Review of The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Bryan J. Cuevas
Alyson Prude
University of California at Santa Barbara

Bryan J. Cuevas, The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 329 pp. $50.00 hard.
As a corrective to past “homogenized” and “ahistorical” studies of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Cuevas offers an account of the origins and successive transformations of the fourteenth-century treasure revealer Karma gling pa’s death liturgies. In Cuevas’ words, the purpose of the book is to “provide a succinct overview of some of the main points of the history of the texts themselves…[to] encourage a more balanced and contextualized approach to the study of the Liberation upon Hearing…in which the focus is as much on the role of historical development as it has been on doctrinal content” (206), and in this goal he certainly succeeds. The book begins by criticizing past scientific, psychological, and humanistic presentations for contributing to a “universalist” view that is not consistent with the history of the texts or their ritual use. Cuevas then gives a brief account of Buddhist and pre-Buddhist funeral rites in Tibet and discusses the development of the Tibetan conception of the intermediate state (bar do) from its Indian antecedent, antarabhava. According to Cuevas, the Tibetan Great Perfection (Rdzogs chen) model of the intermediate state is unique in its combination of cosmogony, theory of transitional phases between states of consciousness – particularly the pre-Buddhist notion of a perilous path (’phrang lam) that Cuevas somewhat confusingly translates as “perilous passage between narrow pathways” – and concept of peaceful and wrathful deities (zhi khro). This original formulation, current in the fourteenth century, formed the basis from which Karma gling pa drew in creating his liturgy.

Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, no. 1 (October 2005): 1-3. www.thdl.org?id=T1224. 1550-6363/2005/1/T1224. © 2005 by Alyson Prude, Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, and International Association of Tibetan Studies. Distributed under the THDL Digital Text License.

Prude: Review of The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Bryan J. Cuevas

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In the second section of the book, Cuevas presents an account of the history of Karma gling pa’s various treasure texts, and here things get complicated. First, he sets out to locate “the foundational structure, or core unity, of the literary tradition” (102). He specifies that by “core” he is not seeking to identify the earliest of the texts but “those principal texts that have been historically treated as the most important works of the literary and ritual tradition” (115). He traces the core of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities to the Direct Introduction to Awareness: Self-Liberation through Naked Vision which, he states, “epitomizes the doctrinal foundation of the Liberation upon Hearing” (114). A few pages later, he redefines his notion of “core” to designate “the main text recited in the Karling ritual,” that being the ritual as performed at Dpal yul Monastery in South India and Rdzogs chen Monastery in Tokyo (117). In this case, the “core” text becomes the Religious Liturgy of the Self-Liberation of Karmic Latencies which has been included in twenty of the twenty-one extant editions of the Kar gling cycle. Based on this observation, Cuevas concludes that “it is certain that the Self-Liberation of Karmic Latencies is the core text of the Self-Liberated Wisdom of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities and lies also at the very heart of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo” (118). Having surveyed the texts, the next chapters turn to an enthusiastic account of the people who propagated and codified Karma gling pa’s treasure tradition. Cuevas credits the late fifteenth-century Rgya ra ba nam mkha’ chos kyi rgya mtsho (b. 1430) with establishing the transmission lineage and with spreading the Kar gling cycle throughout Tibet. As the figure who systematized the system and secured official sponsorship for its practices, it was due to the efforts of Rgya ra ba nam mkha’ chos kyi rgya mtsho that the Kar gling cycle “became the basic ritual response to death and dying among most of the major Rnying ma pa monastic orders, and in a few instances among certain followers of the Bka’ brgyud tradition,” particularly in southern Tibet and Khams where the treasures were most widespread (119). After surveying other lineage persons including Nyi zla ’od zer (b. 1409 or 1421), Karma chags med (1613-1678), and Gter bdag gling pa (1646-1714), as well as figures at Dwags po rtse le, Kong po thang ’brog, and Kaḥ thog monasteries, Cuevas presents Rig ’dzin nyi ma grags pa (1647-1710), “a rather fierce yet benevolent guardian of Buddhism and perhaps a tragically misunderstood religious savant” (180). This “well-connected sorcerer from khams” was apparently a highly charismatic and persuasive individual, and Cuevas credits him with being “the unparalleled master of the Liberation upon Hearing” (200). Rig ’dzin nyi ma grags pa’s contribution to the story lies in his arrangement of the Kar gling transmissions which were then preserved in a late eighteenth-century blockprint prepared at Rdzogs chen monastery, the same blockprint that was likely the basis of the 1943 Spa gro version upon which most Western translations and studies have been based. The book concludes with Cuevas describing his reactions when monks in South India showed him copies of their “liberation upon hearing” texts. He reports that he “was disappointed to learn that none of the texts had any connection whatsoever

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to Karma gling pa’s Liberation upon Hearing; they were copies of prayers or short texts written by some local lama from the monk’s home village” (211). Whereas for him, “liberation upon hearing” referred to “The Tibetan Book of the Dead, plain and simple,” for the Tibetans with whom he spoke, it meant something quite different. As he explains, “For many Tibetans the Liberation upon Hearing has no real history in the sense of being tied to a specific compositor and historical tradition” (212). Similar to what has happened in Europe and the United States since it was first translated into English, the Liberation upon Hearing has undergone what he cleverly labels the “Kleenex effect” such that what was once a brand name has become “a generic label for all similar products” (212). Although not explicit, it is evident that Cuevas is critical of Tibetans’ ignorance of the cycle’s history and, unfortunately, he is uninterested in exploring the differences between his conception of “liberation upon hearing” and those of the monks. Cuevas admits that a purely text-based investigation such as the one he presents here is unlikely to uncover details about social history or ritual practice, yet in focusing his work on the lineage and institutional history of one particular textual tradition and avoiding questions of popular practice and ideas, Cuevas leaves off at precisely the point where a history of a particular transmission becomes important for illuminating larger historical questions. It is here that one must turn to an investigation of the use of Karma gling pa’s texts, popular opinion regarding the identity of “liberation upon hearing,” and adaptations of normative death procedures in order to develop the more balanced view of Tibetan death liturgies and customs that Cuevas advocates. As yet another study of the Liberation upon Hearing, his book hardly acts to counterbalance Western scholarship’s fixation upon the Liberation upon Hearing as the authoritative text of Tibetan writings on the intermediate state. That being said, Cuevas’ helpful and well-researched work (including a bibliography of over one hundred Tibetan-language texts) provides a skeleton on which theorists, ethnographers, and those pursuing questions of social history, practice, and interpretation can now hang the meat and flesh of their studies. While it is unlikely to inspire any new paradigms, The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead represents solid scholarship which will perhaps inspire further investigation into other death-related literature and practices. Alyson Prude University of California Santa Barbara