A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t5.51

v2.c19.s6.t5.51

Moreover, the Dhāraṇīs penetrated to a great extent into the ancient Mahāyāna-Sūtras. We have found them in Chapters XXI and XXVI, *i.e.* those chapters which were added at a later time, of the Saddharma-Puṇḍarīka, and also in the last two chapters of the Laṅkāvatāra, chapters which are missing in the earliest Chinese translation of 443 A.D. Thus we see that they are a later element in the Mahāyāna-Sūtras. Nevertheless we should not regard them as a very modern product of Buddhist literature, for we already find them in Chinese translations made as early as in the 4th century A.D.² And if the passage in the longer Sukhāvatī-Vyūha (VIII, 33) where it says that the beings in Sukhāvatī receive Dhāraṇīs, was already included in the text which was translated into Chinese in the 2nd century A.D., we should be compelled to assume that there were Dhāraṇīs as early as that period. It is not possible, however, to trace the Dhāraṇīs back to the early days of Buddhism, much less to Buddha himself.³ It is true that Buddha lived in an environment of people who believed in the power of magic spells: but if there is one thing which we *do* know of Buddha, it is that he desired to bear a new message to his compatriots, a message which was at variance with the old Brahmanical cult of sacrifices and magic. The Dhāraṇīs belong to a period at which Buddhism in India began to be more and more assimilated to Hinduism,¹ while outside India it tended to make compromises and to become contaminated by the popular religions of the countries in question. In the course of time the difference between the Dhāraṇīs, and the Mantras belonging to the Tantras, became more and more obliterated, and finally the Dhāraṇīs were completely supplanted by the Mantras. In the Tibetan Kanjur the Dhāraṇīs are to be found both among the Sūtras (Mdo) and the Tantras (Rgyut).² The numerous fragments of Dhāraṇīs in various languages of Central Asia, which have been found in Eastern Turkestan,³ and also the large amount of space which the Dhāraṇīs occupy in the Tibetan Kanjur and the Chinese Tripiṭaka, are evidence of the great popularity and wide propagation of this literature in all Buddhist countries.