Notes

n.1The Crest Insignia (1) (translated 2024).

n.2Peter Skilling discusses the title and the term dhvajāgra/dhajagga at length in his introduction to Dhvajāgra­sūtra [2] in Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 444–52. He observes that in a range of other canonical translations into Tibetan, the term was also translated as rgyal mtshan gyi rtse mo (“crest of the insignia”).

n.3The Pali versions do not include “tathāgata” among the epithets, and some commentators count “unsurpassed” as an epithet on its own. See n.­16; also Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, p. 413 and 433–4; and the Buddhānusmṛtivṛtti (attributed to Asaṅga, Toh 3982), F.12.a.

n.4See the 84000 Knowledge Base article, “Mahāsūtras.”

n.5For more on the protective ritual use of the Mahāsūtras, see Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 63–88.

n.6The following information is summarized from Skilling’s study of the Mahāsūtras. Readers interested in more detail should consult Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 441–67, as well as 84000’s Knowledge Base article “Mahāsūtras” on the subject.

n.7A number of English translations from the Pali of this widely-recited text were published before the late 1990s. See Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, p. 442 for references.

n.8There are Sanskrit manuscript fragments of Dhvajāgra­sūtra [2] in both in the Turfan Collection (Berlin) and the Hoernle Collection (London). For references, see Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, p. 442.

n.9For more information on these translators, see Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 111–42, especially pp. 115–30.

n.10Denkarma, folio 300.a.4. See also Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, pp. 131–32, no. 248.

n.11Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, p. 467.

n.12For bibliographic information and a few other references, see Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 442–43.

n.13Skilling 1994–97, vol. 1, pp. 290–309.

n.14Skilling 1994–97, vol. 1, pp. xxvi–xxxiii, at xxvi.

n.15See Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 460–67. For example, the verse portion of the work is not extant in the available Sanskrit source material, but it is in Pali.

n.16There are various slightly different ways of listing and enumerating the set of epithets presented here. In Pali versions of this work, the epithet “thus-gone one” (Pali, Skt. tathāgata, Tib. de bzhin gshegs pa) is missing, and anuttaraḥ (“unsurpassed”) is counted as its own separate epithet. For more on this, see Zhao 2018. See also Harrison 1992, pp. 215–38.

n.17Versions of the following nine verses are also found elsewhere in Buddhist canonical literature. The correspondences are presented as a table in Skilling 2024, p. 327. See also Skilling 1994–97, vol. 2, pp. 464ff.

n.18Verses 1 to 4 are also found as the first four verses in the verse section of the Pali Dhajagga­sutta.

n.19This fifth verse and the four that follow it, as Skilling has pointed out, are “well known in Buddhist literature” and “an early and authoritative group on the subject of refuge.” They are also found in the Udānavarga, in the Pali Dhammapada, and in the story of the Buddha’s “great miracle” (mahāprātihārya) in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya.