The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]; The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]

Translation of འཕགས་པ་སྤྱན་རས་གཟགས་དབང་ཕྱག་ག་མཚན་བརྒྱ་རྩ་བརྒྱད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ (འཕགས་པ་སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས་དབང་ཕྱུག་གི་མཚན་བརྒྱ་རྩ་བརྒྱད་པ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ)

Language: English
Translator: Catherine Dalton
Extent: 42 passages, 4,392 words
Text: partly digitised
Source: 84000 · Published by 84000 (v 1.0.0 2025); Published by 84000 (v 1.0.1 2025). 84000: Translating the Words of the… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…

intro 84000's introduction — 14 parts
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notes Notes — 2 parts

Text

84000's introduction

intro.1

This is one of two short texts with the same title, The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara, each of which enumerates the hundred and eight “names” of Avalokiteśvara, which are more like descriptive epithets. The first part of the text describes his many excellent qualities. The second part of the text describes the benefits that result from praising Avalokiteśvara with these names.

intro.2

The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] opens with the Blessed One residing at Avalokiteśvara’s palace, teaching the Dharma to a vast retinue. After the teaching, Brahmā and others extensively praise the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, enumerating his “names” in the form of descriptive qualities, including qualities specific to Avalokiteśvara, along with a number of qualities corresponding with more general lists of the major and minor marks of an awakened being. The text concludes by describing the benefits that result from praising Avalokiteśvara with these names, including protection from illness, rebirth in Sukhāvatī, and obtaining positive qualities, such as intelligence, heroism, fortune, and skill in the sciences.

intro.3

The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] is one of several canonical texts that focus on Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. It belongs to a genre of “Hundred and Eight Names” texts that extoll deities by listing their “names,” which are often more like descriptive epithets. Sixteen such “Hundred and Eight Names” works are included in the Kangyur and the present text is one of three such texts dedicated to Avalokiteśvara. One of these three, The Dhāraṇī-Mantra of the One Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara (Toh 634/874), is a completely different text from the present one. However, the other, also titled The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [1] (Toh 705/900),¹ is essentially a different recension of the present text.

intro.4

Toh 705/900 and Toh 706 are similar enough to be considered different versions of the “same” text. However, the differences between them are significant enough that the editors of the Degé Kangyur elected to include both works, side-by-side. We have likewise elected to translate them separately. These two works share a large percentage of their content, especially in the introductory and concluding narrative sections. The structure of the praise by way of the hundred and eight names, however, is distinct in the two works. In Toh 705/900, the praise has been rendered into Tibetan in verse, while here in Toh 706 the praise is rendered in prose. There are also additional differences in some of the content in the praise section, suggesting that the two versions likely represent translations of different Sanskrit recensions of the work. The close relationship between Toh 705 and Toh 706 is further highlighted by the fact that the final colophons at the end of both versions append the additional title “The Receptacle of the Precious Relics of all Victors,” the only difference being that the attribute “precious” is missing here in Toh 706.

intro.5

The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] does not appear to survive in Sanskrit. However, a text by the same name was translated into Chinese and is preserved in the Taishō canon as Taishō 1054, translated by Tian Xizai, who was active in the tenth century.² Although the Tibetan translation of The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] (Toh 706) lacks a translators’ colophon (as does Toh 705/900), we can date it to the imperial period, since the title is listed in both the Denkarma and Phangthangma imperial catalogs.³ It is also one of the texts that appears most frequently at Dunhuang.⁴ According to Dalton and van Schaik, the Dunhuang recensions do not correspond with the present recension, but rather with Toh 705.⁵

intro.6

Like many dhāraṇī texts, The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] is found in the Tantra section of both the Tshalpa and Thempangma lineage Kangyurs, as a Kriyā tantra. In the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that have a Dhāraṇī section,⁶ the other recension of this work, Toh 705/900, is additionally found there. However, Toh 706 is exclusively contained in the Tantra section.

intro.7

This English translation of The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] is based on the Degé Kangyur recension of the text, Toh 706. We also consulted the notes to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur and the Stok Palace Kangyur recension of the text in preparing this translation, as well as Toh 705/900, the largely parallel text discussed above.

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1

Homage to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was residing at the noble Avalokiteśvara’s abode at the summit of Mount Potala, a place that was arrayed with many different fragrant flowers, shining like the excellent golden color of the Jambu River, and brilliant with a variety of jewels.

Homage to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was residing at the noble Avalokiteśvara’s abode at the summit of Mount Potala, a place that was arrayed with many different fragrant flowers, shining like the excellent golden color of the Jambu River, and brilliant with a variety of jewels.

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He was surrounded by many trillions of gods, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kinnaras, mahoragas, humans, and non-humans, who honored him, took him as their teacher, respected him, made offerings to him, and revered him. In front of this group, he taught the Dharma.

He perfectly taught the pure conduct—virtuous in the beginning, virtuous in the middle, and virtuous in the end, excellent in meaning, beautiful in expression, unmixed, complete, and completely refined. Thereafter, Brahmā and the others praised the bodhisattva great being, noble Avalokiteśvara, as follows.

“Ah, Blessed One! You have carried out your intention, done what is to be done, cast off the burden, achieved your own aims, and utterly cleared away the ties to existence; due to genuine wisdom, your mind is utterly free; you know everything; you are a great elephant; you have perfected the sublime power of all beings;⁷ you have completed the accumulation of wisdom; you have crossed the wilderness of existence; you benefit others; you have a mind suffused with compassion; you supremely please⁸ every being; you bestow bliss; you engage out of love; you are skilled in liberating countless beings; you are the son of the sugatas; you are the single friend of the three worlds; you have no desire; you have no anger; you have no delusion; you have abandoned the three stains; you are the perfection of the three knowledges; you have the six superknowledges; like the nyagrodha tree,⁹ you cover a vast area; you possess the thirty-two marks of a great being; you are adorned by the eighty minor marks; your skin is fine and golden; your body is tall and white; your body is fresh like a flowering tree; and you have a topknot like the rosy dawn;¹⁰ your crown is covered by many twisting locks; Amitābha shines light upon you; you are renowned for having a blazing aura a fathom in size, like a golden mountain;

He was surrounded by many trillions of gods, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kinnaras, mahoragas, humans, and non-humans, who honored him, took him as their teacher, respected him, made offerings to him, and revered him. In front of this group, he taught the Dharma.

He perfectly taught the pure conduct—virtuous in the beginning, virtuous in the middle, and virtuous in the end, excellent in meaning, beautiful in expression, unmixed, complete, and completely refined. Thereafter, Brahmā and the others praised the bodhisattva great being, noble Avalokiteśvara, as follows.

“Ah, Blessed One! You have carried out your intention, done what is to be done, cast off the burden, achieved your own aims, and utterly cleared away the ties to existence; due to genuine wisdom, your mind is utterly free; you know everything; you are a great elephant; you have perfected the sublime power of all beings;⁷ you have completed the accumulation of wisdom; you have crossed the wilderness of existence; you benefit others; you have a mind suffused with compassion; you supremely please⁸ every being; you bestow bliss; you engage out of love; you are skilled in liberating countless beings; you are the son of the sugatas; you are the single friend of the three worlds; you have no desire; you have no anger; you have no delusion; you have abandoned the three stains; you are the perfection of the three knowledges; you have the six superknowledges; like the nyagrodha tree,⁹ you cover a vast area; you possess the thirty-two marks of a great being; you are adorned by the eighty minor marks; your skin is fine and golden; your body is tall and white; your body is fresh like a flowering tree; and you have a topknot like the rosy dawn;¹⁰ your crown is covered by many twisting locks; Amitābha shines light upon you; you are renowned for having a blazing aura a fathom in size, like a golden mountain;

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you have great magnificence; you have an uṣṇīṣa like a mountain ridge at dawn; you wear a scarf blazing with gems as a sash across your body; you perfectly discern the bhūmis; you have the legs of the ten perfections; your moral conduct is uncorrupted; your moral conduct is unbroken; your breast is broad like a lion’s; your body is smooth and handsome; you glance and move like the ruler of chieftains; your cheeks swirl to the right; your forehead is large and like the half-moon with a bindu; your hands reach your knees; your eyebrows are unbroken; your nose is high; your throat is like the neck of a vase; the fingers and joints on your hands are long; your fingernails are smooth and copper colored; your fingers are webbed; you are adorned with wheels at the palms of your hands and at the soles of your feet; like an autumn lotus, your body is smooth and vast; your voice is deep like Brahmā’s; you are pleasing to bring to mind, a pleasure to see, and bring delight; you are radiant like a lotus; you are born from a lotus; you have arisen from a lotus; you sit upon a lotus seat; you hold a lotus in your hand; you hold a round anointing vase in your hand; you wear the skin of a black deer; you hold a staff; you hold a jewel rosary; you are pure through purity;¹¹ you speak sincerely; you shower down a rain of nectar; you are like a wish-fulfilling jewel; you are like a tree that is a delight to behold; you inspire all beings; you bring delight; you sustain all beings; you are an emanation of the buddhas; you possess the accoutrements of the sugatas; you bear the relics of the sugatas; with each bodily hair arisen, you are the essence of beings;¹² you bring about merit; you carry out virtue; you engage with certainty; you blaze with diligence; you have gone far beyond saṃsāra; you were empowered into the True Dharma as a regent; Tārā is present at your feet; Bhṛkuṭī carries out your commands; the Victors are with you;

you have great magnificence; you have an uṣṇīṣa like a mountain ridge at dawn; you wear a scarf blazing with gems as a sash across your body; you perfectly discern the bhūmis; you have the legs of the ten perfections; your moral conduct is uncorrupted; your moral conduct is unbroken; your breast is broad like a lion’s; your body is smooth and handsome; you glance and move like the ruler of chieftains; your cheeks swirl to the right; your forehead is large and like the half-moon with a bindu; your hands reach your knees; your eyebrows are unbroken; your nose is high; your throat is like the neck of a vase; the fingers and joints on your hands are long; your fingernails are smooth and copper colored; your fingers are webbed; you are adorned with wheels at the palms of your hands and at the soles of your feet; like an autumn lotus, your body is smooth and vast; your voice is deep like Brahmā’s; you are pleasing to bring to mind, a pleasure to see, and bring delight; you are radiant like a lotus; you are born from a lotus; you have arisen from a lotus; you sit upon a lotus seat; you hold a lotus in your hand; you hold a round anointing vase in your hand; you wear the skin of a black deer; you hold a staff; you hold a jewel rosary; you are pure through purity;¹¹ you speak sincerely; you shower down a rain of nectar; you are like a wish-fulfilling jewel; you are like a tree that is a delight to behold; you inspire all beings; you bring delight; you sustain all beings; you are an emanation of the buddhas; you possess the accoutrements of the sugatas; you bear the relics of the sugatas; with each bodily hair arisen, you are the essence of beings;¹² you bring about merit; you carry out virtue; you engage with certainty; you blaze with diligence; you have gone far beyond saṃsāra; you were empowered into the True Dharma as a regent; Tārā is present at your feet; Bhṛkuṭī carries out your commands; the Victors are with you;

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you have moral conduct; you have good recall; you have gained great power; you have excellent qualities; you have loving kindness; you are peaceful; you have moral conduct; you have good fortune; you are purposeful; you understand things; you cut off doubts; you speak the Dharma; you are the teacher of worldly beings; the maṇḍala of your face is broad; the area around your waist is adorned with every gem; you are like a golden sacrificial post; your form surpasses a thousand suns; Brahmā and so forth bow before you.”

Whoever accomplishes this praise of the one hundred and eight names of noble Avalokiteśvara will purify the karmic obscuration of the five actions of immediate consequence. They will enter into all maṇḍalas. Therein, they will accomplish all mantras. They will not go to the lower realms for many trillions of eons. They will not engage in the actions of immediate consequence.

Whoever rises at dawn and recites this, or reads this aloud, or chants it, will not have leprosy, foot sores, phlegm, or difficulty breathing, and will be freed from all illnesses. They will remember all of their previous lives. They will become like the children of the gods. At the time of death, they will be reborn in the realm of Sukhāvatī. In all of their lives, they will never be separated from noble Avalokiteśvara. If they recite this constantly, they will become intelligent. They will become heroic. They will become sweet voiced. They will become fortunate. They will become fearless with respect to all treatises. They will become someone who speaks nobly.

If one offers praise with this practice of praise, it will be just the same, not at all different, from making offerings to blessed buddhas equal in number to the grains of sand in sixty-two Ganges River.

you have moral conduct; you have good recall; you have gained great power; you have excellent qualities; you have loving kindness; you are peaceful; you have moral conduct; you have good fortune; you are purposeful; you understand things; you cut off doubts; you speak the Dharma; you are the teacher of worldly beings; the maṇḍala of your face is broad; the area around your waist is adorned with every gem; you are like a golden sacrificial post; your form surpasses a thousand suns; Brahmā and so forth bow before you.”

Whoever accomplishes this praise of the one hundred and eight names of noble Avalokiteśvara will purify the karmic obscuration of the five actions of immediate consequence. They will enter into all maṇḍalas. Therein, they will accomplish all mantras. They will not go to the lower realms for many trillions of eons. They will not engage in the actions of immediate consequence.

Whoever rises at dawn and recites this, or reads this aloud, or chants it, will not have leprosy, foot sores, phlegm, or difficulty breathing, and will be freed from all illnesses. They will remember all of their previous lives. They will become like the children of the gods. At the time of death, they will be reborn in the realm of Sukhāvatī. In all of their lives, they will never be separated from noble Avalokiteśvara. If they recite this constantly, they will become intelligent. They will become heroic. They will become sweet voiced. They will become fortunate. They will become fearless with respect to all treatises. They will become someone who speaks nobly.

If one offers praise with this practice of praise, it will be just the same, not at all different, from making offerings to blessed buddhas equal in number to the grains of sand in sixty-two Ganges River.

Notes

The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]

notes.1.1

1. Avalokiteśvarasyanāmāṣṭaśatakam , (Toh 705).

notes.1.2

2. See http://www.acmuller.net/descriptive_catalogue/index.html for an online catalog of the Taishō Canon, including text titles, translators, as well as corresponding texts from the Tibetan canon.

notes.1.3

3. Denkarma, folio 304.b; Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, pp. 254-55; Phangthangma 2003, p. 31.

notes.1.4

4. Dalton and van Schaik 2006, p. 79. The most complete recension found at Dunhuang is IOL Tib J 351/3.

notes.1.5

5. That is, they note that IOL Tib J 351/3, the most complete of the many versions of the work found among the Dunhuang manuscripts, is “very similar to the canonical edition,” which they identify as Q 381 (Dalton and van Schaik 2006, p. 79). Q 381 corresponds with Toh 705, rather than Toh 706. Scans of IOL Tib J 351/3 were not available to view on the International Dunhuang Project website at the time of our research. Therefore, we were unable to independently verify this identification.

notes.1.6

6. Regarding this topic, see the 84000 Knowledge Base article, “Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Kangyur Section).”

notes.1.7

7. Tib. sems can thams cad kyi dbang dam pa’i pha rol tu byon pa. We suspect that this line may be a corrupted form of a version of a common phrase used to describe advanced practitioners. In that context, it would mean something like “you have perfected all mental powers” (*sems kyi dbang dam pa thams cad pha rol tu byon pa). However, since this reading would require emending the Tibetan significantly, we have not made the change. See, for example, The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines (Toh 9), , where a similar phrase is translated with a meaning closer to our conjecture, appearing alongside many of the other epithets that are also found in the present text.

notes.1.8

8. We emend to mnyes bzhin. D reads mnyes gshin.

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9. The nyagrodha tree is commonly identified either as the Indian fig tree (Ficus Indica) or the Banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis). Regarding it, see Pandanus Database of Plants. The simile of the nyagrodha tree can be found in a number of sources, e.g. in The Stem Array ((, , ), in The Question of Maitreya (), and in The Play in Full ().

notes.1.10

10. Read dmar ring lta bu as dmar rengs lta bu.

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11. Tib. gtsang ba stsangs pa. This formulation remains unclear. The form bstsangs pa is attested as an archaic form of bsangs pa. The parallel in Toh 705 reads bkra shis dag gis gtsang mar ’gyur (“due to auspiciousness, you are pure”).

notes.1.12

12. Tib. spu re re skyes pa/ sems can gyi snying po. The first part of this phrase remains unclear. Toh 705 here reads ba spu nyag ma re re yang/ sems can kun gyi gtso bor ’gyur, “Each and every bodily hair of yours/ Is the sovereign of all beings.”

The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]; The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]

Contents

Text

84000's introduction

Notes

The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]

The Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2]