ལྷ་མ་ནམ་གྲ་ལ་བསྟད་པ intro.5

intro.5

In that narrative of The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, Vajrapāṇi continues speaking with additional verses describing Revatī and the evils she inflicts, as well as methods that offer protection from those evils. He concludes with the dhāraṇī that is also found here.⁵ Upon hearing all this, Revatī cries out, enters the maṇḍala, and begs Vajrapāṇi for protection, which he grants. She requests instruction and he commands her to protect everyone who has seen the maṇḍala and who wears an amulet on which an account of her family history and characteristics are written. She promises to do so, adding that any child who wears such an amulet will be protected from graha spirits (gdon; Revatī herself is typically considered a graha). The words that are to be written on the amulet—the account of Revatī’s family history and her characteristics—are contained in the praise spoken earlier by Vajrapāṇi and are indeed precisely the contents of the present short work. In Praise of the Goddess Revatī has the added benefit of including a dhāraṇī in addition to the praise. In this sense, then, we can consider In Praise of the Goddess Revatī to be a kind of textual recipe needed to create a protective amulet for warding off harm caused by Revatī.