Zhù Dàfódǐng zhēnyán 注大佛頂眞言
Annotations to the Buddhoṣṇīṣa-Sitātapatra Dhāraṇī (Jp. Chū Daibutchō shingon) by 南忠 (Nanchū, 撰)
About the work
A one-fascicle Japanese Shingon philological-and-doctrinal commentary on the Dàfódǐng dhāraṇī — the Buddhoṣṇīṣa-Sitātapatra mantra 大佛頂如來放光悉怛多鉢怛囉陀羅尼 of Amoghavajra (KR6j0116, T19n0944A) — composed by Nanchū 南忠 (南忠) of the early-Heian Shingon transmission. The work writes out the dhāraṇī in horizontal Sanskrit-with-Chinese double script (梵漢兩字 bonkan ryōji) and provides vertical topical divisions and per-phrase glosses (竪記科段別釋句義) of its meaning.
Prefaces
The author’s own preface opens with the standard Esoteric framing: “What has no unity yet is not multiple is the true mark (實相); what has no identity yet is not different is the [Buddha-]vehicle 乘”. It identifies the Dàfódǐng dhāraṇī as “the secret bolt that witnesses sagely wisdom 證聖智之祕楗, the cryptic armor that outwardly protects the realm of beings 外護生界之密甲.” Nanchū then names his teacher — 靈巖 Língyán / Reigan-oshō 靈巖和尚 — as having “entered the great Tang to receive instruction in this dhāraṇī explanation” 入於巨唐請益此眞言釋 and as having transmitted back to Japan the ritual codification 儀軌 of the same deity. Nanchū himself received the explanation 在受法次被授彼釋 from this teacher, and the commentary is produced — under his teacher’s 印可 sanction (被和尚印可) — from Amoghavajra’s Sanskrit original 取不空梵本. The preface closes with a precise dating: summer of the 14th year of Jōwa, year-cycle Dīng-mǎo 承和十四年歳次丁卯夏女月 = 847 CE.
Abstract
The Zhù Dàfódǐng zhēnyán is one of the earliest extant Japanese Esoteric dhāraṇī commentaries — composed only one generation after Kūkai’s death (835 CE) and within the active lifetimes of his immediate disciples — and is of unusual textual-philological importance for that reason. Its method is two-axis: the horizontal axis preserves the bilingual Sanskrit-Chinese mantra-text exactly as Nanchū’s teacher had received it in Tang transmission (a key witness to early-9th-century Sino-Indian phonological practice in dhāraṇī transmission), while the vertical axis provides the exegetical topical divisions and phrase-by-phrase meaning. The dhāraṇī itself is the same 大佛頂如來放光悉怛多鉢怛囉陀羅尼 that appears as T944A in Amoghavajra’s translation, and the standalone-Sanskrit text on which Nanchū bases his commentary is Amoghavajra’s recension as known in Tang Esoteric circles at the time of Reigan’s transmission.
The work is in the same scholastic genre — and on the same scripture — as the slightly later 大佛頂如來放光悉怛他鉢怛囉陀羅尼勘註 of 明覺 (KR6j0183, T61n2235), the two commentaries together constituting the principal Heian-period Japanese-Esoteric apparatus for the Buddhoṣṇīṣa-Sitātapatra cult. The colophon dating of 847 makes it the earliest precisely-datable surviving Japanese Esoteric dhāraṇī commentary in the canonical apparatus.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.