Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin
Toh 537
Degé Kangyur, vol. 88 (rgyud, na), folio 83.a (in par phud printings), 100.a (in later printings)
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Table of Contents
Summary
Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin includes a short dhāraṇī and the brief statement that if it is recited at the time of death, one will avoid lower rebirth and be reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.
Acknowledgements
This publication was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
The text was translated, edited, and introduced by the 84000 translation team. Catherine Dalton produced the translation and wrote the introduction. Nathaniel Rich edited the translation and the introduction, and Dawn Collins copyedited the text. Martina Cotter was in charge of the digital publication process.
Introduction
Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin includes a dhāraṇī invoking the buddha Ratnaśikhin. The text then states that whoever recites it at the time of death will not be reborn in the lower realms but will instead take rebirth in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.
This dhāraṇī text appears to be connected with the account from The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light (Toh 555), in which it is recounted that, in the past, the Buddha Ratnaśikhin made a commitment that any being who hears his name at the time of death will be reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.1 The fruits of his commitment are borne out in the narrative of The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light, in which several beings report having taken higher rebirths through the fortune of hearing the Buddha Ratnaśikhin’s name. The specific dhāraṇī found in the present text is, however, not included in The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light.
According to a number of canonical works, the Buddha Ratnaśikhin is a buddha from the past in whose presence the Buddha Śākyamuni trained during earlier lifetimes, prior to his awakening. The Play in Full, in describing Śākyamuni’s service to former buddhas, mentions that Śākyamuni “offered a candle to Ratnaśikhin.”2 Vasubhandu’s Abhidharmakośa identifies Ratnaśikhin as the buddha under whom Śākyamuni completed the first of his three “incalculable eons” of training.3
Like many dhāraṇī texts, Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin is found in both the Tantra section as well as the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur. It lacks a Sanskrit title as well as a colophon and it is not listed in any of the imperial-period catalogs. However, a text bearing a nearly identical title does appear at Dunhuang, suggesting that Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin was translated into Tibetan and circulated in Tibet in a relatively early period.4
The Sanskrit for the first part of the dhāraṇī proper is included in a series of dhāraṇīs located on two gold foils found in a reliquary from a shrine at Candi Plaosan in Indonesia. A variant of the dhāraṇī is found in the Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī of Knowledge of Former Lives (Sumingzhi tuolouni jing), which was translated into Chinese by Faxian in 996.5 However, it appears that no Sanskrit recension or Chinese translation of Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin is extant.
This English translation was made on the basis of the two Degé Kangyur recensions of the text (Toh 5376 and Toh 8707), with reference to the Stok Palace edition as well as the notes to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma). The recensions consulted have no significant discrepancies. The dhāraṇī itself has been transcribed exactly as it appears in Toh 537.
Text Body
The Translation
[F.83.a] [F.100.a]
Homage to the Buddha Ratnaśikhin.
namo ratnaśikhine| tathāgatāya| arhate samyaksaṃbuddhāya| tadyathā| ratne ratne ratnaśikhine svāhā||
If someone remembers this at the moment of death, they will be freed from the lower realms. When they do die and transmigrate, they will take birth as a god in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.
This completes “Recollecting the Names of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin.”
Notes
Two sets of folio references have been included in this translation due to a discrepancy in volume 88 (rgyud ’bum, na) of the Degé Kangyur between the 1737 par phud printings and the late (post par phud) printings. In the latter case, an extra work, Bodhimaṇḍasyālaṃkāralakṣadhāraṇī (Toh 508, byang chub snying po’i rgyan ’bum gyi gzungs), was added as the second text in the volume, thereby displacing the pagination of all the following texts in the same volume by 17 folios. Since the eKangyur follows the later printing, both references have been provided, with the highlighted one linking to the eKangyur viewer.
Note that there is a discrepancy among various databases for cataloging the Toh 870 version of this text within vol. 100 or 101 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 870, n.7, for details.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
sangs rgyas rin chen gtsug tor can gyi mtshan rjes su dran pa. Toh 537, Degé Kangyur vol. 88 (rgyud, na), folio 83.a.
sangs rgyas rin chen gtsug tor can gyi mtshan rjes su dran pa. Toh 870, Degé Kangyur vol. 100 (gzungs ’dus, e), folio 89.a.
sangs rgyas rin chen gtsug tor can gyi mtshan rjes su dran pa. bka’ ’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. 88, p. 324.
de bzhin gshegs pa spyi’i snying po rjes su dran pa. bka’ ’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. 97, p. 257.
de bzhin gshegs pa spyi’i snying po rjes su dran pa. S497. Stok Palace Kangyur vol. 102 (rgyud, da), folios 102.b–103.a.
Secondary Sources
84000. The Play in Full (Lalitavistara, rgya cher rol pa, Toh 95). Translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. Online publication. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2013.
84000. The Sūtra of the Sublime Golden Light (Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra, gser ’od dam pa’i mdo, Toh 555). Translated by Peter Alan Roberts. Online publication. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2023.
Burnouf, Eugene. (Translated by Katia Buffetrille and Donald S. Lopez Jr.) Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Dalton, Jacob, and Sam van Schaik, eds. Tibetan Tantric Manuscripts from Dunhuang: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Stein Collection at the British Library. Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 12. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Griffiths, Arlo. “Written traces of the Buddhist past: Mantras and Dhāraṇīs in Indonesian inscriptions.” In Bulletin of SOAS, 77, 1 (2014): 137–94.
Negi, J. S. Tibetan–Sanskrit Dictionary (bod skad legs sbyar gyi tshig mdzod chen mo). 16 vols. Sarnath: Dictionary Unit, Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, 1993.
de la Valee Poussin, Louis (trans. into French). Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam of Vasubhandu, Volume II. (Translated into English by Leo M. Pruden). Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1988–90.
Roberts, Peter Alan, trans. Mahāmudrā and Related Instructions: Core Teachings of the Kagyü Schools. Boston, Wisdom Publications, 2010.
Glossary
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Heaven of the Thirty-Three
- sum bcu rtsa gsum
- སུམ་བཅུ་རྩ་གསུམ།
- trāyastriṃśa AD