Introduction

i.1The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers is a short dhāraṇī work in the Action Tantra section of the Kangyur, which is also contained in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section.

i.2The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers is set in Indra’s Rock Cave on Vaidehaka Mountain where Śakra requests the Buddha for a teaching to help him subdue the asuras, the famed adversaries of the devas. The Buddha instructs Śakra to employ the vidyāmantra that confers freedom from all dangers. A vidyāmantra is an esoteric formula used to accomplish a ritual goal and, in this text, is largely used interchangeably with dhāraṇī. This vidyāmantra specifically frees one from the dangers associated with disease, poisons, weapons, malevolent nonhuman beings, and conflicts. Among the harmful nonhuman beings, the text places a particular emphasis on grahas, a class of beings who “seize,” possess, or otherwise adversely influence other beings by causing a range of physical and mental afflictions, as well as various types of misfortune. After the Buddha recites the vidyāmantra, he offers Śakra ritual instructions on how to incant the vidyāmantra on threads, ritual substances, or armor that, when placed on the body, ensure protection and the successful outcomes of one’s rituals.

i.3The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers shares a great deal of intertextuality with The Dhāraṇī of the Iron Beak [1] (Toh 761) and, to a lesser degree, with Toh 762, also titled The Dhāraṇī of the Iron Beak [2]. These three works share an identical narrative structure, are set in Indra’s Rock Cave, and feature Śakra as their interlocutor. While the dhāraṇī formulas in The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers and Toh 761 are, in most places, nearly identical, they are entirely different from the much shorter formulas found in Toh 762. One notably absent feature from The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers but found in Toh 761 and Toh 762 is the emphasis on the dhāraṇī’s efficacy for weather control rituals aimed at favorable agriculture. Many sections of the dhāraṇī formula were challenging to comprehend. We did not attempt to venture any conjectural emendations and, instead, presented it largely as it appears in the Tibetan.

i.4There is no extant Indic manuscript for The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers and it is unclear what status it held in India. It was translated into Chinese during the Northern Song Dynasty as the Shi yiqie wuwei tuoluoni jing (T1373, 施一切無畏陀羅尼經). This translation was produced by Dānapāla (Shihu 施護, ?–1017 ᴄᴇ), an Indian scholar-monk from Uḍḍiyāna who translated over one hundred works into Chinese. The Tibetan translation describes in its colophon how it was produced by the prolific Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé in collaboration with the Indian masters Jinamitra and Dānaśīla. Therefore, the Tibetan translation would have been completed during the late eighth or early ninth centuries. Though the dhāraṇī’s colophon reports that it was translated during the imperial period, it does not appear in either of the imperial catalogs. The dhāraṇī, therefore, may be among the many tantric works of literature that were intentionally not registered in the imperial catalogs or, perhaps, the colophon may be a later attribution to imperial period translators. Beyond passing references to its title, The Dhāraṇī That Fully Confers Freedom From All Dangers does not appear to have been widely cited or mentioned in later Tibetan literature. It has also has not been the subject of any sustained scholarly research that we are aware of. Without any extant Sanskrit to study, our translation was based on the textual witness from the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the variant readings attested in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) Kangyur and the Stok Palace Manuscript (stog pho brang bris ma) Kangyur.