VII. the Medieval Christian Judgement.

In connexion with the difficult problem of origins, referred to in that part of our Introduction concerning the Judgement (pp. 35-9), and of the probable influences of Buddhism and other Oriental Faiths, including the Osirian Faith, on Chris- tianity, it is interesting to compare with the Bardo Thodol version of the Judgement (pp. 165-9) the similar version in the medieval treatise entitled Te Lamentation of the Dying Creature (date uncertain, but probably of 14th to 15th cent.) contained in the British Museum MS. Harl. 1706 (fol. 96), Comper’s ed. (pp. 137-68) :

‘The Dying Creature enset with Sickness incurable sorrow- fully Complaineth him thus : “ Alas that ever I sinned in my life. To me is come this day the dreadfullest tidings that ever I heard. Here hath been with me a sergeant of arms whose name is Cruelty, from the King of all’ Kings, Lord of all Lords, and Judge of all Judges; laying on me the mace of His office, saying unto me: ‘I arrest thee and warn thee to make ready.... The Judge that shall sit upon thee, He will not be partial, nor He will not be corrupt with goods, but He will minister to thee justice and equity... .”

“The Lamentation of the Dying Creature: “Alas! alas! Excuse me I can not, and whom I might desire to speak for me I wot (i.e. know) not. The day and time is so dreadful ; the Judge is so rightful; mine enimies be so evil; my kin, my neighbours, my friends, my servants, be not favourable to me; and I wot well they shall not be heard there.”

‘The Complaint of the Dying Creature to the Good Angel: “QO my Good Angel, to whom our Lord took me to keep, where be thee now? Me thinketh ye should be here, and answer for me; for the dread of death distroubleth me, so

THE CHRISTIAN JUDGEMENT 239

that I cannot answer for myself. Here is my bad angel ready, and is one of my chief accusers, with legions of fiends with him. I have no creature to answer for me. Alas it is an heavy case!”

‘ The Answer of the Good Angel to the Dying Creature: “ As to your bad deeds, I was never consenting. I saw your natural inclination more disposed to be ruled by your bad angel than by me. Howbeit, ye cannot excuse you, but when ye were purposed to do anything that was contrary to the commandments of God I failed not to remember (i.e. remind) you that it was not well; and counselled thee to flee the place of peril, and the company that should stir or move you thereto. Can ye say nay thereto? How can you think that I should answer for you?”’

Though the Dying Creature appeals for assistance to Reason, to Dread, to Conscience, and to the Five Wits—very much after the manner of Lveryman, probably the best known of the medieval Christian mystery plays (which seem to be the outcome of the spread of Orientalism into Europe)—none can succour him. Thence, in his final appeal to the Virgin, through Faith, Hope, and Charity as mediators, and in the Virgin’s resulting appeal to the Son, there is introduced the Christian doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, in opposition to the doctrine of arma as expounded by the Bardo Thodol. Such introduction suggests that this curious Christian version of the Judgement may possibly have had a pre-Christian and non-Jewish Oriental source, wherein the doctrine of arma (and the correlated doctrine of rebirth) remained unmodified by the European medievalism which shaped Zhe Lamentation of the Dying Creature (see p. 3°). The ancient doctrine of arma (to which the primitive, or Gnostic, Christians adhered, ere Church-council Christianity took shape), being taught in the following answers to the Dying Creature, gives some plausi- bility, even from internal evidence, to this purely tentative view:

Conscience: ‘Ye must sorrowfully and meekly suffer the judgements that ye have deserved.’

The Five Wits: ‘Therefore of your necessity your defaults

must be laid upon you.... Wherefore of right the peril must be yours.’

Also compare the similar account of the Judgement in the Orologium Sapientie (14th cent.), chap. V, in Douce MS. 322 (fol. 20), Comper’s ed., from which the following passage (p. 118) is taken:

‘O thou most righteous Doomsman, how strait and hard be

wretched, in those things the which few folk charge or dread, forasmuch as they seem small and little. O the dreadful sight of the righteous Justice, that is now present to me by dread, and suddenly to come in deed.’

Reference might also be made to the wall-painting of the Judgement in Chaldon Church, Surrey, England, dating from about A.D. 1200 and discovered in 1870, which parallels in avery striking manner our Tibetan painting of the Judgement.! Thus, in both paintings there is the judging of the dead in an intermediate or bardo state, the heaven-world being above and the hell-world below. In the Chaldon Christianized version, St. Michael, in place of Shinje, holds the scales; instead of karmic actions, souls are being weighed; the Six Karmic Pathways leading to the Six Lokas have become a single ladder leading to a single heaven; at the top of the ladder, in place of the Six Buddhas of the Six Lokas, there is the Christ waiting to welcome the righteous, the sun being shown on His right hand and the moon on His left—as though He were a Buddha. In the Hell-world, in both versions, there is the cauldron in which evil-doers are being cooked under the supervision of demons; and, in the Christianized version, the ‘Hill of Spikes’ of the Buddhist version is represented by a ‘Bridge of Spikes’, which the condemned souls are com- pelled to traverse.

THE CHRISTIAN JUDGEMENT 241

All such parallels as these tend to strengthen our opinion that the greater part of the symbolism nowadays regarded as being peculiarly Christian or Jewish seems to be due to adaptations from Egyptian and Eastern religions. They suggest, too, that the thought-forms and thought-processes of Orient and of Occident are, fundamentally, much alike—that, despite differences of race and creed and of physical and social environment, the nations of mankind are, and have been since time immemorial, mentally and spiritually one.

3069 il

INDE

Black-type figures indicate the chief references, most of which may be

Abhidhamma, 167}.

Abhidharmakosha, x\.

Adi (Primordial) -Buddha, SS OV LG IES Ee HA, FR 218, 2311, 232.

Adi- - Kiya, 1674.

Aeschylus, 1673,

Aesop's Fables, 3, 37, 57-

Agamemnon, 50, 51.

Aggania Suttinta, 233.

Aggregate: see Skandha.

— Bodhic Wisdom, of, 16.

— Body, of, 16, 72", 109}, 192*.

—Consciousness, of, 9", 15, 1062, 109}, 192%. — Feelings, of, 9", 16,114,

1924,

— Matter, of, 9,9", 15,106. — Touch (or Sensation), Of, OO AG MEI TO2s. — Volition, of, 9", 16, 116,

192*.

Aggregates of Life, xii.

Ain Soph, 67.

Ajanta Cave, 38, 56.

Ajax, 50, 51.

Akasha (Ether), 0,920,103;

174", 179.

Akasha- Ge TU,

Akshobhya, 91, 16, 108', 1261, 220.

Aloke (Aloka), 113°.

Amitabha, 9", 13, 16-18, 20, 28, 32, 55, 70, 96, 1131, 114-15, 120, 123, 140, 189?, 200, 2021, 220.

— State, g6*.

Amogha-Siddhi, xxxii, 9", 16-17, 32, 55, 70 115}, 116-18, 120, I41, 200, PLOW Ea, OPXOY,

Amrita-Dhara, 120°.

Anthropology, 11, 59.

Apollo, 113%.

Apparitions, xxxili, 32, 98, 101 ff., 103,104, 162, 204: sce Hallucinations,

— Psychology of, 132}, 168, 181,

213Arhant (Pali: Arahant),

Al, 54, 1601. Ars Mortendi (Craft of Dying), viii, xxvi, 37,

used as a Glossary.

887-8, 93%, 951, 991,107, 1348, 1517, 1727, 198?

Arthurian Legend, 54.

Asanga, 2121,

Ashvaghosha, 154, 225-33, 2361,

Asoka, Edicts of, 170°.

— Missionaries of, 14.

Astrology, 19, 27, 75, 87’, 193", 214".

Asura(Titan), 17, 24, 63, TT yeae Lad, Ons esc’ Light-Path, and Lokas.

— Birth, 156, 185.

— Existence, 1217, 194}.

Atalanta, 50, 51.

Atharva-Veda, 46".

Atisha, 1353, 234".

Atma, xxviii, xxxiii, xlili, 189}.

Avalokiteshvara, 23, 99°, 113°) 1162,e120°)), 347, 149!: see Chenrazee.

Avatamsaka Siitra, xxxiii.

Awakening of Laith, The, Die r64a25 ar.

118,

Bardo, XXvi, 281, 38 : see Bardo Thodol, Judge- ment, and Rebirth.

— Astral Light, 1615,

— Birth, 156°.

— Birth-Place, 1021, 202.

—Body, xxiii!, xxviii, XXXVi, xxxix, 16, 30, 31, 8471, 924, 1001, 1038, 104, 126°, 148, 155 ff., 1615, 1668, 177) 187, 195, 210.

—- Chikhat, xxxiv, 29, 891, 89-100, 1024, 151, 203.

— Chonyid, xxxiv, 20,29, 71, 891, IOI-5I, 1025, 135°,152*,193, 203, 217.

—Consciousness, xxxiv, 182: see Consciousness.

— Cult, 373.

— Dawning of, go, 202-4.

— Dhyana, 102°, 203.

— Dream-State, 102”, 202,

— Dream-World, xl, 17, 34, 66, 187},

— Dwellers in, 187}.

— Ending of, 30, 34, 188",

— Food in, 164.

Bardo, Friends in, 164.

— Forty-Nine Daysof, xlii, 6-7, 20, 30, 44; 48, 104, 161, 183.

— Intellect in, 172, 195.

— Liberation from, xxxvii, TTS, 09207, eho hoe esc Liberation.

— Plato and, 36, 49-53: sce Plato.

— Prayers, 71', 88, 192, 197-208, 237.

— Psychology, 31-5, 66, T40!, 195.

— Recognition of, 898, 90%, 97, 99; 99%, 101, 103-5, 112, 118-19, 124-6, 131-3, 135°, 137-41, 146-9, 151, 155-8, 165, 168, 173, 181, 193-4.

— Stdpa, 20, 29, 49, 55, 72", 891, 1028, 135-6", 151, 153-93, 193, 204, 206.

—Six States of, 202-4.

—State, xxili!, xxxv, 7, 28-30, 38, 59, 66, 91 ff., TOOU SORE ahs amigos 158 ff., 1647, 187, 195, 240,

— Supernormal Powers in, 158 ff.

Bardo Thidol, 2, 33, 152, 196: see Bardo,

— Appendix, The, 208.

— Block-Print, 69, V2 LOO, me LOU mLOO ss 1181, 1247, 142°, 144% 145) ?, 1461, 152% 4, 153).

— Colophon, 209.

— Corruptions of, xxxvii- Xxxvilly 58, 77, 0504 174', 179", 1927.

— Deities, 361.

— Divisions of, 85, 1531.

— Doctrine, 41, 136,194-6, 211.

— Illustrations, xvii-xxiv, 70-1.

— Manuscript, 68-73, 1067) 1240) Teas eee ay t741, 1848,

102,

196-

1)

Bardo Thédol, Origin of, 35° ~9, 54-5) 73- 8, 1964,

oe Sambhava and, 13: seé Padma Sam- bhaya.

— Plato and, 36, 49-53: see Plato.

— Psychology, 31-5, 193-

— Reading of, 19, 20, 87 ff., 135, 151, 183, 195-6. — Rebirth Symbols, 49 ff.:

see Rebirth.

— Ritual, 75.

—Science and, 8-9, 41, 66, 77.

— Symbolism, Esotericism.

— Tantricism, 213-20.

— Teachings,10-17,32-5, 66-8, 89%, 132, 151-2, 1647, 176, 180, 182-3, 186, 188, 190, 194-6, 212-13, 222, 225, 235, 238.

—Texts and _ Versions, xxvi, 71-2.

— Translating and Edit-

ing, 11, 78-81.

>)

AAS

Séé

— Voga and, 211-14": see Vos. z

Bhagavin, %05', 119?, 149, 201.

Bhikkhuni, xii, 210.

Bhutan, 80, 188", 218.

Birth, Four Kinds of, 178, 182,

— Supernormal, 156!, 178, 188-90, 206.

Blavatsky, H. P., 7}.

Bodhi (or Bodhic), 10, 11, 17, 52, 964, 116, 123}, 230.

Bodhisattvas, 14, 54%, 67, [OmlOs iL eIls,, DLO, HAS, Te, by aii tote 183, IgI-2, 218, 228, 222.

— Invocation of, 711, 155, 197-8.

Bon, 23, 361, 74-5, 1401.

Book of Dead, xxvi, 1-2, 22, 36, 77-

— Egyptian, xxvi, 2, 22, 35, 77, 877, 1364, 148.

Brahma, 62.

Brahman, 6%, 111.

Bréhmana, Tattiriya, 46°.

— Vagga, 40, 158°.