Dàshèng jīngāng jìzhū púsà xiūxíng fēn 大乘金剛髻珠菩薩修行分
Section on the Practice of the Bodhisattva Vajra-Crest-Jewel of the Mahāyāna (Vajra-cūḍāmaṇi-bodhisattva-caryā-parivarta) by 菩提流志 (Pútíliúzhì, Bodhiruci, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Tang Esoteric parivarta (分, “section / chapter”) on the practice of the Vajra-Crest-Jewel Bodhisattva (金剛髻珠菩薩 Jīngāngjìzhū púsà = Vajra-cūḍāmaṇi-bodhisattva) translated by Bodhiruci (菩提流志, d. 727). The colophon: 大唐天竺三藏菩提流志譯. The “Vajra-Crest-Jewel” is the cūḍāmaṇi — the cintāmaṇi-jewel mounted at the crest of the Buddha’s uṣṇīṣa — personified here as a bodhisattva form. The text is doctrinally adjacent to the Buddhoṣṇīṣa-cult cycle and represents one of Bodhiruci’s later Esoteric translations.
Abstract
The opening narrative situates the discourse with the bodhisattva Pǔsīyì (普思義 Pǔsīyì púsà = Samanta-cintāmaṇi-bodhisattva?) addressing the Buddha: “World-Honoured One, how should…?” The text proceeds to expound the xiūxíngfēn (修行分, “section on practice”) of the Vajra-Crest-Jewel Bodhisattva: the deity-visualisation, the mūla-mantra, the vidyā-formulae, the mudrā-repertoire, and the siddhi-applications. The “section” form indicates the text is an extracted chapter from a larger Indic Esoteric compendium that was never fully translated into Chinese — common in Bodhiruci’s translation programme, which favoured selective extraction of operative chapters from larger Indic scriptural compendia.
As a Bodhiruci translation it dates to his Tang court period (693–727), with the most likely range being post-707 (after the completion of the Amoghapāśa kalpa-rāja programme).
Translations and research
- 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. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
Links
- CBETA T20n1130
- 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.