Introduction

i.1The Noble Uṣṇīṣavijayā Dhāraṇī That Purifies All Lower Rebirths opens in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, where the god Supratiṣṭhita’s enjoyment of divine pleasures is interrupted by a voice warning him that he will die within a week, experience seven rebirths in Jambudvīpa, and then be born as a hell being. Supratiṣṭhita rushes in panic to Śakra, Lord of the Gods, seeking his help. Śakra, shocked by this news, sees that Supratiṣṭhita will be born in the lower realms as various types of animals for seven rebirths. Realizing that only the Buddha can offer refuge for beings facing such low rebirths, he seeks the Buddha’s counsel.

i.2When Śakra tells the Buddha of the god Supratiṣṭhita’s impending death and rebirth, light rays emerge from the Buddha’s uṣṇīṣa, illuminating all the worldly realms before returning to his mouth. The Buddha then explains the qualities of the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī, which include destroying the obscurations, purifying lower rebirths, attaining rebirth as a god, attaining a long life, and attaining rebirth in buddha fields, divine abodes, and the abodes of bodhisattvas. The Buddha bestows the dhāraṇī and again enumerates its benefits. He then requests Śakra to proclaim the dhāraṇī to Supratiṣṭhita so that Supratiṣṭhita will avoid unfortunate future rebirths and be born into the bodhisattva lineage. The Buddha adds that Supratiṣṭhita should contemplate, meditate upon, and recall the dhāraṇī in order to benefit beings in the god realms and all the beings in Jambudvīpa.

i.3The Buddha then explains that the dhāraṇī should be written down and installed in a high place, such as the top of a flagpole or caitya, and that the beings who do this and all beings who see it displayed will be liberated from lower rebirths. He also notes that a person who makes offerings to or venerates the dhāraṇī is to be known as a great being and a child of the tathāgatas.

i.4Following this, Yama, the Lord of Death, goes to the Buddha, praises the benefits of the dhāraṇī, and vows to protect all beings. The Four Great Kings then ask the Buddha to explain the rite related to the dhāraṇī and the technique for performing it. The Buddha explains that beings who recite it will be liberated from the lower realms as well as from all forms of illness, eventually taking their last rebirth in Sukhāvatī.

i.5The Buddha explains a dhāraṇī rite for those who have died in which one should scatter sesame seeds incanted with the dhāraṇī over the bones of the deceased. This will liberate them from lower realms and lead to rebirth in the god realms. He also explains that daily recitation of the dhāraṇī will lead to rebirth in Sukhāvatī, liberation, and protection by the tathāgatas.

i.6Upon hearing these explanations from the Buddha, Śakra returns to Supratiṣṭhita and provides him with the dhāraṇī and the instructions he has received. After practicing it for a week, the dhāraṇī grants Supratiṣṭhita’s every wish‍—he obtains freedom from lower rebirths, is established on the path to higher rebirth, and is set on the path to his own eventual awakening.

i.7This work is one among a group of texts found clustered together in the Kriyātantra section of the Tibetan Kangyurs that contain the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī and its related rituals. Unlike the other texts in this group, the title of the present work does not explicitly refer to the rituals connected with the dhāraṇī, though it does in fact include a few of the same ritual instructions found in the remaining four texts in the group. The group of four more specifically ritual texts all share a similar narrative opening (nidāna) that differs from the introductory narrative in the present text. The dhāraṇī itself and several further passages, however, are shared between the present text and other works in this group. For example, after the supporting narrative for the Buddha’s recitation of the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī, the dhāraṇī itself and nearly all the material that follows it can be found in various sections of Toh 594.

i.8There are many Sanskrit witnesses of the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī proper, and the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī text translated here survives in at least one incomplete early Sanskrit manuscript. There is also at least one surviving Sanskrit uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī work that is closely related to the remaining four uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī texts described above in that it shares the same opening narrative and some of the ritual material with those texts.

i.9Several ritual manuals for recitation of the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī were translated into Chinese. The present work was significant in East Asia, and one scholar has even identified it as the most important esoteric Buddhist scripture translated into Chinese in the seventh century. Practices connected with the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī were important in China, in particular in conjunction with funerary rites, where the dhāraṇī was written on pillars near tombs, especially from the mid-Tang to Ming dynasties (ca. 800–1600 ᴄᴇ). In addition to its ritual uses, in China this dhāraṇī receives mention in poems and tales of miracles and is analyzed in philosophical commentaries.

i.10The uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī also appears to have been popular in Dunhuang. A number of Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang include just the dhāraṇī on its own, both in Tibetan transliteration (dhāraṇīs, like mantras, are commonly left untranslated in Tibetan texts) and in Tibetan translation. The uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī text translated here also appears in several Dunhuang manuscripts. Interestingly, several drawings from Dunhuang show maṇḍala (altar) arrangements corresponding to uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī texts, and one in particular, which has labels written in Chinese, depicts a maṇḍala that is nearly identical to the one described in one of the rites in Toh 594, even though no known ritual manual surviving in Chinese describes such a maṇḍala. The records of uṣṇīṣavijayā-related works at Dunhuang, then, suggest a close relationship between Tibetan- and Chinese-speaking Buddhist practitioners there.

i.11In Nepal, uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī rituals continue to be performed as part of modern Newar Buddhist practice, where their practice is sometimes prescribed for Wednesdays in particular. Practices connected to the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī likewise continue in modern Tibetan Buddhism. The so-called Tongchö (stong mchod)‍—the thousandfold offering practice of Uṣṇīṣavijayā‍—is currently performed in Tibetan monasteries, sometimes using a ritual manual composed by the nineteenth-century polymath Jamyang Khyentsé Wangpo. Other notable Tibetan works on the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī and its associated practices include commentaries by the great Sakya lama Butön (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364) and the fourth Panchen Lama, Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen (blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan, 1570–1662).

i.12The question of what, or who, exactly, Uṣṇīṣavijayā is is a complex one that cannot be clearly answered here. In short, like a number of uṣṇīṣa deities, she is sometimes identified as a protective deity, in this case a goddess, emanated from the Buddha’s uṣṇīṣa. Indeed, Uṣṇīṣavijayā is clearly depicted as a goddess in a number of short sādhanas included in Indian anthologies such as the Sādhanamāla, compiled from the works of many authors probably during the period of the Pāla kings (eighth to twelfth century). Three closely similar sādhanas of a three-faced, eight armed form of the goddess are included in the Tengyur, one in each of the three related anthologies translated from the Indian collections into Tibetan in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries respectively. A variety of other forms are depicted or described in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Kashmiri sources. In the later Tibetan tradition Uṣṇīṣavijayā can even appear as one of a group of three long-life deities along with the Buddha Amitāyus and White Tārā. Here in the Kangyur, however, in all but one (Toh 598) of the uṣṇīṣavijayā works in this section, while the dhāraṇī itself uses the feminine vocative form throughout, the name uṣṇīṣavijayā is not rendered in Tibetan in the feminine, and the word uṣṇīṣavijayā is not used to refer to anything apart from the name of the dhāraṇī‍—the dhāraṇī of the crown victory .

i.13The range of possible answers to the question of what the name Uṣṇīṣavijayā refers to is enlarged even further by the existence of a group of related texts widely used in Southeast Asia, sharing the Pali title Uṇhissa-vijaya-sutta (or in some cases simply Uṇhissa-vijaya) but found in a number of different forms, some in Pali but others in Siamese, Lao, Yuon, and Khmer. Some refer at least briefly to the story of the god Supratiṣṭhita (Pali Supatiṭṭhita), but instead of the dhāraṇī of the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts they contain a set of verses (gāthā) to be recited whose content is unrelated to that of the Sanskrit dhāraṇī. The gāthā are also found alone in several ritual compilations. Even in the vernacular versions, the verses are written in Pali. In these texts, in their own opening lines, it seems to be the verses themselves that are referred to as the Uṇhissa-vijaya.

i.14The present text was translated into Tibetan by the Indian paṇḍitas Jinamitra and Surendrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Bandé Yeshé Dé, thus placing the translation sometime in the ninth century ᴄᴇ.

i.15This translation was made principally on the basis of the Tibetan translations of the text found in the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus) sections in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Stok Palace Kangyur and the Comparative Edition of the Kangyur (dpe bsdur ma). We also consulted Toshiya Unebe’s 2015 transliteration of the Sanskrit text, the Sanskrit from Schopen’s transcription of the “Los Angeles Manuscript” of this text, and Hidas’ edition and translation of the surviving Sanskrit Uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī ritual for the passages that are parallel with the present text.

i.16The dhāraṇī proper‍—as is not unusual in the canonical texts where multiple versions have survived‍—is not identical in every detail even across the five different versions in the Degé Kangyur (Toh 594–598), and the existence of further variations across different Kangyurs and versions in extra-canonical collections further complicates the picture. Reference to Hidas’ edition of the Sanskrit yields useful orthographic confirmation but may be misleading as a model given that the ten different Nepalese Sanskrit manuscripts on which it is based are of much later date than any of the present Tibetan witnesses. Here and in the other works in the group, we have therefore chosen to transcribe the dhāraṇī as it appears in the Degé version of each text, making only minor choices of orthography and adding annotations to point out the most significant discrepancies.

i.17While most differences are minor, one particular phrase in this version of the dhāraṇī appears displaced by comparison with the dhāraṇī in the other works. The apparent displacement is not seen in all Kangyurs but is nevertheless not unique to the Degé xylograph alone. Moreover, in the two supposedly duplicate versions of this text, Toh 597 and Toh 984 (in the Tantra and Dhāraṇī sections respectively), that same phrase is by no means identical.

i.18One noticeable difference across both Tibetan and Sanskrit versions of the dhāraṇī is the presence or absence of the syllable oṁ at the beginning of certain phrases. In the present work and Toh 594, 595, and 596 there are only three such oṁ syllables, while in Toh 598 oṁ appears no less than nine times, as it does in Hidas’ edition from Sanskrit sources and in some of the extra-canonical liturgies. Toh 598 is a translation made at a significantly later date than the other works of the group, and may possibly signal a change in usage that is also reflected in the Nepalese Sanskrit texts of even later date. This is corroborated by the absence of extra oṁs in the Dunhuang manuscripts. The colophon of the equivalent of the present text in the Phukdrak (phug brag) Kangyur includes a note to the effect that the texts with only three oṁs are to be considered more correct; that although there may have been Sanskrit source texts with as many as nine, Sumpa Lotsāwa (twelfth century) reported that all the Sanskrit texts he had seen contained only three; and that of the Sanskrit texts held at Sakya monastery none had more than that. Sumpa Lotsāwa’s remark regarding this aspect of the Sanskrit manuscripts he had seen, presumably including those then available in Nepal, where he studied and lived, thus contrast with what we know of later manuscript traditions of the dhāraṇī in Nepal, in which the inclusion of nine oṁs seems to have been the norm.

i.19Over the centuries, the textual transmission of the dhāraṇī has preserved the major portion of it with remarkable fidelity. Nevertheless, the few anomalies to be seen across all these closely related texts are a reminder that here, as with other dhāraṇī works, some variations over time and place are only to be expected.