Fó shuō shī èguǐ gānlùwèi dà tuóluóní jīng 佛說施餓鬼甘露味大陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Great Dhāraṇī of the Sweet-Dew Flavour for Bestowing Food on Hungry Ghosts, Spoken by the Buddha by 跋馱木阿 (Bátuómùā, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Esoteric Burning-Mouth / Sweet-Dew sūtra, the longest and most narratively elaborate text in the entire Yánkǒu cluster. The translator 跋馱木阿 is otherwise unknown — he is recorded in the canonical record solely on the basis of this attribution. The Sanskrit title may underlie the in-text gloss Qìnnuóbìlìduō mótuóluóní bānzhē tuóluóní 嚫那畢利哆摩陀羅(二合)般遮陀羅尼 (~ Cintā-pretamoda-pañca-dhāraṇī or perhaps Pretamokṣamada-pañca-dhāraṇī), glossed in the Chinese as 施餓鬼甘露味大道場會陀羅尼.
Abstract
The text frames the Burning-Mouth / Sweet-Dew dhāraṇī teaching not — as in KR6j0544 — as Avalokiteśvara’s revelation to the Buddha-as-brāhmaṇa, but as the Buddha’s direct revelation in the great assembly to the bodhisattva Yuè’ài 月愛 (“Moon-Love”). The setting is grand and Mahāyāna in scope: the Buddha is teaching at the Hǎihuì 海會 (“Ocean Assembly”), seated on a vajra-octagonal lion-throne at the Lǔjī shěpóluó 嚧鷄舍婆羅 bodhimaṇḍa on the diamond-wheel-peak of Gūtuóshān 孤陀山. From his heart the Buddha emits a moonstone-coloured light called Yuè’ài cíguāng 月愛慈光 (“Moon-Love Kindly-Light”), illuminating the entire universe from the Bhavāgra down to the Avīci hell, so that all the assembly can see the sufferings of the six destinies. This is the dramatic frame.
The Buddha then expounds at length, in an extraordinary passage of Mahāyāna preta-anatomy without parallel in the rest of the canon, the thirty-six types of hungry ghost (薛荔多 preta, 車耶 chāyā shadow-ghost, 健馱 gandha fragrance-ghost, 布瑟波 puṣpa flower-ghost, 偈婆耶 garbhāya foetus-ghost, 阿輸遮 aśauca impurity-ghost, 婆哆 vāta wind-ghost, 烏馱訶羅 udvāhāra essence-ghost, 馱羅質多 dhara-citta anger-ghost, 質多 citta malice-ghost, 皤嚕耶 bali sacrificial-food-ghost, 視尾哆 jīvita lifespan-eating-ghost, 𦬊莎鷄馱 māṃsa-skanda meat-and-grease-ghost, 蛇底 jāti newborn-eating-ghost, 羯吒布單那 kaṭa-pūtana corpse-stench-ghost, 鳩盤荼 kumbhāṇḍa, 畢舍遮 piśāca) and the manner of their suffering — the bodily form like a great mountain-mass of fire, the head five-Sumeru-mountains broad, the throat needle-fine, the belly like a drum; the various tortures inflicted by the Yama-bureaucracy and by birds-of-prey, by carnivorous beasts, by 18,000 minute parasites in each pore. The passage takes up nearly a third of the entire text and is a key source for medieval Chinese preta-cosmology. (Strickmann 2002 makes important use of this passage in his treatment of Buddhist demonology.)
The bodhisattva Yuè’ài then asks the Buddha to teach a method of rescue, and the Buddha reveals the dhāraṇī, named Qìnnuó bìlìduō dàdàochǎnghuì gānlùwèi fǎ 嚫那畢唎多大道場會甘露味法. The ritual is given in three escalating tiers:
- Summoning dhāraṇī — namo pubhuri tathāgatāya — to summon the pretas (also embedded as the call-mantra in KR6j0544 T1313).
- Throat-opening dhāraṇī — oṃ pubhuri kataritā tathāgata — to open their throats.
- Water-empowerment dhāraṇī — namaḥ surūpāya tathāgatāya tadyathā oṃ suru suru prasuru svāhā — the Surūpa-kāya amṛta mantra (cf. KR6j0547 T1316), turning a single handful of water into ten droṇa of amṛta.
- Food-bestowal dhāraṇī — namaḥ savā tathāgatā nava-gate sambhara sambhara — the food-blessing.
The text then incorporates a substantially developed maṇḍala-altar rite: a three-cubit maṇḍala with four directional water-bowls, four corner-incense-burners, central oil-lamp, central lotus-throne, four offering-cakes; the practitioner faces west to the central seat and visualises the sufferings of the six destinies, weeping in compassion until karuṇā breaks open the heart. The rite is performed for fourteen rounds of amṛta-bīja offering into a fire-pit, and concludes with the vajra-mukha dispatching mantra. The text closes with a long catalogue of twenty kinds of merit-aggregate that accrue to the practitioner, and a verse-summary praising Avalokiteśvara as the kalaviṅka-voiced revealer of the Sweet-Dew teaching.
The dating is uncertain. The translator is canonically attested only here, and the text style — long expository Mahāyāna preta-anatomy + condensed Tángmì ritual + bodhisattva-saṃgha frame — is most consistent with a late-Táng horizon, after the 不空 Bùkōng synthesis but before the Huìchāng persecution. A bracket of 780–850 is given here with the understanding that closer dating must wait on further philological work; the text is not noted in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù (730), so a terminus a quo of c. 780 is at least defensible.
Translations and research
- Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Magical Medicine. Edited by Bernard Faure. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. (Uses the present text’s preta-cosmology in the analysis of Buddhist demonology.)
- Orzech, Charles D. “Saving the Burning-Mouth Hungry Ghost.” In Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr., 278–283. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
- Lye Hsiao-Lan. Feeding Ghosts: A Study of the Yuqie Yankou Rite. PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 2003. (Treats T1321 as a source for the Yuán/Míng yánkǒu altar rite of KR6j0551.)