འཕགས་མ་གཟའ་རྣམས་ཀྱ་ཡམ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས intro.5

intro.5

There are two Chinese translations of this text preserved in the Taishō canon. One version, Taishō 1302,⁵ was translated by Facheng, alias Gö Chödrup (ca. 755–849), who was a prolific Sino-Tibetan translator active in the Dunhuang region during the ninth century. This Chinese version is related to the present text (Toh 660/997), though it more closely matches another Tibetan version, The Dhāraṇī “The Mother of the Grahas” (Toh 661/998). Indeed, many lines in Taishō 1302 and Toh 661/998 match each other word-for-word, and the overall structure of these two texts is identical. It is possible, then, that Toh 661/998 was the source for Taishō 1302, or that Gö Chödrup produced both Toh 661/998 and Taishō 1302 based on a third source. Furthermore, given the parallels between Toh 660/997 and Toh 661/998, and given that the colophon of Toh 660/997 indicates that Drakpa Gyaltsen edited it based on an Indian manuscript, it is possible that the differences and additional material we find in Toh 660/997 are the result of Drakpa Gyaltsen’s editorial interventions. In other words, he may have been working from Toh 661/998 to begin with but later made changes based on a Sanskrit source text. A closer examination of these texts with reference to the Dunhuang manuscripts will shed further light on the connections between these sources. The other canonical Chinese translation, Taishō 1303,⁶ was translated by Fatian in the thirteenth century. This text noticeably differs from Toh 660/997 and Toh 661/998 in its structure and contents.