¹.) Chenrazee being the patron—god, or national tutelary deity, of Tibet, and this being his mantra, its repetition, both in the human world and on the Bardo plane, is credited with bringing to an end the cycle of rebirth and thereby giving entrance into Nirvana ; hence its importance in the Bardo prayer. In the Tibetan work called Ma-ni-kah-hbtttn (pron. Ma—ni—kah—boom), i. e. * History of the Mani or Mantra of Chenrazee)’ this mantra is said to be ‘the essence of all happiness, prosperity, and knowledge, and the great means of liberation’; also it is said that the öm closes the door of rebirth among the gods, må, among the asuras (or titans) ;/f, among mankind, pay, among sub—human creatures, me, among pretas (or unhappy ghosts), and hung, among the inhabitants of Hell. Accordingly, each of the six syllables is given the colour of the light—path corresponding to the six states of existence, thus : öm, the white light—path of the deva—loka (or world of the gods); ma, the green light—path of the asura—oka (or world of the titans); m, the yellow light—path of the manaka—loka (or human world); päy the blue light—path of the ttryaka—loka (or brute world); mi, the red light—path of the preta—oka (or ghost world) ; and hung, the smoke—coloured or black light—path of the rtaraka—oka (or Hell world).

There is an old Tibetan folk—tale concerning a religious devotee who tried to incline his irreligious mother to devotional observances and merely succeeded in habituating her to the recitation of this mantra. Her bad karma predominating over her good karma at death she passed into the Hell—world, whereupon her son, being proficient in yoga, went to her rescue; and she, upon seeing him, was able, in virtue of having recited the mantra on earth, to recite it in Hell, and instantaneously she and all who heard it were liberated from Hell: for, as the tale at its end teaches, * Such is the power of the mantra’.

The origin of this mantra is traceable through tertön works concerning the introduction (during the eighth century) of Tantric Buddhism into Tibet. Dr. Waddell is inclined to doubt that these ttrfón works were hidden away then (i.e. in the time of Padma Sambhava) and in later centuries recovered, as the Urtöns (i. e.’takers—out’ of such lost books) claim, and suggests that their compilation dates from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century——a tentative and possibly unsound theory (cf. L. A. Waddell, LāMaism in Sik him, in the Gazetteer of Sik him, ed. by H. H. Risley, Calcutta, 1894, p. 289 ; also our Introduction, PP* 73—7)* In any case, the mantra, at least by tradition (which ordinarily is as reliable as recorded history), seems to have come into, or been originated in, Tibet contemporaneously with the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet.