Fódǐng zūnshèng tuóluóní zhùyì 佛頂尊勝陀羅尼注義
Annotated Sense-Meaning of the Buddha-Crown Victorious Dhāraṇī by 不空 (Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle interlinear-glossed recension of the Uṣṇīṣa-vijaya-dhāraṇī by Amoghavajra (不空) in which each phrase of the dhāraṇī is paired with a Chinese sense-translation (zhùyì 注義). It is the standard exegetical companion to the dhāraṇī in the Tang Esoteric tradition, providing the semantic decoding that allowed practitioners to integrate the bīja-syllables and phrases into the yoga-mandala visualisation framework rather than treating the dhāraṇī as opaque sound.
Abstract
Amoghavajra’s zhùyì genre — represented also by his commentary on the Adhyardhaśatikā (KR6j0193 Lǐqù shì 理趣釋) — was a methodological innovation that made the Tang Esoteric corpus exegetically tractable. The text glosses each Sanskrit-transliterated phrase with its Sino-Buddhist semantic equivalent (e.g., namo bhagavate 曩謨婆誐嚩帝 = 歸命世尊 “homage to the Bhagavān”), then provides ritual-doctrinal expansion. This commentary became the canonical Tang reading of the Uṣṇīṣa-vijaya-dhāraṇī and was the principal reference for Kūkai (空海) and the Japanese Shingon-Tendai tradition. Composition falls within Amoghavajra’s mature Cháng’ān period (746–774).
Translations and research
- Copp, Paul. The Body Incantatory. New York: Columbia UP, 2014.
- Orzech, Charles D. Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism. University Park: Penn State UP, 1998. — context for Amoghavajra’s exegetical method.