འཕགས་པ་སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱ་སྙང་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས་ཀྱ་ཆས་ཀྱ་རྣམ་གྲངས intro.13

intro.13

The translators’ colophon notes that this text was translated by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla along with the Tibetan translator Bandé Yeshé Dé (c. eighth century). The text appears in the Phangthangma³ royal Tibetan catalogue of translated works among the collection of various dhāraṇī. In the Denkarma inventory’s list of dhāraṇī, there are two texts entitled The Buddha’s Essence (’phags pa sangs rgyas kyi snying po),⁴ and while neither of them matches the full title of the present work, the first mention is the more likely to correspond to it judging by the recorded length of the text (fifty-five ślokas); the second record (thirty-eight ślokas) probably corresponds to another, slightly shorter text with a similar title, (’phags pa sangs rgyas kyi snying po zhes bya ba’i gzungs, Toh 515, 855). The two texts appear alongside each other in the Degé Kangyur both in The Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and in The Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus). The two dhāraṇī mantras in this text are included in Butön’s Collection of Dhāraṇī of the Four Classes of Secret Mantra (gsang sngags rgyud sde bzhi’i gzungs ’bum).⁵