ད་བཞན་གཤགས་པ་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱ་གཙག་ཏར་རྣམ་པར་རྒྱལ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་གཟངས་རྟག་པ་དང་བཅས་པ notes.41

notes.41

41. There appears to have been considerable confusion—especially, but not exclusively, in Tibetan—in the transmission of this dhāraṇī, which also appears in the parallel passage in Toh 594. Here, in Toh 595, the Degé recension correctly transmits the dhāraṇī with the words amṛte, amṛtobdhave, and so forth, whereas the Degé recension of Toh 594 consistently reads amite, amitodbhave, etc. The dhāraṇī as preserved in these two works in other Kangyurs varies between the two readings, sometimes even giving both readings at various places in the dhāraṇī, e.g., amṛte amitodbhave. A Sanskrit recension of a very similar (but not identical) Amitābha dhāraṇī preserved in a tenth-century manuscript from Dunhuang consistently reads amṛte amṛtodbhave, etc. (see Hidas 2014, pp. 110–11). In his edition of that dhāraṇī, Hidas also cites other Sanskrit sources (the Mahāpratisarā, Sādhanamālā, and Sarvadurgatipariśodhana, which include portions of the dhāraṇī with the forms amṛte, etc. Hidas 2014, p. 111n42 and n43 and p. 112n47). He also, however, cites the Uṣṇīṣavijayāsādhana in the Sādhanamālā, which preserves the readings amite amitodbhave, etc. (See Hidas 2014, p. 112n47). The version preserved in the modern Tibetan tradition, in most cases, of a short part of this dhāraṇī (also found below in the present text) that is associated with Uṣṇīṣavijayā reads oṁ amṛta āyurdade svāhā, likewise using the form amṛta. On the preponderance of the evidence, we have thus adopted the reading amṛte here.