Toh 1066The Noble Dhāraṇī “The Supreme Stem Ornament”

Summary

The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament is a short
work that includes several prayers for protection, each of which is followed by an
essence-mantra.

Acknowledgements

This publication was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating
the Words of the Buddha.

The text was translated, edited, and introduced by the 84000 translation team.
Catherine Dalton produced the translation and wrote the introduction. John Canti edited the translation and the introduction, and
Dawn Collins copyedited the text. Martina Cotter was in charge of the digital
publication process.

Introduction

The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament is a
short text that includes several prayers for protection, each of which is followed by an
essence-mantra (hṛdaya). The prayers
pay homage to the Three Jewels and a number of deities, requesting protection from
astrologically inauspicious years, days, times, conjunctions, and the like, as well as
from ghosts, bad dreams, malevolent spirits, enemies, and ill health. The final prayer
requests protection from broken vows and samayas.

The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament does not
appear to be extant in Sanskrit or in Chinese. It lacks a translator’s colophon and does
not appear either in the Denkarma or the Phangthangma imperial catalogs, or among the
manuscripts found in Dunhuang.

It is included in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur and
other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that have a separate Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, and
in the equivalent part of the Tantra section in those that do not label it as such, but is not included in any Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs.

Notably, the dhāraṇī is one of only twelve works in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs
section that is not duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur. It therefore appears
that these twelve texts found their way into the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs specifically
because they were included in a Compendium of Dhāraṇīs that had been compiled on the
basis of earlier collections of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts. These
collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, circulated throughout South Asia and Tibet—including in
Dunhuang—as extracanonical dhāraṇī collections.

There are several factors that suggest the possibility (though it is by no
means a certainty) that this particular work may have been translated into Tibetan from
Chinese, rather than from Sanskrit. The first is a reference to an inauspicious
divination result specific to a Chinese style of divination. But there are other factors, as well: the work’s immediate proximity
in the Kangyur to a text that was certainly translated from Chinese (Toh 1067), the absence
of a translator’s colophon, the incorrect/incoherent Sanskrit title given at the
beginning of all of extant versions of the work, and the presence of at least one
feature indicative of the older “Chinese” translation lexicon and style described by
Stein (i.e., the vocabulary and style used to translate Buddhist texts from a variety of
languages, including Chinese, prior to the lexical standardization imposed by the Mahāvyutpatti in 814 ce).

The Sanskrit title and its variants do not seem to match the Tibetan title in
meaning, and the relationship between the title in either language and the contents of
the text remains puzzling. The transliterated Sanskrit title in the Degé and most
Kangyurs reads ga Nu a laM ka ra a
gra, while the Yongle and Qianlong Kangyurs have the slightly more plausible
variant ga Nya in place of ga Nu.
The Sanskrit gaṇ or gaṇya
(“calculate” or “compute”) might conceivably relate to the theme of
astrology present in the text, or refer to the “metrical” lines of verse that it
contains, but both possibilities are quite unlikely. The Tibetan title, even by itself
without reference to the Sanskrit, is difficult to account for, as there is no mention of a “tree” or “stem” (the most
literal meaning of the Tibetan sdong
po, Skt. gaṇḍa) in the text itself.
Elsewhere in the Kangyur the phrase sdong pos
brgyan pa is found in the chapter colophon of the Gaṇḍavyūha (the final chapter of the
Buddhāvataṃsakasūtra, Toh 44-45) as one of several versions of that text’s
title, but there is no obvious connection between this dhāraṇī and the
themes of the Gaṇḍavyūha.
On the one hand, to assume that the Tibetan sdong po
translates the Sanskrit gaṇḍa, but in its less literal
meaning of “chief” or “excellent,” could corroborate the
interpretation of the dhāraṇī being a supreme ornament. On the other hand, if instead of
gaṇḍa- one takes the gaṇya-
of the Sanskrit title found in the Yongle and Qianlong—ga Nya a laM ka ra a gra
(gaṇyālaṃkārāgra)—as part of a back-reconstruction from the Tibetan that
could reasonably be rearranged with the word agra (Tib. mchog)
at the beginning, the resulting agragaṇyālaṃkāra would make sense.
Agragaṇya, literally “to be counted as the foremost,”
simply means “best,” “principal,” or “supreme,” and the title agragaṇyālaṃkāradhāraṇī
would thus mean “The Dhāraṇī That Is a Supreme
Ornament.” Overall, however, we can only remain circumspect about how the titles of this
text as they have been preserved in different Kangyurs can be understood.

The present English translation of The Dhāraṇī of the
Supreme Stem Ornament was made from the Tibetan as found in the Degé Kangyur
recension of the work, in consultation with the notes in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma).

The Translation

The Noble

Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament

Homage to the
Three Jewels.

May all buddhas grant their protection!

I pay homage to supreme awakening;

May all noble ones grant their protection!

I pay homage to the supreme vajra;

May all knowledge granters grant their protection!

I pay homage to all the gods of the pure god realms;

May all protectors grant their protection!

I pay homage to the gods in the heavens;

May the lords of the three worlds grant their protection!

To all those who rule over the three realms of existence

I pay homage and offer worship;

Grant your compassionate blessings

To my five aggregates and limbs!

The essence-mantra of that is said to be:

Protect my five aggregates and limbs

From inauspicious years and inauspicious months,

Inauspicious days and inauspicious days of the week,

Inauspicious planets and inauspicious stars,

Inauspicious daytimes and inauspicious nighttimes,

Inauspicious middays,

Inauspicious mornings and inauspicious evenings,

Inauspicious cardinal directions and inauspicious intermediary directions,

Possession by the five ghosts, and inauspicious divinations.

Grant protection from all of these!

The essence-mantra of that is said to be:

oṁ prajñe prajñe prajñe avalokiradhati
mani susiddhi ārya jvala nāma mañjuye svāhā

May my five aggregates and limbs,

Despite being subjected to darkness

From violence and malevolent female spirits;

From the onset of coughs and difficult illnesses;

From obstacle years, obstacle months, obstacle days,

Obstacle days of the week and the like;

And from bad dreams, enemies, and hindrances,

Be protected by the directional guardians

Who are said to radiate light, like the sun and moon,

That illuminates from the farthest reaches.

The essence-mantra of that is said to be:

oṁ haku hūṁ hūṁ du hūṁ hūṁ na hūṁ hūṁ
yaṁ hūṁ hūṁ ke hūṁ hūṁ ki hūṁ hūṁ kī hūṁ hūṁ ti hūṁ hūṁ tī hūṁ hūṁ dū hūṁ hūṁ ve hūṁ

From beginningless time

Until being born in this life and body,

I have written incorrectly, recited incorrectly,

Listened incorrectly, explained incorrectly,

Meditated incorrectly, and trained incorrectly.

Protect my five aggregates and limbs

From all such broken rules, broken vows,

And broken samayas!

The essence-mantra of that is:

namo bhagavata sarva dhuye duṣṭana
svāhā

This concludes “The Noble Dhāraṇī Called the
Supreme Stem Ornament.”

Notes

Bibliography

Tibetan

Western