Fó shuō Jiù Miànrán Èguǐ tuóluóní shénzhòu jīng 佛說救面然餓鬼陀羅尼神呪經
Sūtra of the Spirit-Spell Dhāraṇī for Saving the Burning-Face Hungry-Ghost, Spoken by the Buddha by 實叉難陀 (Shíchānántuó, Śikṣānanda, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Esoteric translation by Śikṣānanda (實叉難陀), the great Khotanese translator of Empress 武則天 Wǔ Zétiān’s reign. The Taishō head-line No. 1314 [cf. No. 1313] explicitly identifies this scripture as a parallel rendering of the same source-text translated independently by Bù-kōng as KR6j0544 (T1313). Where Bù-kōng renders the ghost’s name Yàn-kǒu 焰口 (“Burning-Mouth”), Śikṣānanda renders it Miàn-rán 面然 (“Burning-Face”) — the same Sanskrit referent (whose face/mouth blazes with fire and whose throat is needle-thin), but a different translational choice that has fixed itself in the parallel ritual lineages.
Abstract
The narrative is identical to KR6j0544: at the Nyagrodha-saṃgharāma near Kapilavastu, Ānanda at his solitary night-meditation is approached at the third watch by a hideous preta — here named Miàn-rán (“Burning-Face”) — who announces that Ānanda will die in three days and be reborn as a preta unless he immediately offers food to “百千那由他恒河沙數” hungry ghosts and brāhmaṇa-sages, each a droṇa of food. Terrified, Ānanda runs to the Buddha, who reveals the dhāraṇī of the Tathāgata Shìjiān zìzài délì 世間自在德力 (Lokeśvarabaladhāraṇī?) — here called Yīqiè dé-guāng wúliàng wēilì 一切德光無量威力 — by means of which one recitation produces, before each preta and each brāhmaṇa-sage, four droṇa and nine droṇa of Magadhan food. Recipients are freed from their needle-throat preta-state and reborn in the heavens.
Śikṣānanda’s recension diverges from Bù-kōng’s in several details: it does not include the four-Tathāgata sequence (Prabhūta-ratna / Surūpa-kāya / Vipula-kāya / Abhayaṃkara) that is the heart of the Yán-kǒu dhāraṇī cult — that sequence is supplied either by Bù-kōng’s recension alone or by his independent expansion. The dhāraṇī itself is given in a slightly different transcription. The merit catalogue is essentially the same: protection from non-humans, yakṣa, rākṣasa, and bhūta spirits, increase of life-span and merit, and equivalence to making offerings to immeasurable Tathāgatas.
Date bracket: Śikṣānanda’s principal Cháng’ān translation activity (695–704) under 武則天 Wǔ Zétiān, prior to his return to Khotan in 705. His subsequent recall by 中宗 Zhōngzōng (708) and death (710) provide the absolute terminus; but the bulk of his short-text production falls in the 695–704 period at the Dà biàn-kōng-sì 大遍空寺 and Fó-shòu-jì-sì 佛授記寺, alongside the great 80-fascicle Avataṃsaka. The Sanskrit reconstruction is the same Pretamukhāgnijvālayaśarakāradhāraṇī(sūtra) used by CANWWW for KR6j0544.
The existence of two independent Tang translations of essentially the same ritual narrative — Bù-kōng’s Yán-kǒu (T1313) and Śikṣānanda’s Miàn-rán (T1314) — establishes that an Indic-language source for the Avalokiteśvara → Ānanda → Buddha → four-Tathāgata dhāraṇī tradition was in circulation in Central Asia at least from the late seventh century, and that the Burning-Mouth cult is not solely a Tángmì creation by Amoghavajra.
Translations and research
- Orzech, Charles D. “Saving the Burning-Mouth Hungry Ghost.” In Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 278–283. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. (Discusses the Bù-kōng / Śikṣānanda double recension.)
- Orzech, Charles D. “Fang Yankou and Pudu: Translation, Metaphor, and Religious Identity.” In Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual, edited by Livia Kohn and Harold Roth, 213–234. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002.
- Lye Hsiao-Lan, Hun Yeow. Feeding Ghosts: A Study of the Yuqie Yankou Rite. PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 2003.