འཕགས་པ་ཡངས་པའ་གྲང་ཁྱར་ད་འཇག་པའ་མད་ཆན་པ intro.17

intro.17

A further text relating the incident, and in which the same verses as the Ratana-sutta and Mahāvastu are found, is another of the Pañcarakṣa texts, the Mahā­sāhasra­pramardanī, this one surviving not only in Nepalese Sanskrit manuscripts but also in a Tibetan translation in the Action Tantra section of the Kangyur (Toh 558, available in English as Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm)²³ and in Chinese.²⁴ In this text, too, the epidemic occurs while Ajātaśatru is reigning in Magadha, and the Buddha himself utters a mantra and the verses while standing at the gates of the city. The bulk of this complex (and probably composite) text, however, digresses from the Vaiśālī episode and is centered on the origins and uses of the mantra. Some verses extracted from it comprise a standalone Kangyur text with the title The Aspiration Spoken in “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm.” ²⁵ The existence of these selected verses as an extract is interesting in that—out of all the many verse passages that could have been extracted—the verses in question are those that correspond to the Ratana-sutta, and they must surely have been selected in the awareness that they had their own, more ancient origin.