འཕགས་པ་ཚ་དང་ཡ་ཤས་དཔག་ཏ་མད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད notes.15

notes.15

15. Curiously, this finding seems not to have been reported before in Western academic studies. It is based on our examination of the Dunhuang manuscripts for which digitized images are available, and complete enough to judge. Some of these are listed in the bibliography with links to images on the sites of the International Dunhuang Project and Vienna Resources for Kanjur and Tenjur Studies. Dotson (2016, p. 137) does report that Akira Fujieda and Daishun Ueyama (1962) note two different lengths of the dhāraṇī in “some of the Tibetan Dunhuang Ap [manuscripts],” but without stating clearly whether this refers to the manuscripts in this particular group or others. Given our limited access to the manuscripts and inadequate resources for a detailed study, further investigation would be desirable. It should be noted that it is incorrect, strictly speaking, to call the version in the Dunhuang manuscripts the “two oṁ” version, because in most of the Dunhuang manuscripts the dhāraṇī starts “namo…” (and in some cases “tadyathā…”) without the initial oṁ of the canonical versions. These dhāraṇī therefore only have one oṁ. Nevertheless, we will continue to use “the two oṁ version” as a convenient shorthand to designate all versions of the dhāraṇī that lack the centrally placed phrase beginning “oṁ puṇye puṇye mahāpuṇye…”.