འཕགས་པ་དན་དམ་པའ་ཆས་ཀྱས་རྣམ་པར་རྒྱལ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.7

intro.7

There appears to be no surviving Sanskrit edition of this sūtra, but there are two translations of the text in the Chinese canon.⁷ In the Tibetan translation the colophon states that it was translated by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla together with the Tibetan editor-translator Yeshé Dé, all of whom flourished during the late eighth and early ninth century. This dating is confirmed by the text’s inclusion in the Denkarma catalog of Tibetan imperial translations, which is dated to 812 ce.⁸ For this English translation, we relied on the Degé, the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and the Stok Palace versions of the Kangyur and occasionally consulted the Mongolian translation as well. As far as we can tell, this is the first translation or study of the sūtra in a Western language.