Toh 1001 notes: Notes

The Dhāraṇī of Tārā notes

Language: English

Notes

notes.1

1. Tārā’s name is a causative derivation from the Sanskrit root √tṝ (“to cross”), meaning “to cause to cross,” i.e., “to rescue.”

2. In her PhD dissertation, Rachael Stevens (2010) provides a comprehensive introduction to the goddess Tārā via a literary review (pp. 11–21) and an exploration of the history of Tārā worship (pp. 20–45), the Tārā pantheon (pp. 46–56) and key Buddhist texts relating to Tārā (pp. 57–62).

notes.3

3. Beyer 1978, pp. 5–6. We find this episode in Butön Rinchen Drup’s History of Buddhism (Obermiller 1932, vol. 2, p. 184) and dramatized in Sonam Gyaltsen’s The Clear Mirror (Sonam Gyaltsen 1996, pp. 124–27).

notes.4

4. The Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) catalog of early translations, for example, lists only two works dedicated to Tārā that were translated during this time. Following Herrmann-Pfandt’s edition (2008), these are no. 439: ’phags pa lha mo sgrol ma’i mtshan brgya rtsa brgyad pa ( Tāradevīnāmāṣṭaśataka , Toh 728) and no. 454: ’phags pa lha mo sgrol ma ’jigs pa thams cad las sgrol bar bstod pa (according to Herrmann-Pfandt, the identification of this title remains uncertain). One could further include no. 388: ’phags pa spyan ras gzigs kyi yum (Avalokiteśvaramātādhāraṇī, The Dhāraṇī “The Mother of Avalokiteśvara” ), which does not mention the goddess Tārā but was nevertheless included within the Degé Kangyur section of Tārā-related scriptures (Toh 724–731) as Toh 725.

notes.5

5. Beyer 1978, pp. 5–13; Landesman 2008, p. 59; Stevens 2010, pp. 36–37.

notes.6

6. Note that there is a discrepancy among various databases for cataloging the Toh 1001 version of this text within vol. 101 or 102 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 1001, note 6, for details. This text, Toh 1001, and all those contained in this same volume (gzungs, waM), are listed as being located in volume 101 of the Degé Kangyur by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). However, several other Kangyur databases—including the eKangyur that supplies the digital input version displayed by the 84000 Reading Room—list this work as being located in volume 102. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the two volumes of the gzungs ’dus section are an added supplement not mentioned in the original catalog, and also hinges on the fact that the compilers of the Tōhoku catalog placed another text—which forms a whole, very large volume—the Vimalaprabhānāmakālacakratantraṭīkā (dus ’khor ’grel bshad dri med ’od, Toh 845), before the volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur, numbering it as vol. 100, although it is almost certainly intended to come right at the end of the Degé Kangyur texts as volume 102; indeed its final fifth chapter is often carried over and wrapped in the same volume as the Kangyur dkar chags (catalog). Please note this discrepancy when using the eKangyur viewer in this translation.

notes.7

7. Toh 731, ’phags ma sgrol ma ’jigs pa brgyad las skyob pa’i mdo. See translation in Samye Translations, Tārā Who Protects from the Eight Dangers , 2020.

notes.8

8. E.g., Toh 1686, 1688, 1697, and 1705.

notes.9

9. Butön Rinchen Drup, gsung ’bum, folio 218.b.6–7; Beyer 1978, pp. 280–81.

notes.10

10. E.g., Toh 1324, 1325, 1326, 1327, etc.

notes.11

11. No. 93, Bhattacharyya 1925, pp. 178–83.

notes.12

12. This can be translated as “Homage to the Three Jewels! Homage to Noble Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva mahāsattva, the great compassionate one!”

notes.13

13. As noted above, tārā is a causative derivation from the Skt. root √tṝ, “to cross,” thus meaning “to cause to cross,” that is, “to deliver” or “rescue.” It can be argued that the term tuttāre consists of tārā prefixed with ud (ud + √tṝ = uttārā), which is then further prefixed with the consonant t- to avoid a morphological fusion of final vowel of tāre and the initial vowel in uttārā. The addition of the prefix ud conveys a sense of “pulling up,” and thus “saving.” In the translation below, the vocative forms tāre and tuttāre are respectively translated as “deliverer” and “savior.”

notes.14

14. This can be tentatively translated as “Oṁ! Deliverer! Savior! Swift One! Crush, paralyze, confound, restrain all wicked and evil beings for me! hūṁ hūṁ hūṁ phaṭ phaṭ phaṭ! Homage to Tārā, the suppressor of all evil beings!”