Chohan
Though in her 1892 Glossary HPB identifies the word 'chohan' as Tibetan,[93] meaning "Lord" or "Master," "a chief," it can not be located in any Tibetan text or dictionary from last century. Once again, however, it is the spelling which has caused the problem, along with mispronunciation. "Chohan" is indeed a Tibetan word, ??? (chos-'chong-pa). It is compounded of ???/chos (Sanskrit dharma, "the Buddhist Teaching" or "Truth") with '??? 'chong-pa (Sanskrit dharana, "holder" or "protector"). Taken together, the word means "protector of the faith" or perhaps better, "holder of the Buddhist teachings." According to Das, the word has two primary meanings, "1. Buddha 2. A title of honor given to distinguished scholars."[94] Why Blavatsky has prefixed the Sanskrit Maha to the Tibetan chos-'chong-pa, to form 'Mahachohan,' as she often did, who can say? It seems more appropriate, rather, to place Maha with the Sanskrit, dharma-dharana, or add the Tibetan chen-po ("great") to the end of chos-'chang-pa (with the same effect). It is this sort of linguistic carelessness which gives scholars pause when examining HPB, but in reality it is merely idiosyncratic and of little consequence. Thus it may be that Blavatsky actually had a Buddhist teacher with this title, or was in contact with someone who did, for otherwise it becomes difficult to explain her accurate use of the word as a Tibetan Buddhist title, or an as equivalent to 'Dhyani-Buddha'.
Bardo
Since the publication of Evans-Wentz's famous book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927), the term "bardo" has become a fixture in Western vocabulary. But last century the term was virtually unknown, belonging as it did to the Tibetan gTer-Ma or "hidden text" tradition, namely the text called Bar-do Thos-grol. Blavatsky's student Mr. Sinnett writes to Mahatma KH,
The period of gestation between Death and Devachan [Tib. bDe-ba-can, Skt. Sukhavati] has hitherto been conceived by me at all events as very long. Now it is said to be in some cases only a few days, in no cases (it is implied) more than a few years…
To which Master KH responds,
…Another fine example of the habitual disorder in which Mrs. H.P.B.'s mental furniture is kept. She talks of "Bardo" and does not even say to her readers what it means! As in her writing-room confusion is ten times confounded, so in her mind are crowded ideas piled in such a chaos that when she wants to express them the tail peeps out before the head. "Bardo" has nothing to do with the duration of time in the case you are referring to. "Bardo" is the period between death and rebirth - and may last from a few years to a kalpa. It is divided into three sub-periods (1) when the Ego delivered of its mortal coil enters into Kama Loka [a footnote: Tibetan: Yuh-Kai] (the abode of Elementaries); (2) when it enters into its "Gestation State"; (3) when it is reborn in the Rupa-Loka of Devachan [bDe-ba-can, Sukhavati]… Sub-period (3) lasts in proportion to the good KARMA, after which the monad is again reincarnated.[95]
Leaving aside for the moment the other technical words, the term Bardo may only be found in two locations prior to the writing of KH's letter (1882): Schlagintweit's Buddhism in Tibet (1863) and Jaschke's Tibetan-English Dictionary (1881). Schlagintweit says of Bardo:
This is the middle state between death and the new re-birth, which does not follow immediately, but there exists an interval, which is shorter for the good than for the bad. The prolongation of this intermediate state is considered as a punishment caused by evil spirits, who have only power over sinful man. The soul exists during this interval without any shape whatever…[96]
In Jaschke we read
bar-do, also bar-ma-do the intermediate state between death and re-birth, of a shorter or longer duration (yet not of more than 40 days…); although on the one hand it is firmly believed, that the place of rebirth (whether a man, an animal, or a god etc. go forth from it), unalterably depends on the former course of life, yet in [Bar-do Thos-grol] the soul is urged and instructed to proceed at once into Nirwana to Buddha (inconsistently with the general dogma).[97]
In both scholarly accounts the duration of Bardo is of much concern, as it was to Mr. Sinnett. However, the Mahatma's letter contains new information: that of three primary divisions in the bardo state. According to "The Root Verses of The Six Betweens," in the Bardo Thos-grol ascribed to Padmasambhava, there are actually three bar-dos during physical life (waking, dreaming and meditating) and three bar-dos after physical death: 1. The "death-point" 2. "reality between" which is between the death-point and falling into a new rebirth 3. "becoming," which is between the "reality" phase of death and physical conception.[98] These match up admirably with KH's statement quoted above, although KH assumes that all fairly moral humans take rebirth in bDe-wa-can-an assumption apparently unique to Theosophy. As to the length of time in bar-do, the standard time given is, at the utmost, 49 days, or 7 cycles of 7. However, some native commentators have claimed these "days" are measured by the lifespans of one's future birth, some of which are extremely long.[99]
Jnana Prasthana Shastra
The Mahatma Letters make brief mention of a Vaibhashika-Sarvastivada work, commenting on the Abhidharma: "In the Jnana Prasthana Shastra, it is said, 'By personal purity and earnest meditation, we overleap the limits of the World of Desire [Kama-dhatu], and enter in the World of Forms [Rupa-dhatu]'."[100] This 2nd century BCE work, by the Vaibhashika-Sarvastivada scholar Katyayaniputra, was certainly not available in any western language last century, nor is it available in translation today. It is however a critical text for Buddhism, as it became the basis for Vasubandhu's 4th century CE landmark commentary, the Abhidharma-kosha-bhashya.
The Books of 'Kiu-Te'
By far the most important of all the texts that HPB mentions are the hitherto mysterious "Books of Kiu-Te," for it is out of 'secret commentaries' to these works that Blavatsky claims to extract the "Stanzas of Dzyan." Her entire magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, is nothing but a commentary on these Shlokas of 'Dzyan', followed by lengthy comparison of these teachings with contemporary scientific views and the records left by ancient religions. (See Appendix II for a selection of these Stanzas) If these secret "Kiu-Te" commentaries in fact exist, then it is possible to take more seriously Blavatsky's claim that she is presenting to the West, for the first time, extracts from a truly 'esoteric' Buddhism.
99
Rinbochay, Lati and Jeffrey Hopkins, Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism, p. 53.
100
Barker,