Introduction

i.1The Sovereign Tantra “Praises to Śrīdevī Kālī” (Śrī­devī­kālī­praśaṃsārāja­tantra) opens in the Pāruṣyaka grove on the summit of Mount Sumeru, where the bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi has assembled with a large retinue of divine and demonic beings. Vajrapāṇi introduces the goddess Śrīdevī Kālī and implores the members of his retinue to praise and make offerings to her, prompting twelve members of the retinue to praise the goddess in turn.

i.2Each praise to the goddess provides a distinct perspective on how her physical features and virtuous qualities reflect her status as a distinctly Buddhist deity and protector of the Buddha Śākyamuni’s teachings. Śakra, the lord of the gods, begins by praising Śrīdevī Kālī in terms of the ten virtuous actions, noting how the goddess’s practice of the ten virtuous actions led her to abandon all forms of nonvirtuous action. The yakṣa king Vaiśravaṇa then praises Śrīdevī Kālī in terms of her progression on the fivefold path, indicating that she is understood in this tantra to be a highly advanced bodhisattva. We next hear from the kinnara king Druma, the gandharva king Pañcaśikha, the nāga king Nanda, and so forth, representing the various leaders of “eight classes of divine and demonic beings” in Vajrapāṇi’s retinue. Each figure’s praise of Kālī draws out numerous connections between the goddess’s various qualities and the Buddhist teachings on nonduality, the performance of ritual actions, ultimate truth, and the bodhisattva path, providing an entirely Buddhist interpretive framework for understanding and visualizing the goddess. At times, the beings praising Kālī explicitly acknowledge her association with other, non-Buddhist traditions, offering their explanations of why that is the case.

i.3Among the numerous figures praising Mahākālī is Yama, the Lord of Death. His praise is noteworthy for the fact that it also appears, in a slightly modified standalone form, as Praising the Lady Who Rules Disease, a text found in both the Kangyur (Toh 1090) and the Tengyur (Toh 1777). Both versions are attributed to “the brahmin Vararuci,” who, here in Praises to Śrīdevī Kālī, speaks the praise immediately following the praise spoken by Yama. Thus it would appear that Toh 1090/1777 is an extract from Praises to Śrīdevī Kālī, and the compilers of Toh 1090/1777 mistook the line introducing the praise of Vararuci in Praises to Śrīdevī Kālī as an attribution of authorship for the preceding praise spoken by Yama. The fact that Toh 1090/1777 is attributed to the human Vararuci perhaps explains why the same text was also included in the Tengyur.

i.4There is currently no known Sanskrit witness to this text, and the text does not include a translator’s colophon. It also does not appear in either of the ninth-century royal Tibetan catalogs of translated works and is not found in the Chinese canon. All of these factors make it difficult to determine the provenance of the text, and it is perhaps partly for these reasons that Butön Rinchen Drup and others have called into question the authenticity of this work as an Indian text.

i.5This English translation is based on the version of Praises to Śrīdevī Kālī in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the Stok Palace Kangyur, Phukdrak Kangyur, and the Comparative Edition of the Degé Kangyur (dpe bsdur ma). The version of the text preserved in the Nyingma Gyübum also informed this translation.