Notes

n.1The present text, and all those contained in this same volume (gzungs ’dus, e), are listed as being located in volume 100 of the Degé Kangyur by the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC). However, several other Kangyur databases‍—including the eKangyur that supplies the digital input version displayed by the 84000 Reading Room‍—list this work as being located in volume 101. This discrepancy is partly due to the fact that the two volumes of the gzungs ’dus section are an added supplement not mentioned in the original catalog, and also hinges on the fact that the compilers of the Tōhoku catalog placed another text‍—which forms a whole, very large volume‍—the Vimalaprabhā­nāmakālacakra­tantraṭīkā (dus ’khor ’grel bshad dri med ’od, Toh 845), before the present volume, numbering it as vol. 100, although it is almost certainly intended to come right at the end of the Degé Kangyur texts as volume 102; indeed its final fifth chapter is often carried over and wrapped in the same volume as the Kangyur dkar chags (catalog). Please note this discrepancy when using the eKangyur viewer in this translation.

n.2See Lalou, “Notes de mythologie.” The reader should also note that the titles of these texts in the Kangyur differ from the titles in Lalou’s Dunhuang witnesses. Lalou’s first Dunhuang witness entitled The Threefold Ritual (rgyud gsum pa) corresponds to the first twenty-one stanzas in the present translation, and does not include either the passage (1.­22) added from the Lokottaraparivarta (Toh 44-44), or the verses that follow (1.­23–1.­28). Lalou’s second Dunhuang witness, entitled An Invocation of the Great Deities and Nāgas (lha klu chen po rnams spyan dran pa) corresponds to the text that appears next in the Degé Kangyur, with the title The Threefold Ritual (rgyud gsum pa), which 84000 and other databases have designated Toh 846a.

n.3We thank Ryan Damron for identifying this section of The Threefold Invocation Ritual as an excerpt from the Lokottaraparivarta (Toh 44-44). See n.­9 for the location of this passage in the Degé Kangyur Buddhāvataṃsaka itself.

n.4The Tibetan reads stong gsum or Trisahasra. Marcelle Lalou translates this as Triśirṣaka, who is listed as a nāgarāja in Bendall’s edition of the Mahāmegha (Toh 235). Here, following Lalou’s lead, stong gsum has been amended to gdong gsum or Triśirṣaka, “the three-faced one.”

n.5gdon la ’jebs. The translation of this term remains tentative. An alternate translation that adheres closely to the meaning that the term ’jebs pa bears in Tibetan might indicate that this is either a collective noun or a proper name and translate as “Pleasing to the Grahas.” This name does not have any Sanskrit equivalent of which we are currently aware. The Negi dictionary notes that the Tibetan ’jebs pa translates the Sanskrit prācuryam (“multitude,” “abundance,” “plenty”) in the Mahāyāna­sūtrālaṅkāra. I have attempted to integrate this reading of ’jebs pa into the translation “hosts of grahas,” based on the assumption that the Tibetan reading may have read an incorrect grammatical particle into the original compound.

n.6Possibly also “Śrīdevi.” We have gone with Śrīmati here because this yakṣiṇī is witnessed in the Mahāmāyūrī.

n.7gzha’ gzung yun gyi chu srid ’thob ’gyur na/. The la bdun particle na at the end of this line might also be read as a conditional, though that reading seems unlikely.

n.8The first text in Marcelle Lalou’s edition of the Dunhuang manuscripts for the rgyud gsum pa ends here with the final line of this stanza, and does not contain the full invocation that we see in the Kangyur versions of this text. See Lalou, “Notes de mythologie,” 132.

n.9This line begins a passage quoted from the Lokottaraparivarta, chapter forty-four of the Buddhāvataṃsaka­sūtra (Toh 44-44). See ’phags pa sangs rgyas phal po che zhes bya ba shin tu rgyas pa chen po’i mdo, Degé Kangyur vol. 37 (phal chen, ga), ff. 248.a.5–248.b.5. The pairing of phrases that is implied in the mention of “obverse and direct ways” toward the end of the passage, and is necessary to end up with the “ten teachings,” is not entirely obvious from the Tibetan but has been aided here by consulting the Chinese of the Buddhāvataṃsaka.

n.10While the text here in the Degé Kangyur reads mya ngan las ’das par bgyis la, the equivalent phrase in the Degé text of the Lokottaraparivarta reads mya ngan las ’das par shes par gyis la.

n.11Tib. snrel zhir sgrub pa mngon par bsgrub par rnams nye bar sgrub pa.

n.12The section that is reproduced from the Lokottaraparivarta ends here.

n.13lha yi rgyal srid dbu rmog btsan par bsngo/. The phrase dbu rmog btsan pa appears in imperial era Tibetan inscriptions and Dunhuang documents as one of a number of terms that are used to describe a ruler’s sovereign power, and these materials suggest that it should be understood as a martial metaphor for the territory over which a ruler has sovereignty. An alternate translation of this line might hold the phrases lha yi rgyal srid and dbu rmog btsan pa in apposition and translate as, “I dedicate this to the kingdom of the gods, the mighty helmet.”

n.14The concluding statement includes only the shorter form of the title rgyud gsum pa, also used for the following text.