Fó shuō shèng zhuāngyán tuóluóní jīng 佛說聖莊嚴陀羅尼經
Sūtra of the Holy Adornment Dhāraṇī
by 施護 (譯)
About the work
A two-fascicle Northern-Sòng translation by 施護 Shīhù at the Sòng Institute. The colophon “西天譯經三藏朝散大夫試鴻臚少卿傳法大師臣施護奉詔譯”. The text is closely related to KR6j0608 Bǎodài tuóluóní jīng (T1377) — both deal with the Rāhula child-protection narrative — but is the longer and more elaborate of the pair.
Abstract
The Buddha at Kapilavastu (迦毘羅城) in the Aśoka-tree-grove (無憂樹園), with Ānanda and the great bhikṣu-saṅgha, Maitreya, and an exhaustive demonological audience: deva, nāga, yakṣa, rākṣasa, asura, garuḍa, gandharva, kinnara, piśāca, preta, kumbhāṇḍa, pūtana, graha-grasping spirits; the twenty-eight great yakṣa generals, the four great yakṣa-army-leaders, all the planetary-and-stellar spirits (jiǔyào 九曜, èrshí-bā xiù 二十八宿), and the Snow-Mountain ascetic-sages. To this is added a long roll-call of rākṣasī-mothers (Hūjiā-nǐ-lì 護迦儞隷, Bùxiě-nǎ-lǐ-zhǐ-zhā 布寫那哩枳吒, Jiā-luó-ná 迦囉拏, Sūmǒ-nà 穌摩娜, Mǒhē-hēlǐ-mǎ-tāl-ǐ 摩賀賀哩摩怛哩, etc.) and the four great cardinal-direction rākṣasas (East: Hēlì 賀哩; South: Yúnà 虞拏; West: Zhǐ-shè-lǐ 枳設哩; North: Mǎ-ní-tān-duō 摩尼袒哆), each with sixty followers. The Pure-Family King’s son Rāhula is plagued by an evil-spirit nightmare; the Buddha addresses Ānanda and pronounces the Shèng-zhuāngyán dhāraṇī as the parittā of choice for child-protection.
The text is one of the most demonologically detailed of the Sòng Institute’s translations, and an important Chinese witness for the late-Indian bālarakṣā (child-protection) literature. Nanjio N0892.
Translations and research
- Filliozat, Jean. Étude de démonologie indienne: le Kumāratantra de Rāvaṇa et les textes parallèles indiens, tibétains, chinois, cambodgien et arabe. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1937. — discusses T1376 and T1377 within the broader Indo-Buddhist child-protection literature.