The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament

Translation of འཕགས་པ་སྡང་པ་རྒྱན་གྱ་མཆག་ཅས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས (འཕགས་པ་སྡོང་པོ་རྒྱན་གྱི་མཆོག་ཅེས་བྱ་བའི་གཟུངས)

Language: English
Translator: Catherine Dalton
Extent: 22 passages, 2,080 words
Text: complete digital text
Source: 84000 · Translated by Catherine Dalton under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…

intro 84000's introduction — 8 parts
1
2
notes Notes — 12 parts

Text

84000's introduction

intro.1

The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament is a short work that includes several prayers for protection, each of which is followed by an essence-mantra.

The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament is a short text that includes several prayers for protection, each of which is followed by an essence-mantra (hṛdaya). The prayers pay homage to the Three Jewels and a number of deities, requesting protection from astrologically inauspicious years, days, times, conjunctions, and the like, as well as from ghosts, bad dreams, malevolent spirits, enemies, and ill health. The final prayer requests protection from broken vows and samayas.

intro.3

The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament does not appear to be extant in Sanskrit or in Chinese. It lacks a translator’s colophon and does not appear either in the Denkarma or the Phangthangma imperial catalogs, or among the manuscripts found in Dunhuang.

intro.4

It is included in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that have a separate Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, and in the equivalent part of the Tantra section in those that do not label it as such,¹ but is not included in any Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs.

intro.5

Notably, the dhāraṇī is one of only twelve works in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section that is not duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur. It therefore appears that these twelve texts found their way into the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs specifically because they were included in a Compendium of Dhāraṇīs that had been compiled on the basis of earlier collections of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts.² These collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, circulated throughout South Asia and Tibet—including in Dunhuang—as extracanonical dhāraṇī collections.³

intro.6

There are several factors that suggest the possibility (though it is by no means a certainty) that this particular work may have been translated into Tibetan from Chinese, rather than from Sanskrit. The first is a reference to an inauspicious divination result specific to a Chinese style of divination.⁴ But there are other factors, as well: the work’s immediate proximity in the Kangyur to a text that was certainly translated from Chinese (Toh 1067), the absence of a translator’s colophon, the incorrect/incoherent Sanskrit title given at the beginning of all of extant versions of the work, and the presence of at least one feature indicative of the older “Chinese” translation lexicon and style described by Stein (i.e., the vocabulary and style used to translate Buddhist texts from a variety of languages, including Chinese, prior to the lexical standardization imposed by the Mahāvyutpatti in 814 ce).⁵

intro.7

The Sanskrit title and its variants do not seem to match the Tibetan title in meaning, and the relationship between the title in either language and the contents of the text remains puzzling. The transliterated Sanskrit title in the Degé and most Kangyurs reads ga Nu a laM ka ra a gra, while the Yongle and Qianlong Kangyurs have the slightly more plausible variant ga Nya in place of ga Nu. The Sanskrit gaṇ or gaṇya (“calculate” or “compute”) might conceivably relate to the theme of astrology present in the text, or refer to the “metrical” lines of verse that it contains, but both possibilities are quite unlikely. The Tibetan title, even by itself without reference to the Sanskrit, is difficult to account for, as there is no mention of a “tree” or “stem” (the most literal meaning of the Tibetan sdong po, Skt. gaṇḍa) in the text itself. Elsewhere in the Kangyur the phrase sdong pos brgyan pa is found in the chapter colophon of the Gaṇḍavyūha (the final chapter of the Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra, Toh 44-45) as one of several versions of that text’s title,⁶ but there is no obvious connection between this dhāraṇī and the themes of the Gaṇḍavyūha.⁷ On the one hand, to assume that the Tibetan sdong po translates the Sanskrit gaṇḍa, but in its less literal meaning of “chief” or “excellent,” could corroborate the interpretation of the dhāraṇī being a supreme ornament. On the other hand, if instead of gaṇḍa- one takes the gaṇya- of the Sanskrit title found in the Yongle and Qianlong—ga Nya a laM ka ra a gra (gaṇyālaṃkārāgra)—as part of a back-reconstruction from the Tibetan that could reasonably be rearranged with the word agra (Tib. mchog) at the beginning, the resulting agragaṇyālaṃkāra would make sense. Agragaṇya, literally “to be counted as the foremost,” simply means “best,” “principal,” or “supreme,” and the title agragaṇyālaṃkāradhāraṇī would thus mean “The Dhāraṇī That Is a Supreme Ornament.” Overall, however, we can only remain circumspect about how the titles of this text as they have been preserved in different Kangyurs can be understood.

intro.8

The present English translation of The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament was made from the Tibetan as found in the Degé Kangyur recension of the work, in consultation with the notes in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma).

1

Homage to the Three Jewels.

May all buddhas grant their protection!
I pay homage to supreme awakening;
May all noble ones grant their protection!
I pay homage to the supreme vajra;
May all knowledge granters grant their protection!
I pay homage to all the gods of the pure god realms;
May all protectors grant their protection!
I pay homage to the gods in the heavens;
May the lords of the three worlds grant their protection!
To all those who rule over the three realms of existence
I pay homage and offer worship;
Grant your compassionate blessings
To my five aggregates and limbs!

The essence-mantra of that is said to be:

oṁ kara kara svāhā kuru kuru svāhā bhara bhara svāhā bhuru bhuru svāhā dhara dhara svāhā dhuru dhuru svāhā cara cara svāhā curu curu svāhā

Protect my five aggregates and limbs
From inauspicious years and inauspicious months,
Inauspicious days and inauspicious days of the week,⁸
Inauspicious planets and inauspicious stars,
Inauspicious daytimes and inauspicious nighttimes,
Inauspicious middays,
Inauspicious mornings and inauspicious evenings,
Inauspicious cardinal directions and inauspicious intermediary directions,
Possession by the five ghosts,⁹ and inauspicious divinations.¹⁰
Grant protection from all of these!

The essence-mantra of that is said to be:

oṁ prajñe prajñe prajñe avalokiradhati mani susiddhi ārya jvala nāma mañjuye svāhā

May my five aggregates and limbs,
Despite being subjected to darkness
From violence¹¹ and malevolent female spirits;¹²
From the onset of coughs and difficult illnesses;
From obstacle years, obstacle months, obstacle days,
Obstacle days of the week and the like;

2

And from bad dreams, enemies, and hindrances,
Be protected by the directional guardians
Who are said to radiate light, like the sun and moon,
That illuminates from the farthest reaches.

The essence-mantra of that is said to be:

oṁ haku hūṁ hūṁ du hūṁ hūṁ na hūṁ hūṁ yaṁ hūṁ hūṁ ke hūṁ hūṁ ki hūṁ hūṁ kī hūṁ hūṁ ti hūṁ hūṁ tī hūṁ hūṁ dū hūṁ hūṁ ve hūṁ

From beginningless time
Until being born in this life and body,
I have written incorrectly, recited incorrectly,
Listened incorrectly, explained incorrectly,
Meditated incorrectly, and trained incorrectly.
Protect my five aggregates and limbs
From all such broken rules, broken vows,
And broken samayas!

The essence-mantra of that is:

namo bhagavata sarva dhuye duṣṭana svāhā

Notes

notes.1

1. An explicitly named Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section is found in the Degé and Urga Kangyurs as well as in the peripheral Kangyurs of the Tshalpa lineage (Dodedrak, Phajoding, and Ragya). In contrast, the Berlin, Choné, Lithang, and Peking Qianlong Kangyurs include the same collection of dhāraṇīs in a separate part of their Tantra sections that has no distinct label. With or without the label, these collections of dhāraṇīs contain many duplicates of texts also found in the General Sūtra or Tantra sections, and in the latter group of Kangyurs many dhāraṇī texts therefore appear twice in different parts of the Tantra section.

notes.2

2. The opening lines of the table of contents (dkar chag) of an independent dhāraṇī collection printed in Beijing in 1731, found in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest and transcribed by Orosz, identify the source of all such dhāraṇī collections as the extracanonical collection edited by Tāranātha (Orosz 2010, pp. 67 and 100). This mention is also noted by Hidas 2021, p. 7, n. 56.

notes.3

3. See J. Dalton 2016 and J. Dalton and S. van Schaik 2006 on the dhāraṇīsaṃgraha collections preserved in Dunhuang, which, like the canonical collection, contain praises and prayers as well as dhāraṇīs. See Hidas 2021 for the catalogs of eighteen dhāraṇīsaṃgraha collections suviving in Sanskrit.

notes.4

4. This is the term bdud gcod. See the note on this term in the translation below for more details.

notes.5

5. This feature is the spelling of the terminating particle at the end of the work: rdzogs sho rather than the later standard rdzogs so. See Stein 2010, pp. 15–16. For further details on these two distinctive lexicons see Stein’s Tibetica Antiqua, especially the chapter on “The Two Vocabularies in the Dunhuang Manuscripts.” We would also note the presence in our text of the term phra men to refer to a sort of malevolent female spirit. This term also occurs in other manuscripts from Dunhuang that use the older vocabulary. See Stein 2010, p.54. In the context of one such manuscript, Stein translates ’phra men ma it as “witch-goddess,” and notes an association with “Bon and Yol.” We have rendered the term in the present text as “malevolent female spirits,” though we do think that Stein’s translation captures its intended sense. This term phra men ma was also used to translate the Sanskrit ḍākinī, usually in the sense of ḍākinīs as malevolent female entities, not as the “wisdom ḍākinīs” found in the higher tantras, where the term is usually translated as mkha’ ’gro (ma). See also the note to this term below in the translation and the glossary entry on phra men ma for further details.

notes.6

6. See Roberts, Peter Alan. trans., The Stem Array , Toh 44-45 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2021).

notes.7

7. It therefore seems unlikely that this dhāraṇī could have been considered a condensed essence or other adjunct of that influential text—as one finds with other dhāraṇīs that have an explicit relationship to sūtras, a genre found in the groups Toh 583–589 and Toh 939–945. Indeed, such a possibility is made even less likely by the existence of another dhāraṇī that fulfills the “condensed essence” function, sdong po bkod pa’i snying po, Toh 941.

notes.8

8. “Days of the week” would more commonly be gza’, rather than the reading here, za, but gza’ is used in the next line where it seems to indicate the planets (another meaning of the word). Our translation here is tentative.

notes.9

9. Here the Degé, and most of the other Kangyurs consulted in the Pedurma edition, read ’dre lnga sdod (“the five ghosts remaining”), which we understand to mean possession by the ghosts. The Yongle and Kangxi Kangyurs read ’dre lgna gdon (“the demonic five ghosts” or “the demons/spirits who are the five ghosts”), which is also a plausible reading. Given two plausible readings, we simply chose the one that is predominant.

notes.10

10. bdud gcod. This is the name of an inauspicious divination result in the trigram divinations according to the Chinese elemental divination system.

notes.11

11. dmar kyi mthun. Here we follow the Yongle and Kangxi Kangyurs which read dmar kyi mthun, thus taking the phrase to mean “violence” (lit. “that which accords with violence”), rather than the Degé, which reads dmar kyi thun (this might possibly be translated as “violent incanted substances” or “violent practices”). While we believe we can make most sense of the Kangxi and Yongle reading, we nonetheless remain unsure about the meaning of this phrase, and suspect that the passage may be corrupt.

notes.12

12. The term phra men is one of two Tibetan translations of the word ḍākinī, the other being the more familiar mkha’ ’gro (ma). It seems the term phra men (ma) was used more frequently to render the idea of ḍākinīs as a class of potentially malevolent female spirits, while the term mkha’ ’gro (ma), while also used to refer to such worldly spirits, was preferred for the “wisdom” ḍākinīs in the higher tantras, in which context the term ḍākinī is better known to English-speaking audiences. To avoid such confusion (and also because we speculate that this text may have been translated from Chinese rather than from Sanskrit), we have chosen to translate the word phra men here as “malevolent female spirit,” since what is clear is that its referent here is a class of potentially harmful entities. See the glossary entry on phra men for further uses of the term.