The Dhāraṇī of the Eight Goddesses

The Dhāraṇī of the Eight Goddesses is a teaching given by the bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi to the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī on a set of dhāraṇīs in an eight-goddess maṇḍala. The eight dhāraṇī goddesses in this maṇḍala are as follows:

After Vajrapāṇi recites the dhāraṇīs for each of these goddesses, he tells Mañjuśrī that anyone who has the maṇḍala for these dhāraṇī goddesses placed in their hand, or simply recites these dhāraṇīs one time every morning, will be protected in this life and liberated from rebirth in the lower realms.

There is no known Sanskrit witness for The Dhāraṇī of the Eight Goddesses, and the text does not appear to have been translated into Chinese. It appears in both the Denkarma1 and Phangthangma2 imperial Tibetan catalogs of translated works, and the translators’ colophon to the Tibetan witness in the Degé Kangyur notes that it was translated by the Indian preceptor Śīlendrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Bandé Yeshé Dé. These data suggest that The Dhāraṇī of the Eight Goddesses was translated into Tibetan during the eighth century.

Nearly all the material in The Dhāraṇī of the Eight Goddesses is extracted from the Vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka­tantra (Ārya­vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka­mahā­tantra, ’phags pa lag na rdo rje dbang bskur ba’i rgyud chen po), which immediately precedes the version of this dhāraṇī in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) of the Degé Kangyur. The Vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka provides instructions on the construction of a version of “the maṇḍala of consecration in great gnosis” (ye shes chen por dbang bskur ba’i skyil ’khor), but the maṇḍala described in the Vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka is far more complex than the eight-goddess maṇḍala that is suggested (but never described) by the title of the present work, The Dhāraṇī of the Eight Goddesses. While it is very likely the case that each of these dhāraṇīs are considered goddesses in the Vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka, they are only depicted in aniconic form as dhāraṇīs and symbols, and they are not once explicitly referred to as goddesses. They are accompanied in that text, however, by a set of very well-known male bodhisattvas who also only appear in the maṇḍala in aniconic form, and who all have very well-known iconic forms. Whatever ambiguity there may be in the Vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka around whether these dhāraṇīs are in fact understood as goddesses is resolved in the current text, where the title suggests that the eight members of this maṇḍala are known as a set of dhāraṇī goddesses. Elements of this ambiguity have been preserved in the English translation of the current text to reflect the relationship of this material to the passages in the Vajra­pāṇyabhiṣeka from which it derives.

This English translation was produced based on the Tibetan witnesses in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus)3 in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the Tibetan witnesses in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur and the Stok Palace Kangyur.