Běidǒu qīxīng hùmó mìyào yíguǐ 北斗七星護摩祕要儀軌
Secret-Essential Ritual Manual for the Homa of the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper Anonymous (CANWWW assigns to Bùkōng 不空 shù 述, but the text is anonymous in the canonical opening colophon and is bibliographically catalogue-anonymous)
About the work
A short Esoteric ritual-manual in one fascicle on the homa (護摩, huǒ-jì fire-offering) for the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper. The opening colophon reads 大興善寺翻經院灌頂阿闍梨述 (“composed by the Abhiṣeka-ācārya of the Translation Bureau of the Dà-xìng-shàn Monastery”). The Translation-Bureau Abhiṣeka-ācārya at Dà-xìng-shàn-sì in the high-Tang Esoteric period was 不空 (Amoghavajra) — and CANWWW (Wittern) accordingly assigns the text to Bù-kōng. However, the opening does not name him, and the catalogue meta in data/catalogs/meta/KR6j.yaml carries no author or persons field. The attribution is therefore best treated as traditional but uncertain.
Abstract
The text is the fire-rite (homa) companion to the recitation-rite of KR6j0536 (T1305): where T1305 gives mudrās and mantras for visualisation and recitation of the Seven Stars, T1306 prescribes the physical fire-offering (homa) — construction of a square or round earth-altar one cubit on a side, perfumed with cogon-grass, gan-song, frankincense, camphor, white sandal, and the five mixed flavours; the central round hearth-pit; the food-offerings of rice, fruit, cake, ghee, and honey; and the prescribed substances (the “five grains and milk-tree wood” 五穀并乳木) to be cast into the fire while reciting the mantra.
The principal mantras given are: (1) the One-Syllable Wheel-Sovereign Wisdom-King mantra (一字頂輪王真言, Ekākṣaroṣṇīṣacakra-vidyārāja-mantra — the Bhrūṃ or Bhrūṃ Hūṃ class), and (2) the Summons-of-the-Big-Dipper mantra (召北斗真言). The standard mudrā is the “lotus-leaf” form with the two index-fingers slightly separated. The fire-divination element is distinctive: while burning the offerings, the practitioner watches the fire; if the flame “glows golden-yellow” (光黃白) the rite has succeeded and the deity has descended to receive the offering.
The ritual has the same theological frame as T1305 — protection of life, removal of karmic obstacles, success in worldly undertakings — but the homa idiom anchors it firmly in the Indo-Iranian Tantric fire-cult lineage. The text is short and operational rather than doctrinal; it presupposes familiarity with the Vajradhātu apparatus.
The dating bracket adopted here — 746–850 — covers the high-Tang Esoteric period (Bùkōng’s Chángān return in 746) through the late-Tang Esoteric persistence at Dàxìngshànsì into the early Five Dynasties, since the text could plausibly be a high-Tang composition under Bùkōng’s circle or a slightly later Tángmì compilation. A more precise narrowing awaits philological work; Mollier (2008) and Kotyk (2017) discuss the corpus together with T1305, T1310, and the apocryphal T1307.
Translations and research
- Mollier, Christine. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008 — chapter 4 includes T1306 in the Big-Dipper cult corpus.
- Kotyk, Jeffrey. “Buddhist Astrology and Astral Magic in the Tang Dynasty.” DPhil, Leiden, 2017.
- Yano Michio. Mikkyō senseijutsu 密教占星術. Rev. ed., Tōyō shoin, 2013.
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard, 1996 — for the homa ritual genre in Tang Esoteric Buddhism.
- Payne, Richard K. The Tantric Ritual of Japan: Feeding the Gods. The Shingon Fire Ritual. Sata-pitaka 365. Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1991 — for the homa apparatus continued in Japanese Shingon.