The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets
Introduction

This translation is based on seven Tibetan-language textual witnesses of a translation from Sanskrit into Tibetan ostensibly executed by the eleventh century translation team of the Indian paṇḍita Gayādhara and the Tibetan translator Drokmi Śākya Yeshé. The Sanskrit manuscript(s) upon which tradition claims Gayādhara and Drokmi based their translation has since vanished from the purview of Buddhists and Buddhist scholars.1 In reliance, then, on the two conjectured dates of Drokmi’s death, this tantra’s terminus ante quem can only be roughly estimated to be either 1043 or 1072.2 Tibetan historical records claim that Gayādhara continued to be active after Drokmi’s death.3

Judging from its bibliographic location within the relevant Kangyur collections, as well as from the distinctive themes it advances, this tantra belongs to the Yoginī class of tantras. Post-tenth-century Tibetan classification schemes4 that were formalized by the fourteenth century in the structure of the Tibetan Kangyurs typically catalog the translated texts of the Yoginītantra class, which Tibetans called “Mother tantras,” alongside what they called “Father tantras”5 and “Nondual tantras,”6 to make up the more inclusive category of “Unexcelled Yoga Tantra” (yoga­niruttara / anuttara­yoga tantra).7 The Unexcelled Yoga tantras, believed by most Tibetan exegetes to be the ultimate revelation of the Buddha of our eon, therefore occupy the first major bibliographic category in the Tantra collection8 of most Kangyur collections. Unexcelled Yoga tantras are in turn followed by the tantra classes of “Yoga,” “Conduct,” and finally “Action,” an order thought to represent along a descending gradient the relative soteriological power of the yogic techniques emphasized in each textual class.

The same hierarchical logic is also reflected in the Kangyur’s internal subdivisions of Unexcelled Yoga tantra itself, where the highest of the high, Nondual tantras, are followed by Mother tantras and then by Father tantras, once again reflecting in descending order Tibetan conceptions of the relative profundity and power of each subclass’s methodological emphasis. In relating the rationale for this tripartite hierarchy in his commentary on the Guhya­garbha­tantra, Longchenpa (klong chen rab ’byams pa dri med ’od zer, 1308–64) echoes the following popular tantric dictum:

In terms of content, then, Yoginītantras emphasize the apex of those Buddhist tantric methodologies developed on the Indian subcontinent from the ninth through the twelfth centuries ᴄᴇ,10 which later Tibetan exegetes collectively refer to as completion stage practices. Such practices are distinguished by Tibetans from those of the Father tantras, where the emphasis is on male deities, images, and symbols, and the associated practices of development stage, or deity yoga, in which one imaginatively recreates self and environment in the form of a central male deity and his celestial domain.

In contrast, the Yoginī or “female practitioner” tantras are said to emphasize more the special efficacy of female deities, principles, and symbols. These tantras likewise promote yogic techniques‍—the completion phase practices of Tibetan parlance‍—involving highly choreographed manipulations of the energy channels, winds, and seminal fluids that constitute the human body’s subtle physiology. Such practices center on the controlled arousal and movement of winds and fluids throughout the subtle body by means of sexual union with a real or imagined female practitioner or deity. Other salient features of the Yoginītantras include imagery related to Indian charnel grounds and the profusion of fierce male (heruka) and female (yoginīs and ḍākinīs) divinities believed to cavort there; the ritual preparation, exchange, and consumption of “polluting” substances such as bodily fluids and fleshes; an emphasis on the intimate connection and correlation between language, cosmos, and subtle physiology; and a considerable degree of language and imagery shared with Hindu Śaiva tantric traditions, particularly the Kāpālikas.11 For Indian and Tibetan commentators of Yoginītantras the term yoginī not only denotes the overtly sexual nature of the practices these texts prescribe, it also connotes the power and efficacy of contact with the feminine in all its human and divine forms.

Yet, alongside the profusion of elements that might reflect a nonmonastic origin or audience, the Yoginītantras also often assume knowledge of traditional Buddhist topics of learning like the dharmas of the Abhidharma, the ordination status of the various lay and monastic vow holders as stipulated in the Vinaya, and understandings of self, mind, and world drawn from Middle Way and Mind Only formulations. The Hevajratantra and the Cakra­saṃvara­tantra, the two most well-known and widely practiced Yoginītantras, exhibit well this hybrid combination of characteristics.

Due to the social, political, and economic fragmentation that followed the collapse of the Tibetan empire in 840–42 ᴄᴇ, Tibetans were unable to begin translating the Yoginītantras until over a century later, toward the end of the tenth century, when Tibetans once again resumed their large-scale importation of Indian Buddhist texts and traditions. This renewed interest in Indian Buddhism among Tibetans, a movement that has recently come to be called the “Tibetan Buddhist renaissance,”12 was characterized foremost by the rise of an elite class of Tibetan scholars specially trained in the daunting task of translating and interpreting the developments in Indian Buddhist theory and practice that had transpired in the intervening century. From the inception of this period the new class of translator-scholars was thrust into the limelight and enjoyed the status of aristocracy.

Drokmi the translator appears to have been an especially important figure within this new ecclesiastical network. Ronald Davidson’s 2005 study entitled Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture, which explores the major socioreligious figures and themes of this important period in Tibetan history, devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 5: “Drokmi: The Doyen of Central Tibetan Translators:” 161–209) to the life and career of Drokmi, including his relationship with the Indian scholar Gayādhara. We refer the reader to this chapter for a detailed discussion and analysis of Drokmi’s and Gayādhara’s lives and influence.

Here it suffices to note that Tibetan historical records depict Drokmi as having been especially steeped in Yoginītantra traditions. Drokmi receives credit, along with Gayādhara, for having produced authoritative translations of some of the most influential Yoginītantras to circulate in Tibet, most notably the seminal texts of the Hevajratantra system of practice and exegesis.13 Drokmi is also described as having produced, again together with Gayādhara, a translation of the famous Root Text of Mārgaphala (Path and Fruit), which would later become a core feature of the institutional identity of the Tibetan Sakya tradition. The process by which the first few generations of Sakya hierarchs integrated the laconic Root Text of Mārgaphala with the Hevajratantra ritual system to craft a powerfully influential sectarian identity forms the subject matter of much of Davidson’s 2005 study. Further readings on the rubric and contents of Buddhist Yoginītantras include Gray (2007), Isaacson (1998), Sanderson (1995a, 1995b and 2001), and Snellgrove (1959 and 1987).

In most Kangyurs, The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets is found within a corpus of thirty-two works known as the Rali (ra li) tantras (Toh 383–414). The corpus is divided into four groups‍—mind, speech, body, and miscellaneous‍—each comprising eight tantras. All are works translated by Drokmi, and all but eight with Gayādhara.14 The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets is the second of the first group, the eight mind tantras. It is not clear whether the texts belonging to the Rali corpus were so identified by Drokmi himself or later, but Butön, in his 1323 History of the Dharma, includes them in his classified list of canonical texts with the mention that they are “well known as the thirty-two Rali [tantras].”15 He places them as belonging to the Cakrasaṃvara cycle, and editors of the Kangyur have generally followed this classification.

A brief review of the structure and content of The Glorious King of Tantras That Resolves All Secrets reveals the presence of several Yoginītantra traits. The tantra is organized according to a dialogue between the Buddha and Vajragarbha, who is the lead interlocutor of the Buddha’s entourage throughout many of the Yoginītantras, such as the Hevajratantra, and others. After a brief opening narrative frame common to the Yoginītantras, Vajragarbha poses a series of four questions about each of the four major terms of the tantra’s title: secret, resolution, tantra, and king. The Buddha offers responses, which in turn elicit further questions. Vajragarbha’s opening four questions structure the body of the text as a whole, while his follow-up questions tend to open subtopics for further discussion. The following outline, which we have extracted in accordance with Vajragarbha’s questions, reveals the tantra’s thematic flow. Folio numbers correspond to the Degé witness.

This text is present in at least seven of the currently extant Kangyurs‍—the Choné, Degé, Lithang, Kangxi Peking, Stok Palace, Urga, and Yongle Peking versions16 (referenced in the notes, following Harrison and Eimer’s suggested sigla,17 as C, D, J, K, S, U, and Y)‍—where it occupies 18, 18, 14, 18, 21, 18, and 18 folios, respectively. While the tantra is located in each of these Kangyurs within the second bibliographic subdivision of the Collected Tantras section, among the penultimate Yoginītantras, the location of the Collected Tantras section varies somewhat between collections. The present translation is based primarily on the Degé edition, in consultation also with the six other available witnesses.