monasteries with monks; sometimes I went on pilgrimages, as one of the salvation-seeking multitude. The Introduction—which in its unusual lengthiness is intended to serve as a very necessary commentary to the translation—and the annotations to the text record the more important results of this research, more especially in relation to Northern or Mahāyāna Buddhism.
Nevertheless, I have been really little more than a compiler and editor of ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’. To the deceased translator—who combined in himself a greater knowledge of the Occult Sciences of Tibet and of Western Science than any Tibetan scholar of this epoch—the chief credit for its production very naturally belongs.
In addition to that greatest of all debts which the student ever owes to his preceptor, I acknowledge my indebtedness to each of my many good friends and helpers who have personally aided me herewith. Some of them are of one Faith, some of another; some are far away in Japan and in China, some in the land of my birth, America; many are in Ceylon and in India; a few are in Tibet.
Here in England I think first of all of Dr. R. R. Marett, Reader in Social Anthropology in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Exeter College, who ever since I first came up to Oxford, in the year 1907, has faithfully guided my anthropological research. Sir John Woodroffe, late a Judge of the High Court, Calcutta, now Reader in Indian Law in the University of Oxford, and the foremost authority in the West on the Tantras, has read through our translation, chiefly in relation to the character of the work as a ritual more or less Tantric, and offered important advice. I am also very grateful to him for the Foreword.
To Sj. Atal Bihari Ghosh, of Calcutta, Joint Honorary Secretary with Sir John Woodroffe of the Āgamānusandhāna Samiti, as to Sir E. Denison Ross, Director of the School of Oriental Studies, London Institution, and to Dr. F. W. Thomas, Librarian of the India Office, London, I am under a special
