at the place of death, other lāmas chant by relays, all day and night, the service for assisting the spirit of the deceased to reach the Western Paradise of Amitābha. In Tibetan, this service (which the hpho-bo also chants) is called De-wa-chan-kyi-mon-lam. If the family be well-to-do, another service of like nature may be performed at the temple wherein the deceased used to worship, by all of the monks of the temple assembled.
After the funeral, the lāmas who read the Bardo Thödol return to the house of death once a week until the forty-ninth day of the Intermediate State has ended. It is not uncommon, however, for them to intermit one day of the first week and of each of the succeeding periods in order to shorten the service, so that they return after six, five, four, three, two, and one day respectively, thereby concluding the reading in about three weeks.
From the First to the Fourteenth Day, as the arrangement of Book One of our text suggests, the Chönyid Bardo is to be read and re-read, and from the Fifteenth Day onwards the Sidpa Bardo. In poorer families the rites may cease after the Fourteenth Day; for families in better circumstances it is usual in Sikkim to continue the rites at least until the expiration of the twenty-one-day period and sometimes during the whole period of the Forty-nine Days of the Bardo. On the first day of the funeral rites, if the deceased were a man of wealth or position, as many as one hundred lāmas may assist; at the funeral of a poor man only one or two lāmas are likely to be present. After the Fourteenth Day, as a rule for all alike, only one lāma is retained to complete the reading.
The effigy of the body of the deceased is made by dressing a stool, block of wood, or other suitable object in the clothes of the deceased; and where the face should be there is inserted a printed paper called the mtshan-spyang or spyang-pu (pronounced chang-ku), of which the following reproduction of a specimen is typical:[1]
- ↑ Our reproduction, made by special permission given to the editor by Dr. L, A. Waddell, is from pl. xxi, Gazetteer of Sikhim, edited by H. H. Risley (Calcutta, 1894), section on Lamaism in Sikhim by L. A. Waddell.
