Toh 548The Noble Epithets of Mañjuśrī

Summary

The Epithets of Mañjuśrī is a concise scripture consisting of a salutation to
Mañjuśrī that highlights the qualities of his speech, a thirty-six-syllable Sanskrit dhāraṇī, and a
one-sentence statement of the benefit accrued by twenty-one recitations thereof.

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

The Epithets of Mañjuśrī is the fourth of six dhāraṇī scriptures (Toh
545–550) gathered together within the Tantra section of the Degé Kangyur that provide instruction in
incantatory practices that feature the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. Five of these scriptures (Toh 547
omitted) also appear in the Dhāraṇī section of the Degé Kangyur as Toh 892–896.

A concise scripture, it consists of a salutation to Mañjuśrī that highlights the qualities of his
speech, a thirty-six syllable Sanskrit dhāraṇī, and a one-sentence statement of the benefit accrued by
twenty-one recitations thereof. The dhāraṇī itself consists of six mantras, each six syllables in
length, that each express epithets of Mañjuśrī. The single stated benefit accrued by recitation of
this dhāraṇī is the purification of karmic obscurations incurred by the five misdeeds with immediate
retribution.

The six mantras that constitute the Sanskrit dhāraṇī in this text also appear, with only minor
variation, in chapter 7 of The Root Manual of the Rites of Mañjuśrī.
There, the Buddha explains that this dhāraṇī has been taught by 760 million buddhas to tame beings,
instruct them in the development of skillful means, and exhort them to adopt the practice of
mantra.

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

This English translation is based on the two versions in the Degé Kangyur, one in the Tantra
section (Toh 548) and the other in the Dhāraṇī section (Toh 894), in consultation with the variant
readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and with
the Stok Palace Kangyur.

The Translation

The Noble

Epithets of Mañjuśrī

Homage to noble
Mañjuśrī!

Reciting these epithets of noble Mañjuśrī twenty-one times will
purify all the karmic obscurations resulting from the five misdeeds with immediate retribution.

This concludes the noble “Epithets of Mañjuśrī.”

Notes

Bibliography

Tibetan Sources

Western Language Sources

five misdeeds with immediate retribution
mtshams med pa lnga
མཚམས་མེད་པ་ལྔ།
pañcānantarya
The five most negative actions. Upon death, those who have committed
one or more of these immediately proceed to the hells without first experiencing the
intermediate state. They are (1) killing an arhat, (2) killing one’s mother, (3)
killing one’s father, (4) creating a schism in the saṅgha, and (5) maliciously drawing
blood from a tathāgata’s body.