In Praise of the Goddess Revatī

In Praise of the Goddess Revatī includes a short praise to Revatī along with her dhāraṇī. The praise itself is just a few lines long and addresses Revatī’s characteristics and her familial lineage. There is no narrative setting and the praise is preceded by two short introductory lines. It is immediately followed, with no introduction or framing, by Revatī’s dhāraṇī, which closes the text.

It is worth noting that while this work has the title In Praise of the Goddess Revatī in the incipit of all versions consulted, the explicit consistently gives an alternative title, The Dhāraṇī of the Great Goddess Rematī.1 The names Revatī (nam gru) and Rematī (re ma ti), although sometimes conflated as they are in this text, in fact appear to refer to two distinct goddesses with separate characteristics and pedigrees.2 The present text is a praise to Revatī, so both the title given in the explicit, as well as a line of homage at the beginning that also addresses Rematī rather than Revatī, are likely to have been added by later redactors who conflated the two names. In this translation we have nevertheless left the name Rematī in the homage and the explicit as they are found in the Tibetan text, even though it is clear that this text relates to Revatī.

There is no reference in the text of In Praise of the Goddess Revatī to any source for the lines of praise it contains. However, these verses are also found in The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge (Vidyottama­mahā­tantra, Toh 746) where they feature as part of a larger narrative in which they are addressed directly to Revatī by Vajrapāṇi.3 In this section of The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, a group of gods and sages praise Vajrapāṇi and request from him a ritual for taming and pacification.4 Vajrapāṇi replies that he is pleased by their diligence in helping beings and by their entry into the king of maṇḍalas. At this point Revatī approaches but is unable to enter the maṇḍala herself. She nonetheless frightens the gods and the sages because she is powerful, diligent, and kills children. The gods and sages seek protection from Vajrapāṇi, who becomes wrathful and proclaims that all the hateful beings in the world will be destroyed. The gods and sages are grateful for this protection and respond by requesting Vajrapāṇi to praise Revatī in order that she may now be able to enter the maṇḍala. Vajrapāṇi replies by expressing, directly to Revatī, the same lines praising her family line and her qualities as appear in the present work.

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.

An abbreviated version of the very same narrative from The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, including the praise and dhāraṇī, makes up the contents of a short work from Dunhuang entitled The Dhāraṇī of the Goddess Revatī (lha mo nam gru ma’i gzungs, IOL Tib J 442/2), which is, however, not included in any Kangyurs.6 The Dhāraṇī of the Goddess Revatī appears to have been extracted from The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, and presents the longer narrative summarized above verbatim, but in abridged form, with some passages omitted.

In short, The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, The Dhāraṇī of the Goddess Revatī, and In Praise of the Goddess Revatī are closely related works that include the same content, but with varying amounts of detail. The most extensive version of the narrative, including the praise and dhāraṇī, is found as a section of The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge; an abbreviated version is found in The Dhāraṇī of the Goddess Revatī from Dunhuang; and the standalone praise and dhāraṇī,7 without any narrative context, is found in the present work, In Praise of the Goddess Revatī.8

As indicated in the summary above, the goddess Revatī who is praised in these three works is a powerful and frightening graha or goddess known to harm or kill children.9 This Revatī seems to be closely related to, or perhaps even identical with, the bālagraha (child-snatching spirit) Revatī who appears in the Mahābhārata and other non-Buddhist Indian works. This Revatī also harms children and her praise protects against such harm.10

In Praise of the Goddess Revatī is not extant in Sanskrit or in Chinese translation, nor is The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, from which In Praise of the Goddess Revatī has been extracted. The Tibetan text does not include a Sanskrit title and there is also no translator’s colophon at the end. The title does, however, appear in both the Phangthangma and the Denkarma imperial catalogs. This confirms the presence in Tibet during the early ninth century, if not of this very text, at least of one with an identical title.11 Moreover, The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge, from which the verses of praise and dhāraṇī were extracted, was translated by the Indian paṇḍita Vidyākaraprabha and the Tibetan translator Kawa Paltsek, who were both active during the ninth century.12

The text is included in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that include a separate Dhāraṇī section.13 In Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that lack a section so named, the text is found in the Tantra section, but only in the equivalent but unnamed dhāraṇī collection comprising part of the Tantra section. It is not included in any Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs.14

Notably, this is one of only twelve works in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section that are not duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur. It appears that these twelve texts found their way into the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs specifically because of being part of the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs, which most likely was compiled based on earlier collections of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts.15 These collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇī­saṃgraha, circulated throughout South Asia and Tibet‍—including at Dunhuang‍—as extracanonical dhāraṇī collections.16

This English translation was made on the basis of the Degé Kangyur recension with reference to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma). We also consulted the relevant parts of the Degé recension of The Great Tantra of Supreme Knowledge and The Dhāraṇī of the Goddess Revatī from Dunhuang (IOL Tib J 442.2).