ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པ་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱ་གཙག་ཏར་རྣམ་པར་རྒྱལ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས་རྟག་པ་དང་བཅས་པ intro.10

intro.10

The question of what, or who, exactly, Uṣṇīṣavijayā is is a complex one that cannot be clearly answered here. In short, like a number of uṣṇīṣa deities, she is sometimes identified as a protective deity, in this case a goddess, emanated from the Buddha’s uṣṇīṣa. Indeed, Uṣṇīṣavijayā is clearly depicted as a goddess in a number of short sādhanas included in Indian anthologies such as the Sādhanamāla, compiled from the works of many authors probably during the period of the Pāla kings (eighth to twelfth century).¹⁷ Three closely similar sādhanas of a three-faced, eight armed form of the goddess are included in the Tengyur, one in each of the three related anthologies translated from the Indian collections into Tibetan in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries respectively.¹⁸ A variety of other forms are depicted or described in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kashmiri sources.¹⁹ In the later Tibetan tradition Uṣṇīṣavijayā can even appear as one of a group of three long-life deities along with the Buddha Amitāyus and White Tārā. However, in our text, and indeed in all but one of the uṣṇīṣavijayā works in this section of the Kangyur (Toh 598), while the dhāraṇī itself uses the feminine vocative form throughout, the name uṣṇīṣavijayā is not rendered into Tibetan in the feminine, and the word uṣṇīṣavijayā is not used to refer to anything apart from the name of the dhāraṇī—the dhāraṇī of the crown victory. The single instance in this text in which we could interpret uṣṇīṣavijayā to refer to a goddess is a sentence in one of the rites for an Amitāyus sādhana that also involves reciting the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī. After having properly followed the rite, the text notes that “in the early morning at dawn you will see the face of the Bhagavatī, and she will give you whatever accomplishments you desire.” The name of this Bhagavatī is not mentioned in our text, but we might well presume that she is Uṣṇīṣavijayā herself.