Introduction

i.1The Siṃhanāda Tantra opens in Vajrāsana where the Buddha is residing in the form of Padmeśvara. Vajrapāṇi asks him how to train on the path, and Padmeśvara replies that one should recall the practice of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda. The story of Avalokiteśvara’s Siṃhanāda form is recounted in detail in The Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda, Toh 703. There we learn how, during a past-life adventure with his friend who became the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, Avalokiteśvara came to take this particular form. In this form, he obtained the power to tame the nāgas and his famed curative powers. The Siṃhanāda Tantra features the latter. After speaking Siṃhanāda’s secret mantra and teaching a short practice to accompany it, Padmeśvara concludes his discourse by describing the benefits of respecting and upholding the tantra and the detriments of deprecating it.

i.2In addition to The Siṃhanāda Tantra, there are two short dhāraṇī texts associated with Siṃhanāda in the Kangyur and numerous practice manuals, praises, and ritual texts dedicated to him in the Tengyur, attesting to the importance of this particular form of Avalokiteśvara. Siṃhanāda was especially popular in Sri Lanka. An image of Siṃhanāda was found at the Mahābodhi temple in Bodh Gaya prior to the temple’s nineteenth-century renovation. A tenth-century Nepalese miniature painting kept at Cambridge depicts Siṃhanāda and includes a caption reading, “Lokeśvara of the hospital on the island of Siṃhala,” referencing his curative abilities.

i.3Siṃhanāda’s iconography is generally consistent across textual and artistic sources, though not all of the details are clearly elaborated in this text. Siṃhanāda is white in color, has two legs and two arms, is dressed as an ascetic (tapasvin, dka’ thub ldan pa) and sits on a lion. In most descriptions, a skull-adorned trident rests at his right side, but in some, he holds it in his right hand. This trident is also frequently depicted with a white snake coiled around the shaft. With his left hand, he holds the end of a lotus stalk that rises upward and has a sword standing on the open lotus blossom. Nearby and to the left sits what is variously described as a cup (karoṭaka), pot (bhājana, snod), or skull cup (kapāla, thod pa) filled with fragrant flowers. This vessel often sits on a lotus or water lily. The iconography described in the present text largely conforms with this depiction, but a lack of clarity in the Tibetan translation and its Sanskrit sources leaves a number of specific points ambiguous.

i.4The Siṃhanāda form of Avalokiteśvara continues to be practiced in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Two arrangements of practices centered on Lokeśvara Siṃhanāda are found in the Compendium of Sādhanas (sgrub thabs kun btus) compiled by Jamyang Loter Wangpo, and the nineteenth-century scholar Mipham Gyatso wrote a short summary of the story of The Dhāraṇī of Avalokiteśvara Siṃhanāda.

i.5The Siṃhanāda Tantra does not appear to be extant in Sanskrit or Chinese translation. It was translated into Tibetan by the Indian master Prajñākara and the Tibetan translator Gö Khukpa Lhetse in the eleventh century.

i.6The present English translation of The Siṃhanāda Tantra was made on the basis of the Degé Kangyur recension of this work, with additional reference to the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe sdur ma) of the Kangyur, the Stok Palace (stog pho brang) Kangyur, and the Phukdrak (phug brag) Kangyur recensions of the text. We also consulted the Sanskrit Siṃha­nāda­dhāraṇī from the Sādhanamālā.