The Blessed One’s Praise of Sharp Mañjuśrī

Translation of Toh 551

Language: English
Translators: David Mellins, Kaia Fischer
Extent: 19 passages, 1,031 words
Text: partly digitised
Source: 84000 · Translated by the Tibetan Classics Translators Guild of New Yorkunder the patronage and supervision of 84000:… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…

intro 84000's introduction — 4 parts
2
notes Notes — 14 parts

Text

84000's introduction

intro.1

The Blessed One’s Praise of Sharp Mañjuśrī is a praise in twelve verses that describes in detail the physiognomy, ornamentation, vestments, and general splendor of Mañjuśrī’s various manifestations as a bodhisattva and as a tathāgata.

intro.2

The Blessed One’s Praise of Sharp Mañjuśrī is the first of two short Mañjuśrī praise texts¹ in the Tantra section of the Degé Kangyur that immediately follow a group of six concise Mañjuśrī dhāraṇī scriptures. The text describes in detail the physiognomy, ornamentation, vestments, and general splendor of Mañjuśrī while skillfully maintaining a tension between two frames of reference: the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī of the sūtras and the tathāgata Mañjuśrī who appears in various manifestations in tantric literature. The verses also employ tropes that integrate features characteristic of the devotional and philosophical genres of Sanskrit literature, in a manner reminiscent of Buddhist belle-lettres such as Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacārita and Kṣemendra’s Avadānakalpalatā.

intro.3

A Sanskrit version of the text is to our knowledge no longer extant, and no record of its Sanskrit title has yet been identified. It also appears that the text was never translated into Chinese. The Tibetan translation lacks a colophon, so we have no information about the history of its transmission or the identity of its translators. The text’s absence from the Denkarma and Phangthangma imperial catalogs suggests that it was translated into Tibetan later than the beginning of the ninth century² but before the flourishing of the scholar Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364), who listed its title in his History of Buddhism.³

intro.4

This English translation is based on the Degé Kangyur version (Toh 551) in consultation with the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), with all major divergences recorded in the notes.⁴

2

Homage to the Omniscient One!

The Blessed One praised sharp Mañjuśrī:

Your head shines gently with the beauty of midnight splendor.⁵
Your braids sway like a boat amid azure ocean waves.
At the noble crown of your head, the supreme mark, coiled to the right—
An uṣṇīṣa lofty beyond the sight of ordinary beings.⁶

That all suffering of existence be overcome
And your brilliant powers vanquish the enemy,
The crown upon your head conceals a conqueror’s excellence;⁷
Your perfections of might and skill are those of a dharmarāja.

As in cat’s-eye gems and water lilies, so in your eyes,
White and black are distinguished with perfect clarity.
Your elegant eyebrows glisten like crescent moons,
And the sidelong glances of your smiling eyes signal your affection.

You are the foundation of countless Dharma gates to limitless liberation,
In the sundry plethora of the victors’ fields,
Embellished by pure music, excellent qualities,⁸ ample grain,
And jewels of every type.

The beautiful form of your nose is noblest of all—
Highly ridged, with corners slight, and elegant of shape,
Finely channeled like a slender stream.
One will not tire of gazing upon its virtues even in a hundred eons.

Your lips, the red of a mañjiṣṭhā flower,⁹
Your exquisite body, perfectly formed, quelling deluded thought,¹⁰
Your lovely complexion, radiant as a lotus, clear as a lake,¹¹
And the lucidity of your mind—all give reason to smile.

Your moon-like countenance is golden and effulgent,
A maṇḍala of light resplendent with golden garlands,
An orb of pure light to outshine a hundred suns,
Emitting many colors like a mass of clouds.

O Gentle Voice, the dharmadhātu you proclaim—
Alluring as the song of the kalaviṅka bird.
Your voice, perfect, pristine, and melodious,
Roars like a lion and chimes like a golden bell.

The body that you cultivate¹²—a body cloaked in noble splendor¹³—
Performs the deeds of the most excellent of beings.
It is youthful in appearance and youthful in bearing,
A youthful form that trains the ready.

You wear a crown replete with many jewels;
Pearls are embedded in your golden necklace.
Layered garments, a divine lotus, envelop you.¹⁴

In your right you brandish the finest weapon, which tames through skillful means—
It is insight itself, incomparably keen,
Perfectly expressing the dharmadhātu principle,
Incisive in manner, unbreakable as vajra.

In your left is the Perfection of Wisdom,
The inconceivable sphere where nothing is cultivated nor cast aside—
Such is the fathomless dharmatā,
The truth you embrace in your heart.

Notes

notes.1

1. The second is Tibetan Classics Translators Guild of New York, trans. The Eight Maidens’ Praise of Mañjuśrī , Toh 552 (2023).

notes.2

2. The Denkarma catalog is usually dated to ca. 812 ce.

notes.3

3. Butön listed the Tibetan title of this text together with those of other Mañjuśrī-associated dhāraṇī scriptures and The Eight Maidens’ Praise of Mañjuśrī . Butön Rinchen Drup, chos ’byung, folio 172.a/p. 975.

notes.4

4. The text is not included in the Kangyur collections of the Thempangma line.

notes.5

5. The use of the third person as a polite form of second-person address is common in Sanskrit literature. Since such usage is comparatively rare in contemporary English, we have chosen to translate the scripture’s third-person praises in the second person to emphasize their directness and devotional context.

notes.6

6. Tib. dge ba’i spyi gtsug mtshan mchog g.yas su ’khyil/ gtsug tor ’phags pas skye bos bltar mi mthong. Translation tentative.

notes.7

7. “A conqueror’s excellence” is presumably a reference to the uṣṇīṣa.

notes.8

8. Tib. mtshan rab.

notes.9

9. Also known as red lotus or Indian madder.

notes.10

10. “Quelling deluded thought” for yid gzhungs [sic] sel ba, which we have elected to read as yid gzhung sel ba (giving precedence to the verb). The Comparative Edition records the variant yid gzhungs ’phel (“increasing intelligence/perspicacity”) in a number of other Kangyurs. Alternatively, a Tibetan reader has suggested that perhaps the text should read yid zhum sel ba (“dispelling timidity”).

notes.11

11. Tib. mtsho lo bzhin. Translation tentative. The Comparative Edition notes no variants. One wonders whether this might be an extremely rarely seen two-syllable version of the common mtsho, similar to ’khor lo, ’phang lo, tshe lo, and cho lo. To our knowledge mtsho lo does not appear elsewhere in the Kangyur.