Xíchú zhōngyāo tuóluóní jīng 息除中夭陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī for Averting Untimely Death by 施護 (Shīhù, Dānapāla, 譯)
About the work
A one-fascicle Northern-Sòng dhāraṇī-sūtra translated at the Sòng Institute for the Translation of Sūtras (譯經院) by 施護 Shīhù (Dānapāla; arrived in Kāifēng 980 with 法賢; died c. 1017). The colophon attributes the work to “西天北印度烏填曩國帝釋宮寺三藏傳法大師賜紫沙門臣施護奉詔譯” — Shīhù of the Indra-Palace Monastery (帝釋宮寺) of the Uddiyāna country (烏填曩國) of north India, the chuánfǎ dàshī 傳法大師 (“Master of the Transmission of the Dharma”), in purple-robe attire. The Taishō editors mark the parallel “[No. 1346]” — i.e. the work is a Sòng re-translation of the same Indic text underlying KR6j0576 Zhū fó jíhuì tuóluóní jīng by 提雲般若 Devaprajñā.
Abstract
The narrative arc is essentially identical to KR6j0576: the Buddha at the Gaṅgā with the Four Heavenly Kings (here led by Vaiśravaṇa, the bahuśrutya of the north); the four-fold fear of birth, old-age, sickness and death, of which “untimely death” (zhōngyāo 中夭) is the most pressing; the Buddha summoning the Buddhas of all ten directions; their unison utterance of the dhāraṇī; the contributions of each of the Four Heavenly Kings; the rubric of recitation. Shīhù’s transcription of the dhāraṇī uses the standard Sòng-Institute double-syllable phonetic markers — cuó 怛, èr-hé 二合, yǐn-shēng 引聲 — that distinguish his work from Devaprajñā’s earlier transcription style.
The differences between KR6j0576 and KR6j0577 illustrate the Sòng Institute’s editorial practice: rather than reissuing the existing Wǔ-Zhōu translation, Shīhù produced a fresh rendering from a Sanskrit manuscript that may have differed in detail from Devaprajñā’s exemplar; the two are now attested as independent witnesses to a single (or very nearly single) Indic prototype. Nanjio N0883.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.