A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is a short work that pays homage to the Three Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, and provides a mantra to be used for incanting medicines.
This text was translated and introduced by Catherine Dalton and edited by members of the 84000 editorial team.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The generous sponsorship of May, George, Likai, and Lillian Gu, which helped make the work on this translation possible, is most gratefully acknowledged.
A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is a short work that pays homage to the Three Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja, and provides a mantra to be used for incanting medicines. The text itself does not mention the original source of the mantra, but it may have been extracted from The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505),1 where it appears as the final part of the longer dhāraṇī taught there. The short mantra presented in A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them was later incorporated into the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā and Aṣtāṅgasaṅgraha, two important works of the Indian Āyurvedic medical tradition that are believed to have been composed by Vāgbhaṭa (ca. 600
A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is included in both the Tantra section (Toh 505a) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Toh 1059a) in the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that include a Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section.4 In the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that do not include a separate dhāraṇī section, as well as in the Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs, it is included in the Tantra section. There are no significant variations between the recensions in terms of their textual content.5
The present work lacks a Sanskrit title at the beginning and a translator’s colophon at the end. It is possible that like A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted From “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm” (Toh 1059),6 the short work that immediately precedes it in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, it may have been extracted from its source text and given its present form in Tibet, rather than in India. It is perhaps not surprising then that A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them does not appear to be extant as an independent work in Sanskrit or in Chinese translation. A work with this title is not found in the Denkarma or Phangtangma imperial catalogs of Tibetan translations, but the Denkarma catalog does include one prayer to Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha and the Phangtangma lists two,7 thus indicating that Medicine Buddha practices were being translated into Tibetan in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Additionally, The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha, from which the mantra found in this text may have been extracted, was translated by the imperial-period translator Yeshé Dé, working with the Indian paṇḍitas Jinamitra, Dānaśīla, and Śīlendrabodhi, and was later revised by Atiśa and Tsültrim Gyalwa. However, although its colophon suggests it was translated during the imperial period, a text with that title does not appear in either of the imperial catalogs.
The present English translation of A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them was made on the basis of the two Degé Kangyur recensions of this work (Toh 505a and Toh 1059a), with additional reference to the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and the single recension of the work found in the Stok Palace Kangyur. We also compared the mantra against its occurrence in the Degé recension of The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505) and found it to be nearly identical with that presented in this work.8
tadyathā oṁ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye samudgate svāhā9
This completes “A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them.”
A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is a short work that pays homage to the Three Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, and provides a mantra to be used for incanting medicines.
This text was translated and introduced by Catherine Dalton and edited by members of the 84000 editorial team.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The generous sponsorship of May, George, Likai, and Lillian Gu, which helped make the work on this translation possible, is most gratefully acknowledged.
A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is a short work that pays homage to the Three Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja, and provides a mantra to be used for incanting medicines. The text itself does not mention the original source of the mantra, but it may have been extracted from The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505),1 where it appears as the final part of the longer dhāraṇī taught there. The short mantra presented in A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them was later incorporated into the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā and Aṣtāṅgasaṅgraha, two important works of the Indian Āyurvedic medical tradition that are believed to have been composed by Vāgbhaṭa (ca. 600
A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is included in both the Tantra section (Toh 505a) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Toh 1059a) in the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that include a Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section.4 In the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that do not include a separate dhāraṇī section, as well as in the Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs, it is included in the Tantra section. There are no significant variations between the recensions in terms of their textual content.5
The present work lacks a Sanskrit title at the beginning and a translator’s colophon at the end. It is possible that like A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted From “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm” (Toh 1059),6 the short work that immediately precedes it in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, it may have been extracted from its source text and given its present form in Tibet, rather than in India. It is perhaps not surprising then that A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them does not appear to be extant as an independent work in Sanskrit or in Chinese translation. A work with this title is not found in the Denkarma or Phangtangma imperial catalogs of Tibetan translations, but the Denkarma catalog does include one prayer to Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha and the Phangtangma lists two,7 thus indicating that Medicine Buddha practices were being translated into Tibetan in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Additionally, The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha, from which the mantra found in this text may have been extracted, was translated by the imperial-period translator Yeshé Dé, working with the Indian paṇḍitas Jinamitra, Dānaśīla, and Śīlendrabodhi, and was later revised by Atiśa and Tsültrim Gyalwa. However, although its colophon suggests it was translated during the imperial period, a text with that title does not appear in either of the imperial catalogs.
The present English translation of A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them was made on the basis of the two Degé Kangyur recensions of this work (Toh 505a and Toh 1059a), with additional reference to the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and the single recension of the work found in the Stok Palace Kangyur. We also compared the mantra against its occurrence in the Degé recension of The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505) and found it to be nearly identical with that presented in this work.8
tadyathā oṁ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye samudgate svāhā9
This completes “A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them.”
84000 Translation Team, trans., The Vaiḍūryaprabha Dhāraṇī, Toh 505 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2024).
It has been argued, tentatively, that Vāgbhaṭa was a Buddhist. For more on Vāgbhaṭa and his works, see Meulenbeld 1999, pp. 597–656 and Wujastyk 1998, pp. 236–39.
See the Aṣtāṅga Hṛdaya of Vāgbhaṭa, pp. 188–89, and the Aṣṭāṅga Samgraha of Vāgbhaṭa, pp. 466–69.
An explicitly named Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section is found in the Degé and Urga Kangyurs, as well as in the peripheral Kangyurs of the Tshalpa lineage (Dodedrak, Phajoding, and Ragya). In contrast, the Berlin, Choné, Lithang, and Peking Qianlong Kangyurs include the same collection of dhāraṇīs in a separate part of their Tantra sections, which has no distinct label. With or without the label, these collections of dhāraṇīs contain many duplicates of texts also found in the General Sūtra or Tantra sections, and in the latter group of Kangyurs many dhāraṇī texts therefore appear twice in different parts of the Tantra section.
It is nonetheless notable that the recension in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section preserves the older orthography for the concluding particle rdzogs sho at the end of the work, whereas the recension in the Tantra section of the canon, in all but one (the Narthang) of the recensions we consulted in both the Tshalpa and Tempangma Kangyur lineages, has been updated to the more common—and later—orthography, rdzogs so. The two recensions also have one minor spelling difference that is consistent across recensions (sman gyi lha in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section recension and sman gyi bla in the Tantra section recension), suggesting that the two recensions were transmitted separately. This may indicate that the recension adopted into the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section was incorporated into the canon due to its being part of an earlier collection or collections of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts that were brought together to constitute the canonical Compendium of Dhāraṇīs collection. Indeed, apart from the canonical dhāraṇī collection appearing in several of the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs, these popular dhāraṇī collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇīsaṅgraha, appear in South Asia as well as in Tibet—including at Dunhuang, and as extracanonical Tibetan dhāraṇī collections—and it appears that the canonical dhāraṇī collection may have been created on the basis of an earlier such collection or collections (see Hidas 2021, p. 7, n. 56; see also Dalton 2016 and Dalton and van Schaik 2006 on the dhāraṇīsaṅgraha collections preserved at Dunhuang; see Hidas 2021 for the catalogs of eighteen Sanskrit dhāraṇīsaṅgraha collections). It therefore seems likely that one recension of A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them entered the canon via its inclusion in a dhāraṇīsaṅgraha collection that was brought into the canonical Compendium of Dhāraṇīs, while the very same text, in a different recension that had been updated to a more modern orthography, was then adopted into the Tantra section of a wider range of Kangyurs in a fitting place—immediately following the work from which its mantra was extracted.
Dalton, Catherine. trans., A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted from “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm”, Toh 1059 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2023).
The Denkarma includes the ’phags pa de bzhin gshegs pa sman gyi bla bai DU rya ’od kyi sngon gyi smon lam gyi khyad par rgyas pa (no. 148; Hermann-Pfandt 2008, p. 81) and the Phangthangma lists de bzhin gshegs pa sman gyi bla be dur rya’i sngon gyi smon lam chen po (no. 117) and the de bzhin gshegs pa sman gyi bla be dur rya’i ’od kyi smon lam chen po chung ngu (no. 179; Kawagoe 2005, pp. 11 and 13).
The mantra in the present work includes an additional repetition of the word bhaiṣajye, which is not found in the dhāraṇī in Toh 505. The mantra in the present work reads tadyathā oṁ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye samudgate svāhā. The final line of dhāraṇī in Toh 505 (1.38) reads tadyathā oṁ bhaṣajya bhaiṣajya mahābhaiṣajya samudgate svāhā.
Atiśa Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna (982–1054 ᴄᴇ), often referred to in Tibetan as jo bo, “(The) Lord,” was a renowned figure in the history of Tibetan Buddhism famous for coming to Tibet and revitalizing Buddhism there during the early eleventh-century.
A name for the Medicine Buddha.
In Buddhist literature, this is an epithet applied to buddhas, most often to Śākyamuni. The Sanskrit term generally means “possessing fortune,” but in specifically Buddhist contexts it implies that a buddha is in possession of six auspicious qualities (bhaga) associated with complete awakening. The Tibetan term—where bcom is said to refer to “subduing” the four māras, ldan to “possessing” the great qualities of buddhahood, and ’das to “going beyond” saṃsāra and nirvāṇa—possibly reflects the commentarial tradition where the Sanskrit bhagavat is interpreted, in addition, as “one who destroys the four māras.” This is achieved either by reading bhagavat as bhagnavat (“one who broke”), or by tracing the word bhaga to the root √bhañj (“to break”).
An Indian paṇḍita who was resident in Tibet during the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
Jinamitra was invited to Tibet during the reign of King Tri Songdetsen (khri srong lde btsan, r. 742–98 ᴄᴇ) and was involved with the translation of nearly two hundred texts, continuing into the reign of King Ralpachen (ral pa can, r. 815–38 ᴄᴇ). He was one of the small group of paṇḍitas responsible for the Mahāvyutpatti Sanskrit–Tibetan dictionary.
An Indian paṇḍita who was resident in Tibet during the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
The Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha—the three objects of Buddhist refuge. In the Tibetan rendering, “the three rare and supreme ones.”
A frequently used synonym for buddha. According to different explanations, it can be read as tathā-gata, literally meaning “one who has thus gone,” or as tathā-āgata, “one who has thus come.” Gata, though literally meaning “gone,” is a past passive participle used to describe a state or condition of existence. Tatha(tā), often rendered as “suchness” or “thusness,” is the quality or condition of things as they really are, which cannot be conveyed in conceptual, dualistic terms. Therefore, this epithet is interpreted in different ways, but in general it implies one who has departed in the wake of the buddhas of the past, or one who has manifested the supreme awakening dependent on the reality that does not abide in the two extremes of existence and quiescence. It is also often used as a specific epithet of the Buddha Śākyamuni.
Prolific eleventh-century Tibetan translator also known as Naktso Lotsawa (nag tsho lo tsā ba). He was sent to India by Lhalama Yeshé Ö (lha bla ma ye shes ’od), the king of Western Tibet, and his grand-nephew Jangchup Ö (byang chub ’od) to invite Atiśa to Tibet.
Yeshé Dé (late eighth to early ninth century) was the most prolific translator of sūtras into Tibetan. Altogether he is credited with the translation of more than one hundred sixty sūtra translations and more than one hundred additional translations, mostly on tantric topics. In spite of Yeshé Dé’s great importance for the propagation of Buddhism in Tibet during the imperial era, only a few biographical details about this figure are known. Later sources describe him as a student of the Indian teacher Padmasambhava, and he is also credited with teaching both sūtra and tantra widely to students of his own. He was also known as Nanam Yeshé Dé, from the Nanam (sna nam) clan.
sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. Toh 505a, Degé Kangyur vol. 87 (rgyud, da), folio 286.a.
sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. ka’ ’gyur (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. 87, pp. 850–51.
sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. Toh 1059, Degé Kangyur vol. 101 (gzungs ’ dus, waM), folios 189.b–190.a.
sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. ka’ ’gyur (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. 98, pp. 689–90.
sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. Stok Palace Kangyur vol 109 (rgyud, tsha), folios 277.b–278.a.
’phags pa de bzhin gshegs pa’i ting nge ’dzin gyi stobs bskyed pa bai dūrya’i ’od ces bya ba’i gzungs. Toh 505, Degé Kangyur vol. 87 (rgyud, da), folios 284.a–286.b.
84000 Translation Team. trans. The Vaiḍūryaprabha Dhāraṇī, Toh 505. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2024.
Anonymous, trans. Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya of Vāgbhaṭa: The Book of Eight Branches of Āyurveda. Text and English Translation, vol 1. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1999.
Denkarma (pho brang stod thang ldan dkar gyi chos kyi ’gyur ro cog gi dkar chag). Toh 4364, Degé Tengyur vol. 206 (sna tshogs, jo), folios 294.b–310.a.
Dalton, Catherine. trans. A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted from “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm”, Toh 1059. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2023.
Dalton, Jacob P. “How Dhāraṇīs WERE Proto-Tantric: Liturgies, Ritual Manuals, and the Origins of the Tantras.” In Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation, edited by David Gray and Ryan Richard Overbey, 199–229. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Phangthangma (dkar chag ʼphang thang ma). Beijing: mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003.
Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. Die lHan kar ma: ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008.
Hidas, Gergely. Powers of Protection: The Buddhist Tradition of Spells in the Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha Collections. Boston: de Gruyter, 2021.
Kawagoe, Eshin. Dkar chag ’Phang thang ma. Sendai: Tōhuku indo chibetto kenkyūkai (Tohuku Society for Indo-Tibetan Studies), 2005.
Lalou, Marcelle. “Les textes Bouddhiques au tempes du Roi Khri-sroṅ-lde-bcan.” Journal Asiatique 241 (1953): 313–53.
Meulenbeld, G. Jan. A History of Indian Medical Literature, vol. 1A. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1999–2002.
Murthy, K. R. Srikantha, trans. Aṣṭāṅga Samgraha of Vāgbhaṭa, vol. 1. Varanasi: Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1995.
Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Āyurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1998.
