འཕགས་པ་སྤྲན་ཆན་པ intro.4

intro.4

The text appears to have circulated widely and enjoyed considerable popularity, as evidenced by the fact that it was translated into Chinese four different times between the sixth and eighth centuries. Two Tibetan translations of this text exist. is a shorter version entitled The Essence of All Nāgas, The Great Cloud Chapter on the Array of Winds (Mahā­megha­vāyu­maṇḍala­parivarta­sarva­nāga­hṛdaya). The slightly longer text translated here (Toh 235) is simply titled The Great Cloud, but in the colophon the title is similarly given as The Sixty-Fourth Chapter of The Great Cloud “The Array of Winds That Send Down Rainfall” Together With its Ritual Manual. This text is also included in the Tantra and Dhāraṇī sections of the Degé Kangyur, where it appears as Toh 657 and Toh 1063, respectively. The text is included in the Tibetan Kangyur collections of different periods and is also recorded in the Denkarma² catalog of Tibetan imperial translations (but not in the Phangthangma catalog). Thus, it appears likely that it was first translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by the early ninth century, as the compilation of the Denkarma is usually dated to 812 ce. Five versions of this text are also found among the manuscripts recovered from the caves of Dunhuang.³ In addition to these Tibetan translations, a partial Sanskrit version is also extant.⁴