Introduction

i.1This short untitled work begins with an homage to the Three Jewels, to the Buddha Vairocana, and to Ākāśagarbha. It then provides a short dhāraṇī and brief instructions in its rite. Through this, the practitioner will be unharmed by negative influences and will see Amitābha and other buddhas and bodhisattvas at the time of death.

i.2The text is included in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that include a separate Dhāraṇī section. In Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that lack a section so named, the text is only found in the equivalent but unnamed dhāraṇī collection comprising part of the Tantra section. It is not included in any Thempangma lineage Kangyurs.

i.3Notably, the dhāraṇī is one of only twelve works in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section that, because they are not duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur, are likely to have found their way into the Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs as a result of having been included in earlier collections of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts from which the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs seems to have been compiled. These collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇī­saṃgrahas, circulated throughout South Asia and Tibet‍—including at Dunhuang‍—as extracanonical dhāraṇī collections.

i.4Since the text lacks a translator’s colophon, we do not know when it was translated into Tibetan. Furthermore, the absence of a title makes it difficult to determine whether the text is extant in Sanskrit, or whether it was ever translated into Chinese.

i.5The present English translation was made based on the Degé Kangyur with additional reference to the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), as well as to the two recensions of the work in the Namgyal Collection. The text is stable across all recensions consulted, with some slight variation in a single alternative recension found in the Sūtra section of the Namgyal Collection. The dhāraṇī itself has been rendered in this translation according to the Degé Kangyur recension.