Notes

n.1rab tu byed pa dang po’o. Butön uses the phrase rab byed dang po in his list of canonical translations to distinguish this text from the others in the group; see Butön F.173.b.

n.2The four texts are Toh 594, 595, 596, and the present text, Toh 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 zhes bya ba’i rtog pa).

n.3The 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.4Probably 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.5Hidas 2020, p. 141. See also Hidas 2021b, which catalogs a number of Indic dhāraṇī­saṃgraha collections, many of which include the uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī.

n.6The 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.7The 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 This is an early manuscript from Bamiyan-Gilgit that Schopen transcribed and translated into English in an unpublished work, which we are grateful to Jacob Dalton for sharing.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.8This 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.9The first translation is Taishō 967, followed by Taishō 968–971 and Taishō 974 (Chou 1945, p. 322).

n.10According 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.11Hidas 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 (Toh 595) but present in some of the other uṣṇīṣavijayā texts in the Tibetan canon.

n.12See J. Dalton forthcoming for a description of the maṇḍala of uṣṇīṣa buddhas in Amoghavajra’s Uṣṇīṣavijayā ritual manual, and Hodge 2003, pp. 113–14 for the uṣṇīṣa buddhas from the Mahāvairocana-abhisaṃbodhi-tantra.

n.13Sørensen 2011a, p. 165.

n.14Sørensen 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.15Copp 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.16See 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).

n.17Schmid 2011, pp. 372–73.

n.18Bühnemann 2014; Rospatt 2015, p. 821.

n.19See Bhattacharyya 1928, vol. 2.

n.20The three are Toh 3377, 3248, and 3580, translated respectively by Khampa Lotsāwa Bari Chödrak (khams pa lo tsA ba ba ri chos grags, eleventh century), 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.21See Chandra 1980.

n.22The single instance in the other four texts in this section of the Kangyur in which one might interpret the term uṣṇīṣavijayā to refer to a goddess is a sentence in one of the rites included in both Toh 594 and 595 in which it is stated that, having properly followed the rite for reciting the dhāraṇī, “in the early morning at dawn you will see the face of the Bhagavatī, and she will give you whatever accomplishments you desire.” The specific identity of this Bhagavatī is not mentioned in the passage, but one might well presume that she is Uṣṇīṣavijayā herself.

n.23These 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.24Phangthangma (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 as just noted it cannot be the present text because, in addition to representing a separate ritual system later than the other texts in this group, the present Tibetan translation was not made until the thirteenth century. The Phangthangma also lists what may be a copy of the dhāraṇī alone, outside 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.25Unlike 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.26The first part of this text through the presentation of the dhāraṇī itself is parallel with the opening passages of Toh 594, Toh 595, and Toh 596, though the latter text has made a number of emendations that improve upon some readings from Toh 594 and Toh 595, while making others even less smooth and more complicated. This opening section of the present text both lacks a line slip error that was transmitted in each of the three other works in this group of four, and also shows evidence of having been edited. In the present text the dhāraṇī itself has also been edited, with vowel sandhi applied between words, which has not been done in any other recensions of the dhāraṇī in this group of parallel texts.

n.27chos yang dag par sdud pa’i phug chen po’i khang bzangs kyi tshal. 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.28thams cad dang ldan pa.

n.29The phrase uṣṇīṣavijāyāpariśuddhe follows here in in Toh 595, 596, and 598, and in Hidas’ Sanskrit edition.

n.30This oṁ is not found in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984.

n.31mama is not present in Hidas’ edition of the Sanskrit manuscripts.

n.32Hidas’s edition of the Sanskrit reads sarvatathāgatamātre, a plausible variant unattested in Tibetan sources.

n.33This oṁ is not found in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984.

n.34This repetition of mamati is absent in the Narthang and Stok Palace versions of Toh 598.

n.35The passage mamati mamati mahāmamati| sumati sumati mahāsumati is unique to Toh. 598. Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984, as well as Hidas’ Sanskrit edition, all read mamati | sumati.

n.36This oṁ is not found in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984.

n.37This oṁ is not found in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984.

n.38There is some variation in this phrase across the Tibetan and Sanskrit sources. Toh 594, 596, and 597 read sadā me; Toh 595, 598 (this text), and Toh 984 read me sadā; and Hidas’ Sanskrit edition has mama sadā. The meaning is the same in all cases.

n.39Hidas’s Sanskrit edition includes sarvatathāgatahṛdayādhiṣṭhānādhiṣṭhite here. There is significant variation at this point across the Tibetan and Sanskrit sources. Please see the corresponding passage of the dhāraṇī in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984 for the variants reported in those texts.

n.40māṃ is absent in Hidas’ Sanskrit edition.

n.41This oṁ is not found in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984.

n.42This oṁ is not found in Toh 594, 595, 596, and 597/984.

n.43Hidas 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).

n.44The Tibetan text reads ’dzin pa (“holder”), while the parallel Sanskrit text edited by Hidas reads -nivāraṇī (“destroyer”) (Hidas 2020, p. 153). Moreover, three of Hidas’ Sanskrit witnesses here read -harā, also meaning “destroyer” (ibid., p. 161n142). Given the lack of sense in the Tibetan passage and the consistency of meaning in the Sanskrit witnesses, this translation follows the Sanskrit reading.

n.45This translation is based on the reading bla bres following the Narthang and Lhasa Kangyurs rather than the reading bla res from the Degé.

n.46Literally “place” (gdab). Below, the verb ’bri (“draw”) is used, so we have used “draw” to translate gdab here as well.

n.47The sixteen uṣṇīṣa buddhas listed here are named after the sixteen emptinesses, the classical set of sixteen types of emptiness described in many Mahāyāna philosophical texts.

n.48See i.­3 and n.­1.