Karma Lingpa Shitro Manuscript in Mongolian script with painted illuminations. Karma Lingpa was born circa 1350 and became famous as a Nyingma Terton (treasure discoverer).

Text Pages | Image Pages | Bardo Outline Page

Book illustrations are an important part of the visual culture of the Himalayas and surrounding regions. This manuscript is hand written with painted illustrations giving visual form to the written word, personifying the abstract meanings into easily recognized and remembered forms and shapes, both peaceful and fearsome.

This manuscript belongs to a tradition of Tibetan Buddhism known as the Ancient Ones (Nyingma) and proposes a system of meditation called Peaceful and Wrathful (shitro) using the idea of opposites and dualities as the special metaphor and paradigm for spiritual practice.

Separated by the vertically written Mongolian script, various female forms are depicted in active postures, each with a different animal head and body color. The colors relate to basic elements such as fire, air and earth, and the animal heads are derived from Central Asian species of wild game along with the iconic animals of India such as the elephant and boar.

Jeff Watt 5-2005

Please see: Transitions to the Otherworld: The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Background on Funerary Buddhism