Néng jìng yīqiè yǎnjíbìng tuóluóní jīng 能淨一切眼疾病陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī Able to Purify All Eye-Diseases by 不空 (Bùkōng, Amoghavajra, 譯)
About the work
A short one-fascicle Esoteric healing dhāraṇī translated by Amoghavajra (不空) under imperial commission, paired with KR6j0554 (T1323) as the eye-disease member of the late-Bùkōng medical Esoteric corpus. The Sanskrit reconstruction Cakṣur-viśodhana-vidyā (“Eye-Purifying Knowledge-mantra”) is preserved by CANWWW, which also gives the alternate Chinese title 眼疾病陀羅尼經 Yǎnjíbìng tuóluóní jīng.
Abstract
The frame is unusually concrete for a dhāraṇī text: the Buddha is in the Śākya-clan settlement near Kapilavastu. There is a particular Śākya named Qǐshàimójiā 乞曬麼迦 (Skt. Kṣemaka “Tranquil-Safe”, a stock Śākya-clan name from the Mūla-sarvāstivāda Vinaya) living in the village of Chēnímójiā 車尼摩迦 (perhaps Skt. Cāṇī-māka or similar), described as a layman of unwavering faith in the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṃgha — the threefold formula given six times in two clauses (淨信 / 歸依 / 不疑 of each of the Three Jewels separately) — but who suffers from blindness or near-blindness: “the eye-objects he sees in form-shape, but he cannot see them” (其人眼所見色相而不得見). Kṣemaka, despairing, calls aloud to the Buddha for help: “Homage to the Buddha-World-Honoured-One, the wisdom-torch dhāraṇī able to make light, refuge in the Sugata Great-Compassionate-One; protect, accept, and shelter me, and make my eyes pure.”
The Buddha — far away near Kapilavastu but hearing with the divya-cakṣus and divya-śrotra — instructs Ānanda to take the dhāraṇī to Kṣemaka and recite it as protection-blessing (adhiṣṭhāna) over him. The dhāraṇī is given:
tadyathā hili miri lekhi hili hete huyu huyu huya mane huru huru duru duru svāhā
The Buddha then enumerates what the dhāraṇī is effective against: eye-disease produced by wind-defilement (眼垢風垢), by bile (黃病), by phlegm (痰病), and by all three combined (三集病) — that is, the standard tridoṣa / 風-黃-痰 schema — and enjoins Ānanda to recite it three times by day and three times by night. The text continues with a long satya-vacana affirmation by which the dhāraṇī is sealed: “by the truth-speech of the Arhat, by the truth-speech of right-and-pure precepts, by the truth-speech of the Sevenfold Buddha, by the truth-speech of the pratyekabuddha … may my eyes be pure.” Among the entities named as causes of eye-disease against which the dhāraṇī protects are deva, nāga, yakṣa, rākṣasa, rākṣasī, piśācī, kumbhāṇḍa, kumbhāṇḍī, vetāla-revenants, human curses, and brāhmaṇa curses. Ānanda then carries the dhāraṇī to Kṣemaka, who hears it and at once “his eye-veins are purified, his vision restored, all defilement gone.”
The text is significant as one of the few Táng Buddhist eye-disease dhāraṇī to survive in canonical transmission, and as the principal source for the Buddhist medical use of the three-doṣa schema (tridoṣa) in eye-disease specifically. It survives also in Tibetan parallel as Mig-nad rab-tu zhi-bar byed-pa. 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.
- Salguero, C. Pierce. Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
- Salguero, C. Pierce, ed. Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. (Includes related Buddhist healing dhāraṇī material.)