Introduction

i.1The Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus) opens with the present work, The Threefold Invocation Ritual. A very large majority of the 250 texts in this two-volume section appended to the Degé Kangyur are simply duplicates of texts in other sections, but this is one of the dozen or so that are unique to the compendium. Nevertheless, it is present in all Kangyurs of predominantly Tshalpa (tshal pa) lineage, being included in the Tantra sections of those that do not have a separate section of dhāraṇī. Kangyurs of the Thempangma lineage do not include this work at all.

i.2The Tōhoku catalog (the standard reference for the Degé Kangyur) appears to have grouped two texts together under the catalog number Toh 846, despite the fact that the Degé Kangyur (as well as other Tshalpa Kangyurs) marks these as independent works with their own titles. Of the handful of witnesses for this text that have survived among the Pelliot Dunhuang manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, the manuscripts that Marcelle Lalou presented in her 1938 study, edition, and French translation confirm that these two sections of Toh 846 are in fact independent works, respectively entitled The Threefold Ritual (rgyud gsum pa) and An Invocation of the Great Deities and Nāgas (lha klu chen po rnams spyan dran pa). The confusion over whether or not these two texts should be catalogued as a single work might have derived from the fact that the initial title in the Kangyur versions is a combination of parts of the two titles of these older versions of the text. The version in all Tshalpa Kangyurs of the present text, The Threefold Invocation Ritual, also adds a passage of aspiration in prose from the Lokottaraparivarta, chapter 44 of the Buddhāvataṃsaka­sūtra, and a concluding set of verses that are not included in the Dunhuang witnesses.

i.3The Threefold Invocation Ritual does not appear in either the Denkarma or Phangthangma royal Tibetan catalogues of works translated in the early period. It also does not appear to have been translated into Chinese at any point. Its opening line does not contain an original Indic title, and it is possible that this text is Tibetan in origin. Most of the subject matter of the invocation, however, is unmistakably Indian. The text begins by calling upon the great kings and guardians of the cardinal and ordinal directions, zenith, and nadir. The text then calls upon the attendants of Śiva and the deity Jambhala and his four treasures (Padma, Mahāpadma, Śaṅkha, and Mahāśaṅkha), follows with a list of sixteen yakṣa generals, and concludes by calling upon a number of nāga kings, rākṣasīs, and goddesses. This pantheon of worldly deities is invoked in the first part of the text to bear witness to the person who is reciting the liturgy (or the person for whom the liturgy is being recited). A short aspiration prayer in prose follows that confirms that person’s commitment to the bodhisattva path in the presence of all who have gathered as witnesses. The aspiration (1.­22) is an extract from the Lokottaraparivarta, and details ten essential practices a bodhisattva should undertake, setting out each practice as a contrasting but complementary pair of attitudes drawn respectively from relative and ultimate perspectives. This is followed by a short set of instructions on the power of the Buddhist teachings that employs the cosmogonic myth from the Purāṇas, the churning of the ocean of milk, encoding elements of the myth with a broader Buddhist significance.

i.4The names of all the deities invoked in this text have been rendered in Sanskrit whenever possible. The Sanskrit names and classifications for these deities have been derived by triangulating between the Negi Tibetan–Sanskrit dictionary, Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English dictionary, and the Sanskrit of the Mahā­māyūrī­vidyārājñī. The reader will notice that a number of familiar names from Sanskrit epic and Purāṇa literature appear among lists of yakṣa generals, nāga kings, rākṣasīs, and goddesses in this text. As is the case in other dhāraṇī texts, it is likely that their role as worldly deities in this work supercedes their characterizations in the Sanskrit epics and Purāṇas. This phenomenon is also observed in the Mahāmāyūrī, where the goddesses Mārīcī and Kālī, for instance, are listed as rākṣasīs. Similarly, several figures such as Daśagrīva, Vibhīṣaṇa, Meghanāda, Sugrīva, and Hanuman who are known from the Rāmāyaṇa appear here as yakṣa generals and nāga kings.

i.5This translation is based on the version of The Threefold Invocation Ritual found at the opening of the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the text as it appears in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur. The prose section that is derived from the Lokottaraparivarta was checked against the Tibetan translation of that text from the A Multitude of Buddhas (phal chen) section of the Degé Kangyur, and also against Śikṣānanda’s Chinese.