The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā

The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā is a short text concerning a series of disease-causing spirits and the incantations that avert them. Though titled a “tantra,” the text internally refers to itself as a “demon-averting dhāraṇī-sūtra” (gdon zlog pa’i mdo’i gzungs). The text lacks the introductory narrative framework (nidāna) typical of sūtras and tantras and, indeed, has no narrative elements at all. Rather, the tantra begins with a list of names of these spirits, all female, who are organized into two main groups: grahīs (gdon) and a set comprised of “rulers” (dbang byed) of thirteen tents (gur). Despite being divided into these groups, both sets of female deities are identified as emanations of the goddess Ekajaṭī. The tantra proceeds to describe different illnesses and conditions associated with the specific grahīs and “tent rulers,” and to teach incantations for the particular deities that serve as remedies for these afflictions. In the instructions for each incantation, the practitioner is directed to employ a specific type of ritual dagger (kīla), and the text provides an extensive list of the different daggers suitable for each purpose. The final incantations in the tantra are distinct for being written in a mixture of Tibetan and Sanskrit. Following the list of incantations and remedies, the tantra concludes with a statement of the benefits of reciting the text and following the proper ritual procedures (which are not taught in the tantra). The tantra proclaims that someone who does so will accomplish all of their wishes, be victorious on the battlefield, and defeat their enemies.

The grahīs that form the core subject of The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā are a class of disease-causing spirits that appear in Buddhist and non-Buddhist Indic texts alike.1 These spirits, who can be either male (graha) or female (grahī),2 are understood to cause physical and mental illnesses by means of possessing the person.3 Indeed, the very name of this class of spirits comes from the Sanskrit verbal root √grah, which signifies grasping or seizing. While it seems that the lists of such grahas remained fluid in Indic literature,4 the members of the list found in The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā do not map onto any known set of grahīs in either the Indian or the Tibetan tradition.

The Tibetan term for such disease-causing spirits, dön (gdon), is also an important term in Tibetan medicine, where it is used not just to refer to the spirits themselves, but also as a technical term for certain types of diseases associated with dön, including types of mental illness, stroke, paralysis, and skin disorders.5 Similar to its Indic counterpart, the Tibetan medical tradition describes dön as “grasping” or “taking hold of” those afflicted by their influence.6 In both traditions, the causes for such spirit-induced illnesses are associated with ethical transgressions, as well as offenses committed against the specific afflicting spirit, and the symptoms of illness often share similar characteristics with the afflicting spirit.7 While both traditions typically prescribe medical and ritual means in the treatment for such afflictions,8 The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā focuses solely on ritual means: the use of incantations and the wielding of ritual daggers. The tantra does not reference the cause of being afflicted by such spirits, but it does establish a relationship between the offending spirits and the deity whose mantra is indicated as their remedy. For example, the afflictions caused by the grahī Black Yamā are overcome by the incantation of Mañjuśrī Yamāntaka, and the afflictions caused by the grahī Black Indrāṇī are overcome by the incantation of Indra.

The other type of disease-causing spirits described in The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā are the Tent-Ruling Ladies (gur la dbang byed ma). They do not appear elsewhere in the Kangyur or Tengyur and comprise one of several features of this text that suggest it may have been compiled in Tibet, on the basis of both Indic and Tibetan elements, rather than translated from an Indic source. There is no single aspect of the text that would definitively indicate a Tibetan rather than an Indic provenance for this work. However, there are a number of such features which, when taken in aggregate, do rather strongly suggest this to be the case. This includes the unusual title of the work, which appears to be a back-translation from Tibetan into Sanskrit; the absence of a translator’s colophon; unusual mantras that include many seemingly non-Indic words and rough approximations of Sanskrit terms; the inclusion of several spirit types like the terang (te rang; te’u rang), tsen (btsan), and gongpo (’gong po) that are indigenous to Tibet and lack Indic equivalents; the reference to the terang spirts of the sky, the “middling” area, and the earth (gnam, bar, and sa); the “tent-ruling ladies,” whose tents are made of turquoise, coral, crystal, ox-wool, silk, or leather, all of which convey a Tibetan, rather than Indic, feel; the reference to a mountain-top yak spirit; and the inclusion of a spirit named the Lord of Order who Carries a White Staff (skos rje drang dkar), one of the nine male ancestors (srid pa ’pho dgu) from the indigenous Tibetan Bonpo mythology.9

The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā is only included in the Kangyurs from the Tshalpa line. It is found in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus) section of the Kangyurs that have one, as the Degé does, and in the Tantra section of those Tshalpa Kangyurs that do not. It is not found in any of the Kangyurs of the Thempangma line. The canonical recension of this tantra, moreover, appears to be the only form in which it is extant‍—we find neither a Sanskrit text nor a Chinese translation, no record of this work in Dunhuang or in the imperial Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) or Denkarma (ldan kar ma) catalogs, and the tantra does not appear in any extracanonical collections.

The Dunhuang manuscript archive may, nonetheless, provide some clues that help us understand the context of this tantra. There are several collections of dhāraṇīs (dhāraṇī­saṃgraha, gzungs ’dus) found at Dunhuang in which the compiled dhāraṇīs are preceded by a short version of The Threefold Invocation Ritual (spyan ’dren rgyud gsum pa, or just rgyud gsum pa)10 that includes the invocation of a number of worldly deities and spirits to witness the ritual recitation of dhāraṇīs. This is followed by the main collection of texts, which then concludes with a series of closing prayers and dedications.11 This same tripartite structure maps on to the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs sections found in the Kangyurs; in fact, the versions of The Threefold Invocation Ritual in these canonical dhāraṇī collections are precisely the same as those found at the head of such collections from the Dunhuang archive.12 It is in these shared structural features of Tibetan dhāraṇī collections that we find interesting parallels with The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā.

First, both The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā and The Threefold Invocation Ritual are among just a dozen works in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur that are not additionally found elsewhere in that Kangyur. The remaining 237 texts in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section are also found in either the Sūtra or Tantra sections of the Degé Kangyur.13 Moreover, the translators of The Threefold Invocation Ritual suggest that this work may have been compiled in Tibet on the basis of Indic elements.14 Indeed, in the Dunhuang archive we find a commentary on The Threefold Invocation Ritual, IOL Tib J 711, in which, in addition to the many Indic gods and spirits who are mentioned, there is also a short discussion of terang spirits‍—a category of spirits indigenous to Tibet‍—in a section of the text where the three worlds in Indic cosmology (khecara, bhūcara, and nāgaloka) are likened to the three worlds from pre-Buddhist Tibetan cosmology: the sky, the “middling” area, and the earth (gnam, bar, and sa).15 We will recall that terang spirits from the sky, the “middling” area, and the earth appear in The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā as one of its seemingly Tibetan, rather than Indic, features. This suggests that some of the texts included in Tibetan dhāraṇī collections may have been a locus where Indic demonologies were merged with Tibetan demonologies. It would appear that this is particularly true for those texts that are unique to the Tibetan canonical dhāraṇī collections and not duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur.

While there are no known versions of The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā outside of Kangyur canonical collections, the text shares a significant portion of its content with another dhāraṇī text preserved under two different titles: The Play of Uṣṇīṣādevī (gtsug tor lha mo rol ma; henceforth TLR) and The Dhāraṇī Called Uṣṇīṣā of the Playful Goddess Mahākālī (lha mo nag mo chen mo rol par byed pa’i gtsug tor zhes bya ba’i gzungs). This text is found in several extracanonical collections as well as in the small canonical collections kept in four Western Tibetan monasteries. However, it is not included in any of the larger Kangyur or Tengyur collections.16 Given the fact that both of these two largely parallel works have limited canonical inclusion, it may be that some redactors of canonical collections considered them to be Indic texts, while other redactors did not.17

The present English translation of The Tantra of the Play of the Goddess Uṣṇīṣā was produced on the basis of the Degé18 recension of the text, in consultation with the recension found in the Qianlong Kangyur as well as the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur. The text is stable across all of the Kangyurs consulted, with the same title and only minor variants; all recensions are alike in lacking a translators’ colophon. The tantra appears to have some textual problems that are likely the result of textual corruption. As a result of this, it is sometimes difficult to decipher. Where applicable, the parallel passages in The Dhāraṇī Called Uṣṇīṣā of the Playful Goddess Mahākālī were consulted for clarity, but given that that Dhāraṇī is not strictly parallel with this tantra, emendations on the basis of that text were made sparingly, and such instances are noted in the footnotes to the translation. A number of passages display verse segments in which one or more lines of verse have a slightly uneven syllable count, or where an occasional line break is not shown on the page with a shad, despite the segment being properly metered. We have chosen to render these passages in verse despite these anomalies, because the versified structure of the passages is nonetheless clear, and we presume the periodic uneven syllable count and lack of shad are textual corruptions that have crept into the text over time. Because the provenance of this text is uncertain, and because the mantras and dhāraṇīs found herein include many non-Indic elements, we have rendered the mantra formulas in individual syllables rather than speculatively combining them into longer strings, even in cases where the intended Sanskrit term is clear. Finally, many of the deities and spirits listed in this text are unknown outside the witnesses identified above, so many of the identifications remain speculative until further resources come to light.