Wénshūshīlì púsà gēnběn dà jiàowáng jīng Jīnchìniǎowáng pǐn 文殊師利菩薩根本大教王經金翅鳥王品
Garuḍa-King Chapter from the Root Great Teaching-King Sūtra of Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Esoteric ritual chapter (品) extracted from a larger Mañjuśrī “root teaching-king” cycle (the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa tradition, Sanskrit Garuḍapaṭalaparivarta) and translated by Amoghavajra (不空). The text is the Tángmì counterpart to the broader Garuḍa (金翅鳥, Skt. Garuḍa) cult of avian wisdom-king deities and serves as a self-contained snake-bite, poisoning, and dragon-subduing manual centred on the Garuḍa-king as Mañjuśrī’s emanation.
Abstract
The opening frame places the Buddha at the heaven of the Pure Abode (淨居天宮) addressing Mañjuśrī 文殊師利, who is told that within his great teaching-cycle the Garuḍa-king’s vidyā affords mastery over the five elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space) and through them over the speech and inconceivable realms of all sentient beings, including the snake- and dragon-realms. The Garuḍa-king then approaches Mañjuśrī, prostrates, and is licensed to expound his root vidyā before the assembly.
The body of the chapter teaches the Garuḍa-king root-mantra, his hand-mudrā, and the directional sub-mantras for invoking the four cardinal Garuḍa-emanations. It prescribes the iconography (a winged anthropomorphic Garuḍa-king with serpent-eating beak), the painted-cloth paṭa image used for the rite, and the formulae for: snake-bite cure, dragon-binding (for irrigation and rain-stopping), poisoning antidote, and abhicāra against demonic interference. The text is a key witness to the assimilation of the pre-Buddhist Indian Garuḍa figure into the Mañjuśrī Esoteric cycle and its installation as a vidyārāja under Mañjuśrī’s superintendence.
The dating bracket follows Amoghavajra’s mature Chángān period (746 – 774), consistent with the colophon styling him 大廣智 (“Great-Vast-Wisdom”) — the posthumous-honorific form 諡 in his catalogue entries.
Translations and research
- Orzech, Charles D., Henrik H. Sørensen, and Richard K. Payne, eds. Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia. Handbook of Oriental Studies 24. Leiden: Brill, 2011 — chapters on Amoghavajra’s translation programme and the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa tradition in Tang Chinese.
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et mandarins: le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
- Goble, Geoffrey C. Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra, the Ruling Elite, and the Emergence of a Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
- Chou Yi-liang. “Tantrism in China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8, no. 3/4 (1945): 241–332.