The Dhāraṇī of the Tathāgata Jñānolka

The Dhāraṇī of the Noble Tathāgatha Jñānolka that Purifies All Rebirths centers on a pairing of four tathāgatas and four bodhisattvas, who offer dhāraṇīs to the deities of the Sun and the Moon after perceiving their wish to shine a light upon beings residing in the darkest depths of cyclic existence. The tathāgata Jñānolka is identified in the Indic title of the work in the Kangyur, and the Sanskrit names of the three tathāgatas accompanying him have been identified here thanks to an edition of the Khotanese manuscript of the Jñānolka­dhāraṇī published, along with a brief study and German translation, by Ernst Leumann in 1920.1 The set of four tathāgatas and four bodhisattvas at the center of the Jñānolka­dhāraṇī cult, based on Leumann’s Khotanese sources, are as follows:

∙ The four tathāgatas: Jñānolka, Suvarṇa­prabhākūṭa­nirbhāsa, Satyavādin, and Bhīkṣmas­varagarjita­rājā.

∙ The four bodhisattvas: Samanta­bhadra, Mañjuśrīkumārabhūta, Dhāraṇīś­vara­rāja, and Vajrapāṇi.

Leumann’s edition also preserves Khotanese Sanskrit versions of the dhāraṇī mantras contained in the text that appear in this translation.

Mauro Maggi’s summary of sources for the Jñānolka­dhāraṇī notes that the majority of known extant versions of the text have survived in Khotanese witnesses, and that the earliest Chinese translations of the text derive from both a Khotanese original and a Tibetan translation. According to Leumann, the Tibetan translation of the text does not agree very closely with the Khotanese, and the Khotanese versions vary.2 While the differences between the Tibetan translation and Khotanese manuscripts of the Jñānolka­dhāraṇī raise the possibility that the version translated and preserved in the Kangyur derives from a separate source that has yet to be located, the Sanskrit manuscript witnesses that are currently available all indicate Khotan as the most likely location in which the cult of the four tathāgatas and bodhisattvas in this text and the dhāraṇī mantras it preserves flourished. Aside from its obvious applications for purifying those still living of the possible fate after their death of lower rebirth, and its potential function as a ritual liturgy for the bodhisattva’s practice of liberating beings, the narrative frame of the Jñānolka­dhāraṇī indicates that its dhāraṇī mantras could have functioned as part of a funeral liturgy, designed rather to liberate from lower rebirth the recently deceased.

The Jñānolka­dhāraṇī appears in the Denkarma3 and Phangthangma4 royal Tibetan catalogs of translated works, which indicates that the text was translated into Tibetan by at least the early ninth century. It is found in all Kangyurs, with one copy in Kangyurs of the Themphangma line and often two in Kangyurs of predominantly Tshalpa lineage; in the Degé Kangyur, there is one copy in the Action Tantra section (Toh 522) and one in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Toh 848),5 while in some other Tshalpa Kangyurs (Choné, Lithang, Urga, Lhasa, and others) there are two copies in different volumes of the Tantra section. The text was translated into Chinese twice, first in the late seventh century by the translator Devaprajñā (T 1397)6 and then again in the tenth century by Dānapāla (T 1398).7

This translation is based on the two versions of the text preserved in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the versions in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur, and the text in the Stok Palace Kangyur.