The Dhāraṇī for Retaining the Noble Avataṃsaka
Toh 940
Degé Kangyur, vol. 100 (gzungs ’dus, e), folio 282.a
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
This publication was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The text was translated, edited, and introduced by the 84000 translation team. Paul G. Hackett produced the translation and wrote the introduction. Rory Lindsay edited the translation and the introduction, and Dawn Collins copyedited the text. Sameer Dhingra was in charge of the digital publication process.
Introduction
This text presents a single dhāraṇī1 to enable the retention of the Avataṃsakasūtra2, with no additional explanation. The text appears similar in nature to the sort of dhāraṇī presented to enable retention in The Dhāraṇī for the Retention of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra in One Hundred Thousand Lines (Toh 583). No Sanskrit title is provided for this text, and its title is given on the basis of the Tibetan alone.
This translation of the text into English relied primarily on the Degé recension while referring to variant readings in other recensions as noted in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and validated in the source texts—notably Narthang.3 No previous translation of this text into a language outside the Tibetan sphere of influence is known. Meisezahl (1957) provides a diplomatic edition of the dhāraṇī found in the Linden Museum Tibetan collection.
Text Body
The Translation
Homage to the Three Jewels.
oṃ nthiṃ | nāmaḥ sarvabuddhānām | oṃ māṃ bhrūṃ mūṃ | tadyathā | oṃ bhrūm |4
By taking up this dhāraṇī, one will retain the noble Avataṃsaka. One will be like someone who has written it and recited it.
This completes “The Dhāraṇī for Retaining the Noble Avataṃsaka.”
Notes
This text, Toh 940, and all those contained in this same volume (gzungs ’dus, e), are listed as being located in volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). However, several other Kangyur databases—including the eKangyur that supplies the digital input version displayed by the 84000 Reading Room—list this work as being located in volume 101. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the two volumes of the gzungs ’dus section are an added supplement not mentioned in the original catalog, and also hinges on the fact that the compilers of the Tōhoku catalog placed another text—which forms a whole, very large volume—the Vimalaprabhānāmakālacakratantraṭīkā (dus ’khor ’grel bshad dri med ’od, Toh 845), before the volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur, numbering it as vol. 100, although it is almost certainly intended to come right at the end of the Degé Kangyur texts as volume 102; indeed its final fifth chapter is often carried over and wrapped in the same volume as the Kangyur dkar chags (catalog). Please note this discrepancy when using the eKangyur viewer in this translation.
Bibliography
’phags pa phal po che gzung bar ’gyur ba’i gzungs. Toh 584, Degé Kangyur vol. 90 (rgyud, pha), folios 204.a.
’phags pa phal po che gzung bar ’gyur ba’i gzungs. Toh 940, Degé Kangyur vol. 100 (gzungs ’dus, e), folios 282.a.
’phags pa phal po che gzung bar ’gyur ba’i gzungs (dpe bsdur ma) [Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing: krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing House), 2006–9, vol. 90, pp. 661–62.
Other Sources
Meisezahl, Richard O. “Die tibetischen Handschriften und Drucke des Linden-Museums in Stuttgart.” Tribus 7 (1957): 1–166, 102 (item 71 566, Nr. 5).
Pagel, Ulrich. Mapping the Path: Vajrapadas in Mahāyāna Literature. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2007.
Glossary
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Attested in other text
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Attested in dictionary
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Approximate attestation
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Reconstruction from Tibetan phonetic rendering
This term is a reconstruction based on the Tibetan phonetic rendering of the term.
Reconstruction from Tibetan semantic rendering
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Source unspecified
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