Móxīshǒuluótiān fǎ yào 摩醯首羅天法要
Essential Method of Maheśvara
About the work
A short, anonymous one-fascicle Esoteric ritual manual centred on Maheśvara 摩醯首羅 (= 魔醯首羅, Skt. Maheśvara / Śiva), surviving without translator-attribution in the Taishō. It is closely related to (and may be a digest or alternate redaction of) KR6j0511 (T1280) — both manuals open with the identical scenario of Maheśvara producing a “transformation-born” art-goddess from his hair-coil and her teaching of a dhāraṇī.
Abstract
The frame: Maheśvara, sporting in his heavenly palace with the goddesses and making music, suddenly produces from within his hair-coil (髮中) a single goddess of unsurpassed beauty and supreme skill in the arts (伎藝第一) — a Sarasvatī-like art-and-skill goddess. She speaks the dhāraṇī (given here in transliterated Sanskrit). The text then prescribes the rite of recitation: the practitioner — regardless of whether he is pure or impure, married or unmarried, eating the five pungent vegetables or not — may receive the result, an unusual concession that explicitly waives the ordinary preliminary purifications of mainstream Esoteric practice. The promised effects centre on accomplishing all worldly arts and skills (伎藝), winning beauty and eloquence, and obtaining wealth and esteem.
The text is shorter and more compact than its sister KR6j0511; the Taishō prints it as the first of a textually paired triplet with that text and KR6j0512 (the Nārāyaṇa-Asura battle-rite of 寶思惟 Ratnacinta). Editorial scholarship has tended to treat 0510 as a derivative summary or alternate edition of 0511 rather than an independent translation. Dating bracket: post-Amoghavajra Tángmì redaction, before Japanese transmission (c. 750 – 900).
Translations and research
- Faure, Bernard. The Fluid Pantheon: Gods of Medieval Japan, vol. 1. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015 — on Maheśvara / Daijizaiten 大自在天 in East Asian Esoteric Buddhism.
- Iyanaga Nobumi. Daijizaiten henjō kō: chūsei shinwa no shisōteki haikei 大自在天変成考 — for the East Asian Maheśvara complex.
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et mandarins: le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.