Qiānshǒu qiānyǎn Guānshìyīn púsà mǔ tuóluóní shēn jīng 千手千眼觀世音菩薩姥陀羅尼身經
Sūtra of the Mother-Dhāraṇī Body of the Thousand-Hand Thousand-Eye Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara by 菩提流志 (Pútíliúzhì, Bodhiruci, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Sahasrabhuja dhāraṇī-sūtra translated by Bodhiruci (菩提流志, d. 727), the South-Indian master who succeeded Divākara (地婆訶羅) as principal Sanskrit-translation lead in the 武則天–中宗 courts (693–713). The text is parallel to and partly textually overlapping with KR6j0256 (Zhìtōng’s Sahasrabhuja sūtra) but is independently translated from Sanskrit and arranged around the mātṛ-dhāraṇī-kāya (姥陀羅尼身) — the “mother-dhāraṇī body” — i.e. the body of the bodhisattva understood as the locus of all dhāraṇīs.
Abstract
In the opening Avalokiteśvara, gazing toward the Buddha with respect, declares his “former-life inconceivable merit-cause” by which he received this dhāraṇī. The Buddha then expounds the mātṛ-dhāraṇī — the basic spell-formula — and the cultivator’s procedure: visualisation of the bodhisattva, recitation, and the worldly fruits (cure of disease, exorcism, longevity, abhaya) and the supramundane fruits (good rebirth, eventual bodhi). The text is briefer and more focused than Zhìtōng’s parallel (KR6j0256), confining itself to a single principal mantra and a small number of derivative formulae. Its Sanskrit original is best identified as a member of the Nīlakaṇṭhaka-dhāraṇī family, contemporaneous with the Avalokiteśvaraikādaśa-mukha-dhāraṇī and the Cundī-dhāraṇī that Bodhiruci was also rendering in the same translation series.
CANWWW (T20N1058) cross-references KR6j0256/KR6j0257 (T20N1057, Zhìtōng) and KR6j0269 (T20N1064) as related texts of the same Sahasrabhuja corpus.
Translations and research
- Reis-Habito, Maria. Die Dhāraṇī des Großen Erbarmens. Nettetal: Steyler, 1993.
- Forte, Antonino. “The Activities in China of the Tantric Master Manicintana (Bao-si-wei: ?–721 A.D.) from Kashmir and of his Northern Indian Collaborator Bodhiruci (Putiliuzhi: ?–727 A.D.).” East and West 34 (1984): 301–345 — definitive on Bodhiruci’s translation activity.
Links
- CBETA T20n1058
- Kanseki DB
- 菩提流志 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (720) — T = CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association]. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經. Edited by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡邊海旭. Tokyo: Taishō shinshū daizōkyō kankōkai/Daizō shuppan, 1924-1932. CBReader v 5.0, 2014.