76
ON THE HISTORY AND
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE 'DAS-LOG
Lawrence Epstein
Source: The Tibet Journal?, 4 (1982): 20-85.
The 'das-log literature centers around a figure in Tibetan popular religious lore.
Designating "one who has returned (log) from passing away ( 'das) "the 'das-log
occupies a place in Tibetan folklore and folklife, as well as in the literature asso-
ciated with the worship of the bodhisattva A valokitesvara. There exists a
number of written biographies of 'das-log; additionally, they existed in the flesh
in Tibet and the Himalayas, as they do today, albeit rarely, amongst the Tibetan
refugee population.^1 Claiming to have undergone personally the experience of
returning from death, they committed themselves to a life of telling their stories,
bringing with them tidings from beings born in limbo (bar-do) and hell to the
living, and conveying to men at large injunctions to moral conduct from the lips
of the Dharmaraja, the Lord of Death, himself.
The 'das-log biographies belong to an enormous and an ancient class of
world literature; they are variations upon the theme of the spiritual journey. The
spiritual adventure or quest "forms the principal theme in the oral literature of
the Old World" (Chadwick 1942: 91), and it is found as a central motif both
in myth and in many of the world's literary classics. The particular subtype
of this theme to which the 'das-log genre belongs is the journey-to-hell.
The grim reality of hell as shaped by those that have purportedly been there has
long been used as a didactic device in the literature of popular religion. In
Western literature, such classical figures as Virgil, Orpheus and Er, whose myth
is found in the final chapter of Plato's Republic, expand upon the themes of
duty, justice and moral uprightness through this motif. The 'horrific detail of
hell" (Owen 1970: 3) and the stories of those who visited it persisted in captur-
ing the public imagination throughout Christendom, especially after the eleventh
century and up through modem times (cf. Asin 1968: 46 and 177 ff.; Rowell
1974).
Much like the 'das-log literature, many of the Western stories and legends
about hell and the agonies of death which precede men's journeys there were
told or expressly created for the purpose of convincing sceptics to mend their