Toh 547The Dhāraṇī “Mañjuśrī’s Promise”

Summary

Mañjuśrī’s Promise begins without preamble
with a Sanskrit praise text in the form of a dhāraṇī that resembles other
traditional encomiums that exult in the purity, grace, and triumph of
bodhisattvas. The scripture then enumerates the benefits accrued by a single
recitation of this dhāraṇī, which include the purification of evil deeds accumulated
over eons, and the many rewards for its extensive recitation, namely erudition,
exceptional powers of memorization, and finally the sight of the body of
Mañjuśrī himself.

Acknowledgements

Translated by David Mellins and Kaia Fischer, with Geshé Lobsang Dawa and
Phakyab Rinpoche (Geshé Ngawang Sungrab), under the auspices of the Tibetan
Classics Translators Guild of New York. Introduction by David Mellins and Kaia
Fischer. Special thanks to Paul Hackett for generously sharing his bibliographic
expertise and resources. This translation would not have been possible without
the kind and dedicated tutelage of Gen Lozang Jamspal, Executive Director,
Tibetan Classics Translators Guild of New York.

The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of
84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.

Introduction

Mañjuśrī’s Promise is a short dhāraṇī
text that exults in the purity, grace, and triumph of the bodhisattva
Mañjuśrī. The Tibetan translation lacks Sanskrit and Tibetan titles, and the
text opens simply with a salutation to Mañjuśrī in Sanskrit. This suggests
that the Tibetan translators considered the salutation to be part of the
dhāraṇī proper and thus did not translate it into Tibetan. Following the
dhāraṇī proper, the scripture describes the benefits associated with its
recitation a single time, which include the purification of evil deeds accumulated
over eons, and then the rewards reaped by its extensive recitation, namely
erudition, exceptional powers of memorization, and eventually the sight of
the body of Mañjuśrī himself.

A Sanskrit version of the text is to our knowledge no longer extant, and it appears that the text was never translated into Chinese. The Tibetan translation lacks a
colophon, so we have no information about the history of its transmission or
the identity of its translators. Its absence from the Denkarma and
Phangthangma catalogs suggests that it was translated into Tibetan later
than the beginning of the ninth century ce, but earlier than the flourishing of the
scholar Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364), who listed it, along with the other
texts of this collection, in his History of
Buddhism.

Mañjuśrī’s Promise appears as the third
text in a collection of six Mañjuśrī dhāraṇī scriptures (Toh 545–550) in the
Tantra section of the Degé Kangyur. Interestingly, only this text among the
six does not also appear in the Dhāraṇī section or in the corresponding
sections of any of the other Kangyurs of the Tshalpa line. It is possible
that the compilers considered the text primarily as a praise rather than a dhāraṇī per se, and this may explain the exclusion.

This English translation is based on the Degé Kangyur version (Toh
547), in consultation with the variant readings recorded in the Comparative
Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and with the Stok
Palace version.

The Translation

The Dhāraṇī

Mañjuśrī’s Promise

Those who uphold, read aloud, or teach this dhāraṇī will obtain a
keen intellect. If they chant it a single time, they will memorize a hundred
dhāraṇīs, and every single one of the evil deeds they have accumulated over a
thousand eons will be purified. If they recite it a hundred thousand times,
they will become erudite in the five sciences. If they recite it two hundred
thousand times, they will retain in memory all the teachings they have heard. If they
recite it three hundred thousand times, they will behold the body of
Mañjuśrī.

This concludes the dhāraṇī “Mañjuśrī’s
Promise.”

Notes

Bibliography

Tibetan Sources

Western Language Sources