Notes

n.1The four texts are Toh 594, 595, 596 (the present text), and 598. The first three share the same title: Crown Victory of All Tathāgatas: The Uṣṇīṣavijayā Dhāraṇī with Its Ritual Manual (de bzhin gshegs pa thams cad kyi gtsug tor rnam par rgyal ba zhes bya ba’i gzungs rtog pa dang bcas pa). The fourth has an ever-so-slightly different title: Crown Victory of All Tathāgatas: A Ritual Manual for the Uṣṇīṣavijayā Dhāraṇī (de bzhin gshegs pa thams cad kyi gtsug tor rnam par rgyal ma’i gzungs zhe bya ba’i rtog pa).

n.2Hidas 2020, p. 141. See also Hidas 2021b, which catalogs a number of Indic dhāraṇī­saṃgraha collections, many of which include the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī.

n.3The surviving Sanskrit work seems, more properly, to be titled the Sarvagati (rather than Sarvadurgati)-pariśodhana-uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī, but either way the title provides evidence of the relationship between the Uṣṇīṣavijayā and Sarva­durgati­pariśodhana corpuses. For more on this relationship see J. Dalton 2016 and forthcoming. The point here, however, is simply that Toh 597 is titled the Uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī rather than the Uṣṇīṣāvijayā-“ dhāraṇī with its ritual manual” (kalpasahitā).

n.4The Sanskrit of this work is preserved in what Gregory Schopen calls the “Los Angeles Manuscript,” though it appears to be held currently in Japan. This is an early manuscript from Bamiyan-Gilgit that Schopen transcribed and translated into English in an unpublished work, which we are grateful to Jacob Dalton for sharing. In addition to being incomplete, probably due to the loss of a folio, the manuscript lacks several passages that are found in the Tibetan translation of Toh 597 and contains a few passages that are absent in that translation, including two passages that are found in Toh 594. Nonetheless, the Sanskrit manuscript is by and large the same work that is translated into Tibetan as Toh 597. More recently, the Sanskrit of the very same manuscript was studied by Gudrun Meltzer in a 2007 “limited distribution report” (Silk 2021, p. 108), to which we have not had access, as well as by Unebe Toshiya, who published the Sanskrit along with a Japanese translation in a 2015 article.

n.5This text has been edited on the basis of ten Nepalese Sanskrit manuscripts and translated into English in Hidas 2020. From among the works belonging to this group that are preserved in the Tibetan canon, the Sanskrit text is most closely parallel, though not identical, with Toh 595.

n.6The first translation is Taishō 967, followed by Taishō 968–971 and Taishō 974 (Chou 1945, p. 322).

n.7According to Chou, the ritual manuals surviving in Chinese are Taishō 972–973 (Chou 1945, p. 322). Hidas 2020 notes that the full set of Uṣṇīṣavijayā-related texts found in the Taishō canon includes Taishō 968–974, 978, and 979.

n.8Hidas mentions that Taishō 978 “stands closest to the Nepalese tradition” of the Sanskrit work that he has edited, which is also how he describes the relationship between the Sanskrit work and Toh 595 (Hidas 2020, p. 156n6–7). A comparison of Toh 595 and Taishō 978 shows that while neither exactly matches the Sanskrit text that Hidas edited, the Tibetan and Chinese are indeed translations of the same Sanskrit work and contain identical material apart from the Chinese translation’s inclusion of a single, very short passage about a toothbrush that is absent in the Tibetan translation (but present in some of the other uṣṇīṣavijayā texts in the Tibetan canon).

n.9Sørensen 2011a, p. 165.

n.10Sørensen 2011b, p. 386. See also Silk 2021 for further mention of the uses of the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī, often alongside the Heart Sūtra, in China.

n.11Copp 2005, p. 4. For further details see Copp 2005, which addresses the topic of dhāraṇīs in medieval China using the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī as a case study.

n.12See IOL Tib J 307/PT 54, PT 6, and PT 368 for Tibetan translations of the work, IOL TIB J 322 and IOL Tib J 349/3 for a Tibetan translation of the dhāraṇī alone (not the whole text), and IOL Tib J 466/2, IOL Tib J 547, IOL Tib J 1134, IOL Tib J 1498, PT72, and PT73 for Tibetan transliterations of the Sanskrit dhāraṇī alone (J. Dalton and van Schaik 2006; accessed through The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online). The translations of the primary uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī text (Toh 597) appearing at Dunhuang include at least one passage parallel with rites described in our text but missing from the primary text in its Tibetan canonical translation, though present in the surviving Sanskrit manuscript corresponding to Toh 597 studied by Schopen (see J. Dalton forthcoming; Schopen unpublished).

n.13Schmid 2011, pp. 372–73.

n.14Bühnemann 2014; Rospatt 2015, p. 821.

n.15See Bhattacharyya 1928, vol. 2.

n.16The three are Toh 3377, 3248, and 3580, translated respectively by Khampa Lotsāwa Bari Chödrak (khams pa lo tsA ba ba ri chos grags, 1040–11, possibly the translator of the present text, see i.­10 below); Patshap Lotsāwa Tsültrim Gyaltsen (pa tshab lo tsA ba tshul khrims rgyal mtshan, twelfth century); and Yarlung Lotsāwa Trakpa Gyaltsen (yar klungs lo tsA ba grags pa rgyal mtshan, late thirteenth or early fourteenth century).

n.17See Chandra 1980.

n.18These Southeast Asian texts are not included in the official Pali Canon of the Theravāda tradition and are unknown in Sri Lanka. In mainland Southeast Asia, however, they are popular in rituals for extending life and in funeral rites. Whether they reflect the diffusion of texts and practices directly from India prior to the relatively recent evolution of Theravāda orthodoxy, or were transmitted via Chinese along with Chinese migrations and cultural influence in the region, remains an open question. For a detailed study of these texts and their possible origins, see Cicuzza (ed.) 2018.

n.19Phangthangma (2003), p. 23. While the phrase cho ga dang bcas pa (Skt. vidhisahitā) is functionally equivalent to the phrase rtog pa dang bcas pa (Skt. kalpasahitā), we unfortunately have no way of knowing whether this text was or resembled the primary uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī text (Toh 597) with a ritual manual attached to it, or if it resembled the present text or any of the other works in the modern canons titled Uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī-kalpasahitā (i.e., Toh 594 or 595); Toh 596 is too short to correspond with the text identified in the Phangthangma as having 120 ślokas, and Toh 598 is an unlikely candidate because, while it shares the opening narrative with the other texts in this set, it seems to represent a separate, and later, ritual system. The Phangthangma also lists what may be a copy of the dhāraṇī alone, outside of the framework of a sūtra (Phangthangma, p. 31). The other imperial catalog, the Denkarma, lists only the primary uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī text, identified clearly as the text included in the later canons as Toh 597 by its full title in that catalog: the Sarva­durgati­pariśodhana-uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī (Lalou 1953, p. 327).

n.20Unlike many dhāraṇī texts (including Toh 597), which tend to appear both in the Tantra Collection and the Dhāraṇī Collection sections of the Kangyurs, the texts in the genre of dhāraṇī-kalpas seem to appear exclusively in the Tantra Collection section of the Kangyurs.

n.21The text is F 631, Phukdrak Kangyur, vol. 117 (rgyud, dza), F.224.a–231.a. It should be noted, however, that the version of the dhāraṇī preserved in F 631 differs from the dhāraṇī in the present text much more substantially than any of the versions in the mainstream Kangyurs.

n.22Probably Sumpa Lotsāwa Dharma Yontan (sum pa lo tsA ba dhar ma yon tan), a translator and teacher of Sakya Jetsun Drakpa Gyaltsen, but possibly his uncle, also called Sumpa Lotsāwa, Palchok Dangpö Dorje (dpal mchog dang po’i rdor rje). Both studied in Nepal. See Treasury of Lives.

n.23The title of this text and the first part, through the presentation of the dhāraṇī, are closely parallel with the opening passages of Toh 594 and Toh 595. However, this version of the opening passage seems to have been edited and gives smoother readings in some places, and very much less smooth and even slightly different readings in other places. It is also parallel with the opening narrative of Toh 598, which has significantly improved the difficult readings.

n.24chos yang dag par sdud pa’i phug khang bzangs mchog. The Sanskrit in the closely parallel text edited by Hidas reads dharma­saṃgīti­mahā­guhya­prāsāde (Hidas 2020, p. 152). The Tibetan phrase is awkward, and it seems that there may have been some textual corruption. What has been rendered in Tibetan as phug seems to be guhya in the Sanskrit parallel; perhaps the Tibetan translators were reading guhā‍—which does translate to phug‍—rather than guhya. Although we cannot be sure that the surviving Sanskrit witnesses represent the older reading, they provide a more coherent reading than the one in our Tibetan witnesses, so we have translated this word following the Sanskrit, rather than the Tibetan witness.

n.25The text here is corrupt and appears to have transmitted a line slip, where a line from slightly lower in the text made its way incongruously to a place where it does not belong, rendering this sentence difficult to parse. While the passage as it reads here, unlike the parallel passage in Toh 594 and Toh 595, shows evidence of having been edited to improve some readings, the text remains problematic. The parallel passage in both the Sanskrit text and Toh 598 lack this line slip error, confirming that it is a textual corruption. We have relied upon Hidas’ Sanskrit edition to repair the Tibetan text here. The Tibetan reads de rnams kyi phyir sems can thams cad la kun du gzigs pa’i mtshan gyi dpal de bzhin gshegs pa thams cad kyi gtsug tor rnam par rgyal ba zhes bya ba’i gzungs ’di nyid ’cang ba dang / klogs pa dang / gzhan la rgya cher yang dag par bstan pa’i phyir yun ring por gnas par sgrub pa’i ched du . . . The passage in bold has been incongruously lifted from its proper place several lines down in the text and added here. The phrase sems can thams cad la in our text is absent in all the parallel passages in both Sanskrit and Tibetan and may have been added here by editors in order to render the passage more sensible. Once the line slip has been corrected, however, that phrase no longer makes sense, so we have not translated it. The Sanskrit passage lacks the line slip error but also includes several additional words absent in the Tibetan. However, as the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts are not identical in other places in this parallel passage either, and since the Tibetan text makes perfect sense without these additional elements, we have not taken the liberty of adding them in the English translation. The Sanskrit passage, in Hidas’ edition (with the elements absent in the Tibetan text indicated in bold), reads teṣāṃ arthāya hitāya sukhāya imāṃ sarvatathāgatoṣṇīṣavijayā-nāma-dhāraṇīṃ dhārayed vācayed deśayet paryavāpnuyāt parebhyaś ca vistareṇa samprakāśayet | dīrghāyuṣkāṇām upādāyeti (Hidas 2020, p. 152). The passage in Toh 598 reads de rnams kyi don du tshe ring bar nye bar bsgrub par bya ba’i phyir/ de bzhin gshegs pa thams cad kyi gtsug tor rnam par rgyal ma zhes bya ba’i gzungs ’di gzung bar bya/ gzhan la rgya cher yang dag par bstan par bya’o.

n.26thams cad dang ldan pa.

n.27mama is not present in Hidas’ edition of the Sanskrit manuscripts.

n.28Hidas’s edition of the Sanskrit reads sarvatathāgatamātre, a plausible variant unattested in Tibetan sources.

n.29This repetition of vijayagarbhe is absent in the Choné, Kangxi, Lhasa, Narthang, Stok Palace, and Yongle versions of Toh 596. It is also absent in the uṣṇīṣavijaya dhāraṇīs reported in Toh 594, 595, 597, 598, and 984, as well as Hidas’ Sanskrit edition. It is likely that this repetition in the Degé version is the result of scribal error.

n.30There is some variation in this phrase across the Tibetan and Sanskrit sources. Toh 594, 597, and this text read sadā me; Toh 595, 598, and Toh 984 read me sadā; and Hidas’ Sanskrit edition has mama sadā. The meaning is the same in all cases.

n.31The Lhasa and Narthang versions of this text include the line sarvatathāgatasamayādhiṣthānādhiṣṭhite here. The Degé version of Toh 597 includes the phrase samantān mocaya mocaya ādhiṣṭhāna, though it is absent in other canonical recensions of the same translation. Hidas’s Sanskrit edition includes sarvatathāgatahṛdayādhiṣṭhānādhiṣṭhite at this point.

n.32māṃ is absent in Hidas’ Sanskrit edition.

n.33Hidas has translated the dhāraṇī based on his edition, and rather than retranslate it, we give his translation here. Substantive variants between the Sanskrit basis for his translation and the Degé have been noted above. “Oṁ veneration to the glorious Buddha distinguished in all the Three Worlds. Namely, oṁ bhrūṃ bhrūṃ bhrūṃ, purge, purge, purify, purify, O Unequalled Enveloping Splendor Sparkle Destiny Sky, O the One of Purified Nature, O the One Purified by the Topknot Victory, let all Tathāgatas consecrate me with consecrations of the nectar of the excellent Sugata’s words along with great seals and mantrapadas, oṁ bring, bring, O the One who Nourishes Life, purge, purge, purify, purify, O the One Purified by Sky Nature, O the One Purified by the Topknot Victory, O the One Impelled by Thousand Rays, O the One Beholding all Tathāgatas, O the One Fulfilling the Six Perfections, O Mother of all Tathāgatas, O the One Established in the Ten Stages, O the One Empowered by the Empowerment of the Heart of all Tathāgatas, oṁ O Seal, O Seal, O Great Seal, O the One Purified by the Firmness of the Vajra Body, O the One Purged of all Obscurations Resulting from Actions, turn back for me O Life-purged One, O the One Empowered by the Empowerment of the Vow of all Tathāgatas, oṁ muni muni, mahāmuni, vimuni vimuni, mahāvimuni, mati mati, mahāmati, mamati, sumati, O the One Purified by Truth and the True Goal, O the One Purged by a Burst Open Mind, oṁ he he, triumph triumph, succeed succeed, recollect recollect, manifest manifest, expand expand, O the One Empowered by the Empowerment of all Buddhas, oṁ O Pure One, O Pure One, O Awakened One, O Awakened One, O Vajra, O Vajra, O Great Vajra, O Vajra-essence, O Victory-essence, O Triumph-essence, O Vajra-flame-essence, O Vajra-born, O Vajra-produced, O Vajra, O the One with a Vajra, let my body become a vajra and that of all beings, let there be body-purification for me and purification of all destinies, O the One Empowered by the Empowerment of the Heart of all Tathāgatas, let all Tathāgatas provide encouragement, oṁ awake awake, succeed succeed, awaken awaken, wake up, wake up, liberate liberate, release release, purge purge, purify purify, liberate completely, O the One Purified by an Enveloping Ray, O the One Empowered by the Empowerment of the Heart of all Tathāgatas, oṁ O Seal O Seal, O Great Seal, O Great Seal and Mantrapada svāhā” (Hidas 2020, p. 154).