ཚགས་ས་བཅད་པ་གཉས་པའ་གཟངས intro: 84000's introduction
The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī consists of two initial verses that enumerate eight obscurations and their antidote—the Mahāyāna teachings—followed by a dhāraṇī and three verses that list the ten beneficial results of reciting the text.
intro.2
The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī consists of two initial verses that enumerate eight obscurations and their antidote—the Mahāyāna teachings—followed by a dhāraṇī and three verses that list the ten beneficial results of its recitation.
intro.3
The Sanskrit text of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī is extant in several manuscripts from Nepal. Two of these manuscripts have been edited by Gergely Hidas in his editions of two dhāraṇī collections.¹ Kazuo Kano has also published a critical edition of the Sanskrit text of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī,² together with a translation into Japanese. According to Kano, The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī has its origin in verses XII.19–23 of the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkārakārikā (Toh 4020) and originally consisted of these verses without the dhāraṇī,³ which corresponds to the translations found at Dunhuang. Its intermediate form with the dhāraṇī and five verses, as presented in the Kangyur, was likely formed between the eleventh and the early fifteenth century, at least before the publication of the Yongle Kangyur in 1410.⁴ According to Kano, its developed form, as now extant in the Nepalese collections, reached Nepal between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. It integrated two verses from The Secrets of the Realized Ones (Toh 47)⁵ that are not found in any Tibetan version.⁶
intro.4
Kano concludes that The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī formed part of a set of five texts used for recitation in India.⁷ These also included The Dhāraṇī of the Six Gates (Toh 141, 526, 916),⁸ The Single Stanza (Toh 323),⁹ The Four Stanzas (Toh 324),¹⁰ and The Prayer of Good Conduct (Toh 1095).¹¹ Initially, these five texts circulated individually but became popular in India as a set by the time of Advayavajra or Ratnākaraśānti (eleventh century). Later, they were incorporated in the dhāraṇī collections in Nepal.
intro.5
The Degé Kangyur contains three recensions of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī, one in the General Sūtra section, one in the Tantra section, and one in the Dhāraṇī section.¹² Likewise, all other Kangyurs of the Tshalpa line include three recensions of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī.¹³ The Thempangma Kangyurs classify The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī exclusively as a tantra, with only one recension. In the Lhasa and Narthang Kangyurs, we find two recensions of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī in the Sūtra and Tantra sections. The Phukdrak Kangyur contains three recensions, two in the Sūtra section and one in the Tantra section. The first version in the Sūtra section (Phukdrak 142) is noteworthy because it comprises only the first two verses and the dhāraṇī. It is then followed by another text, the Traigāthā (tshigs su bcad pa gsum pa, Phukdrak 143), which corresponds to the last three stanzas of the usual recensions of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī.¹⁴
intro.6
The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī is also found among the Dunhuang manuscripts. There exists one fragment¹⁵ and two complete manuscripts with colophons.¹⁶ The two complete manuscripts are almost identical to the canonical Two Stanza Dhāraṇī, yet they omit the dhāraṇī and have a different title: The Presentation of The Two Stanzas together with Their Benefits.¹⁷ Though none of the versions in the Kangyur include a translator’s colophon, both complete Dunhuang manuscripts state that Paltsek Rakṣita was the translator and editor. If this attribution is correct, The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī must have been translated at some point in the late eighth or early ninth century when Paltsek Rakṣita was active as a translator.
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The Tengyur includes a commentary on this text: An Explanation of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī (Toh 4002) by Sundaravyūha.¹⁸ The Tibetan scholar Tāranātha (1575–1634) composed a commentary on The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī as well as sequential commentaries on three of the other five texts in the above-mentioned set,¹⁹ corroborating Kano’s view that these texts were seen as related.²⁰
intro.8
The importance of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī and the other texts in the set for recitation is evident, for in Tibet they are included in extracts from sūtra and tantra (gces btus), collected liturgical texts (chos spyod), collections of mantras and dhāraṇīs for recitation, and collections of sādhanas. They are also sometimes mentioned as texts for recitation in preliminary practices. The first complete modern translation of The Two Stanza Dhāraṇī was published in 1883 by the French Orientalist Léon Feer in his Extraits du Kandjour.²¹
intro.9
The main source of the present translation is the Tibetan text as found in the Sūtra section of the Degé Kangyur (Toh 143) and Kano’s annotated Sanskrit edition. We also consulted the versions found in the Tantra and Dhāraṇī sections of the Degé Kangyur (Toh 611 and Toh 918, respectively), in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and in the Stok Palace and Phukdrak Kangyurs, as well as the two complete Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang. The most significant variants are mentioned in the notes. The transcription of the dhāraṇī was based on Degé (Toh 143), with major variants from Kano’s Sanskrit edition and the two other versions from the Degé recorded in the notes. A tentative English translation of the dhāraṇī is provided in a note.²² On occasion, we consulted Sundaravyūha’s commentary and Vasubandhu’s Sūtrālaṃkārabhāṣya (Toh 4026) for clarification.