ON THE HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE 'DAS-LOGis faced with a hopeless task, Guru Chos-dbang deserts his mother on the pretext
of going off on a trading expedition to Lhasa; instead, he goes to meditate for
nine years at the holy mountain Rtsa-ri. His family's pho-lha eventuates in the
form of a bird and relates that his mother has died. He returns home to find her
bones and the family property divided among the neighbors. He searches for her
in all the realms and finally locates her in the "gateless iron fortress" after he
tours hell and limbo, witnessing the horrors to be seen there. He splits the
fortress with his staff and orders the guards to bring his mother out. She recol-
lects her son's teachings on the Mal).i on the occasion of his father's funeral
rites, and her single recitation of the mantra releases countless beings from hell.
Guru Chos-dbang takes her soul from hell, but "loses" it, so that she is reborn as
an ass. Dutifully he performs the ass's labor to spare her further suffering. After
other suchlike adventures she is reborn a human and gains liberation. The simi-
larity of this story to Maudgalyayana's, plus the addition of some of the ele-
ments found in later 'das-log biographies-such as the tour of hell and messages
given to be taken back to the land of the living-appears to offer at once a legiti-
mating link to a well known Buddhist source and to act as a template for the
later 'das-log adventures.
Finally, the so-called "Book of the Dead" traditions must be mentioned in
connection with the 'das-log. These traditions have been discussed in great
detail and I do not intend to add more than a few comments. The "Book of the
Dead" and the 'das-log literature share many of the same historical sources; they
are mutual redactions of the ancient world-wide literature to which we have
already referred.^14 However, the "Book of the Dead" literature is basically a
formal presentation of the death and limbo states from the point of view of a
religious elite. The events of passing through the various stages of death process
and the intermediate states of rebirth are given a careful and detailed exegesis,
with such-and-such an event occurring on this-or-that day and having a meaning
of thus-and-so. While the formal literature is meant to be read to a corpse, so
that its rnam-shes might find understanding and enlightenment, or by a medita-
tion master whose goals are the same, recitations and readings of the 'das-log
biographies are aimed at a living lay audience. The aims of this literature are
accordingly less lofty and more preparatory in nature. Likewise, many of the
complex theological notions found in the "Book of the Dead" are reduced to the
simpler and more concrete language of metaphor, and the neat indexical "plot"
of events in the former is drastically attenuated in the latter. While parallels can
be found between the two genres, how much of their experience is actually
explained in terms of the Bardo teachings appears to be a function of the 'das-
log's personal erudition. Whatever the case, none of the biographies fully con-
tains all of the events reported in the theoretical literature.
In this connection it would be well to remember that religions, as cultural
systems, are creative processes, which both objectify social experience and
provide a template for the meaningful subjective interpretation of that
experience ( Geertz 1973 ). In all literary religious traditions certain axioms