Qiānshǒu qiānyǎn Guānshìyīn púsà dàbēi xīn tuóluóní 千手千眼觀世音菩薩大悲心陀羅尼
Great-Compassion-Heart Dhāraṇī of the Thousand-Hand Thousand-Eye Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Tángmì recension of the Mahā-karuṇā-dhāraṇī translated by Amoghavajra (不空) and circulating in the Taishō at T20n1064. The text opens with an introductory verse (“稽首觀音大悲主…”, “I bow to Avalokiteśvara, the Lord of Great Compassion”), in which the Sahasrabhuja deity is invoked through the standard Tángmì opening jìshǒu / guīmìng formula. After this verse the dhāraṇī follows in transliteration, accompanied in the Taishō text by the iconographical and ritual apparatus of forty-two arms, each bearing its proper attribute and corresponding mudrā / mantra.
Abstract
This is the principal Tángmì Mahā-karuṇā-dhāraṇī witness alongside Bhagavaddharma’s longer narrative-framed sūtra (KR6j0260) and Vajrabodhi’s zhòuběn extracts (KR6j0262, KR6j0265). Where Bhagavaddharma’s text is a full sūtra with cosmological and biographical narrative around the spell, Amoghavajra’s recension here is closer to a focussed yíguǐ — the spell with its forty-two-mudrā / forty-two-arm ritual apparatus, suitable for actual cultic recitation. The relation to KR6j0260 is that of a complementary “ritual extract” to a parent canonical sūtra: the same spell, the same forty-two-arm iconography, but with a different Sanskrit Vorlage and a more rigorous Esoteric apparatus. CANWWW (T20N1064) cross-references the entire Sahasrabhuja corpus.
Translations and research
- Reis-Habito, Maria. Die Dhāraṇī des Großen Erbarmens. Nettetal: Steyler, 1993 — synoptic edition including this recension.
- Chandra, Lokesh. The Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1988.
- Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Links
- CBETA T20n1064
- Kanseki DB
- 不空 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (750) — 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.