འཕགས་པ་ཚ་དང་ཡ་ཤས་དཔག་ཏ་མད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.37

intro.37

From today’s perspective, no surviving Sanskrit versions of the text from Tibet have been discovered, and the only known Sanskrit manuscripts are Nepalese ones dating from much later centuries. However, the veracity of Tāranātha’s report can be indirectly confirmed by Sten Konow’s 1916 comparison of two versions, one in Sanskrit based on Nepalese manuscripts and one a Khotanese manuscript (probably centuries earlier) found in the Dunhuang caves by Sir Aurel Stein. The Nepalese Sanskrit has the “three oṁ” version of the dhāraṇī while the Khotanese has the “two oṁ” version.²⁰ Ngorchen and his successors were also presumably unaware that in both of the two Chinese translations, too, the dhāraṇī is the “two oṁ” version.²¹