Zēnghuì tuóluóní jīng 增慧陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Wisdom-Increasing Dhāraṇī
by 施護 (譯)
About the work
A very short Northern-Sòng dhāraṇī-text translated by 施護 Shīhù at the Sòng Institute (982–1017). The colophon “西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試鴻臚卿傳法大師臣施護奉詔譯”. Distinctive feature: the speaker is not the Buddha but the bodhisattva Dà-huì 大慧 (Mahāmati), the famous interlocutor of the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra.
Abstract
Mahāmati sits on the summit of Mount Sumeru, surrounded by deva-sons. The bodhisattva Tóngzǐ-xiàng 童子相 (“Kumāra-rūpa”, “of-the-form-of-a-young-prince”) rises and asks him to teach a zēng-huì tuóluóní (“wisdom-increasing dhāraṇī”) for the benefit of beings of dull faculties and weak memory. Mahāmati pronounces the dhāraṇī (tan-niā-tā oṃ pī-zǔ pī-zǔ pra-jña-vardhanai jvala jvala medhā-vardhanai dhīri-dhīri buddhe vardhane svāhā — clearly recoverable Sanskrit). The application: those of dull faculties who receive, recite, copy and worship this vidyā will swiftly attain great wisdom and unforgetting memory; for the most rapid effect, recite seven or fourteen times over three hé of water, drink the water at the mǎo watch (5–7 a.m.), continue daily for seven or eight months, and you will be able to memorise a thousand verses a day; without the daily water-drinking, five hundred verses a day.
The work is a medhā-vardhana genre dhāraṇī — a category attested in many Indic kriyātantra texts and in tantric astro-medical compendia — and is one of the few Chinese examples of the genre. It belongs in the same Sòng-Institute medical-magical cluster as KR6j0561 (paediatric demonology) and KR6j0602 (universal-protection dhāraṇī). Nanjio N0890.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.