no doubt it had lost something of its primitive purity. By its very nature and religious usage, the Bardo Thödol would have been very susceptible to the influence of the popular or exoteric view; and in our own opinion it did fall under it, in such manner as to attempt the impossible, namely, the harmonizing of the two interpretations. Nevertheless, its original esotericism is still discernible and predominant. Let us take, for example, the animal-thrones of the Five Dhyānī Buddhas as it describes them, in harmony with Northern Buddhist symbolology: the Lion-throne is associated with Vairochana, the Elephant-throne with Vajra-Sattva, the Horse-throne with Ratna-Sambhava, the Peacock-throne with Amitābha, the Harpy-throne with Amogha-Siddhi. And, in interpreting the symbols, we find them to be poetically descriptive of the peculiar attributes of each deity: the Lion symbolizes courage or might, and sovereign power; the Elephant, immutability; the Horse, sagacity and beauty of form; the Peacock, beauty and power of transmutation, because in popular belief it is credited with the power of eating poisons and transforming them into the beauty of its feathers; the Harpy, mightiness and conquest over all the elements. The deities, too, in the last analysis, are symbolical of particular Bodhic attributes of the Dharma-Kāya and of supramundane forces of Enlightenment emanating thence, upon which the devotee may depend for guidance along the Path to Buddhahood.
In attempting the esoteric interpretation of the animal symbols used in the Sidpa Bardo—and this interpretation finds its parallel in the esoteric interpretation obviously intended by the Sidpa Bardo episode in Plato, as in the Dulva account of the birth of the Buddha—we have sufficient Buddhist rebirth symbols whose esoteric interpretation is clearly known and generally accepted to guide us.
Dr. L. A. Waddell, a well-known authority on Lāmaism, in Lāmaism in Sikhim,[1] refers to the symbolism of the famous, but recently ruined, wall-painting of the Sī-pa-ī-khor-lo or ‘Circle of Existence’ in the Tashiding monastery, Sikkim, as follows: ‘This picture is one of the purest Buddhist
- ↑ See Gazetteer of Sikhim, ed. by H. H. Risley, p. 266.
