Shìjiào zuìshàngchéng mìmìzàng tuóluóní jí 釋教最上乘秘密藏陀羅尼集
Collection of Dhāraṇīs of the Highest-Vehicle Secret-Treasury of the Buddhist Teaching by 行琳 Xínglín (集)
About the work
A monumental thirty-fascicle (30卷) comprehensive Tang-period anthology of Buddhist dhāraṇīs, compiled by 行琳 Xínglín 行琳, Sānzàng shāmén 三藏沙門 (“Tripiṭaka-master”), titled Chuán mìjiào Chāowù dàshī 傳密教超悟大師 (“Master of Surpassing Awakening, Transmitter of the Esoteric Teaching”), and recipient of the imperial honor 賜紫 (purple-robe), of Dà’ānguósì 大安國寺 in the Tang capital Shàngdū 上都 (Cháng’ān 長安). The work is preserved in the Fángshān shíjīng 房山石經 stone-sutra inscriptions at Yúnjūsì 雲居寺 (Fángshān, Hebei) and survives nowhere else; the modern reading-text is the CBETA edition based on the Fángshān stone-sutras (F28 no. 1071) and the Zhōnghuá dàzàngjīng 中華大藏經 reproduction (H068, no. 1619).
Prefaces
The work opens with Xínglín’s own preface, Shìjiào zuìshàngchéng mìmìzàng tuóluóní jí xù 釋教最上乘秘密藏陁羅尼集序, dated precisely:
時大唐乾寧五年，歲在戊午，寄安順政太陽躔次大火望圓之日集畢。
— “The work was finished on the day of the full moon when the sun was in the asterism Dàhuǒ 大火 (= Antares region, lunar mansion Xīn 心), in the cyclical year wùwǔ 戊午 of Qiánníng 乾寧 5 of the Great Tang, jì’ān shùnzhèng.*”
This corresponds to 898 CE, the final year of the Qiánníng era of Tang Zhāozōng 唐昭宗 (the Tang’s penultimate reign before the dynasty’s collapse in 907). The cyclical date wùwǔ 戊午 confirms 898.
The preface is one of the most articulate late-Tang manifestos of Esoteric Buddhism as a self-conscious zōng 宗 (school). Xínglín opens with a doctrinal definition: tuóluóní zhě, zǒngchí zhī fànchēng yě 陁羅尼者，揔持之梵稱也 — “Dhāraṇī is the Sanskrit name for zǒngchí 揔持 (‘total holding’).” He then situates the Esoteric path against the xiǎn 顯 (exoteric) path: jiào yǎn duō tú, zōng fēn wéi èr, xiǎn zhī yǔ mì, tǒng jìn qí yuán 教演多途，宗分唯二，顯之與密，統盡其源 — “Though the teaching unfolds along many paths, the schools are divided into only two: exoteric and esoteric; together they exhaust the source.” Xiǎn comprises the wǔxìng sānchéng 五性三乘 (five-natures, three-vehicles); mì is the zǒngchí mìzàng tuóluóní mén 揔持秘藏陁羅尼門 (dhāraṇī gate of the secret-treasury of total-holding), founded by Vairocana 毗盧, “secretly transmitted from then to now without break.” Xínglín honors the three Tang Esoteric patriarchs Kāiyuán sān dàshì 開元三大士 — 善無畏 Śubhakarasiṃha 善無畏, 金剛智 Vajrabodhi 金剛智, and 不空 Amoghavajra 不空 — as the founders of Esoteric Buddhism on Chinese soil at Cháng’ān. He laments the post-Huìchāng (845) decline of the Esoteric tradition (益以洚乱之後，明藏星隳，慮漸陵夷), positions his own anthology as a corrective philological enterprise (乃詢諸舊譯，搜驗眾經，言多質略，不契梵音，今則揩切新文，貴全印語), and offers it as an act of imperial-Buddhist gratitude: 上報國恩，敬酬佛德，希寰海之清寧，保皇圖於萬劫 (“In repayment for the Country’s grace, in reverent gratitude to the Buddha’s virtue, in hope of the world’s peace, to safeguard the imperial realm for ten-thousand kalpas”).
Abstract
The Shìjiào zuìshàngchéng mìmìzàng tuóluóní jí (henceforth Mìmìzàng) is the single most comprehensive late-Tang Esoteric Buddhist dhāraṇī compendium, and arguably the most important Esoteric anthology between the Kāiyuán-period (713–741) translation programs of the Three Great Masters and the Sòng-period imperial Mìjiào translation projects. The work organizes hundreds of dhāraṇīs into a systematic taxonomy by deity-class, articulated in the preface: 佛頂顯最尊奇特，佛心示覺體玄深，諸佛以福智果圓，佛母表出生慈育，菩薩悲行接物，明王調伏難調，聖天殄毒豊饒，世主加威愛護，諸經散說巧濟隨根 — i.e., the deity-classes are:
- Fódǐng 佛頂 (Buddha-Crown / Uṣṇīṣa) deities — the most exalted (juan 1ff. opens with the Lúnwáng fódǐng yīzì tuóluóní 輪王佛頂一字陁羅尼, the Fóyǎn tuóluóní 佛眼陁羅尼, and the various Báisǎngài / Guāngjù / Gāo / Shèng / Bànshì / Cuīhuài / Cuīhuǐ / Wúnéngshèng / Biànzhào fódǐng dhāraṇīs);
- Fóxīn 佛心 (Buddha-Mind) deities;
- Zhūfó 諸佛 (Buddhas) — blessed-and-wise fruition;
- Fómǔ 佛母 (Buddha-Mothers) — productive nurturance (Cundī, Mahāmāyūrī, Tārā etc.);
- Púsà 菩薩 (Bodhisattvas) — compassionate engagement;
- Míngwáng 明王 (Wisdom-Kings / Vidyārāja) — subjugation of the difficult-to-tame;
- Shèngtiān 聖天 (Holy Devas) — eradicating poisons, granting abundance;
- Shìzhǔ 世主 (World-Sovereign deities) — protectors who add awesome force (juan 30 opens with Brahmā-rāja, Maheśvara, Māra Pāpīyas, Indra, the Four Heavenly Kings, Vaiśravaṇa in his many forms, Mahāśrī devī);
- Zhūjīng sǎnshuō 諸經散說 (sūtra-scattered) dhāraṇīs — those distributed throughout other sūtras.
The work is textually pioneering for its phonetic apparatus: Xínglín’s stated editorial principle is kǎiqiē xīnwén, guì quán yìnyǔ 揩切新文，貴全印語 — “to set in good order the new text, valuing the wholeness of the Sanskrit word.” Each mantra is given with elaborate fǎnqiè 反切 phonetic notations and èrhé 二合 (conjunct-consonant) markers, often correcting earlier translations against what Xínglín identifies as the underlying Sanskrit yìnyǔ 印語. This makes the anthology one of the principal sources for the late-Tang reception of Sanskrit phonetics in Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, alongside the Yīqiè jīng yīnyì 一切經音義 of 慧琳 Huìlín (lifedates 737–820, slightly earlier).
Transmission. The work was apparently never widely circulated as a paper edition: it is absent from the standard Sòng-Yuán-Míng catalogs and from the Korean and Japanese canons, and would have been completely lost but for its preservation by stone-inscription at Fángshān 房山 (Yúnjūsì 雲居寺, Hebei). The Fángshān corpus contains over fourteen thousand stone-tablets carved between the Suí period (c. 605) and the Liao-Jin and Ming, preserving texts that elsewhere disappeared; the Mìmìzàng survives there in the Liao-period inscription of the Yúnzì hào 雲字号, Jùnzì hào 俊字号 etc. cliff-tablets. The CBETA Fángshān series (F = Fángshān shíjīng) edition is the modern critical reading-text. The work entered modern East Asian Buddhist scholarship through Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆’s Fángshān surveys and through the post-1956 Chinese Fángshān stone-sutra reproduction projects.
Author. 行琳 Xínglín (DILA A000420; 9th c., fl. 880s–890s) is otherwise unknown beyond this work and its preface. As Chuán mìjiào Chāowù dàshī 傳密教超悟大師 — “Esoteric Teaching Transmitting Master of Surpassing Awakening” — he held a quasi-official imperial-monastic ecclesiastical title at the Cháng’ān imperial monastery Dà’ānguósì 大安國寺, founded under Tàizōng (627–649) and rebuilt by Xuánzōng. His ordination lineage is not specified, but the doctrinal alignment of the Mìmìzàng with the Three Great Masters (善無畏 / 金剛智 / 不空) places him in the direct heritage of Tángmì 唐密 as it survived through the late Tang.
Translations and research
- Misaki Ryōshū 三崎良周, “Tōdai Mikkyō no kenkyū” 唐代密教の研究 (in Mikkyō shisō 密教思想, 1994) — fundamental Japanese-language survey of late-Tang Esoteric Buddhism, with detailed discussion of Xínglín and the Mìmìzàng as a key witness to post-Huìchāng Esoteric continuity at Cháng’ān.
- Tsukamoto Zenryū 塚本善隆, Bōzan unkyo-ji to sekkokyō 房山雲居寺と石刻經 (Kyoto, 1937) — foundational survey of the Fángshān stone-sutra corpus and the place of Xínglín’s anthology within it.
- Lǚ Jiànfú 呂建福, Zhōngguó mìjiào shǐ 中國密教史 (Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué, 1995; 2nd ed. 2011) — standard Chinese survey of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism, with chapters on Xínglín’s Mìmìzàng as the principal late-Tang anthology.
- Charles D. Orzech, Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism (Penn State, 1998) and idem (ed.), Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (Brill, 2011) — chapters on the late-Tang Esoteric reception, including Xínglín.
- Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (Columbia, 2002) — for the Indic-Buddhist context of the dhāraṇī-collection genre.
- Strickmann, Michel, Mantras et mandarins: le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) — for the broader context of Esoteric Buddhism and dhāraṇī practice in medieval China.
- The CBC@ database at https://dazangthings.nz/cbc/ records the Fángshān edition and the Mìmìzàng’s relations to Tang Esoteric Tripiṭaka materials.
Other points of interest
The Mìmìzàng is the key witness to the survival of Esoteric Buddhism at Cháng’ān after the Huìchāng persecution of 845. The Three Great Masters’ lineage is conventionally treated as terminating at the Huìchāng disaster, but Xínglín’s 898-CE preface — written from within Dà’ānguósì in the imperial capital, claiming an unbroken Esoteric zōng with court patronage — demonstrates that Tángmì retained institutional life into the very last decade of the Tang. Within nine years (907) Tang would fall and Cháng’ān would be sacked; the Mìmìzàng was thus apparently composed at the terminus ad quem of late-Tang imperial Buddhism. Its survival via Liao-period stone-inscription at Fángshān, rather than via the Sòng paper canons, accordingly preserves a unique witness to a tradition that the standard catalogs lost.