may perhaps seem to deserve.
A brief account of the unusual career of the translator will,
