Dà wēidé tuóluóní jīng 大威德陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī of Great Awesome Virtue by 闍那崛多 (Jñānagupta, 等譯)
About the work
A twenty-fascicle Mahāyāna dhāraṇī-sūtra translated under the leadership of 闍那崛多 Jñānagupta (523–600) at the Suí Dàxīngshànsì 大興善寺. The colophon “隋北印度三藏闍那崛多譯” cites him as the principal but is the děng yì form of a team translation. Together with KR6j0570 Dà fǎjù tuóluóní jīng (T1340) — both 20 fascicles — it forms the great pair of large-scale dhāraṇī-frame sūtras Jñānagupta produced for the Suí court in the 590s.
Abstract
The text opens at Śrāvastī’s Jeta-grove with the standard 1,250 bhikṣus and an audience including the eight classes of deva-beings. The Buddha addresses Ānanda directly: there is a dhāraṇī fǎběn 陀羅尼法本 (dhāraṇī-mūla, “root-text of the dhāraṇī”) that the Buddhas of the past have already revealed in elaborate and abbreviated forms; he now wishes to teach it again, for the welfare and ease of all beings. From this opening the work unfolds across twenty fascicles into a sweeping doctrinal-and-ritual exposition of the Mahā-tejas-vatī-dhāraṇī (dà wēidé) — the spell of “great awesome virtue” — including detailed treatments of the bodhisattva path, the prerequisites of dhāraṇī-recitation, the visualisation programmes, and the protection of the dhāraṇī-master in the age of the decline of the dharma.
The text-history is well attested: recorded in the Lìdài sānbǎo jì 歷代三寶紀 under Jñānagupta’s Suí translations and consistently transmitted across the Goryeo, Sòng, Yuán, Míng witnesses. Nanjio N0432. Together with KR6j0570 T1340 the work constitutes one of the principal documents of the late-Suí dhāraṇī-revival, in which dhāraṇī-practice is presented not as the secondary apotropaic activity of the zhòujīng tradition but as the central path of bodhisattva cultivation.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. (No critical edition; passing references in Chinese and Japanese surveys of the dhāraṇī corpus.)