The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism, with mystic cults, symbolism and mythology, and its relation to Indian Buddhism / by L. Austine Waddell.

Laurence Waddell

Date:: [1934]

Credit: The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism, with mystic cults, symbolism and mythology, and its relation to Indian Buddhism / by L. Austine Waddell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$manager of a worldly house only through filial obedience to the dictates \ of my parents. Now pray tell me, which is the most suitable convent for i me to enter, and who is the most learned Lama as a spiritual father Y’ I The beggar gave her the information she desii-ed. And Nah-sa, in f her gratitude, bestowed upon him all her silver and golden ornaments. J Now, it so happened that just at this time, the lord arrived, and * hearing the voice of a man in his wife’s chamber he peeped in and, to his great surprise, saw Nah-sa giving a beggar all her jewels, while the young prince was playing with the beggar’s monkey. Furious at the sight, he entered the chamber, just as the beggar and his monkey left; and thinking that Ani’s story must indeed be true, and that his wife had bestowed his property on the devotees, and had , scandalously brought beggars even inside her private chamber, he seized <■ Nah-sa by the hair and began to beat her most unmercifully, and i Nemo also came and assisted in beating her. They tore the young 1 prince away from her, and the lord and Ani-Nemo continued beating \ Nah-sa until she died. ACT III. I < JVan-sYs return from the Dead. j ^ ] Om ma-ni-_imd-me Hiita ! The young prince, unable to bear separa- I tion from his mother, stole to her room after the tragedy and found her • lying dead. Rushing to his father with the dreadful news, his father, ■ in alarm, ran to her prostrate figure, but thinking that Nah-sa was \ merely shamming, he exclaimed, “ 0 ! fair Nah-sa, arise ! The starry { heaven betimes is obscured by clouds ; the lovely flowers die at winter’s ■ approach ; you have been harshly treated, but your time has not yet come ; so, pray arise ! ” But the corpse lay still, for its spirit long had fled. Then the lord repented him bitterly, but being powerless to revive her, he had to consent to the customary funeral offerings being made to The Three Holy Ones, and he gave alms to the poor and blind, and feasts to the priests. And the death-astrologer was called and he ordered that the body should be kept for seven days exposed on the eastern hill, and care taken that no animal should destroy it, and that after the eighth day it should be cremated or thrown into a river or lake. Nah-sa’s body was therefore wrapped in a white blanket and bound on a four-footed bed, and taken to the eastern grassy hill, where it was deposited in solitude. Now Nah-sa’s spirit on her death had winged its way, light as a feather, to the ghostly region of the intermediate purgatory, Bardo, where the minions of the Death-king seized it and led it before the dreaded judge-king of the dead. At that tribunal Nah-sa’s spirit was terrified at seeing many wicked souls condemned and sent down for torture to the hells, in cauldrons of molten metal, or frozen amongst the ice; while she was pleased to see the souls of several pious people sent to heaven. But in her fear she threw herself before the great judge of the$