This Book, which is of extraordinary interest, both as regards Text and Introduction, deals with the period (longer or shorter according to the circumstances) which, commencing immediately after death, ends with ‘rebirth’. In the Buddhists’ view, Life consists of a series of successive states of consciousness. The first state is the Birth-Consciousness; the last is the consciousness existing at the moment of death, or the Death-Consciousness. The interval between the two states of Consciousness, during which the transformation from the ‘old’ to a ‘new’ being is effected, is called the Bardo or intermediate state (Antarābhāva), divided into three stages, called the Chikhai, Chönyid, and Sidpa Bardo respectively.
This Manual, common in various versions throughout Tibet, is one of a class amongst which Dr. Evans-Wentz includes the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guide for the use of the Ka or so-called ‘Double’, the De Arte Moriendi and other similar medieval treatises on the craft of dying, to which may be added the Orphic Manual called The Descent into Hades (cf. ‘He descended into Hell’) and other like guide-books for the use of the dead, the Pretakhanda of the Hindu Garuda Purāna, Swedenborg’s De Coelo et de Inferno, Rusca’s De Inferno, and several other eschatological works both ancient and modern. Thus, the Garuda Purāna deals with the rites used over the dying, the death-moment, the funeral ceremonies, the building up, by means of the Pretashrāddha rite, of a new body for the Preta or deceased in lieu of that destroyed by fire, the Judgement, and thereafter (ch. V) the various states through which the deceased passes until he is reborn again on earth.
Both the original text and Dr. Evans-Wentz’s Introduction form a very valuable contribution to the Science of Death from the standpoint of the Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhism of the so-called ‘Tantrik’ type. The book is welcome not merely in virtue of its particular subject-matter, but because the ritual works of any religion enable us more fully to comprehend the philosophy and psychology of the system to which they belong.
The Text has three characteristics. It is, firstly, a work on
