The Essence of Aparimitāyus

This is one of the shortest texts in the Kangyur. It has no introductory passage, conclusion, or colophon, and in the Kangyur source texts it does not even have a title; the title we have given it here is the one that appears in the catalog (dkar chag) of the Degé and other Kangyurs, and is drawn from the prose sentence that opens the text after the initial salutation mantra.1 The text is not identified or numbered in the Tōhoku catalog of the Degé Kangyur, but appears in the Degé, Lhasa, Stok Palace, Shelkar, and Urga Kangyurs.2

From the fact that this text is placed in the Kangyur directly before The Aparamitāyurjñāna Sūtra (1), Toh 674, and from the mantras it contains, the Tibetan tshe dpag med must be presumed to be translating Aparimitāyus rather than Amitāyus, which is also tshe dpag med in Tibetan, and to refer to the Buddha Aparamitāyurjñāna residing toward the zenith and associated with longevity, rather than to the Buddha Amitābha residing in his buddhafield of Sukhāvatī in the western direction. The conflation of these names and the buddhas they denote‍—they are thought to have originally been distinct but were later conflated not only in Tibetan but also in East Asian traditions‍—is discussed in more detail in the introduction to The Aparamitāyurjñāna Sūtra (1), Toh 674.3

The text begins with a salutation, in the form of a brief mantra, to Aparimitāyus under the name Vajra-āyuṣa (Vajra Life).4

This is followed by one prose sentence and a mantra of Aparimitāyus. The prose sentence is not ascribed to any speaker, and could be taken either as a pronouncement by the Buddha, or as a practice instruction of the kind that one might expect to be included in a Tengyur text.

The mantra, oṁ puṇye puṇye mahāpuṇye aparimitāyuḥ-puṇya-jñāna-saṃbharopacite svāhā, appears to have its most immediate origin in the longer Aparimitāyurjñāna Sūtra (1), Toh 674. The dhāraṇī of that text (repeated twenty-nine times within it) contains this mantra as its central portion, roughly one third of the dhāraṇī.5 The dhāraṇī in the other version of the sūtra, however, The Aparimitāyurjñāna Sūtra (2), Toh 675,6 differs from the dhāraṇī of Toh 674 only in not containing this mantra‍—and indeed this difference of dhāraṇīs is the only really substantial difference between the two versions of the sūtra as a whole. It is also the reason why some catalogs and commentaries distinguish the two versions of the text as the “three oṁ” and “two oṁ” versions, respectively, and the Degé karchak goes further in referring to the shorter one (Toh 675) as the “two oṁ, no puṇye” version. As explained more fully in the introductions to The Aparimitāyurjñāna Sūtra (1) and (2), Toh 674 and 675 respectively,7 it is likely that the latter represents a version translated in the early, imperial translation period of the late eighth or early ninth century, while the former is the version introduced to Tibet some three centuries later.

The existence of this text, containing the very dhāraṇī phrase that differentiates the two versions of the sūtra as a standalone mantra, is therefore intriguing, even if from the Kangyurs and their catalogs themselves we can glean no clearer explanation for its existence than the notion that it is simply one of several mantras or dhāraṇīs of Aparimitāyus which, as we can observe, is also found incorporated in longer alternatives.

Nevertheless, the mantra featured in this text is also to be found in one other place in the Kangyur, in the Sarva­durgati­pariśodhana, a tantra of the Yoga class that is widely used in rituals for the dead. The tantra features a number of secondary maṇḍalas for specific purposes, and among these is one presided over by Aparimitāyus. There are two versions of the tantra in the Kangyur, Toh 483 and 485, translated (from slightly different Sanskrit manuscripts) in the eighth and thirteenth centuries, respectively. The mantra of the present text is found in the early translation version exactly as it is here, and in the later version with the addition of one word, karaṇi,8 before the final svāhā. In both texts, the mantra is described as the “essence” or “heart-mantra” (hṛdaya, snying po), just as it is in the brief introductory sentence of the present text. In the Sarva­durgati­pariśodhana it is introduced as the essence of all tathāgatas, but in the context of being the principal mantra of others accompanying it and clearly corresponding to the maṇḍala of Aparimitāyus, while here it is simply said to be the essence of Aparimitāyus.9