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聖閻曼德迦威怒王立成大神驗念誦法

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Text ID
KR6j0441
Date
746–774
Dynasty
唐

Shèng Yánmàndéjiā wēinùwáng lìchéng dàshényàn niànsòng fǎ 聖閻曼德迦威怒王立成大神驗念誦法

Established Recitation-Method of the Great Spiritual Power of the Holy Yamāntaka Wrathking by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)

About the work

A one-fascicle Táng Esoteric ritual manual on Yamāntaka (閻曼德迦 = Yamāntaka “Death-Ender”) — the wrathful protector who slays Yama, the Lord of Death, and thus is the vidyārāja of the west-quarter of the five-wisdom-king system. Translated by Amoghavajra (不空). Title page: full elevated Amoghavajra titulature.

Abstract

The frame-narrative places the assembly at the Pure-Abode Heaven (淨居天宮), with Mañjuśrī as the central interlocutor. Śākyamuni addresses Mañjuśrī, declaring that long ago, ten asaṃkhyeya-koṭi world-ages past, an obscure Buddha-field saw the manifestation of the wrathful protector Yamāntaka — and that the present sūtra is the established (立成) ritual transmission of his cult.

Yamāntaka’s iconography is that of a bull-headed wrathful figure trampling a buffalo — he is in fact identified in the Indian tradition as the wrathful aspect of Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom turned in his ferocious mode against the Lord of Death himself. The body of the text gives the standard vidhi:

  1. The Yamāntaka root mantra — oṃ hrīḥ ṣṭriḥ vikṛtānana hūṃ ṣaṭ phaṭ;
  2. The mudrā-cycle for the bull-headed wrathful body;
  3. The visualization of Yamāntaka as a six-faced, six-armed, six-legged figure on a buffalo-mount;
  4. The abhicāra programme — subjugation of the lord of death, deliverance of the dying, and protection from premature death.

Yamāntaka became the most consequential wrathful protector of the late-Indian Anuttara-yoga-tantra system (especially the Vajrabhairava cycle of the Sa-skya, dGe-lugs and other Tibetan traditions); the Táng-Chinese Yánmàndéjiā corpus (this T1214 plus T1215 (KR6j0442) and T1216 (KR6j0443) and the later T1217 (KR6j0444)) is its earliest East Asian footprint.

The dating bracket follows Amoghavajra’s translation activity at Cháng’ān (746–774).

Translations and research

  • Goble, Geoffrey C. Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
  • Siklós, Bulcsu. The Vajrabhairava Tantras: Tibetan and Mongolian Versions, English Translation and Annotations. Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1996. (For the Tibetan parallel tradition.)

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