Bǎiqiānyìn tuóluóní jīng 百千印陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Hundred-Thousand-Seal Dhāraṇī by 實叉難陀 (Śikṣānanda, 譯)
About the work
A short Wǔ-Zhōu-period (大周, 690–705) translation by 實叉難陀 Śikṣānanda (652–710). The colophon “大周三藏實叉難陀奉制譯”. This text and its companion KR6j0600 (T1369b) are two surviving recensions of the same translation by the same translator — the Taishō editors preserved both because they differ in transcription detail and in the second colophon (the “great-Zhōu” form here vs. the “Táng” form in KR6j0600). The dating bracket is Śikṣānanda’s Wǔ-Zhōu period, between his arrival at Luòyáng in 695 and the end of Wǔ Zétiān’s reign in 705.
Abstract
The Buddha sits at Vulture-Peak (耆闍崛山) in Rājagṛha with the bhikṣu-saṅgha and a great host of bodhisattvas. He pronounces the Bǎiqiānyìn (“Hundred-thousand-seal”) dhāraṇī, prescribed for stūpa-deposit: anyone who builds a single stūpa and places this dhāraṇī within it acquires the merit of building a hundred-thousand stūpas. The text gives in succession (1) the root dhāraṇī (mūla-dhāraṇī), (2) the heart dhāraṇī (hṛdaya-dhāraṇī), and (3) the follow-the-heart dhāraṇī (upahṛdaya-dhāraṇī) — the standard triple-dhāraṇī programme of the Táng esoteric texts.
The work is one of the principal Chinese textual sources for the dharma-relic ideology by which a written-and-deposited dhāraṇī is held to substitute for the bodily-relic of the Buddha — a doctrine of immense practical importance for the late-Táng and Sòng explosion of stūpa-deposit dhāraṇī in inscribed-print form. Nanjio N0939; recorded in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù.
Translations and research
- Schopen, Gregory. “The Phrase ‘sa pṛthivīpradeśaś caityabhūto bhavet’ in the Vajracchedikā: Notes on the Cult of the Book in Mahāyāna.” Indo-Iranian Journal 17 (1975), 147–181. — foundational study of the dhāraṇī-as-relic doctrine, of which T1369 is one of the cleanest exemplars.
- Strickmann, Michel. Mantras et mandarins. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. — extensive treatment of the stūpa-deposit dhāraṇī tradition.