The Dhāraṇī of Vajrapāṇi, the Yakṣa Lord

Notes

It is of course possible that Vajrakumāra is employed in this text as an epithet of Vajrapāṇi, but this is not, to our knowledge, a common epithet. The Tantra of the Empowerment of Vajrapāṇi (’phags pa lag na rdo rje dbang bskur ba’i rgyud chen po, Toh 496) does contain a mantra for Vajrakumāra, who in that tantra is a member of Vajrapāṇi’s retinue, but that mantra does not resemble the one in the present text. Moreover, in later Tibetan literature Vajrakumāra is commonly used as an epithet of Vajrakīlaya.

Tib. phra men ma. The term is translated in this text as “malevolent female spirits.” When encountered in a malevolent role, the Sanskrit term ḍākiṇī was sometimes translated into Tibetan with the term phra men ma, rather than the more familiar term mkha’ ’gro ma that commonly refers to the wisdom ḍākinīs found in the higher tantras. See the glossary entry for further details.

The absence of a Sanskrit title at the beginning of the text and the lack of a translator’s colophon at the end suggest the possibility that this work may have been compiled in Tibet. This conjecture seems further supported by the mantra’s mixture of Tibetan and Sanskrit words, which is a common feature of indigenous Tibetan liturgical texts, especially those related to protection and protective deities.

An explicitly named Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section is found in the Degé and Urga Kangyurs as well as in the peripheral Kangyurs of the Tshalpa lineage (Dodedrak, Phajoding, and Ragya). In contrast, the Berlin, Choné, Lithang, and Peking Qianlong Kangyurs include the same collection of dhāraṇīs in a separate part of their Tantra sections that has no distinct label. With or without the label, these collections of dhāraṇīs contain many duplicates of texts also found in the General Sūtra or Tantra sections. Therefore, in the latter group of Kangyurs many dhāraṇī texts appear twice in different parts of the Tantra section.

This text, Toh 953, and all those contained in this same volume (gzungs ’dus, waM), are listed as being located in volume 101 of the Degé Kangyur by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). However, several other Kangyur databases‍—including the eKangyur that supplies the digital input version displayed by the 84000 Reading Room‍—list this work as being located in volume 102. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the two volumes of the gzungs ’dus section are an added supplement not mentioned in the original catalog, and also hinges on the fact that the compilers of the Tōhoku catalog placed another text‍—which forms a whole, very large volume‍—the Vimala­prabhā­nāma­kālacakra­tantra­ṭīkā (dus ’khor ’grel bshad dri med ’od, Toh 845), before the volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur, numbering it as vol. 100, although it is almost certainly intended to come right at the end of the Degé Kangyur texts as volume 102; indeed its final fifth chapter is often carried over and wrapped in the same volume as the Kangyur dkar chags (catalog). Please note this discrepancy when using the eKangyur viewer in this translation.

The opening lines of the table of contents (dkar chag) of an independent dhāraṇī collection printed in Beijing in 1731, found in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest and transcribed by Orosz, identify the source of all such dhāraṇī collections as the extracanonical collection edited by Tāranātha (Orosz 2010, pp. 67 and 100). This mention is also noted by Hidas 2021, p. 7, n. 56.

See J. Dalton 2016, and J. Dalton and S. van Schaik 2006 on the dhāraṇī­saṃgraha collections preserved at Dunhuang, which, like the canonical collection, contain praises and prayers as well as dhāraṇīs. See Hidas 2021 for the catalogs of eighteen dhāraṇīsaṃgraha collections surviving in Sanskrit.

’then pa. The use of this word is a bit odd, but we take it to refer to Vajrakumāra as one who expels or draws out negative forces, or perhaps illnesses, from someone who is afflicted.

Translation tentative. Here we read sdig pa as sdig yul as used in the older “Chinese” vocabulary described by Stein in Tibetica Antiqua, as a translation of naraka, “hell” (Stein 2010, p. 21). We also read gdung bar byed pa’i rig sngags as gdung bar byed pa rig sngags.