Notes

n.1See Sadakata 1997, pp. 41–70.

n.2The pretas are enjoying renewed scholarly attention; McNicholl 2019 and Rotman 2021 are two recent major works on the subject.

n.3Unpublished manuscript, currently being studied by Szántó for a forthcoming publication, Buddhism for Beginners II: The Mañjukīrti Corpus. The current location of the manuscript is not known with certainty. It was first seen and identified by Rāhula Sāṅkṛityāyana at Ngor Monastery; see Sāṅkṛityāyana 1935, p. 32. We are reading the text from the photographs kept at the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, shelf number Xc 14/50; for the catalog entry, see Bandurski 1994, pp. 86–87. Little is known of the author; the manuscript is undated but was most likely copied in Magadha during the eleventh or twelfth century.

n.4There are two editions of this text: La Vallée Poussin 1898, based on Royal Asiatic Society, London, MS. Hodgson 69 and Takahashi 1993, based on the previous edition, and Tōkyō University Library MS. new 57, old 349. Takahashi 1992 is a Japanese translation of the entire text. According to the colophon, the author Anupamavajra was active at Vikramaśīla Monastery.

n.5Unpublished, incomplete manuscript, currently at National Archives Kathmandu, showcase 3/7, read from the microfilm images of the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project, reel no. A 1165/7. Little is known of the author; the manuscript is undated but was probably copied in Bengal during the thirteenth century.

n.6On the life and career of this Kashmiri scholar, see Orzech 2011, pp. 448–49.

n.7Note that there is a discrepancy among various databases for cataloging the Toh 1078 version of this text within vol. 101 or 102 of the Degé Kangyur. See Toh 1078, n.­7, for details.

n.8Two sets of folio references have been included in this translation due to a discrepancy in volume 88 (rgyud ’bum, na) of the Degé Kangyur between the 1737 par phud printings and the late (post par phud) printings. In the latter case, an extra work, Bodhi­maṇḍasyālaṃkāra­lakṣa­dhāraṇī (byang chub snying po’i rgyan ’bum gyi gzungs, Toh 508), was added as the second text in the volume, thereby displacing the pagination of all the following texts in the same volume by 17 folios. Since the eKangyur follows the later printing, both references have been provided, with the highlighted one linking to the eKangyur viewer.

n.9“oṃ suru suru prasuru prasuru, cross, cross, bear, bear, collect, collect, remember, remember, gratify, gratify, for all pretas, svāhā!”

n.10avatāraprekṣin. This description usually applies to bhūtas or other demons who are constantly on the lookout for weak points, usually caused by a breach of morality, in order to enter and possess a being. It is conceivable that one of the two Tibetan elements was originally a gloss of the other.