འཕགས་པ་སྒ་དྲག་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས intro.6

intro.6

Texts that include dhāraṇīs, as well as those referred to as dhāraṇīs by their titles, are widespread in the Mahāyāna sūtra literature as well as featuring in the tantras. Gergely Hidas, for example, notes that dhāraṇī scriptures have been assigned both to sūtra and tantra categories in Buddhist canonical collections and that their classification is “sometimes controversial within Tibetan and Chinese textual systems.”² In this regard, it is interesting to note that three almost identical versions of the Ṣaṇmukhī­dhāraṇī are assigned to the Sūtra, Tantra, and Dhāraṇī sections of the Kangyurs of the Tshalpa group. In the Thempangma Kangyurs, such as the Stok Palace Kangyur, it is included exclusively in the Tantra section. In the Lhasa and Narthang Kangyurs, we find almost identical versions of The Dhāraṇī of the Six Gates in both the Sūtra and Tantra sections. Our text is also found among the Dunhuang manuscripts.³ All versions are roughly the same length. There were probably different sources for the Tibetan translations that were found in Dunhuang: Pelliot tibétain 415 is almost identical to the Thempangma versions, while Pelliot tibétain 77 is in some cases closer to the Tshalpa versions.