Toh 505aA Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them

Summary

A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering
Them is a short work that pays homage to the Three Jewels and the
Medicine Buddha, and provides a mantra to be used for incanting medicines.

Acknowledgements

This text was translated and introduced by Catherine Dalton and edited by
members of the 84000 editorial team.

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

The generous sponsorship of May, George, Likai, and Lillian Gu, which
helped make the work on this translation possible, is most gratefully
acknowledged.

Introduction

A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When
Administering Them is a short work that pays homage to the Three
Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja, and
provides a mantra to be used for incanting medicines. The text itself does
not mention the original source of the mantra, but it may have been
extracted from The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha
(Toh 505),
where it appears as the final part of the longer dhāraṇī taught there. The
short mantra presented in A Mantra for Incanting
Medicines When Administering Them was later incorporated into
the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā and Aṣtāṅgasaṅgraha, two important works of the
Indian Āyurvedic medical tradition that are believed to have been composed
by Vāgbhaṭa (ca. 600 ce). In
both works the mantra is used in an emetic procedure (vamanavidhi) to incant a medicinal beverage
immediately before it is administered to the patient. The mantra
incorporated into Vāgbhaṭa’s texts includes both the mantra formula itself
and the initial homage to Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja.

A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When
Administering Them is included in both the Tantra section (Toh
505a) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Toh 1059a) in the Degé Kangyur and
other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that include a Compendium of Dhāraṇīs
section.
In the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that do not include a separate dhāraṇī
section, as well as in the Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs, it is included in
the Tantra section. There are no significant variations between the
recensions in terms of their textual content.

The present work lacks a Sanskrit title at the beginning and a
translator’s colophon at the end. It is possible that like A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted From
“Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm” (Toh 1059), the short work that immediately
precedes it in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, it may have been
extracted from its source text and given its present form in Tibet, rather
than in India. It is perhaps not surprising then that A
Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them does not
appear to be extant as an independent work in Sanskrit or in Chinese
translation. A work with this title is not found in the Denkarma or
Phangtangma imperial catalogs of Tibetan translations, but the Denkarma
catalog does include one prayer to Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha and the
Phangtangma lists two, thus indicating that Medicine
Buddha practices were being translated into Tibetan in the eighth and ninth
centuries.

Additionally, The Dhāraṇī of
Vaiḍūryaprabha, from which the
mantra found in this text may have been extracted, was translated by the
imperial-period translator Yeshé Dé, working with the Indian paṇḍitas
Jinamitra, Dānaśīla, and Śīlendrabodhi, and was later revised by Atiśa and
Tsültrim Gyalwa. However, although its colophon suggests it was translated
during the imperial period, a text with that title does not appear in either
of the imperial catalogs.

The present English translation of A Mantra for
Incanting Medicines When Administering Them was made on the
basis of the two Degé Kangyur recensions of this work (Toh 505a and Toh
1059a), with additional reference to the notes from the Comparative Edition
(dpe bsdur ma), and the single
recension of the work found in the Stok Palace Kangyur. We also compared the
mantra against its occurrence in the Degé recension of The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505) and found it to
be nearly identical with that presented in this work.

The Translation

A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering

Them

Homage to the Three Jewels!

Homage to the blessed, thus-gone, worthy, completely perfect Buddha
Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja!

tadyathā oṁ bhaiṣajye
bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye samudgate svāhā

This completes “A Mantra for Incanting
Medicines When Administering Them.”

Notes

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Dānaśīla
dānaśīla

Jinamitra
jinamitra

Śīlendrabodhi
śīlendrabodhi

Tsültrim Gyalwa

Yeshé Dé
Yeshé Dé

ye shes sde
ཡེ་ཤེས་སྡེ།