འཕགས་པ་རག་སྔགས་ཀྱ་རྒྱལ་པ་སྒྲན་མ་མཆག་ག་གཟངས intro.7

intro.7

A complete version of The Dhāraṇī of Agrapradīpa is not presently available in Sanskrit, but several lines of the text are extant in a fragment of a paper manuscript written in the Brāhmī script that was recovered in Khotan. The fragment, which dates to roughly the eighth or ninth century, was unearthed by Aurel Stein at Khadalik, Khotan in 1906 and is presently held by the British Library.² The Dhāraṇī of Agrapradīpa was translated into Chinese multiple times over a span of several centuries. The earliest translation is the Chiju shenzhou jing (Taishō 1351; 持句神呪經), which was translated by Zhi Qian and completed in the third century.³ The Tuoluonibo jing (Taishō 1352; 陀隣尼鉢經) was translated by Zhu Tanwu lan, also known as Dharmarakṣa, who was active between 381 and 395. There are also two versions of Jñānagupta’s Donfang zuisheng dengwang tuoluoni jing (Taishō 1353 and 1354; 東方最勝燈王陀羅尼經) preserved in the Chinese canon.⁴ Jñānagupta was a Gandharan monk who spent time in Khotan and prepared his translations during his residence at the Xingshan Temple in Chang’an between 592 and 594. A fourth translation, the Sheng zuishang dengming rulai tuoluoni jing (Taishō 1355; 聖最上燈明如來陀羅尼經) was completed centuries later by Dānapāla, who was active between 982 and 1017.⁵ The range of dates of the Chinese translations, as well as the discovery of a Sanskrit fragment of the dhāraṇī in Khotan, demonstrate the enduring popularity and geographic diffusion of The Dhāraṇī of Agrapradīpa.