Nàluóyántiān gòng Āxiūluówáng dòuzhàn fǎ 那羅延天共阿修羅王鬪戰法
Method of the Battle between Nārāyaṇa and the Asura-King by 寶思惟 (Bǎo-sī-wéi, Ratnacinta / Maṇicintana, 譯)
About the work
A very short one-fascicle Esoteric ritual manual translated by Ratnacinta (寶思惟, d. 721), the Kashmir-origin Tang-period translator best known for his kriyā-tantra dhāraṇī work. The text takes its frame from the pan-Indian deva-vs-asura war myth and converts the deva-king Nārāyaṇa 那羅延 (Skt. Nārāyaṇa, here in his Vaiṣṇava war-aspect) into the proprietor of an apotropaic rite for ritual combat against demonic obstructors.
Abstract
The frame: Nārāyaṇa is on the summit of Mount Sumeru (須彌山頂上), convening a great assembly of devas — Brahmā, Maheśvara (Mahā-Īśvara 大自在天王), Indra, the aṣṭa-class beings (nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, kiṃnaras, mahoragas, humans-and-non-humans) — and innumerable spirits, to expound the dharma. The amṛta elixir 甘露妙藥 has been mixed with auspicious ingredients and placed in a vessel. The asura-king transforms his body, enters the vessel, and steals the elixir; Nārāyaṇa, perceiving him within, strikes the vessel with his golden cakra (金輪), severing the asura’s body in half.
The text then re-deploys this myth as a healing rite: when an asura-illness is contracted, the practitioner takes white mustard-seed (白芥子), guggul resin (安悉香 gum guggul), sesame, and ghee with honey, blends them with khadira wood cut into 108 finger-length pieces, and burns the pieces one by one while reciting the mantra and naming the afflicted person. The rite is thereby a typical Esoteric homa for purgation of demonic causation, dressed in cosmogonic narrative.
The dating bracket follows Ratnacinta’s documented Chángān activity: he arrived in 693, his last attested translation is dated 706, and he died in Kāiyuán 9 (721 CE) at the Tiānzhú monastery.
Translations and research
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et mandarins: le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
- Forte, Antonino. “The Maitreyist Huai-i (d. 695) and Taoism.” In Tang Studies 4 (1986): 31–43 — context for the early-Tang Indian translator establishment in which Ratnacinta worked.
- Orzech, Charles D., Henrik H. Sørensen, and Richard K. Payne, eds. Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2011.