Introduction

i.1A 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 ᴄᴇ). 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.

i.2A 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.

i.3The 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.

i.4Additionally, 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.

i.5The 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.