Notes

  1. Offerings to give thanks for the Prince's birth.

  2. This paragraph, the first part of which is addressed directly to Atisha, forms the writer's conclusion to the first part of the story.

  3. From this point onwards, the story continues in the first person with Atisha as the narrator.

  4. Atisha was not boasting. Having by tantric means taken on the form of the terrible, he had become the divinity!

  5. Twenty-one forms of the goddess Tara.

  6. Atisha's chief disciple.

  7. Atisha

  8. Another of Atisha's names.

  9. A nephew of Lha Lama.

  10. A Tibetan living in India.

  11. A fabulous mountain region, the chief peak of which is said to be 15,990 feet.

  12. Elders who severally preached Buddhist doctrine in the various islands and continents of the Buddhist cosmogony.

  13. The day of removing faults by making confession to a monk.

  14. An offering to quench the thirst of pretas.

  15. Serpent-gods who live under the ground.

  16. Great Compassion, another name for the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.

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