འཕགས་པ་ཚ་དང་ཡ་ཤས་དཔག་ཏ་མད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.46

intro.46

Among other reasons they cite to justify this unusually harsh judgment, (for more detail, see introduction to The Aparimitāyur­jñāna Sūtra (2), Toh 675), Ngawang Kunga Sönam writes that Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo mentioned seeing three Sanskrit manuscripts of the sūtra, all of which were the “three oṁ” version. While there is little doubt that this “three oṁ” version of the text is indeed authentic to its source, Ngorchen’s claim that it is the only authentic version is explicitly refuted and dismissed by Tāranātha, who reports seeing, on a visit to Narthang, several Sanskrit manuscripts of the sūtra, of which one was clearly the “two oṁ” version. 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.³⁴ Ngorchen and his successors were also presumably unaware that in both of the two Chinese translations, too, the dhāraṇī is the “two oṁ” version.³⁵