Toh 547 intro: 84000's introduction
Mañjuśrī’s Promise intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
Mañjuśrī’s Promise begins without preamble with a Sanskrit praise text in the form of a dhāraṇī that resembles other traditional encomiums that exult in the purity, grace, and triumph of bodhisattvas. The scripture then enumerates the benefits accrued by a single recitation of this dhāraṇī, which include the purification of evil deeds accumulated over eons, and the many rewards for its extensive recitation, namely erudition, exceptional powers of memorization, and finally the sight of the body of Mañjuśrī himself.
intro.2
Mañjuśrī’s Promise is a short dhāraṇī text that exults in the purity, grace, and triumph of the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. The Tibetan translation lacks Sanskrit and Tibetan titles, and the text opens simply with a salutation to Mañjuśrī in Sanskrit. This suggests that the Tibetan translators considered the salutation to be part of the dhāraṇī proper and thus did not translate it into Tibetan. Following the dhāraṇī proper, the scripture describes the benefits associated with its recitation a single time, which include the purification of evil deeds accumulated over eons, and then the rewards reaped by its extensive recitation, namely erudition, exceptional powers of memorization, and eventually the sight of the body of Mañjuśrī himself.
intro.3
A Sanskrit version of the text is to our knowledge no longer extant, and it appears that the text was never translated into Chinese. The Tibetan translation lacks a colophon, so we have no information about the history of its transmission or the identity of its translators. Its absence from the Denkarma and Phangthangma catalogs suggests that it was translated into Tibetan later than the beginning of the ninth century ce,¹ but earlier than the flourishing of the scholar Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364), who listed it, along with the other texts of this collection, in his History of Buddhism.²
intro.4
Mañjuśrī’s Promise appears as the third text in a collection of six Mañjuśrī dhāraṇī scriptures (Toh 545–550) in the Tantra section of the Degé Kangyur. Interestingly, only this text among the six does not also appear in the Dhāraṇī section or in the corresponding sections of any of the other Kangyurs of the Tshalpa line. It is possible that the compilers considered the text primarily as a praise rather than a dhāraṇī per se, and this may explain the exclusion.
intro.5
This English translation is based on the Degé Kangyur version (Toh 547), in consultation with the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and with the Stok Palace version.