Each Buddhist Sect in Tibet, according to the opinion of the translator, probably has its own version of the Bardo Thödol more or less changed in some details, but not in essentials, from our version, the version used by the reformed Gelugpa, otherwise known as the Yellow-Hat School, being the most altered, with all references to Padma Sambhava, the Founder of the Ñingmapa, the Red-Hat School of Lāmaism, as well as the names of deities peculiar to the Red-Hats, expurgated.
Major W. L. Campbell, who was the British Political Representative in Sikkim during my residence there, wrote to me, from the Residency in Gangtok, under date of the twelfth of July, 1919, concerning the various versions of the Bardo Thödol, as follows: ‘The Yellow Sect have six, the Red Sect seven, and the Kar-gyut-pas five.’
Our text being of the primitive or Red-Hat School and attributed to the Great Guru Padma Sambhava himself, who introduced Tantric Buddhism into Tibet, has been deemed by us to be substantially representative of the original version, which, on the basis of internal evidence derived from our
6. ‘The Setting-Face-to Face of the Sidpa-Bardo’;
7. ‘The Salvation by Attaching [whereby] the Body Aggregate is Self-Liberated’—a version of the Tadhol Doctrine—(see pp. 1361, 1523, 194 of our text);
8. ‘The Prayer to Protect [One] from the Fears in the Bardo’;
9. ‘The Self-Liberating Diagnosis of the Symptoms of Death’—(cf. pp. 86, 89–97 of our text);
10. ‘The Setting-Face-to-Face called “The Naked Vision”, and the Self-Liberation [by that]’;
11. ‘The Special Teaching showing the Forms of Merit or Demerit, while in the Sidpa Bardo, called “The Self-Liberating in the Sidpa-Bardo”’;
12. ‘The Addenda [to the above, “The Special Teaching”]’;
13. ‘Prayer to the Line [of Gurus] of the Divine Self-Liberating Doctrine’;
14. ‘The Ransoming of the Dying’;
15. ‘Self-Liberation called “Absolution by Confession”’;
16. ‘The Best Wish-Granting Tadhol’—another form of the Tadhol Doctrine;
17. ‘The Ritual called “The Self-Liberation from Habitual Propensities”’.
Herein, the treatises numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 correspond—in slightly different versions—to the matter contained in our manuscript. The manuscript, moreover, contains much matter in the Appendix not contained in this Block-Print. The Block-Print itself is quite new, but the blocks from which it was printed may be quite old—how old, we have been unable to ascertain.
