Fó shuō Jīnpíluótóngzǐ wēidé jīng 佛說金毘羅童子威德經
Sūtra of the Awesome Power of the Boy Kumbhīra, Spoken by the Buddha by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A short one-fascicle Esoteric yakṣa scripture devoted to the boy-form (童子, kumāra) of the yakṣa king Kumbhīra 金毘羅 (Pāli Kumbhīra; in East Asia later rendered Kompira こんぴら, the famous Shikoku tutelary deity). The text is attributed to Amoghavajra (不空) under his honorific title Dà-guǎng-zhì 大廣智 (“Great Vast Wisdom”) with the formula 大廣智不空密譯. Like a number of the Vināyaka- and yakṣa-cycle short rituals carried under his name, the text is not entered as an independent translation in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 nor in his own Biǎo zhì jí 表制集; it is instead one of the so-called “school-name transmissions” (Tángmì lineage texts) that circulated under his lineage. The Taishō recension is followed.
Abstract
The setting is the Pāriyātraka tree 波利質多羅樹 in Indra’s Joyful Garden (忉利天歡喜園) on Trāyastriṃśa Heaven, where the Tathāgata is described as the “imperishable wisdom-life” who looks upon all beings as a single child. A vast assembly is present — bodhisattvas in numbers as the sands of the Ganges, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, the four-grade noble persons, monks and nuns, lay devotees of both sexes, devas, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kinnaras, and mahoragas — and the Buddha emits a great radiance that pervades the trichiliocosm, the heavenly palaces of the sun, moon, and constellations, the dragon palaces, and the celestial-māra palaces. The terrified assembly’s spokesman is Mañjuśrī 文殊師利, who in prose and verse pleads with the Buddha to explain the source of the radiance.
The Buddha then preaches the yakṣa-king Kumbhīra in his boy-form (金毘羅童子, “Kumbhīra-kumāra”), giving his iconography, his dhāraṇī, and the rites for his invocation. As the principal yakṣa attendant of Bhaiṣajya-guru / Yào-shī 藥師 (the Medicine Buddha) and chief of the Twelve Yakṣa Generals (Yào-chā shén-jiàng 十二藥叉神將), Kumbhīra appears widely in East-Asian Esoteric ritual; the present scripture isolates his boy-form for an autonomous Tang Esoteric devotional and protective rite.
The dating bracket follows Amoghavajra’s mature Chángān period (746 – 774). Although the catalogue evidence is weak (the text is not in his own Biǎo zhì jí), Tang Esoteric circles transmitted it consistently under his name; it survives in three Taishō witnesses (the master, the 甲 [Dūnhuáng / Kūkai-bicycled] line, and 原 manuscript-line variants).
Translations and research
- Sanford, James H. “Literary Aspects of Japan’s Dual-Gaṇeśa Cult.” In Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God, edited by Robert L. Brown, 287–335. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991 — useful comparative material on Tang yakṣa / wealth-deity cycles.
- Faure, Bernard. The Fluid Pantheon: Gods of Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015 — for the East-Asian Kompira / Kumbhīra cult, vol. 1.
- 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 周一良. “Tantrism in China.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8 (1945): 241–332 — foundational survey of the Tang Tantric translations.
Other points of interest
The deity Kumbhīra 金毘羅 is in continental Esoteric usage primarily a yakṣa-king and chief of the Twelve Generals of Bhaiṣajya-guru; in Japan he became the great maritime tutelary Kompira こんぴら (Konpira) of Kotohira-gū 金刀比羅宮 on Shikoku, one of the most famous popular shrines of the Tokugawa and modern eras. The present text is one of the earliest Chinese Esoteric scriptures to give him a fully autonomous kumāra-form rite.