Introduction

i.1The Dhāraṇī for Secret Relics, often referred to by its abbreviated Sanskrit title, Guhya­dhātu­dhāraṇī, or sometimes also by its alternative title Karaṇḍa­mudrā­dhāraṇī, is a short sūtra that has played a fundamental role in ritual practice throughout the Buddhist world, particularly regarding the veneration of relics and of the stūpas that contain them.

i.2In this sūtra, the Buddha, who is residing in Magadha, is invited for a midday meal by a brahmin named Stainless Glow. On the way to the brahmin’s home, he comes across an old stūpa that resembles a rubbish heap. When approached by the Buddha, the stūpa emits rays of light, and a mysterious exclamation of praise resounds. After paying his respects to the stūpa, the Buddha weeps and then smiles, revealing an entire array of buddhas who likewise shed tears. When Vajrapāṇi rushes to the scene to inquire about the reasons behind the Buddha’s weeping, the Buddha first explains that the stūpa contains a doctrinal synopsis that is the essence of the blessings of innumerable buddhas. Upon hearing this, many in the assembly attain various levels of realization. Prompted by Vajrapāṇi, the Buddha enumerates the benefits of copying, reading, and worshiping this scripture. He also points out that the derelict old stūpa is, in fact, made of precious substances, yet it appears as a heap of rubbish because of sentient beings’ lack of merit. He warns of a future time when sentient beings’ merit will be so depleted that the Three Jewels will no longer be present, and the only token of the Buddha’s teaching to remain will be stūpas. This, he explains, is the reason he and the other buddhas are weeping. The Buddha then extols the merit involved in copying the text and placing it in stūpas and buddha statues, indicating that the areas where these stūpas and images are located will be free from illness and other calamities, and that the stūpas and images themselves will take on the properties of precious substances. When the Buddha proclaims the actual dhāraṇī, the assembled buddhas praise Śākyamuni for having brought forth a religious treasure in the world. The sūtra concludes by proclaiming that wherever this dhāraṇī is taught, or whenever it is placed inside a stūpa, the blessings of all the buddhas will be present. Furthermore, as a consequence of the Buddha pronouncing the dhāraṇī, the derelict old stūpa is restored to its former glory.

i.3This text belongs to the genre of dhāraṇī sūtras, which began to circulate around 500 ᴄᴇ. A central preoccupation of these texts is the notion that a dhāraṇī encapsulates the blessings of all the buddhas, and that building a stūpa and placing within it the dhāraṇī being promoted is equal to the merit of erecting stūpas for all the buddhas. Given the centrality of this theme, it may be helpful to briefly clarify the sense of the term dhāraṇī . The term is derived from the Sanskrit root √dhṛ and is connected to the word dhāraṇa, hence it is related to notions of retaining, holding, and memory. Part of a dhāraṇī’s function is to aid in the memorization of the Buddhist teachings. Aside from this mnemonic function, these formulas also serve protective and soteriological purposes. Dhāraṇīs contribute to an expanded understanding of memory and mnemonics, where memory is not just about remembering a specific memorized formulation of the Buddhist teachings, but also about recalling the power and blessings encoded within the formula. The dhāraṇī can thus be seen as a code that operates on multiple cognitive and affective levels, its polysemic nature reflecting the interdependence of the teachings (and of reality itself) encrypted within its syllables.

i.4The genre of dhāraṇī sūtras may itself be seen as part of the emergent “cult of the book” in the Mahāyāna, which arose against the background of the historically older and dominant cult of relics and of their receptacles, the stūpas. Eventually, sūtras and dhāraṇīs came to be placed within the stūpas, and the dhāraṇīs themselves came to be considered (at least in the Tibetan tradition) relics. Just as a single bone relic is held to encapsulate the Buddha’s essence, so a dhāraṇī is believed to contain within it the entirety of the Buddha’s doctrine. And since the Buddha can be identified with the essence of his doctrine and with the realization of ultimate reality itself, when a dhāraṇī is placed within a stūpa or buddha image, it infuses the stūpa or image with the presence of the Buddha and his doctrine.

i.5The Sanskrit version of The Dhāraṇī for Secret Relics does not appear to be extant. Epigraphical and archaeological evidence, however, suggests that, like the other texts of its genre, this sūtra was widespread in India and throughout the Buddhist world, and that it exerted a strong influence on religious practice. The text of the dhāraṇī itself‍—without the surrounding narrative of the sūtra‍—is found on a set of stone tablets from the ninth century recovered in Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, indicating that the sūtra was well known on the island at the time. The tablets seem to have been part of a stūpa located at the Abhayagiri Stūpa in Anuradhapura. Maritime trade routes played an important part in bringing the sūtra to East Asia. While The Dhāraṇī for Secret Relics was well known in China after the eighth century when Amoghavajra produced the first Chinese translation of the sūtra, it was not until the tenth and eleventh centuries that it began to be placed inside stūpas. Qian Chu (929–88 ᴄᴇ), the ruler of the prosperous coastal Wuyue state, promoted the distribution of the sūtra as a textual relic throughout his kingdom. For example, along with the full narrative sūtra and a pictorial representation, the dhāraṇī was inserted in the hollow bricks of a stūpa in Hangzhou constructed during his reign, as well as in a stūpa from the same period in Zhejiang. Other sūtras of the same genre, such as the Raśmi­vimalaviśuddha­prabhā­dhāraṇī (Toh 510/982), were likewise inserted in stūpas in Korea and Japan. Epigraphical evidence of this genre of texts has also been recovered in India itself, as witnessed by a stone inscription from Orissa and by terracotta tablets from Nālandā, both of which depict the Bodhi­garbhālaṅkāra­lakṣa (Toh 509/920), a text that has also been found in Afghanistan and Indonesia. In the Tibetan tradition, The Dhāraṇī for Secret Relics is classified as belonging to a wider group of five dhāraṇīs‍—the five great dhāraṇīs (gzungs chen sde lnga)‍—that are frequently placed inside stūpas throughout the Buddhist world. The other dhāraṇīs of this group are the Uṣṇīṣa­vijaya­dhāraṇī (Toh 594, Toh 595, Toh 596, Toh 597, Toh 598), the Vimaloṣṇīṣa­dhāraṇī (Toh 599/983), the above-mentioned Bodhi­garbhālaṅkāra­lakṣa­dhāraṇī (Toh 509/920), and the Pratītya­samutpāda­hṛdaya (Toh 521/981).

i.6The Tibetan translation of The Dhāraṇī for Secret Relics was produced by the Indian scholar Vidyākaraprabha and the translator Tsang Devendrarakṣita, who appear to have lived in the late eighth or early ninth century. No Dunhuang version of the text seems to have surfaced so far. However, given its popularity throughout Buddhist Asia, this does not necessarily mean that no copies of the text circulated in that area. While the text is not mentioned in the Phangthangma catalog, it is listed in the Denkarma, confirming that by the early ninth century the text had been translated into Tibetan. Regarding the title of the text as recorded in the Tibetan versions, it might be remarked that the Sanskrit title in the Stok Palace Kangyur is slightly different from that found in the Degé Kangyur edition, since it adds the word mudrā after karaṇḍa, so that the title reads Sarva­tathāgatādhiṣṭhāna­hṛdaya­guhya­dhātu­karaṇḍa­mudrā­nāma­dhāraṇī­sūtra. This variant is also found in several of the other editions. While this additional word is not found in the Tibetan title of the editions that have the variant in their Sanskrit title, it is reflected in discussions of the title found in the body of the sūtra itself.

i.7Two Chinese translations of the sūtra exist. The earlier of them, the Yiqie rulai xin mimi quanshen sheli bao qie yin toluoni jing (切如來心祕密全身舍利寳篋印陀羅尼經; Taishō 1022a) was made by Amoghavajra (705–74 ᴄᴇ), and the later, the Yiqie rulai zhengfa mimi qie yin xin tuoluoni jing (切如來正法祕密篋印心陀羅尼經; Taishō 1023), is by Dānapāla (d. 1017). Dānapāla’s translation does not seem to have enjoyed the same level of popularity as Amoghavajra’s, which spread from China to Korea and Japan. Interestingly, since the Chinese translations make use of the Chinese equivalent of the word mudrā (印) in their titles, this suggests that the Sanskrit text on which they are based probably included the word mudrā in the title, thus confirming the transcription thereof found in some of the Tibetan editions.

i.8A commentary on this dhāraṇī was written by Bodong Paṇchen Choklé Namgyal (1376–1451). To this must be added the earlier yet more general commentary by Jetsün Drakpa Gyaltsen (1147–1216), which is among the earliest Tibetan expositions of the practice of inserting dhāraṇīs and relics inside stūpas.

i.9The translation of the sūtra presented here is based on the two versions recorded in the Degé Kangyur, one from the Action Tantra section (Toh 507) and one from the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section (Toh 883). These two versions correspond very closely. The Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) versions of both texts have also been consulted, as has the version from the Stok Palace Kangyur. As some of the personal and place names in the text do not seem to be otherwise attested, the choice was made to render them in English rather than attempt a Sanskrit reconstruction. The Sanskrit of the dhāraṇī has been transliterated according to the version found in the Action Tantra section of the Degé Kangyur, though in cases of major divergence from the version in the Compendium of Incantations section, the variant that seemed most viable was chosen, listing the differences in the notes. A tentative translation has also been proposed in the note following the transliterated Sanskrit of the dhāraṇī.