Introduction

i.1The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [1] opens with the Blessed One residing at Avalokiteśvara’s palace, teaching the Dharma to a vast retinue. After the teaching, Brahmā and others extensively praise the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, enumerating his “names” in the form of descriptive qualities, including qualities specific to Avalokiteśvara, along with a number of qualities corresponding with more general lists of the major and minor marks of an awakened being. The text concludes by describing the benefits that result from praising Avalokiteśvara with these names, including protection from illness, rebirth in Sukhāvatī, and obtaining positive qualities, such as intelligence, heroism, fortune, and skill in the sciences.

i.2The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [1] is one of several canonical texts that focus on Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. It belongs to a genre of “Hundred and Eight Names” texts that extoll deities by listing their “names,” which are often more like descriptive epithets. Sixteen such “Hundred and Eight Names” works are included in the Kangyur and the present text is one of three such texts dedicated to Avalokiteśvara. One of these three, The Dhāraṇī-Mantra of the One Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara (Toh 634/874), is a completely different text from the present one. However, the other, also titled The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [2] (Toh 706), is essentially a different recension of the present text.

i.3Toh 705/900 and Toh 706 are similar enough to be considered different versions of the “same” text. However, the differences between them are significant enough that the editors of the Degé Kangyur elected to include both works, side-by-side. We have likewise elected to translate them separately. These two works share a very large percentage of their content, especially in the introductory and concluding narrative sections. The structure of the praise by way of the hundred and eight names, however, is distinct in the two works. In Toh 705/900, the praise has been rendered into Tibetan in verse, while in Toh 706 the praise is rendered in prose. There are also additional differences in some of the content in the praise section, suggesting that the two versions likely represent translations of different Sanskrit recensions of the work. The close relationship between Toh 705 and Toh 706 is further highlighted by the fact that the final colophons at the end of both versions append the additional title “The Receptacle of the Precious Relics of all Victors,” with the only difference being that the attribute “precious” is not contained in Toh 706.

i.4The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [1] does not appear to survive in Sanskrit. However, a text by the same name was translated into Chinese and is preserved in the Taishō canon as Taishō 1054, translated by Tian Xizai, who was active in the tenth century. Although the Tibetan translation of The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [1] (Toh 705/900) lacks a translators’ colophon (as does Toh 706), we can date it to the imperial period, since the title is listed in both the Denkarma and Phangthangma imperial catalogs. It is also one of the texts that appears most frequently at Dunhuang. According to Dalton and van Schaik, the Dunhuang recensions correspond with Toh 705.

i.5Like many dhāraṇī texts, The Noble Hundred and Eight Names of Avalokiteśvara [1] is found in the Tantra section of both the Tshalpa and Thempangma lineage Kangyurs as a Kriyā tantra. In the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that have a Dhāraṇī section, it is additionally found there. The recension found in the Tantra section of the Degé Kangyur (Toh 705) and the one found in the Dhāraṇī section (Toh 900) are almost identical, containing only minor differences. There are occasional word variances between the two recensions, where the variant word has the same meaning. There are also a few places where a word is found replaced by a word with a different meaning. Occasionally, the order of items in a list appears differently or a word may be added or missing in one version or the other. In most cases where there are differences, the Stok Palace Kangyur recension agrees with Toh 900 rather than Toh 705. However, it also contains additional variations.

i.6This English translation follows the readings in Toh 705. We have noted in the footnotes the variants in Toh 900 that would affect the meaning of the translation or its word order. We did not note the instances where the variants would not affect the translation. We also consulted the notes to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur and the Stok Palace Kangyur recension of the text in preparing this translation, as well as Toh 706, the largely parallel text discussed above.