Báisǎngài dàfódǐngwáng zuìshèng wúbǐ dàwēidé jīngāng wúài dàdàochǎng tuóluóní niànsòng fǎyào 白傘蓋大佛頂王最勝無比大威德金剛無礙大道場陀羅尼念誦法要
Essentials of the Recitation Practice in the Vajra-Unobstructed Great-Ritual-Site Dhāraṇī of the Most Victorious Incomparable Greatly-Awesome White-Parasol Great-Buddha-Crown-King [anonymous translator]
About the work
A one-fascicle ritual-practice essentials text (niànsòng fǎyào 念誦法要) for the Sitātapatra 白傘蓋 (“White Parasol”) uṣṇīṣa — the Mahā-pratyaṅgirā 大白傘蓋 cult that worships the goddess-emanation issuing from the Buddha’s uṣṇīṣa and bearing a white parasol that shelters all beings from harm. The text is the principal liturgical companion to the Śūraṅgama-mantra (KR6j0118) extracted as a stand-alone Sitātapatra practice. Its expansive title — characteristic of Tang Esoteric yoga-tantra ritual texts — reflects the goddess’s ten epithets in the canonical Sitātapatra-dhāraṇī.
Abstract
The text presents the abbreviated daily-practice form of the Sitātapatra ritual, integrating the dhāraṇī recitation with the mudrā-mantra-visualisation sequences and the offering-dedication framework. The translator-anonymous attribution and the elaborate Tang-Esoteric title diction place it within the Tang Tángmì 唐密 ritual corpus, plausibly produced in the post-Amoghavajra (post-774) generation under Huìguǒ (惠果) or his contemporaries; the text shares ritual-grammatical features with Amoghavajra’s Uṣṇīṣa-vijaya ritual (KR6j0149 T972) and with Sherap’s later Yuán Sitātapatra translation (KR6j0159 T976). The Sitātapatra-Buddha-Crown cult became one of the principal protective cults of late-Tang and Sòng-Liáo Buddhism, with extensive Yuán-Qīng Tibetan-Esoteric extensions.
Translations and research
- Sørensen, Henrik H. “On Esoteric Buddhism in China: A Working Definition.” In Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Brill, 2011), 155–175.
- Copp, Paul. The Body Incantatory. New York: Columbia UP, 2014.