Fó shuō Dà Mólǐzhī púsà jīng 佛說大摩里支菩薩經
Sūtra of the Great Mārīcī Bodhisattva, Spoken by the Buddha (Skt. Mārīcīmaṇḍalavidhimārīcījātadvādaśasahasrāduddhṛta-kalpahṛdaya-saptaśata; alternate Sanskrit titles in canwww) by 天息災 (Tiānxīzāi, Devaśāntika, 譯)
About the work
A seven-fascicle (the longest single Mārīcī text in the East-Asian canon) Esoteric sūtra translated by Tiānxīzāi (天息災 = post-987 Fǎxián 法賢, the early Sòng Translation Institute’s principal translator) at Kāifēng. Sanskrit affiliation in canwww: a long kalpa-hṛdaya compound title that registers the text as the Heart of the Twelve-Thousand-Verse Mārīcī-Maṇḍala-vidhi. Korean Tripiṭaka K1156; Zhōnghuá H1266; Nanjio 0844. This is the principal late-Indian Mārīcī-tantra in Chinese.
Abstract
The seven fascicles develop the elaborated Mārīcī-tantra material that had crystallised in late-Indian Esoteric Buddhism: the goddess’s iconography in her various aspects (the standard beautiful-goddess form, the wrathful three-faced multi-armed form, and the boar-headed form characteristic of late tantric Mārīcī); the elaborated maṇḍala and its parivāra-deities; the abhiṣeka protocol; the mantra and mudrā repertoire; the yāna (vehicle / ritual programme) for various siddhi-ends; and the homa applications. This text — together with its Tibetan parallels — represents the most complete late-Indian Mārīcī-tantra surviving in any Asian language. The dating bracket reflects Tiānxīzāi’s documented activity at the Kāifēng Translation Institute (982 onward, deceased 1000).
Translations and research
- Hall, David A. The Buddhist Goddess Marishiten: A Study of the Evolution and Impact of Her Cult on the Japanese Warrior. Leiden: Brill, 2014. (Devotes substantial attention to T1257.)
- Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.