The Quintessence of “The Great Peahen”
Translation of Toh 943
- Language
- English
- Translators
- Gergely Hidas, Péter-Dániel Szántó
- Extent
- 12 passages, 845 words
- Text
- complete digital text
- Source
- 84000 · Published by 84000 (v 1.0.2 2025). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha,… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…
Contents
- intro 84000's introduction — 5 parts
- 1
- notes Notes — 6 parts
Text
84000's introduction
intro.1
This text consists of a short dhāraṇī said to encompass a famous text for protection in the Kangyur, The Great Peahen (Toh 559), and the benefit of its recitation.
intro.2
This text consists of a short dhāraṇī said to encompass a famous sūtra for protection in the Kangyur, The Queen of Incantations: The Great Peahen,¹ and the benefit of its recitation.²
intro.3
Such short texts served a variety of purposes, the primary being that by reciting them one could acquire the positive karmic benefits of reciting an entire, sometimes extremely long, text. On a practical level, the recitation of these short texts also served as equivalent to the recitation of the parent text, should a prescribed ritual so require.
intro.4
The text lacks both a Sanskrit title and a translator’s colophon. We could not find it transmitted in Sanskrit.
intro.5
This translation was made principally on the basis of the Tibetan translations of the text found in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus)³ in the Degé Kangyur.
1
Homage to the Three Jewels.
Homage to all buddhas whose teaching is unopposed.⁴ oṃ piśune ⁵ svāhā!
By upholding this, one will have upheld The Noble Great Peahen.⁶
Notes
notes.1
1. Mahāmāyūrīvidyārājñī (rig sngags kyi rgyal mo rma bya chen po, Toh 559). See The Queen of Incantations: The Great Peahen .
notes.2
2. For a similar extract of the same text, see The Quintessence of the Peahen (Māyūrīvidyāgarbha, Toh 560).
notes.3
3. This text, Toh 943, and all those contained in this same volume (gzungs, e), are listed as being located in volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). However, several other Kangyur databases—including the eKangyur that supplies the digital input version displayed by the 84000 Reading Room—list this work as being located in volume 101. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the two volumes of the gzungs ’dus section are an added supplement not mentioned in the original catalog, and also hinges on the fact that the compilers of the Tōhoku catalog placed another text—which forms a whole, very large volume—the Vimalaprabhānāmakālacakratantraṭīkā (dus ’khor ’grel bshad dri med ’od, Toh 845), before the volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur, numbering it as vol. 100, although it is almost certainly intended to come right at the end of the Degé Kangyur texts as volume 102; indeed its final fifth chapter is often carried over and wrapped in the same volume as the Kangyur dkar chags (catalog). Please note this discrepancy when using the eKangyur viewer in this translation. Note that there is a discrepancy among various databases for cataloging the Toh 943 version of this text within vol. 100 or 101 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 943, , for details.
notes.4
4. We translate this having the very common Sanskrit expression namaḥ samantabuddhānām apratihataśāsanānām in mind. The Tibetan in this form would mean something like “to the Buddha who teaches without opposition from anywhere.”
notes.5
5. We prefer this form, that of the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs version. The Tantra version has piśuni. The meaning is something like “slanderer” (fem.). Such opprobrious epithets are not uncommon for deities.
notes.6
6. Here, too, we side with the version in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs. The Tantra version names the parent text as The Essence (snying po) of The Great Peahen, but this cannot be the case. Instead of what we translate here as “to uphold” to capture the ambiguity of the original, Tatakaragupta, when discussing a similar dhāraṇī said to encapsulate The Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines (see The Dhāraṇī of “The Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines,” Toh 576/932), Śatasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitādhāraṇī (Toh 576/932). is more explicit when he replaces the verb with kaṇṭhasthīkṛ (“to place it in one’s throat”), which is the Sanskrit idiom for “to learn by heart.” He also spells out the benefit as the “meritorious karmic fruit” (puṇyaphala) of memorizing the parent text. This sentence is then followed by a fascinating short discussion, which merits to be quoted in full: “Surely, this is an exaggeration! No, one should not say this. For countless thus-gone ones have empowered this dhāraṇī to serve as a method for gaining the equipment of merit for women, immature people, and simpletons, as well as for learned people whose minds are confused, just like the pole of a snake charmer[, which is preprepared by the expert snake charmer to be effective even when he is no longer present,] for removing poison; however, it is not a method for gaining the knowledge conveyed by The [Perfection of Wisdom in] One Hundred Thousand Lines. This should be understood to apply in other cases [i.e., where the text is abbreviated into a dhāraṇī] as well” (nanv atyuktir eveti. na caitad vaktavyam. yataḥ strībālamūrkhān paryākulitamatīn paṇḍitān praty api puṇyasaṃbhārasādhanatvenāsaṃkhyeyatathāgatair adhiṣṭhiteyaṃ dhāriṇī, yathā viṣaharatvena gāruḍikaṃ stambhaḥ; na tu lakṣāpratipāditajñānasādhanatvena. evam anyatrāpi boddhavyaḥ). In his note to this dhāraṇī, he reiterates the point about “to uphold” meaning “to memorize” and promises as the reward the fruit of reciting the text (pāṭhaphala).