Introduction

i.1The Dhāraṇī of Vajrapāṇi, the Yakṣa Lord is a short scripture that teaches a vidyāmantra of Vajrakumāra. The mantra is given to repel and avert illness, preempt malevolent actions perpetrated by a variety of spirits and enemies, and grant protection to the individual who recites or wears it. While the title of the text identifies the work as a dhāraṇī of Vajrapāṇi, the contents are entirely related to a protective vidyāmantra of Vajrakumāra (“The Youthful Vajra”), and aside from the homage at the beginning there is no further mention of Vajrapāṇi in the text itself.

i.2Following the opening homage, the text begins with a brief statement announcing that the teaching of the vidyāmantra will be given by “the vajra holder.” It then proceeds directly to the mantra, with no further narrative content. The mantra consists of a mixture of sentences in Tibetan, such as requests for protection and statements about the effectiveness of the mantra, interspersed with Sanskrit words and syllables. The malevolent beings that this vidyāmantra offers protection from include grahas, spirits that cause illness, and malevolent female spirits.

i.3The text does not appear to be extant in Sanskrit, nor does it exist in Chinese. The Tibetan text also lacks a translator’s colophon, and it does not appear in either of the surviving imperial catalogs, nor among the manuscripts discovered at Dunhuang. Little therefore can be surmised about its textual history in Tibet up until its inclusion in the Kangyur.

i.4It is included in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section of the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs that have a separate Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, and in the equivalent part of the Tantra section in those that do not label it as such, but is not included in any Thempangma lineage Kangyurs.

i.5Notably, the dhāraṇī is one of only twelve works in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section that is not duplicated in other sections of the Kangyur. It appears that these twelve texts found their way into the Tshalpa lineage Kangyurs specifically because of their inclusion in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs, which was likely compiled on the basis of earlier collections of dhāraṇīs and associated ritual texts. These collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇī­saṃgraha, circulated throughout South Asia and Tibet‍—including at Dunhuang‍—as extracanonical dhāraṇī collections.

i.6The present English translation of The Dhāraṇī of Vajrapāṇi, the Yakṣa Lord was made from the Tibetan text as found in the Degé Kangyur, with reference to the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma). The Sanskrit words and syllables of the mantra are rendered in the translation exactly as they appear in the Degé recension of the work, while the Tibetan sentences that appear interspersed with them have been translated into English.