The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī
Introduction

The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī presents the dramatic events in the life of the Buddha when Māra attempts to destroy the Buddha, break up the Saṅgha, and annihilate the Dharma, a struggle from which the Buddha eventually emerges victorious. This epic confrontation is told with tremendous verve and poignancy, and features characters, dialogue, and plot twists that rank among the best in Buddhist literature. The narrative starts with its own version of the well-known story of the conversion of two of the Buddha’s most prominent early disciples, Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, and is soon embellished with quaint stories from the past lives of some of the characters, ranging from well-known buddha figures down to (at one time) ordinary human and nonhuman beings. The parts of the narrative that unfold on earth are centered around the city of Rājagṛha, the capital of Magadha. They provide some interesting insight into the everyday life of India at the time, with its division into secular and religious members of society, and vividly capture the experiences that Buddhist monks might have had when going on their daily alms-rounds in the city streets. This is interspersed with lively dialogue that is at once didactic and aesthetically captivating. Especially moving is the conversation that Māra has with his children, when the daughters try to console their distraught father, who bitterly despairs over the impending loss of his realm and the humiliation of seeing his minions, even his own children, desert him, with all the pathos of a broken old man and all the obduracy of a petulant child.

The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī is part of a large body of Mahāyāna sūtras called the Great Collection (Mahāsannipāta). Mahāsannipāta can be translated either as “Great Collection” or “Great Assembly,” a semantic ambivalence that may have been intentional given the predilection for punning among the Sanskrit literati. The latter connotation reflects a feature shared by the sūtras in this collection, namely, that the discourse contained in each of them is always delivered to a “great assembly” of infinite numbers of beings who have congregated to hear the teaching, and typically begins, “Blessed Śākyamuni, at that time, directed his gaze at the great assembly.” According to Jens Braarvig,1 the Mahāsannipāta was compiled in the first centuries of the common era during the formative period of the Mahāyāna canon. The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī, being part of the original core of this collection, must therefore have already existed by then.

The text of The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī extant today is available in the original Sanskrit, which is incomplete, and in the Tibetan canonical translation. The English translation presented here has been prepared from the incomplete Sanskrit text as critically edited by Kurumiya.2 Lacunae and missing sections were supplied from the Degé (sde dge) edition of the Tibetan translation. These lacunae vary in length from individual syllables to several lines of text, while folios are missing in blocks, from a single folio to a few, in various parts of the text. The parts translated from the Sanskrit‍—about two thirds of the text‍—were subsequently checked against and edited based on the Degé and other Tibetan Kangyur editions. The beginning and end of each section were translated entirely from the Tibetan, as indicated in the notes.

The colophon to the Tibetan translation, which is found in all major recensions of the Kangyur, states that it was produced by the Indian preceptor Śīlendrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé. The text is also recorded in the Denkarma3 and Phangthangma4 inventories of Tibetan imperial translations, so we can establish that it was first translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan no later than the early ninth century, as the Denkarma is dated to 812 ᴄᴇ. Apart from the Tibetan canonical translation, other Tibetan translations have been found in manuscript form in the Dunhuang caves.5 There are also two Chinese translations. Most of the Tibetan and one of the Chinese translations were included by Kurumiya in his Sanskrit and Tibetan editions of The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī (Kurumiya 1978 and Kurumiya 1979, respectively). The primary Tibetan text used for the present translation was the Degé edition, but the other editions included in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) were also consulted.

The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī shares much of its character and some of its themes with other sūtras and, like most sūtras of the Mahāsannipāta, has left a rich legacy in the subsequent Buddhist literature. It is quoted or referred to in a number of texts, either as a whole text or as its eponymous dhāraṇī, not least because of its salient theme of changing the female gender into male by means of the dhāraṇī. One such text is the Mañjuśrī­mūla­kalpa, which recommends, in one of its rituals, the recitation of the text. One of the important mantras there is the heart essence of the buddha Ratnaketu (who seems to be an emanation of Mañjuśrī). This buddha is also part of the maṇḍala retinue of Mañjuśrī. He and the dhāraṇī goddess called Ratnaketu are also members of the large audience attending the original delivery of the Mañjuśrī­mūla­kalpa.

The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī represents a mixture of genres. In the most general classification, it is a Mahāyāna sūtra, a discourse traditionally attributed to the Buddha that elaborates, through narratives and teachings, the basic Mahāyāna themes of altruism, morality, emptiness, selflessness, and the bodhisattva path to awakening. The term sūtra may be applied to individual sūtras, to some sūtra collections such as the Mahāsannipāta, and to the totality of sūtra literature. The more specific genres that The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī exemplifies, such as incantation (dhāraṇī) and exposition (vyākaraṇa), are subdivisions of the sūtra genre.

It is worth noting some of the salient features of these two genres as they are reflected in this text. The dhāraṇī genre, found in both the sūtra and tantra literature, is characterized by the presence of magical formulae that are held to play a critical role in promoting and preserving the Buddhist teachings. The word dhāraṇī derives from the root √dhṛ (to “hold,” “support,” “contain,” “retain,” or “remember”). The sense of containing could be applied to both the formula, which magically “contains” a certain quality or qualities, and also the person who has obtained this dhāraṇī formula or seal. Once they have obtained it, they become “sealed” or “stamped” with whatever quality the dhāraṇī contains, and they subsequently have the power to activate this quality or invoke the corresponding buddha activity. One thing a dhāraṇī is always a vehicle for‍—whether this is implied by the literal meaning of the term or not‍—is the blessing of the buddhas and the magical power sealed therein. Although the sūtras and commentaries like to dwell on the dhāraṇī-powers of retaining things in memory (probably to account for the literal meaning of “containing”), dhāraṇīs can open the door to innumerable other qualities, such as loving kindness, compassion, and so forth, and invoke any kind of activity. The main function of the Ratnaketu dhāraṇī, for example, is to purify the karma of being reborn as a woman and ensure a male birth; the power of this dhāraṇī is so great that it can even cause the instant transformation of a female body into a male one. The function of the second most important dhāraṇī in the Ratnaketu, the samucchraya­vidhvaṃsanī (“terminator of birth”), is to terminate embodied rebirth in saṃsāra.

The term dhāraṇī is frequently paired in the sūtra literature with other terms, such as “door” (praveśa or mukha) or “seal” (mudrā). As a magical formula, a dhāraṇī constitutes the door to the infinite qualities of buddhahood, buddhahood itself, or the different types of buddha activity. Just as such qualities are innumerable, so are the dhāraṇī-doors. The Mahā­prajñā­pāramitā­śāstra6 explains what a dhāraṇī-door is by bringing out the difference between “dhāraṇī-door” and “samādhi-door.” Just as a samādhi-door may allow access to any desired quality or magical power, so too can a dhāraṇī-door. The difference is that while the meditative absorption (samādhi) comes and goes, the incantation (dhāraṇī) never leaves those who have “obtained” it, following them like a shadow from life to life. This is because, when realizing or “obtaining” (pratilābha) a dhāraṇī, one becomes “sealed” or “stamped” with it‍—hence a dhāraṇī is also called a “dhāraṇī-seal.”

The term vyākaraṇa (from vi+ā+√kṛ) implies taking something apart and means a clear analysis or detailed presentation, and it has been translated throughout this text as “exposition.” The term also denotes a prophecy by the Buddha of a particular person or being attaining buddhahood, and, by extension, also a text containing such prophecies. In The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī, this term is probably used with both meanings (“exposition” and “text containing prophecies”) at once. What is unique to The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī is the feminine form‍—vyākaraṇī‍—of the term vyākaraṇa.7

The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī also contains another important feature characteristic of its particular blend of genres, namely the stories of the former lives (pūrvayoga) of the Buddha and his disciples. This element is pervasive in Mahāyāna sūtras and also developed into a distinct genre, the jātaka stories, which are entirely dedicated to recounting the former lives of the Buddha as exemplary models of Buddhist morality.

Just as The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī is part of a larger sūtra (the Mahāsannipāta), the text itself consists of sections that may have originally been at least two separate sūtras. The first one, The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī proper, is centered around its eponymous dhāraṇī. It has its own consistent narrative with the same characters appearing throughout. It may be noted that portions of this section find parallels in other canonical texts. For instance, the account of the meeting between the two mendicants Aśvajit and Upatiṣya, wherein the latter learns of the former’s conversion to Buddhism, is to be found in the Pravrajyāvastu chapter of the Vinayavastu.8 This section extends as far as the latter part of chapter 5, at which point another dhāraṇī, the samucchraya­vidhvaṃsanī (“terminator of birth”), becomes the main focus of the text. The latter dhāraṇī also has a large section devoted to it. Within this section, the whole text is consistently referred to by the name of the dhāraṇī, the Samucchraya­vidhvaṃsanī, thus raising the possibility that this section once formed an independent work. This hypothesis is further supported by the fact that the name Ratnaketu is never used after the end of the first four and a half chapters, except in chapter colophons and the final dedication of merit. Furthermore, the Samucchraya­vidhvaṃsanī section marks a change in the narrative, introducing new characters and stories, and it also introduces new terminology unique to this section. The continuing use of the name Ratnaketu in the chapter colophons might have been an attempt on the part of the redactors to give compositional integrity to the two (or three) texts presented as one.

After the Samucchraya­vidhvaṃsanī section comes the story of the yakṣa general Āṭavaka, who recites to the audience his own dhāraṇīs. This story has an entire chapter (chapter 12) dedicated to it that constitutes a third main section of the work and may have been at some point an independent text.

The final chapter (chapter 13) dwells at length on the merits of the entire “Dharma discourse” and includes pledges from various gods and protectors to care for those who “in the future will uphold and preserve” it. In this chapter no distinction between, or references to, the two main sections or their eponymous dhāraṇīs are made, suggesting, again, that the redactors might have compiled the final chapter to bring the previous parts together in a single “Dharma discourse.”

Notwithstanding the evidence of it being a compilation, the Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī is unified by certain thematic elements that bridge its three main sections. We can identify three main elements that feature in each of its sections: (1) the narrative, (2) the Dharma instructions, which include both philosophy and practice, and (3) the magic. Magic figures prominently in each of the narratives, as when Śākyamuni or other buddhas or mythical beings, malign or beneficent, perform their supernatural deeds. Magic is also “sealed” in the magical formulae of the dhāraṇīs. Ultimately, though, there can be no distinction between these two types of magic, as the miraculous feats and the awesome power of the dhāraṇīs are inextricably linked‍—the feats are the buddha activity manifesting itself, and the dhāraṇīs are the Dharma methods9 that empower such activities. The unlocking of the magical power in a dhāraṇī may be effected only by someone who has “obtained” this dhāraṇī.

Despite its composite nature, The Ratnaketu Dhāraṇī reflects a consistent soteriological aim. Through its varied narratives and teachings, the text explains and illustrates how to apply the Buddha’s teachings in order to attain final liberation and offers special Dharma methods‍—notably the dhāraṇīs‍—expressly for this purpose. It repeatedly affirms that such methods will ensure that Dharma will not perish in times to come but will resurface in times of need, such as the present dark age.