Wǔdà niúyù yǔbǎo tuóluóní yíguǐ 五大牛玉雨寶陀羅尼儀軌
Ritual Manual of the Dhāraṇī of the Five Great Bull-King Jewels for Raining Down Treasure by 縛日羅枳惹曩 (譯)
About the work
A short (1卷) Tang-period Esoteric (mìjiào 密教) ritual manual (yíguǐ 儀軌, vidhi) preserved as X02 no. 201 in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏經, attributed to the otherwise-unknown translator 縛日羅枳惹曩 (Vajrajñāna). The text presents the dhāraṇī of the Five Great Bull-King Jewels (pañcamahā-go-ratna) — the so-called “rain-of-treasure” (ratnavarṣa) cult — in the form of a complete ritual liturgy: invocation of the Vairocana maṇḍala, formal entry of the deity Ākāśavikrīḍitarāja 虛空神通王菩薩 (“Sovereign-Bodhisattva of the Spiritual-Powers of Open Space”) who is the speaker of the dhāraṇī, sequence of mudrās (印) and mantras for purification, abhiṣeka, and oblation, culminating in the consecration of a crystal japamālā and a hundred-thousand-fold recitation regime.
Prefaces
The text opens with the standard evaṃ-mayā-śrutaṃ frame: “At that time the Tathāgata, in the secret palace of Vajra-śekhara yoga, surrounded by an assembly numerous as motes of dust …” (爾時如來在金剛頂瑜伽祕密宮殿中。與微塵數諸大眾俱). The bodhisattva Ākāśavikrīḍitarāja asks permission to expound the dhāraṇī, “having in former kalpas, made offerings to all the buddhas and practiced the highest secret teachings, on behalf of beings in the corrupt age (pañca-kaṣāya) — householders and renunciants alike — who are poor, distressed, of meagre merit, lacking necessaries, whose wished-for objects do not follow their will” (為濁世眾生等在家出家貧窮困苦薄福之類資具乏少所求願事不隨其意). The Tathāgata grants permission and reveals that he himself, in former kalpas, vowed to manifest as a great water-buffalo king (mahāgorāja) of jeweled body — silver hooves, golden horns, lapis-lazuli colour — to bring forth treasures for sentient beings.
The body of the manual then sets out the ritual: the Jūnzhālì 軍吒利 (Kuṇḍalin) mudrā and mantra; the xiàn èqiā shuǐ 獻閼伽水 (offering of argha water); the xiàn huázuò 獻華座 (lotus-seat offering); the universal-offering mudrā; the jīngāng héngzhǎng 金剛合掌 with the praise-verse to the Pañcamahā-go-ratna bodhisattva; the jiémó 羯磨 (karma) mudrā with the visualization “I now contemplate that my body is none other than the body of the Five Great Bull-King-Jewel Bodhisattva” (觀想我身即同五大牛玉菩薩); and finally the consecration of the japamālā with the dhāraṇī to be recited 1,080 times daily for a total of 1,000,000 recitations (滿一百萬遍。一切求願莫不成就). A closing valedictory verse warns that the rite must not be transmitted to the unworthy, and that the disciple must be one whose conduct is pure, who reveres the Three Jewels, and who has received abhiṣeka from a master (從師入壇巳灌頂).
Abstract
The text is a representative example of the post-Bùkōng 不空 (Amoghavajra) wave of Yogatantra-style ritual manuals (jīngāngdǐng 金剛頂 cycle) compiled or translated in late Tang and Five-Dynasties China, with strong continuity into the Heian-period Japanese Tōmitsu / Taimitsu tradition. It is not listed in the Kāiyuán shìjiào lù 開元釋教錄 (730), the Zhēnyuán xīndìng shìjiào mùlù 貞元新定釋教目錄 (800), or any standard Sòng catalogue under this title or under the translator’s name; the Xùzàngjīng witness comes ultimately from a Japanese transmission, as confirmed by the closing colophon dated Bunpō 3 = 1319 (文保三年正月三日 — i.e. the third year of the Bunpō era, 3rd day of the 1st month) at the Fùtuìsì Rùzhēnfáng 不退寺入真房 (a sub-cloister of the Tōnan-in 東南院 of Tōdai-ji). The colophon attributes the secret transmission of this text to Cíjué Dàshī 慈覺大師 (Ennin 圓仁, 794–864), the Tendai patriarch who introduced Taimitsu after his pilgrimage to Tang China.
The dating bracket is therefore set conservatively at 770–900 for the original Chinese composition / translation: it post-dates Bùkōng’s death (774) on stylistic grounds, and pre-dates Ennin’s return to Japan (847) by hypothesis of the colophon-attested Tendai transmission. The text is fundamentally a prosperity-and-treasure ritual (lābhapūjā) in the Vajra-śekhara idiom — alongside its more famous counterparts the Pratisarā 隨求 and Vasudhārā 持世 dhāraṇī manuals — and reflects the late-Tang elaboration of esoteric apotropaic-prosperity ritual for monastic and lay clientele.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located. For the broader genre of Tang post-Amoghavajra Esoteric ritual manuals (yíguǐ 儀軌), see Charles D. Orzech, Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism (Penn State Press, 1998); Charles D. Orzech, Henrik H. Sørensen, Richard K. Payne (eds.), Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Brill, 2011); and Ronald M. Davidson, “Studies in Dhāraṇī Literature II: Pragmatics of dhāraṇīs,” Bulletin of SOAS 77.1 (2014): 5–61. For the Japanese Tendai Taimitsu transmission of this and related manuals, see Lucia Dolce, Esoteric Buddhism in Pre-modern Japan (Brill, forthcoming) and the Tendaishū zensho 天台宗全書 Mikkyō volumes.
Other points of interest
The closing colophon is a particularly clear instance of the Heian-Kamakura Japanese transmission’s secrecy ethos: the manual was deliberately not circulated, even within the master-disciple lineage, “in order that this method should not be cut off” (為令此法令斷絕。雖傳受之深隱心腑。不敢披露俱能知彼器。可傳受之云云). Such kuden 口傳 (oral-transmission) annotations are valuable witnesses to the social history of esoteric textual transmission.