The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda

The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda is a short dhāraṇī text that includes the dhāraṇī formula for the Siṃhanāda form of Avalokiteśvara and a brief instruction for a ritual that employs the dhāraṇī to cure illness. Its contents closely parallel a section from the longer Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda (Toh 703),1 where the dhāraṇī and ritual content of The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda‍—along with several other dhāraṇīs, mantras, and rituals‍—is incorporated into a narrative framework that describes how Siṃhanāda acquired his curative powers. The concise Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda, in contrast, opens directly with the dhāraṇī proper, followed by instructions for making eight maṇḍalas with cow dung, and how to incant and smear the dung on a sick person to cure their illness. In the end, Avalokiteśvara states that if a curative result were not achieved through the practice, it would be as if he, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, had performed the five deeds of immediate retribution. This set of acts includes patricide, matricide, killing an arhat, causing a rift in the saṅgha, and drawing the blood of a tathāgata with malicious intent. This forceful statement implies that it is as impossible for the ritual not to take effect as it would be for Avalokiteśvara‍—the very embodiment of compassion‍—to perform any of these heinous acts. In the longer Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda from which the content of this shorter text appears to be extracted, this promise is made even more explicit, with Śākyamuni telling Mañjuśrī, “Mañjuśrī, this is the Great Compassionate One’s own promise.”2 This sentence from the longer dhāraṇī text provides the context for the title of one recension of the shorter work: The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda’s Promise (Toh 704/912).3

Siṃhanāda, “Lion’s Roar,” also sometimes called Lokeśvara Siṃhanāda, is a form of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. There are nine Siṃhanāda sādhanas and several other Siṃhanāda praises and ritual texts preserved in the Tibetan Kangyur, attesting to his importance in India. Images of Siṃhanāda have been found at the Mahābodhi temple in Bodh Gaya prior to that temple’s nineteenth-century renovation,4 and in Sri Lanka, where it seems Siṃhanāda was especially popular.5 The association of Siṃhanāda with curative properties that we find in the present text appears to be quite an old one, as a tenth-century Nepalese miniature painting kept at Cambridge depicts Siṃhanāda and includes a caption reading, “Lokeśvara of the hospital on the island of Siṃhala.”6 While Avalokiteśvara in general has a close iconographical association with the deity Śiva, this is even more clear in the case of Siṃhanāda. In the Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda (Toh 703), Siṃhanāda‍—just like Śiva‍—holds a brahmin’s skull and a snake-wrapped trident, and wears a sacred thread made of a snake.

Although it is not described in this text, Siṃhanāda’s iconography is generally consistent across textual and artistic sources. In the descriptions found in his many sādhanas and praises, Siṃhanāda is white in color, has two legs and two arms, is dressed as an ascetic (tapasvin, dka’ thub ldan pa), and sits on a lion. In most descriptions, a skull-adorned trident rests at his right side, but in some, he holds it in his right hand. This trident is also frequently depicted with a white snake coiled around the shaft. With his left hand, he holds the end of a lotus stalk that rises upwards, with a sword standing on the open lotus blossom. Nearby and to the left, sits what is variously described as a cup (karoṭaka), pot (bhājana, snod), or skull cup (kapāla, thod pa) filled with fragrant flowers. This vessel often sits on a lotus or water lily.7

The Siṃhanāda form of Avalokiteśvara continues to be practiced in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Two arrangements of practices centered on Lokeśvara Siṃhanāda are found in the Compendium of Sādhanas (sgrub thabs kun btus) compiled by Jamyang Loter Wangpo,8 and the nineteenth-century scholar Mipham Gyatso wrote a short summary of the story of The Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda.9

The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda is extant in Sanskrit, as text number twenty-one in the Sādhanamālā,10 and as part of the dhāraṇī collection published by Gergely Hidas.11 It does not appear to be extant in Chinese translation. Despite the fact that The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda is preserved in the Tengyur, there is no attribution of authorship or other information to contextualize the transmission of the text in India. A different translation of The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda is also found in the Kangyur, where it is included in both the Tantra section (Toh 704) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section (Toh 912) of the Degé collection.12 The Kangyur and Tengyur recensions of the work have several minor variants that suggest that, in addition to being translated by different translators, they were also based on different Sanskrit recensions of the text. Although the differences are minor, the Tengyur recension stands closer to the extant Sanskrit text as preserved in the Sādhanamālā than the Kangyur recension.

The Tengyur version of The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda translated here was produced in the eleventh or twelfth century by Patshab Lotsawa Tsultrim Gyaltsen, and is part of the collection called “The ‘Hundred’ Sādhanas translated by Patshab” (pa tshab kyi bsgyur ba’i sgrub thabs rgya rtsa) in the Tantra section of the Tengyur. It is one of only two dhāraṇīs in that collection of one hundred and sixty-three texts, the majority of which are indeed sādhanas. The version transmitted in the Kangyur was translated into Tibetan by the Indian master Vāgīśvara and the Tibetan translator Lokya Sherab Tsek, who were active in the eleventh century.

This English translation of The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda was made on the basis of the Degé Tengyur recension of this work, with additional reference to the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe sdur ma) of the Tengyur, both recensions of the text from the Degé Kangyur (Toh 704 and 912), the single Stok Palace Kangyur recension, the parallel passage in the longer Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda (Toh 703), as well as the Sanskrit versions of the Siṃha­nāda­dhāraṇī from the Sādhanamālā, and Hidas 2021. The Dhāraṇī of Siṃhanāda is generally stable across all recensions consulted, including the Sanskrit, with only minor variants. We edited the dhāraṇī itself very slightly on the basis of the Sanskrit text from the Sādhanamālā and have noted those emendations.