¹ Text: khram—shmg (pron. htant—shing) referring to a board—either a flogging—board such as that on which culprits are stretched and flogged in Tibet, or else,as here, a board written over with karmic records of the deceased’s life. Khram is the name given to a scroll of records or an inventory like a rent—roll; shing alone means ‘wood’ Hence we may render the two words as ‘wood-register’ or ‘record-board’. In the great Tibetan Arthurian—like saga called in Tibetan Gt—sar—bsgrungs (pron. Kt—sar—doottg), or Kesar Saga (of unknown author, butprobably dating from the eighth or ninth century a. d.), which is so much thepopular saga of Tibet that many Tibetans know it by heart, a boy, thirteenyears of age, who, when wishing to join in a battle, is held back by fond relatives,brushes them aside, saying, The place of illness, the place of death, and theplace of cremation are in accordance with the [karmic] register of the Lords ofDeath’; and here the Tibetan word for register is khram.

The verification of our rendering of this passage is important because, like other passages in the Bardo Thödol, particularly the closely—related passage describing the Judgement, coming in the Second Book (pp. 165—9), It ^liaistriking correspondence with parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dtad,