Chú yīqiè jíbìng tuóluóní jīng 除一切疾病陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī for Removing All Sicknesses by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A very short one-fascicle Esoteric healing dhāraṇī translated by Amoghavajra (不空) under imperial commission. The Sanskrit reconstruction Sarva-roga-praśamani-dhāraṇī(sūtra) (so CANWWW) is otherwise unattested in extant Indic sources. CANWWW also preserves the alternate Chinese title 除病經 Chúbìng jīng (“Sūtra for Removing Sickness”). The text is one of three short Bùkōng healing-dhāraṇī in Taishō vol. 21 — alongside KR6j0555 (T1324) for eye-disease and the present text for general disease — that together form the late-Bùkōng medical Esoteric corpus.
Abstract
The frame is the standard evaṃ mayā śrutam: the Buddha is at the Anāthapiṇḍika park near Śrāvastī with 1,250 bhikṣus and a great host of mahāsattva bodhisattvas. The Buddha addresses Ānanda directly: “There is a dhāraṇī capable of removing all sicknesses of the world; you should receive, retain, recite, master, and wisely contemplate it.”
The dhāraṇī is then given:
tadyathā vimale vimale vana-kukile śrīmati kuṇḍale dundubhe indrāgni mūle svāhā
The Buddha then enumerates the conditions cured: undigested food (sù-shí bù-xiāo 宿食不消), cholera-and-diarrhoea (huò-luàn 癨亂), wind-disease, biliousness, phlegm-disease, haemorrhoidal fistulae (痔瘻 — note the parallel with KR6j0556), urinary obstruction (淋), wheeze and asthma (上氣), coughing, malaria-fevers (瘧寒熱), headache and migraine (頭痛半痛), and possession by bhūta-graha spirits (著鬼魅者). The text closes with the Buddha’s adhiṣṭhāna-formula by satya-vacana — “by the truth-speech of the Tathāgata is supreme among all beings, by the truth-speech that the desire-free Dharma is supreme among Dharmas, by the truth-speech that the saṃgha is supreme among assemblies — may I and all sentient beings, having taken food, have it digested in the belly and gain right tranquillity, svāhā.”
The dhāraṇī’s enumerated indications are noteworthy because they correspond closely to the standard Indian Āyurvedic tridoṣa schema (vāta-pitta-kapha = 風-黃-痰), here translated fēng-huáng-tán 風黃痰, with the addition of digestive and graha-possession entries. The text is one of the principal Tang Buddhist witnesses to the Indian medical-doctrinal apparatus in Chinese.
The dating bracket follows Bùkōng’s principal Cháng’ān period (746–774).
Translations and research
- Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Magical Medicine. Edited by Bernard Faure. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. (The principal English-language treatment of Buddhist healing-dhāraṇī in China; treats the present text alongside KR6j0555 and KR6j0556 in the framework of “therapeutic Buddhism”.)
- Salguero, C. Pierce. Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. (For the broader translation-history of Buddhist medical texts into Chinese.)