Bùkōng juànsuǒ zhòu jīng 不空羂索呪經
Spell-Sūtra of the Unfailing Noose (Amoghapāśahṛdaya-dhāraṇī-sūtra) by 闍那崛多 (Shénàjuéduō, Jñānagupta, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Suí-period translation of the Amoghapāśahṛdaya-dhāraṇī-sūtra — the earliest extant Chinese rendering of the Bùkōngjuànsuǒ (Amoghapāśa, “Unfailing Noose”) cycle of Avalokiteśvara dhāraṇī-sūtras. Translated by Jñānagupta (闍那崛多, 523–600) at the Suí Daxingshan-si 大興善寺 translation workshop. The text is the seed of a remarkable cluster of parallel and expanded retranslations spanning four centuries: T20n1094 (KR6j0302, Xuánzàng, 656), T20n1095 (KR6j0303, Bodhiruci, 707/8), T20n1096 (KR6j0304, Lǐ Wúchǎn, 700), T20n1099 (KR6j0307, Shīhù, late 10th c.), and the comprehensive thirty-fascicle Bùkōng juànsuǒ shénbiàn zhēnyán jīng of Bodhiruci (KR6j0300, T20n1092).
Prefaces
The Taishō text opens with the colophon “隋天竺三藏闍那崛多譯” — “Translated by the Tripiṭaka-master Jñānagupta of India of the Suí.” The opening Taishō head-note records: 〔Nos. 1094, 1095, 1099, cf. No. 1092 (Fasc. 1)〕 — confirming the parallel-translation status of the text relative to the later renderings.
Abstract
The discourse is set on Mt. Potalaka (逋多羅山頂 Bùduōluóshāndǐng) at the Avalokiteśvara-prāsāda, with eight thousand bhikṣus, innumerable śuddhāvāsa deities, and the Mahā-Brahma kings as audience. Avalokiteśvara, addressing the Buddha, declares that he holds a hṛdaya-dhāraṇī called the Amogha-pāśa-rāja (不空羂索王) which he received in a former life ninety-one kalpas in the past from the Buddha Lokendrarāja (世間王 / 世自在王). The text proceeds to expound the mūla-mantra, the secondary vidyā-formulae, and the eighteen siddhi (成就) outcomes of the practice — the cure of disease, the recovery of lost possessions, the binding of demons, victory in litigation, and the standard ritual operations of kriyā-tantra Avalokiteśvara worship. The pāśa (羂索, “noose / lasso”) is the deity’s iconographic instrument: with it Avalokiteśvara captures and delivers sentient beings drowning in saṃsāra. As the earliest Chinese witness to this material, this text precedes Bodhiruci’s massive thirty-fascicle expansion by over a century and represents a relatively compact kriyā-tantra core that the later Tang Esoteric tradition elaborated into the developed Amoghapāśa kalpa-rāja.
The Suí dating must lie within Jñānagupta’s productive period at Daxingshan-si (587–600); the translation does not appear in the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 (KR6r0011) of 597 and is first catalogued in the Dà-Táng nèidiǎn lù 大唐內典錄 (KR6s0088) of 664 — suggesting the latter half of his Suí career.
Translations and research
- Reis-Habito, Maria. Die Dhāraṇī des Großen Erbarmens des Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. Nettetal: Steyler, 1993 — comparative discussion of the Amoghapāśa cycle.
- Forte, Antonino. “The Activities in China of the Tantric Master Manicintana from Kashmir and of his Northern Indian Collaborator Bodhiruci.” East and West 34 (1984): 301–345.
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et mandarins: le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
Links
- CBETA T20n1093
- Kanseki DB
- 闍那崛多 DILA
- CANWWW: T20N1093 (in div17.xml); related-text references → KR6j0300 (T1092 fasc. 1), KR6j0307 (T1099)
- Dazangthings date evidence (590) — 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.