Glossary
Types of attestation for names and terms of the corresponding source language
This term is attested in a manuscript used as a source for this translation.
This term is attested in other manuscripts with a parallel or similar context.
This term is attested in dictionaries matching Tibetan to the corresponding language.
The attestation of this name is approximate. It is based on other names where the relationship between the Tibetan and source language is attested in dictionaries or other manuscripts.
This term is a reconstruction based on the Tibetan phonetic rendering of the term.
This term is a reconstruction based on the semantics of the Tibetan translation.
This term has been supplied from an unspecified source, which most often is a widely trusted dictionary.
g.1
Avataṃsaka
Wylie: phal po che
Tibetan: ཕལ་པོ་ཆེ།
Sanskrit: avataṃsaka AD
This very long work in 45 chapters fills no less than four volumes of the Degé Kangyur. In its current form, it is presented as a single extensive sūtra (vaipulyasūtra), but it probably evolved as an encyclopedic coalescence of shorter works, many of which circulated independently and are still seen as texts in their own right. The whole work is classified by Tibetan editors as belonging to the Buddha’s third turning of the wheel of Dharma. See the 84000 Knowledge Base article, “A Multitude of Buddhas.”
g.2
dhāraṇī
Wylie: gzungs
Tibetan: གཟུངས།
Sanskrit: dhāraṇī AS
The term dhāraṇī has the sense of something that “holds” or “retains,” and so it can refer to the special capacity of practitioners to memorize and recall detailed teachings. It can also refer to a verbal expression of the teachings—an incantation, spell, or mnemonic formula—that distills and “holds” essential points of the Dharma and is used by practitioners to attain mundane and supramundane goals. The same term is also used to denote texts that contain such formulas.