Toh 941 intro: 84000's introduction
The Quintessence of “The Stem Array” intro
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84000's introduction
intro.1
This text consists of a short dhāraṇī said to encompass a famous sūtra in the Kangyur, The Stem Array (Toh 44–45), and the benefits of its recitation.
intro.2
This text consists of a short dhāraṇī said to encompass a famous sūtra in the Kangyur, The Stem Array,¹ also said to be the forty-fifth and final chapter of the Avataṃsaka collection (here translated as Ornaments of the Buddhas),² and the benefits of its recitation. In other dhāraṇī texts, the reward typically includes some kind of karmic purification, but here “tantric” fruits are foreshadowed, namely becoming learned in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist esoteric systems.
intro.3
Such short texts served a variety of purposes, the primary being that by reciting them one could acquire the positive karmic benefits of reciting an entire, sometimes extremely long, text. On a practical level, the recitation of these short texts also served as equivalent to the recitation of the parent text, should a prescribed ritual so require.
intro.4
The text lacks both a Sanskrit title and a translator’s colophon. In South Asia, the text was transmitted within collections such as the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha),³ but it is also embedded into some ritual manuals such as the corpus of “rituals for beginners” (ādikarmika, las dang po pa) texts, in our case the Ādikarmāvatāra by Mañjukīrti,⁴ the Ādikarmavidhi by Tatakaragupta,⁵ and the *Bodhipaddhati by Abhayākaragupta.⁶
intro.5
This translation was made principally on the basis of the Tibetan translations of the text found in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus)⁷ in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the various Sanskrit sources mentioned above, especially the text of Mañjukīrti, which is transmitted in a manuscript noted for its scribal precision.