Introduction

i.1The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī opens with a description of Mārīcī’s maṇḍala from its source tantra, The Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising, which describes the maṇḍala’s external features, progresses to the entrance and consecration of a disciple, and concludes with a detailed explanation of the internal features of the maṇḍala. The introductory section of this tantra thus provides brief instructions for a ritual that is critical for the successful performance of the many ritual actions presented in the remainder of the tantra‍—initiation into Mārīcī’s maṇḍala.

i.2After its initial description of Mārīcī’s maṇḍala, the text turns to its primary subject matter‍—the various ritual actions that someone who has been consecrated in Mārīcī’s maṇḍala can accomplish. The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī contains instructions for a broad range of ritual actions such as attracting, binding, paralyzing, enthralling, enchanting, expelling, killing, piercing, pacifying, and subjugating various targets, as well as rites for sowing discord, curing diseases, controlling rainfall, finding lost treasure, and increasing a ritual target’s wealth and well-being. These ritual actions can presumably be performed for oneself or any patron, and many of them are also concerned with the performance of rituals that either target or can be used to benefit kings and members of a royal court. This text also provides a list of seven siddhis that can be accomplished using Mārīcī’s rites‍—invisibility, collyrium, shoes, sword, pill, bovine bezoar, and flight.

i.3Much like The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī (Toh 564) and The King of Ritual Manuals from the Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising (Toh 565), The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī is primarily concerned with the performance of ritual actions and the attainment of siddhis toward worldly ends. The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī expands upon the relationship between Vairocana and Mārīcī found in Toh 565, describing the goddess as the Buddha Vairocana’s “great consort” (Skt. mahāmudrā; Tib. phyag rgya chen po). Despite her association with Vairocana, who is identified as the buddha who taught the original source text for The King of Ritual Manuals from the Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising and The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī, neither of these texts give us any indication that Mārīcī’s rituals can be used toward the attainment of an ultimate soteriological goal or realization that might allow one to advance on the path to awakening. This is consistent with The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī, taught by the Buddha Śākyamuni, which functions solely as a protective spell.

i.4Tarthang Tulku’s catalog of the Nyingma edition of the Degé Kangyur divides The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī into three chapters. However, since the text itself tells us that its material is extracted from a much larger work, it is likely the case that the three chapter colophons that appear in this text are not indicative of the structure of The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī itself but are instead artifacts from its source text. The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī and The King of Ritual Manuals from the Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising both indicate that they are compilations of ritual instructions from a larger tantra dedicated to the goddess Mārīcī. The title of Toh 565 refers to its source text as The Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising, and the title for The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī refers to this work as The Twelve-Thousand Line Tantra of Mārīcī’s Arising. The opening section of The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī also refers to its source text as Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising, which indicates that these two ritual manuals may derive, at least in part, from the same longer tantra dedicated to the goddess Mārīcī.

i.5Unlike The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī, neither The King of Ritual Manuals from the Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising nor The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī contain a translators’ colophon, and neither work appears in either of the ninth-century royal Tibetan catalogs of translated works. As a result, it is difficult to say with any real precision when these texts were first translated into Tibetan. However, as Lancaster notes, Tian Xizai’s tenth-century translation of the Mārīcī­dhāraṇī­sūtra (Taishō 1257) contains a translation of The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī as well as both ritual manuals in the cycle on the goddess Mārīcī that correspond to those preserved in the Degé Kangyur. It thus seems possible that all three of the works dedicated to Mārīcī in the Tibetan Kangyurs‍—The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī, The King of Ritual Manuals from the Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising, and The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī‍—belong to the same later textual tradition of the goddess Mārīcī that was translated into Chinese in the tenth century. As noted in the English translation of Toh 565, however, the version of The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī described in the opening section of The King of Ritual Manuals from the Tantra of Māyā Mārīcī’s Arising (Toh 565) appears to be a slightly different version than the translation preserved in the Kangyur as a standalone text (Toh 564).

i.6While a relatively large number of Sanskrit witnesses of The Mārīcī Dhāraṇī have survived, there is to our knowledge only one surviving manuscript witness of The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī. This witness is preserved in an unpublished manuscript from Nepal that contains Sanskrit versions of all three works in the cycle of texts in the Degé Kangyur on the goddess Mārīcī. The fact that this witness contains all three texts in the exact order in which they appear in the Degé Kangyur may indicate its relationship to the textual tradition from which the translations of Toh 564, 565, and 566 were produced. The Sanskrit manuscript unfortunately cuts off at the material corresponding to the middle of The Maṇḍala Rites of Noble Mārīcī. The fragment of scribal colophon that survives notes that the text was copied by one Vajrācārya Ravṛndrabhadra (perhaps a misspelling of Ravīndrabhadra), but it does not indicate when or where the text was copied. The manuscript comes from the private collection of Manavajra Vajrācārya and was microfilmed and cataloged by both the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP) and the International Association for the Study of World Religions (IASWR). The readings in this Sanskrit witness reflect a relatively close relationship to these texts as they are received in the Tibetan Kangyur recensions, and it has proved a valuable resource for this translation.

i.7This English translation is based on the Tibetan translation as found in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) section in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Tibetan translation in the Stok Palace Kangyur and the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur. The Tibetan was also checked against the Sanskrit manuscript witness cataloged in the NGMCP microfilm collection under the title Mārīcīkalpa (NGMCP E 1480/9) and the IASWR microfilm collection under the title Mārīcī­kalpa­tantra (MBB II 112). All instances in which the English translation deviates from the reading in the Degé Kangyur in favor of a reading in the Sanskrit witness or another Tibetan witness are noted in the translation.