Toh 1066 — The Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament
Gaṇyālaṃkārāgradhāraṇī
Translated by Catherine Dalton under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha
The Noble
Dhāraṇī of the Supreme Stem Ornament
F.236.a Homage to the Three Jewels.
The essence-mantra of that is said to be:
oṁ kara kara svāhā kuru kuru svāhā bhara bhara svāhā bhuru bhuru svāhā dhara dhara svāhā dhuru dhuru svāhā cara cara svāhā curu curu svāhā
The essence-mantra of that is said to be:
oṁ prajñe prajñe prajñe avalokiradhati mani susiddhi ārya jvala nāma mañjuye svāhā
The essence-mantra of that is said to be:
oṁ haku hūṁ hūṁ du hūṁ hūṁ na hūṁ hūṁ yaṁ hūṁ hūṁ ke hūṁ hūṁ ki hūṁ hūṁ kī hūṁ hūṁ ti hūṁ hūṁ tī hūṁ hūṁ dū hūṁ hūṁ ve hūṁ
The essence-mantra of that is:
namo bhagavata sarva dhuye duṣṭana svāhā
This concludes “The Noble Dhāraṇī Called the Supreme Stem Ornament.”Notes
“Days of the week” would more commonly be gza’, rather than the reading here, za, but gza’ is used in the next line where it seems to indicate the planets (another meaning of the word). Our translation here is tentative.
backHere the Degé, and most of the other Kangyurs consulted in the Pedurma edition, read ’dre lnga sdod (“the five ghosts remaining”), which we understand to mean possession by the ghosts. The Yongle and Kangxi Kangyurs read ’dre lgna gdon (“the demonic five ghosts” or “the demons/spirits who are the five ghosts”), which is also a plausible reading. Given two plausible readings, we simply chose the one that is predominant.
backbdud gcod. This is the name of an inauspicious divination result in the trigram divinations according to the Chinese elemental divination system.
backdmar kyi mthun. Here we follow the Yongle and Kangxi Kangyurs which read dmar kyi mthun, thus taking the phrase to mean “violence” (lit. “that which accords with violence”), rather than the Degé, which reads dmar kyi thun (this might possibly be translated as “violent incanted substances” or “violent practices”). While we believe we can make most sense of the Kangxi and Yongle reading, we nonetheless remain unsure about the meaning of this phrase, and suspect that the passage may be corrupt.
backThe term phra men is one of two Tibetan translations of the word ḍākinī, the other being the more familiar mkha’ ’gro (ma). It seems the term phra men (ma) was used more frequently to render the idea of ḍākinīs as a class of potentially malevolent female spirits, while the term mkha’ ’gro (ma), while also used to refer to such worldly spirits, was preferred for the “wisdom” ḍākinīs in the higher tantras, in which context the term ḍākinī is better known to English-speaking audiences. To avoid such confusion (and also because we speculate that this text may have been translated from Chinese rather than from Sanskrit), we have chosen to translate the word phra men here as “malevolent female spirit,” since what is clear is that its referent here is a class of potentially harmful entities. See the glossary entry on phra men for further uses of the term.
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