འཕགས་པ་ཚ་དང་ཡ་ཤས་དཔག་ཏ་མད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.43

intro.43

At first sight, this is perhaps the most convincing argument in favor of the “three oṁ” version of the text. On closer examination, however, some of its initial attractions seem less clear. To see the dhāraṇī as comprising one hundred and eight names requires a stretch of the imagination. The dhāraṇi contains semantically coherent words and phrases²⁵ of which few are actual “names,” and even if all the many compound words are divided into their irreducible units their number still remains less the number of syllables. Of the many “hundred-and-eight-name” or “hundred-name” texts to be found in the Kangyur and elsewhere,²⁶ most actually do contain distinct lists of names just as their titles suggest, and there do not seem to be other instances of a dhāraṇī being referred to as a “one-hundred-and-eight-syllable appellation,” as this phrase might possibly be interpreted.²⁷ Indeed, Tāranātha points out in his commentary²⁸ that to account for the fact that the one hundred and eight names are also mentioned in the “two oṁ” version of the text we have to assume that it refers to a separate text on the one hundred and eight names elsewhere. Such cases, he says, are not unknown; he gives the example of the hundred names of Śrī Heruka. In fact, however, no text enumerating the hundred and eight names of Aparimitāyur­jñāna appears ever to have been identified.