Notes on the Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» and the Heart Sutra Dhāraṇī

Having looked at the background of Atikūṭa and the Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» (T 901) in my previous post, I will now look more closely at the relationship between the Tuóluóní jí jīng and the Heart Sutra. John McRae (1988: 107 n.10) noted another occurrence of the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī in the Tuóluóní jí jīng, so we begin with this.

The Dhāraṇī

We begin the dhāraṇī as it occurs in the Heart Sutra, noting some variations between different recensions.

Sanskrit	gate gate　pāragate　pārasaṃgate　bodhi　svāhā
Fangshan Xīn jīng	揭諦揭諦　般羅揭諦　波羅僧揭諦　菩提　莎婆訶 jiēdì jiēdì　bānluójiēdì　bōluósēngjiēdì　pútí　shāpóhē
Taishō Xīn jīng	揭帝揭帝　般羅揭帝　般羅僧揭帝　菩提　僧婆訶 jiēdì jiēdì　bānluójiēdì　bānluósēngjiēdì　pútí　sēngpóhē

Clearly, these are all the same text, but the scribes have made minor substitutions. Some inscriptions use dì 諦 and some dì 帝 (with the same pronunciation). Transcriptions of pāra is generally bōluó 波羅, but T251 has bānluó 般羅. (In Buddhist contexts, 般 is often pronounced bo due to an ancient error). The transcription of svāhā varies considerably in the witnesses, but the earlier versions have two characters shāhē 莎訶. The transcriptions with three characters represent svā as 莎婆 (or similar).

For svāhā, the Taishō print edition of T 251 has sēng pó hē 僧婆訶. This is clearly a mistake for shāpóhē 莎婆訶, which is what most Buddhists chant. The online CBETA version of the Taishō edition has recently been emended T251 to read 莎婆訶. See also my blog post Svāhā in The Heart Sutra Dhāraṇī (05 July 2019)

Other Dhāraṇī

Amidst his research on the Heart Sutra, Fukui Fumimasa observed that two similar dhāraṇīs occur in other texts (see Nattier 1992: 211 n.52, 53) and as noted John McRae identified another example. The three texts are:

• Dà fāngděng wúxiǎng jīng «大方等無想經» Mahāmegha-sūtra (T 387)
• Dōngfāng zuìshèng dēng wáng tuóluóní jīng «東方最勝燈王陀羅尼經» Agrapradīpadhāraṇīvidyārāja (T 1353)
• Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» Dhāraṇīsamuccaya (T 901).

The Mahāmegha Sūtra and a commentary translated by Bodhiruchi are also associated with Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 (r. 690–705 CE) and propaganda supporting her claim to lead the Chinese Empire.

There are several other translations of the Agrapradīpa (see DDB): T 1029, 1351, 1352, 1353, 1354, and 1355.

I give a tentative Sanskrit back-translation for each dhāraṇī but it's not entirely clear how these would have looked/sounded.

Mahāmegha-sūtra

竭帝　波利竭帝　僧竭帝　波羅僧竭帝波羅卑羅延坻　三波羅卑羅延坻　婆羅婆羅　波沙羅　波娑羅　摩文闍　摩文闍　遮羅帝　遮羅坻　波遮羅坻波遮羅坻　三波羅遮羅坻比提嘻利嘻梨　薩隷醯　薩隷醯　富嚧富嚧 莎呵 (T 387 12.1084c7-12)
gate gate pāragate saṃgate pārasaṃgate parābhirayaṇi parābhirayaṇi vara vara bhāṣvara bhāṣvara mahāvajra mahāvajra cārati cārati cāriṇi cāriṇi paracāriṇi paracāriṇi triparacāriṇi bhṛti hṛti hṛti śraddhe śraddhe phuru phuru svāhā

There seems to be no counterpart of this dhāraṇī in the Tibetan translation from the 9th century (see The Great Cloud, comparing this with the Chinese, I expect the dharaṇī to occur after paragraph 1.165). A sanskrit text of the Mahāmeghasūtra exists (Ye 2023) but the text has not been published.

Agrapradīpadhāraṇīvidyārāja

阿竭帝　波羅竭帝　波羅僧竭帝　婆羅毘羅延帝　波羅波羅　摩牟闍摩牟闍羅帝　三波羅闍羅帝　毘提提希希尼尼　憂句隷牟句頭帝　檀那竭帝　檀那羅帝　檀那僧多羅　伊波呵大要縛鬼(一縛鬼二香爐)婆利摩訶婆利闍梨摩訶闍梨　塸牟訶沙　婆帝摩訶沙婆帝　阿波吒僧金吒　陀羅尼　多陀呵　阿伽闍　尼婆毘薩婆達摩尼婆毘　伊舍摩陀　毘婆舍那　毘摩羅　修鉢離達摩尼佉那婆樓尼　文夜多　摩隷遮隷睺樓睺樓　朔鞞帝　曼多羅曼多羅　娑呵 (T 1353 21.867c12-c22)
agate pāragate parasaṃgate pārasaṃgate parābhirayaṇe parābhirayaṇe vara vara mamūja mamūja carate carate triparājate bhṛti bhṛti hṛdi hṛdi yukule mukule turite turite dānagate dānarate dānasaṃdāra epaha mahāya vāku vāku pari mahāpari jari mahājari pūrṇamahāśa vade mahāśa vade abhaṭasaṃkīrṇa dhāraṇi tāṭaha agāja nibhavisa pradam nibhavisa iṣamāta vipāśyana vimala śubhalitā dhāraṇikā navarūṇi vaṇyata maṇicara hulu hulu śabindi maṇḍala maṇḍala svāhā

Note that the other (putative) translations of the Agrapradīpa don't seem to include a comparable dhāraṇī. Indeed, they each seem to have a completely different set of dhāranī. However, they are all transcribed by different translators and there is no system to transcribing dhāraṇī, so it can be hard to tell.

 

Dhāraṇīsamuccaya

揭帝揭帝　波羅揭帝　波囉僧揭帝　菩提　莎訶 (T 901; 18.807b20)
jiēdì jiēdì　bōluójiēdì　bōluōsēngjiēdì　pútí　shāhē

As the Tuóluóní jí jīng itself shows, there seem to have been many dhāranī associated with Prajñāpāramitā. However, while there is some crossover, the first two dhāraṇī are clearly not the same dhāraṇī as in the Heart Sutra, and the third one is nearly identical.

So, with these other potential sources ruled out, we are left with the dhāraṇī in the Heart Sutra and the one in the Tuóluóní jí jīng. And it seems very likely that one copied from the other. Moreover, the Heart Sutra largely consists of copied passages, so we suspect from the outset that the dhāraṇī there was also copied.

A Digression on Heart Sutra and Mahāmegha Sūtra

Yang Zhaohua (2023: 7) proposes "that it was the rainmaking dhāraṇī in the [Dayun jing «大雲經»] that provided the direct inspiration for and exerted a greater impact on the Heart Sūtra mantra." This seems to be an obviously false conjecture. The false identity is facilitated by Yang only citing the parts that appear to overlap, and ignoring the ~80% or so of the dhāraṇī in the Mahāmegha Sūtra that has no counterpart in the much shorter Heart Sutra dhāraṇī. Where is the evidence that Chinese Buddhists abbreviated dhāraṇī?

The dhāraṇī from the Mahāmedgha is popularly known as the Jiàngyǔ tuóluóní 降雨陀羅尼 “Rainmaking Dhāraṇī”. Yang (2003: 7) notes "The dhāraṇī from the Great Cloud Sūtra circulated independently in China afterward" and cites the example of T. 1336, 21.609a25-b19 (corresponding to Dayun jing T. 387, 12.1084c4-26). However, Yang makes a huge, unjustified leap from these two dhāraṇī being vaguely similar, to them being the same, e.g.

Thus, we see the rainmaking function of the dhāraṇī from the Great Cloud Sūtra being transferred to the Jiedi Mantra of the Heart Sūtra and utilized to subdue snakes and dragons.

To my knowledge, we don't see this at all. The Heart Sutra "mantra" [not a mantra] is not generally associated with "rainmaking" or "water transference". Yang's discussion of Woncheuk's comments on the dhāraṇī in terms of the "crossing to the further shore" is simply not credible. Yang concludes (2023: 10):

Through a series of ingenious East Asian exegeses, the Jiedi Mantra is imputed with not only soteriological significance but also a metaphorical aquatic setting.

and

The association of the Jiedi Mantra with water and nāgas, I thus argue, is not solely the result of external transference from a rainmaking dhāraṇī in the Great Cloud Sūtra. Rather, the hermeneutic tradition, which interprets the soteriological metaphor of crossing within the mantra, has also provided a fertile ground for making this transference plausible.

I have no idea what Yang is talking about. No such facts have been established in his article and his conclusion is manifestly contradicted by all of the ancient commentaries I've encountered. Notably, as far as I can see, no traditional commentary uses the phrase jiàngyǔ 降雨 "rain making". In fact, in the whole of Vol 8 of Taishō (which contains all the Prajñāpāramitā translations except Xuanzang's) only one text uses this phrase, i.e. Fó shuō zuìshàng gēnběn dàlè jīngāng bùkōng sānmèi dàjiào wáng jīng «佛說最上根本大樂金剛不空三昧大教王經» (T 244)

「若欲降雨者，當往龍潭中持誦。(T 244 8.789b03)

If you wish to cause rain, you should go to the dragon pool and recite this.

The text is surrounded by a whole series of statements beginning Ruò yù 若欲 "If you want..." and it's not easy to see what chí sòng 持誦" "recite this" refers to. A little later we find

若求十方諸佛如來作忻樂愛敬者，當結金剛箭印持誦心明。(8.788b24-25)

If you seek the joy, love, and reverence of the Tathāgatas of the ten directions, you should form the Vajra Arrow Mudra (jīngāng jiàn yìn 金剛箭印) and recite the heart vidyā.

In this case, the heart vidyā (心明) appears at the end of the long list of applications. And it is simply 阿(引), ie. the long vowel sound ā (T 244 8.789c03).

The Heart Sutra dhāraṇī is not associated with "water and nāgas" by any commentator other than Yang. Moreover, the dhāraṇī in the Mahāmegha-sūtra (T 387), while similar in some respects, is very obviously not the same dhāraṇī as the Heart Sutra.

Curiously, Yang cites McRae (1988), which identifies the Tuóluóní jí jīng dhāraṇī as related, but he overlooks this important fact. Yang is also aware of Fukui and Nattier citing Mahāmegha and Agrapradīpa as other possible sources (he cites them in note 15), but he still focuses solely on the Mahāmegha.

For a more sober account of the use of the Mahāmegha dhāraṇī in rain-making see Schmithausen (1997: 58-63). For a deep dive into how Wu Zetian used the Mahāmegha Sūtra and a commentary authored in China to bolster her claim to rule China see Forte (1976).

Copying

Rather than try to lump them all together, which involves ignoring the manifest differences, we have to see these three dhāraṇī as related but distinct incantations. Notably, the Mahāmegha Sūtra is definitely not a Prajñāpāramitā text or a Tantric text, while the dhārāṇī in the Tuóluóní jí jīng is associated with Prajñāpāramitā and Tantric healing rituals.

To date, I have assumed that the direction of copying was from the Tuóluóní jí jīng to the Heart Sutra. It recently became clear that this was not quite good enough and that there might be reason to think it went the other way. However, in digging into this issue, I found some information that clarifies the situation. This involved reading the whole Prajñāpāramitā section of the Tuóluóní jí jīng (a tentative translation follows below after the main post)

In Tuóluóní jí jīng, the Prajñāpāramitā section contains several dhāraṇī accompanied by instructions on how to use them in tantric healing rituals. On the subject of tantric healing rituals and magic generally, I highly recommend Glucklich's (1997) account of his fieldwork amongst modern tantric healers in Varanasi. I've cited his definition of magic many times:

"Magic is based on a unique type of consciousness: the awareness of the interrelatedness of all things in the world by means of simple but refined sense perception... magical actions... constitute a direct, ritual way of restoring the experience of relatedness in cases where that experience has been broken by disease, drought, war, or any number of other events." (1997: 12)

There is a superficial resemblance between the title Bānrě bōluómìduō xīn jīng 般若波羅蜜多心經 and the name of one of the Prajñāpāramitā dhāraṇī: Bānrě dà xīn tuóluóní 般若大心陀羅尼. However, the phrases dà xīn tuóluóní 大心陀羅尼 and dà xīn zhòu 大心呪 are used frequently in Tuóluóní jí jīng and are generic in that seeing. For example, Capitanio (2017: 317) notes

The method of Kuṇḍalī Vajra for treating illnesses utilizes the great heart-mantra, the medium heart-mantra, and the lesser heart-mantra.

The great heart-mantra is: oṃ huru huru tiṣṭha tiṣtha bandha bandha hana hana amṛṭa hūṃ phaṭ

The medium heart-mantra is: oṃ dūna dūna hana hana hūṃ phaṭ

The lesser heart-mantra is: oṃ amṛṭa hūṃ phaṭ

The phrase dà xīn zhòu 大心呪 is used 41 times in the text, and xiǎo xīn zhòu 小心呪 21 times. This tells us that terms such as Prajñā-mahāhṛdaya-dhāraṇī (般若大心陀羅尼) and Prajñā-cūlahṛdaya-dhāraṇī-vidyā (般若小心陀羅尼呪), are not references to the Xīn jīng 心經. 大心呪 is a generic phrase in the Tuóluóní jí jīng. That said, the dà xīn zhòu 大心呪 in the Prajñāpāramitā section is precisely the dhāraṇī also found in the Heart Sutra.

That said, Tuóluóní jí jīng definitely refers to the incantation as a tuóluóní 陀羅尼 "dhāraṇī" and not a "mantra". This confirms my hypothesis that the incantation in the Heart Sutra is a dhāraṇī and not a mantra. That said, amongst Tantrikas this distinction may not have held, or at least might already have been breaking down by this time. The word tuóluóní 陀羅尼 is not found in the Heart Sutra.

Context

The final extended passage of the Prajñāpāramitā section of the Tuóluóní jí jīng gives instructions for the tantric rituals in which the various Prajñāpāramitā dhāraṇī can be used for healing. In those instructions, there is a call back to the dà xīn zhòu 大心呪, which here is a reference to the gate gate dhāraṇī. I take this to mean that the dhāraṇī is embedded in this context, and intrinsic to this passage. The Prajñāpāramitā section seems to hang together as a series of connected passages, that seem likely to have come from a single source that is no longer extant.

As we saw in the previous post, the anonymous preface of the Tuóluóní jí jīng suggests that it is an abbreviated version of a text called the *Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī Sūtra. Although this text is no longer extant, we have reason to believe it once existed because another extract is recorded as having been translated a century earlier. And, unfortunately, this does not seem to be related to the Jīngāngcháng tuóluóní jīng «金剛場陀羅尼經» *Vajramaṇḍadhāraṇī (T 1344, 1345).

The Kāiyuán lù (T 2154) also suggests that the translation of the Sanskrit and the final compilation of the Chinese texts of Tuóluóní jí jīng happened 40 years apart. So it may be true that the text is extracted from a single Sanskrit source, and it may also be true that the text was later redacted in Chinese, a process which may have included adding material from other sources.

For example, this may explain why we apparently see Tuóluóní jí jīng quoting a passage from Xuanzang's translation of the Adhyardhaśatikā prajñāpāramitā (150-line text), i.e.

如是神呪是諸佛母，能誦持者一切罪滅，常見諸佛，得宿命智，速證無上正等菩提。(T 901 18.807b7-8)

如是神呪是諸佛母，能誦持者一切罪滅，常見諸佛得宿住智，疾證無上正等菩提。 (T 220: 7.991a06)

Since T 220 was not completed until 28 November 663, this passage could not have been included in the original translation of Tuóluóní jí jīng from Sanskrit completed on 6 May 654. Rather, it had to have been added later in Chinese, presumably around the time the text was compiled and published on 5 December 695.

The translation of Adhyardhaśatikā by Xuanzang was the first in Chinese. Neither the extant Sanskrit manuscripts nor any of the subsequent Chinese translations include this passage.

The Heart Sutra Dhāraṇī

In Attwood (2017) I explored observations by Yamabe Nobuyoshi and Jan Nattier, who noted that the epithets passage was very different in Sanskrit and that the versions of this passage in Hṛd and Pañc are very different.

Hṛd: tasmāj jñātavyam prajñāpāramitā mahāmantro mahāvidyāmantro ‘nuttaramantro ‘samasamamantraḥ

Pañc: mahavidyeyaṃ bhagavan yaduta prajñāpāramitā / anuttareyaṃ bhagavan vidyā yaduta prajñāpāramitā asamasameyaṃ bhagavan vidyā yaduta prajñāpāramitā.

Xīn jīng: 故知般若波羅蜜多　是大神咒　大明咒　無上咒　無等等咒

Dàjīng: 般若波羅蜜　是大明呪　無上明呪　無等等明呪。 (T 223 8.286b28–c7)

From this, some things become clearer. Contrary to popular opinion, this passage does not reference the dhāraṇī in the Heart Sutra. The original passage praises Prajñāpāramitā as a superlative kind of vidyā,. Thus mantra is a mistranslation from Chinese zhòu 咒/呪 which is itself a modification of Kumārajīva's míng zhòu 明呪 vidyā (note that 咒 and 呪 are the same character written to different ways).

The upshot of this is that the dhāraṇī in the Heart Sutra is, contrary to popular opinion, not logically connected to the rest of the text, not embedded in the text, nor intrinsic to it. It's a standalone feature.

Dating the Heart Sutra.

When we put it all together, this means that the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī is presented in what seems to be a natural context in the Tuóluóní jí jīng while it is adventitious to the Heart Sutra. This tells us that the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī was copied from the Tuóluóní jí jīng.

Dating is tricky here because the Tuóluóní jí jīng was translated into Chinese on 6 May 654 CE from a Sanskrit text named something like *Vajra-mahā-bodhimaṇḍa-dhāraṇī, based on back-translating Jīngāng dàdàochǎng jīng «金剛大道場經». The text was not compiled and published until 5 December 695 CE. In the interim, the text was redacted (in Chinese) by some unknown person(s), to produce the received text.

The redacted text includes an interpolated quotation from Xuanzang's Chinese translation of the Adhyardhaśatikā dated 28 November 663 but is otherwise of a piece. Neither the Indic source nor Atikūṭa's original Chinese translation survive.

This all suggests that the redacted text of the Tuóluóní jí jīng in the Taishō should be dated to 695 CE rather than 654 CE.

All is not lost, however. Jeffrey Kotyk (2019) has noted that the earliest reliably dated mention of the Heart Sutra is in a letter from Xuanzang to Emperor Gāozōng 高宗 dated 25 December 656. The Heart Sutra had to exist by this date. This is what scholars call a terminus ante quem. Having this data point simplifies things a little since the Heart Sutra did copy from the Tuóluóní jí jīng, it seems to have copied from an earlier version than the one in the Taishō, likely from Atikūṭa's original Chinese translation (6 May 654). This gives us the earliest date at which the Heart Sutra could have existed, the terminus post quem.

With these observations, we can now confidently state that the Heart Sutra was composed between 6 May 654 and 25 December 656 CE.

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Capitanio, Josh. (2017). "‘The Ritual Altar of Kuṇḍalī Vajra for Treating Illnesses’ from the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras." In: P. Salguero (ed.), Buddhism and Medicine - An Anthology of Premodern Sources, New York: Columbia University Press, 2017, pp. 314-321.

Davidson, R.M. (2012) “Some Observations on an Uṣṇīṣa Abhiṣeka Rite in Atikūṭa’s Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha,” in I. Keul, ed., Transformations and Transfer of Tantra in Asia and Beyond, Berlin, 2012, 77–97.

Forte, Antonino. (1976) Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century: Inquiry into the Nature, Authors and Function of the Dunhuang Document S.6502, Followed by an Annotated Translation. Napoli: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale. [there is a 2nd edition, 2005]

Giebel, Rolf W. (2015) "Tantric Ritual Manuals in East Asia". Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism.

Glucklich, Ariel. (1997). The End of Magic. New York, Oxford University Press.

Gulik, R.H. van, Hayagrīva: The Mantrayānic Aspect of the Horse-Cult in China and Japan, Leiden, 1935.

Kotyk, Jeffrey. (2019). "Chinese State and Buddhist Historical Sources on Xuanzang: Historicity and the Daci'en si sanzang fashi zhuan 大慈恩寺三藏法師傳". T'oung Pao 105(5-6): 513–544. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685322-10556P01

Shinohara, K., Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals, New York, 2014.

Schmithausen, Lambert. (1997). Maitrī and Magic: Aspects of the Buddhist Attitude Toward the Dangerous in Nature. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften 1997, p. 58–63.

Sørensen, Henrik H. (2020). “Offerings and the Production of Buddhist Scriptures in Dunhuang during the Tenth Century.” Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 3(1): 70–107.

Strickmann, M. (1996), Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine, Paris, 1996.

Ye Shaoyong (2023a). “Phun tshogs Tshe brtan, Dngos grub Tshe ring: A Preliminary Report on the ‘Burnt Manuscripts’ from Retreng Monastery; Bundle A.” In Śāntamatiḥ: Manuscripts for Life; Essays in Memory of Seishi Karashima, edited by Noriyuki Kudo, 447–65. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, 2023.

Yang, Zhaohua. (2023). "Snake, Spell, Spirit, and Soteriology: The Birth of an Indian God Jiedi 揭諦 in Middle-Period China (618–1279)". Religions 14(10), 1303; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101303 [pagination from the pdf version]

~~oOo~~

Note 13 Oct 24: Entry in the Kāiyuán lù 開元錄 (730 CE)

第三卷（《摩訶般若波羅蜜多心經》：佛在舍衛國說大般若理趣中呪及般若心呪皆在此中。於中第十二印并呪名「般若無盡藏」。 注云「是一印呪」。筏梨耶思蠅伽法師譯。卷末復有《大輪金剛陀羅尼》。若誦此呪，即當入壇及得用印，不成盜法。）      (T 2154 55.599b2-4; punctuation added)

Scroll Three (Mahāprajñāpāramitā Heart Sūtra: When the Buddha was in Śrāvastī, he spoke the great Prajñā teachings, including the profound Prajñā incantation and the Prajñā Heart Incantation. All of this is contained here. Within it, the twelfth mudrā and incantation are named 'Prajñā’s Inexhaustible Treasury.' A note says this is an incantation mudrā translated by Dharma Master Fálíyēsī Yíngqié*. At the end of the scroll, there is also the Mahāvajra Dhāraṇī. "If one recites this incantation, one will immediately enter the mandala and be able to use the mudrā; it will not be considered stealing the Dharma.")

[7] 呪【大】，經【明】
[8] 梨【大】，𠼝【宋】【元】，黎【明】
[9] 卷末【大】，末卷【元】【明】

* Fálíyēsī Yíngqié 筏梨耶思蠅伽  (MC bjot liɛ ja sɨ jiŋ gɨa) appears to be a transliterated Sanskrit name. But I can find no information about this person. This combination of characters only occurs once in Taishō. 

 

---

Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經»

(Prajñāpāramitā Section). T 18.806c26-808a03

NB: The reconstructed dhāraṇī are extremely tentative and unlikely to be accurate, except where the words are very familiar, like the ones in the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī.

Mahāprajñāpāramitā dhāraṇī (14th). The dhāraṇī says:

namo bhagavate (1) mahāprajñāpāramitāyai (2) prajñāpṛṣṭhāyai (3) aparimitāgṛṇāyai (4) sarvatathāgatāya (5) prabhūte codyāyai (6) sarvatathāgatāya (7) nūratta nūratta (8) virajitāyai (9) tadyathā (10) prajña prajña (11) mahāprajña (12) prajñāvasa śrīḥ (13) prajñārūpaka śrīḥ (14) antarjala (15) vidhāmanī (16) siddhi sū siddhi (17) siddhānumāna (18) bhagavate (19) saṃgha gṛha saṃgha (20) bhakti paśu lī (21) prajāśīrṣṭaṣṭi (22) samaya svākṛti (23) baddhi baddhi mudrā mudrā (24) siddhi siddhi (25) kṣema kṣema (26) kāra kāra (27) jala jala (28) āpa āpa (29) agaccha agaccha (30) bhagavate (31) maheśvara (32) svāhā (33)

This is the dà shénzhòu 大神呪 "Great Incantation", found in the Dà bānrě jīng «大般若經», where the Buddha reaffirms it through his mastery of spontaneous manifestation.* The devas proclaim that all Buddhas in the ten directions equally praise and endorse it. Thus, it is named the Dà bānrě zhòu 大般若呪 "Great Prajñā Incantation". The power of this incantation is inconceivable; it can also save beings from the great suffering of birth and death. Such is the divine incantation, spoken and protected in common by the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. Whoever recites and upholds it will have all obstacles eliminated, and all wishes fulfilled, swiftly attaining supreme and perfect enlightenment.

* This dhāraṇī is not found in the extant Dà bānrě jīng or Pañc texts

Prajñāpāramitā Bhadra Dhāraṇī, Fifteenth (also called the Cūla Prajñāpāramitā Vidyā, and also called the Daśadiśāni Sarvatathāgatamāta Vidyā).

At that time, the Tathagata spoke the divine spell again. The spell says:

namo bhagavate. namo mahāprajñāpāramitāyai. tadyathā: maṇidāmi saṅgharaḥdāmi anugarardāmi vimuktidadāmi sādhanugaradāmi vaiśravaṇa āmi samantrapatra-balipradānadāmi kunakarasaṅgharadāmi sarvatrāṇukadāmi sarvagarbha-baliprāṇadāmi samṛddhidāmi āsābalamusaṇadāmi svāhā.

The Buddha said: "This divine spell is the mother of all Buddhas. Those who recite and uphold it will have all their sins eradicated, will always see the Buddhas, attain the wisdom of past lives, and quickly realise supreme and perfect enlightenment."

This passage is a quotation from Xuanzang's translation of the Adhyardhaśatikā prajñāpāramitā (T220 7.991a5-6) which is not found in the extant Sanskrit text].

If any man or woman recites and upholds this spell, seeking wisdom or the eradication of heavy sins, they will gain wisdom, and their heavy sins will be eradicated. The Buddha’s words are sincere and without falsehood.

In the morning, purify the mouth with willow branches, and after rinsing, respectfully and wholeheartedly stand before a Buddha image with hands joined in reverence. Burn various fragrant incense, scatter exquisite flowers, and with utmost sincerity, bow with the right knee on the ground. Recite this spell twenty-one times. Until the fasting period, avoid unnecessary interactions and conversations with others, and go to a quiet and secluded place. In one day, recite five hundred verses. Practising for one, two, or three sets of seven days will always yield results, except when done with utmost sincerity.

If you wish to read and recite all the scriptures, you should first recite this Dhāraṇī, which will grant the power of remembrance and non-forgetfulness. Use the Śamatha mudra and the mudra of the four dhyānas.

Prajñā-mahāhṛdaya-dhāraṇī, 16th: The spell says:

tadyatha: gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

This is the Mahāhṛdaya Dhāraṇī, used with the Mahāhṛdaya mudrā, which can be universally applied to all altar sites.

Prajñā-cūlahṛdaya-dhāraṇī-vidyā says:

tadyathā: gate gate pārami gate pārayata svāhā

Use the Cūlahṛdaya Dhāraṇī; it can be universally applied to all purposes.

Prajñāhṛdaya-dhāraṇī, 17th: The spell says:

tadyathā: śrīmilya śrīmilya śrī citra svāhā

Using the śamatha mudrā, if one recites with utmost sincerity, one will attain the power of non-forgetfulness and retain all that is heard. Reciting it one hundred thousand times, even up to a million times, will yield results without fail, except when not done with utmost sincerity.

Prajñā-śrutadhāra-asaṃpramoṣa-dhāraṇī, 18th: The spell says:

namo bhagavate prajñāpāramitāyai tadyathā: śrīye śrīye śrīye śrīye śrīyaṣe svāhā

Another Prajñā-cūlahṛdaya-dhāraṇī, 19th. The spell says:

tadyathā: śrīya śrīya śrī citra svāhā

If a spell master (zhòushī 呪師) wishes to cure illness, they should first perform self-protection. After completing this, they should set up a four zhǒu 肘 (~120 to 150 cms) water altar near the sick person. Once the altar is adorned with various fragrant flowers, forty-nine lamps, and assorted food and drink, the master should hold an incense burner in their hand, burn incense, and circumambulate clockwise. They should offer to all the buddhas, bodhisatvas, vajras, deities, and spirits in the ten directions. After completing the offerings, the incense burner should be placed in the centre of the altar, and the master should sit in a cross-legged posture in a clean and suitable place, facing directly east or, alternatively, north.

Next, the master should burn ghee, honey, sesame, rice grains, and fragrant flowers as offerings. Then, they should form the prajñākāya-mudrā and recite the main mahādhāraṇī (qián dà zhòu 前大呪) twenty-one times, contemplating emptiness in the mind, realizing that all phenomena are without characteristics. After that, they should release breath from their mouth, directing it at the body of the sick person, repeating either seven times or twenty-one times for recovery. If the illness does not improve with one session of this practice, it should be performed three times daily for recovery.

The food and offerings on the altar should be replaced daily with fresh items. Any leftovers should be given as offerings, but neither the spell master nor the sick person is allowed to eat them; consuming the leftovers would render the spell ineffective.

If this practice is followed, all rākṣasas, spirits, and gods will rejoice, and the sick person will be relieved of their illness. It is best to give the remaining food to the poor, as this prevents it from being taken by any spirits. Those who practice this spell should have a good memory and not forget.

The altar is four zhǒu 肘 (~120 to 150 cms) in length and width, made with five colours. Starting from the centre, place the colours in the following order: white, yellow, blue, red, and black. This is the standard for all altar rituals. In the centre of the altar, place a lotus seat for Śakyamuṇi Buddha, and on the seat, place the image of the Buddha.

To the east of this seat, place another lotus seat, and on it, place the image of Prajñāpāramitā, holding a sutra in the left hand. In the north of the altar, place another lotus seat, and on it, place the image of Brahma, holding a water vessel* (Tang sources refer to it as a hú píng 胡瓶 "foreign bottle" or shuǐ guàn 水罐 "water jar") in the left hand. In the south, place a lotus seat, and on it, place the image of Indra, holding a vajra in the right hand."

* The word is jūn chí 君遲 which is an alternate form of jūnchí 君持 meaning Sanskrit kuṇḍikā. The note in parentheses is in the Taishō text.

In the centre, place an incense burner and a water vessel, and at each of the four corners, place one incense burner and one water vessel. Each of the five water vessels should be filled with pure water, five kinds of grains, and the seven treasures. Plug the mouths of the vessels with cypress leaves and pear branches, and tie them with three feet of raw silk. Prepare twelve trays of various fruits and delicacies, and set out sixteen lamps.

The spell master should sit at the west gate, facing directly east. To the southeast of the spell master, place a fire brazier. In front of the spell master, place various fragrant flowers, ghee, honey, sesame, rice grains, and other food items in three to five trays, intended for burning as offerings. Once everything is properly arranged, proceed to invite the deities in sequence, making the appropriate mudra and reciting the mantra (zhēnyán 真言 "true words") for each. Then, form the puṣpamudrā (huá 華 "flower") as an offering for each.

After all are seated, perform the grand boundary-setting ritual. Next, distribute coins as offerings according to one's capacity, giving as much as one can afford. Afterwards, perform the ritual offerings of fragrant flowers, burning ghee, honey, sesame, and other items as offerings. Then, the spell master holding a mālā should recite the mahāhṛdaya dhāraṇī (Dà xīn zhòu 大心呪) one thousand and eight times."

~o~

Notes on Atikūṭa and Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» (T 901)

In some of my published work I have identified the source of the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī as the Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» (T 901), translated by Atikūṭa on 6th May 654 CE. Some recent correspondence has forced me to reconsider this. In particular, it became clear that on the evidence I had, I could not be confident of the direction of copying. And since I relied on this to date the Heart Sutra, the lack of confidence was problematic. This prompted me to go back to the sources (this time armed with ChatGPT4).

These are my edited notes on Atikūṭa and the Tuóluóní jí jīng. Another batch of notes will follow on the Tuóluóní jí jīng and the Heart Sutra dhāraṇī.

Atikuṭa

In Chinese, the name is transcribed as: Ā dì qú duō 阿地瞿多 which could conceivably represent Atikūṭa, Ādikūṭa, or even Atigupta. The name is also translated as Wújígāo 無極高 (無極 "unlimited" and 高 "Lofty" [especially lofty virtue, high-minded, etc]; esteem"). By comparison ati "very, excessively; superior", and ādi "beginning". Kūṭa can mean many things, but primarily it refers to prominence, as a horn on the head of an animal, the hump of a Brahmin bull (aṃsakūṭa), the crown of a king: This seems to support the transcription: Atikūṭa meaning something like "highest peak" or "ultimately high-minded". In one word, perhaps, Pinnacle.

Though note that words in -kūṭa are few and difficult to predict: utkūṭa "parasol", kālakūṭa "the black poison produced by churning the ocean", niṣkūṭa "guileless", parikūṭa "barrier, town gate", Atikūṭa could have a specific concrete meaning in a Buddhist context that is not apparent from the etymology.

Much of what we know about Atikūṭa comes from a Chinese story that is repeated almost verbatim in a range of sources, e.g.

1. The anonymous preface to the Tuóluóní jí jīng (T 901; 18.785a5-b4) ~654 CE
2. Dà Táng kāiyuán shìjiào lù «大唐開元釋教錄» (T 2154; 55.562c08-c22) ~730 CE
3. Sòng gāosēng chuán 宋高僧傳 (T2061; 50.718b18-c2) - included as an appendix below. ~988 CE

Given the dates, it's likely that both the Kāiyuán lù and the Gāosēng chuán copied this story with only minor changes from the Tuóluóní jí jīng itself.

Shinohara (2014: 29) comments "Atikūṭa gave an oral translation of an original Sanskrit text, from which the author produced a summary in Chinese as a work in twelve fascicles."

The text and translation of Tuóluóní jí jīng preface (T 18.785a5-b4) follows:

有高德沙門厥號阿地瞿多(唐言無極高也)，是中天竺人也。法師聰慧超群、德邁過人，弱冠慕道，歷五竺而尋友，低心躍步而諮法要，故能精練五明、妙通諸部。

There was a venerable śramaṇa of great virtue named Ādìqúduō 阿地瞿多 [Atikūṭa] (in Tang speech: Wújígāo 無極高 "Unlimited Lofty"), who was a man from Central India (中天竺). The Dharma Master (法師) was exceptionally intelligent, surpassing others, and his virtue exceeded that of ordinary people. From a young age, he admired the Dharma, travelled through the Five Indias in search of companions, humbly approached and eagerly stepped forward to inquire about essential teachings. Thus, he became proficient in the Five Sciences and adept in various teachings.

意欲運西域之法水、潤東夏之渴仰，判身許于險難，務存弘道之心，跋山巖而不疲、涉沙流而無倦，頂戴尊經向斯漢地。永徽二年正月，屈于長安，奉勅住慈門寺。

He aspired to bring the Dharma waters of the Western Region to quench the thirst of Eastern Xia, committing himself to dangerous and difficult paths with a dedicated heart for the propagation of the Dharma. He traversed mountains and cliffs without weariness and crossed sandy streams without fatigue, carrying the revered sūtras to this Han land. In Yǒnghuī 永徽 2.1 (Feb 651), he arrived in Chang'an and was commanded by imperial decree to reside at Címén sì 慈門寺 "Cimen Monastery".

但法師含珠未吐，人莫別于懷珍，雅辯既宣，方知有寶(云云)，故能決眾疑，言皆當理。然則經律論業傳者非一，唯此法門未興斯土，所以丁寧三請，方許壇法。

However, the Dharma Master, who held pearls within but had not yet revealed them, kept his treasures unknown to others. Once his elegant explanations were proclaimed, it was realised that a treasure was present (and so on). Thus, he was able to resolve many doubts, and his words were always in accord with reason. Although many have transmitted works of sūtras, vinaya, and śāstras, this particular Dharma method had not yet been introduced to this land. Therefore, after three earnest requests, he was finally permitted to perform the altar rituals.

三月上旬赴慧日寺浮圖院內，法師自作普集會壇，大乘琮等一十六人，爰及英公、鄂公等一十二人，助成壇供，同願皇基永固，常臨萬國，庶類同沾，皆成大益，其中靈瑞恐繁不述(別在傳記)。

In the first ten days of the third lunar month (March 27-6 April 651), at the Fútú Yuàn 浮圖院 within Huìrì Sì 慧日寺, the Dharma Master personally established a universal assembly altar. Sixteen individuals, including the Mahāyāna monk Dàchéng Cóng 大乘琮, and twelve officials, including Yīng Gōng 英公 and È Gōng 鄂公, assisted in preparing the altar offerings. Together, they wished for the imperial foundation to be eternally stable, to always oversee the myriad nations, and for all beings to partake in great benefits. The numerous auspicious signs that appeared are not detailed here (but are recorded elsewhere in chronicles).

余慶逢此法，不勝忻躍，躬詣翻經，所悕翻廣本屢值事鬧，不及陳請，恐幻質遷謝失于大利，便請法師于慧日寺宣譯梵本，且翻要抄一十二卷，竪興國之洪基、存隆民之祕寶歟。

I was fortunate to encounter this Dharma, and my joy was beyond measure. Personally attending the sutra translation, I had hoped to translate the extensive version but was repeatedly hindered by various disturbances, unable to make the request. Fearing that my transient existence might end and miss out on the great benefit, I requested the Dharma Master at Huìrì Sì 慧日寺 to expound and translate the Sanskrit text, and to translate an essential extract of twelve scrolls, to establish a grand foundation for the nation and preserve the secret treasures that enrich the people.

從四年三月十四日起首，至永徽五年歲次甲寅四月十五日畢。以後頻頻勅追法師入內，邂逅之間無暇復校。此經出《金剛大道場經》，大明呪藏分之少分也；今此略抄擬勘詳定，奏請流通天下普聞焉。

Starting on Yǒnghuī 永徽 4.3.14 (16 April 653) and completed on 5.4.15 (6 May 654), in the year of Year of the Wood Tiger. Subsequently, repeated imperial edicts summoned the Dharma Master to the court, and amidst these encounters, there was no time to review again.

This sutra originates from the Jīngāng Dàdàochǎng Jīng «金剛大道場經» (*Vajra-mahābodhimaṇḍa-sūtra), a minor part of the Dàmíng Zhòucáng 大明呪藏 (*Mahāvidyākośa or Mahāvidyāpiṭaka). This current abridged extract (lüè chāo 略抄) is intended to be carefully examined and officially submitted for universal circulation throughout the world.

Chinese dates in the format: Regnal Era yy/mm/dd. Dates converted to Gregorian calendar using https://sinocal.sinica.edu.tw/

Shinohara (2014: 30) "Xuankai served as the recorder (bishou 筆受)"

Several passages, even a large part of the entry on the Eleven-Faced Avalokiteśvara in fascicle 4, were taken from existing Chinese translations of other texts.

T 2154 also retells the story above in similar terms (T 2154; 55.562c08-c22). Here, "he was ordered to reside at Cí'ēn Sì 慈恩寺" (T 2154; 55.562c13), rather than Címén sì 慈門寺 Sòng gāosēng chuán 宋高僧傳 has him dwelling at 慈門寺. However, far as I can tell there was no Címén sì 慈門寺 before the Yuan (13thC - 14thC), and Cí'ēn Sì 慈恩寺 was a prominent translation centre in the 650s.

Note also that the first Tantric ritual in Chinese was dedicated to promoting the empire.

Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經»

The preface of the Tuóluóní jí jīng is consistent with the idea of the text being a samucaya "anthology" or saṃgraha "collection" of extracts from a larger book of Tantric ritual. T 2154 includes the phrase "[Xuānxiē 玄揩 and others] extracted and translated essential parts from the Jīngāng Dàdàochǎng Jīng «金剛大道場經»." Two Chinese phrases catch my eye: cuō yào 撮要 "extract the essentials" and chāo yì 鈔譯 "copy and translate". This seems to compliment the phrase abridged extract (lüè chāo 略抄) in the Preface.

Unfortunately no text with the title Jīngāng dàdàochǎng jīng «金剛大道場經» *Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī is extant.

However, there is another independent extract from *Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī from ~two centuries earlier in the Fú shuō shíyī miàn Guānshìyīn shénzhòu jīng «佛說十一面觀世音神呪經» *Avalokiteśvaraikādaśamukhadhāraṇī sūtra (T 1070), translated ca. 564-572 CE. The colophon of which reads:

此經名金剛大道場神呪經，十萬偈成部，略出十一面觀世音一品。(T 1070 20.152a6-7)
This sūtra is named the Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī Sūtra, composed of 100,000 verses. This abbreviated version presents one section on the Eleven-Faced Avalokiteśvara.

Thus we have reason to believe that a text called Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī (Sūtra) existed at some point. And that is was already a compilation of various ritual texts or dhāraṇī sūtras with a Tantric flavour. As Joshua Capitanio (2017: 314) notes:

The Collected Dharani Sutras, though based on Indian manuscripts, was most likely compiled in its current form by Atikūṭa and his chinese collaborators. It consists of dozens of different ritual texts and short scriptures that are loosely organized across the text's twelve fascicles into five different groups or "families" of deities.

Though this appears to ignore the idea of the Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī Sūtra as a single source for the Tuóluóní jí jīng.

There are two other texts with similar names that are translations of the same source by different translators. 

• T 1344 «金剛上味陀羅尼經» by Buddhaśānta 佛陀扇多.
• T 1345 «金剛場陀羅尼經» by Jñānagupta 闍那崛多

These two texts are recorded in Dàoxuān's 道宣 catalogue Dàtáng nèidiǎn lù «大唐內典錄» (T 2149 55.292a3-6) of 664 CE. He notes "two sutras, same source, different translation" (二經同本別譯). However, both of these texts is quite short (14 pages, but only 1 juan), so they are not the same as the Vajramahābodhimaṇḍa Dhāraṇī Sūtra mentioned in the preface to the Tuóluóní jí jīng.

As well as Kāiyuán lù (T 2154), another catalogue records the Tuóluóní jí jīng with an interesting note. The Dà Zhōu kāndìng zhòngjīng mùlù «大周刊定衆經目錄» (T 2153), compiled 695 CE (also known as Dà Zhōu lù «大周錄»):

右大唐永徽五年四月十五日中天竺國三藏阿地瞿多(此云無極高)於西京慧日寺譯。天冊萬歲元年十月二十四日奉勅編行 (T 2153 55.379b2-4)
Translated on Yǒnghuī 永徽 5.4.15 (6 May 654) of the Tang Dynasty, by the Tripiṭaka master Aṭikūta 阿地瞿多, from Central India at Huìrì 慧日 Temple in the Western Capital. Compiled and published by imperial order on Tiāncè wànsuì 天冊萬歲 1.10.24 (5 December 695).

The text was "translated" (yì 譯) in 654 CE but also "compiled and issued" (biān xíng 編行) 41 years later in 695 CE. This later process doesn't seem to be accounted for by commentators.

The date "695 CE" and the reign name, Tiāncè wànsuì 天冊萬歲, tell us that Wǔ Zétiān 武則天 (r. 690–705 CE) was involved in the dissemination of this text. It's not clear to me what kind of process occurred here. FWIW... ChatGPT says:

The expression "biān xíng 編行" would typically appear in contexts where a compilation was not merely created but also sanctioned and actively disseminated as an authoritative or required text, such as historical records, legal codes, or other state-sanctioned works.

Note that Daoxuan's catalogue (T 2149, 55.301b19) includes a text named Tuóluóní jí  陀羅尼集 but it's not clear if this is the same text: 

陀羅尼集(十卷一百八十七紙一名雜呪集九卷) 
Collection of Dhāraṇī (Ten volumes, 187 sheets. Also called Zá zhòu jí 雜呪集 "Collection of Miscellaneous Incantations", Nine volumes)

Most scholars seem to believe that the Tuóluóní jí jīng «陀羅尼集經» contains Chinese elements overlaid on a Sanskrit substrate. For example, Davidson (2021: 81) asserts

...the text as it exists was clearly assembled from Indian texts and traditions in China rather than in India. This is evident from, among other places, the introduction to a short sūtra on the goddess Śrīdevī appended to chapter 15, which states that the text was transported to China by Atikūṭa and translated there.

The "introduction" he refers to is:

功德天法一卷 (中天竺國菩提寺僧阿難律木叉師、迦葉師等共瞿多法師於經行寺翻，流行於唐國。) (T. 901 18.874b25-6)

Dharma of Jíxiángtiān 功德天 [Śrīdevī or Lakṣmī], one scroll (Translated at Jīngxíng Sì 經行寺 by the monks Ānán Lǜmùchā 阿難律木叉師 and Kāshé 迦葉師 of Mahābodhi Monastery in Central India, together with Dharma Master Atikūṭa 瞿多法師, and circulated in the Tang Kingdom).

This does not appear to say that "the text was transported to China by Atikūṭa". It does, however, suggests that the text was translated in China by Indian monks (which is entirely unsurprising) and perhaps suggests that it circulated independently. This impression is confirmed by Shinohara (2014: 30), who adds "In fact, significant sections of this entry on Lakṣmī appear to have been taken from Dharmakṣema’s (385–433) translation of the Golden Light Sūtra."

Davidson also asserts that the Tuóluóní jí jīng contains "an alternative Heart Sūtra teaching śamatha in the contemplation of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā" which, as far as I can see, is simply not true. Stickman's (1996: 53) comments are more apposite:

Bien qu'étant tous deux décrits comme des traductions dans le canon bouddhique chinois, ils furent en fait rédigés directement en chinois. L'autorité de l'écrit en Chine a peut-être encouragé les ritualistes à transcrire leurs pratiques et traditions orales, qui n'avaient jusque-là jamais été consignées. Les textes produits dans ces circonstances sont peut-être entièrement fondés sur des pratiques indiennes, mais représentent néanmoins inévitablement des adaptations aux conditions chinoises. Bien que portant le stigmate d'apocryphes par rapport au bouddhisme indien, ces ouvrages constituent les sources les plus riches sur la pratique du bouddhisme dans la Chine médiévale.

Although both [the Book of Consecration (ca 457) and the Collection of Dharani-Sūtra (653-654)] are described as translations in the Chinese Buddhist canon, they were actually written directly in Chinese. The authority of writing in China may have encouraged ritualists to transcribe their practices and oral traditions, which had not previously been recorded. Texts produced under these circumstances may be entirely based on Indian practices, but they inevitably represent adaptations to Chinese conditions. Although bearing the stigma of being apocryphal compared to Indian Buddhism, these works constitute the richest sources on the practice of Buddhism in medieval China.

Strickman (1996: 153) again:

C'est le même esprit de tolérance qui est sans doute à l'origine de l'incorporation d'éléments indiscutablement chinois dans ce texte qui n'a d'indien que le nom. Nous avons déjà mentionné une certaine suggestio serica dans quelques-unes des cérémonies. Nous pouvons maintenant observer des traits d'origine nettement chinoise. Il y a par exemple un "monarques yakṣa bleu de l'est" que l'on invoque lors d'une cérémonie thérapeutique. C'est l'un des cinq monarques yakṣa des cinq directions, dont les noms et les couleurs symboliques trahissent l'origine chinoise. La plupart des drogues prescrites sont citées soit sous leur nom chinois, soit en transcription du sanskrit, accompagnées de gloses chinoises. On trouve aussi la mention occasionnelle d'heures et de jours correspondant au cycle sexagésimal chinois. Parmi les chinoiseries». citons une référence aux baguettes (x, 872b). Mais ce sont les références à l'argent, déjà mentionnées plus haut, qui sont le plus révélatrices. On attribue généralement les premières allusions aux offrandes en espèces à une collection d'anecdotes datant du milieu du vin siècle, le Ming-pao ki (Registre de récompenses de l'au-delà), de T'ang Lin. On peut donc se féliciter de posséder ces instructions rituelles concrètes datant de la même période.

It is likely the same spirit of tolerance that is behind the incorporation of unmistakably Chinese elements into this text, which is Indian in name only. We have already mentioned a certain suggestio serica in some of the ceremonies. We can now observe features of clearly Chinese origin. For example, there is a "blue yakṣa monarch of the east" invoked during a therapeutic ceremony. He is one of the five yakṣa monarchs of the five directions, whose names and symbolic colours betray their Chinese origin. Most of the prescribed drugs are cited either under their Chinese names or in Sanskrit transcription, accompanied by Chinese glosses. There are also occasional mentions of hours and days corresponding to the Chinese sexagenary cycle. Among the 'Chinese elements,' we find a reference to chopsticks (x, 872b). But it is the references to money, already mentioned earlier, that are the most revealing. The earliest references to offerings of money are generally attributed to a collection of anecdotes dating from the mid-fifth century, the Ming-pao ki (Register of Rewards from the Afterlife) by Tang Lin. Thus, we can be pleased to have these concrete ritual instructions dating from the same period.

I'm not sure that the association of blue and the east is Chinese however, as this combination is common in Tantras that feature Akṣobhya. 

The process described is an added complication to the revised history, since the process of creating the Tuóluóní jí jīng appears to mirror the creation of the Heart Sutra, in having been composed in Chinese, abridged, but "entirely based on Indian practices".

Shinohara (2014: 31) gives an important caveat:

For the most part, though, the material in the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras does not exist elsewhere in independent translations. A large body of previously unknown Indian texts must have been translated for this compilation.

and

the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras presents a coherent and carefully worked out picture of one distinctive kind of maṇḍala. The Indian monk Atikūṭa must have brought this understanding of the maṇḍala ceremony and its guiding principles from India.

Shinohara (2014: 31) describes the Tuóluóní jí jīng as "carefully organized"

Note: The information on T901 in Lancaster's catalogue to the Korean Tripitaka, is largely correct but cites the source as "T. 2149-260c:16". The text on that line is unrelated. A similar title is recorded in T 2149, though not where Lancaster suggests, i.e.

• T 55.301b19：陀羅尼集(十卷一百八十七紙一名雜呪集九卷) "Dhāraṇī Collection" (10 scrolls, 187 sheets; also known as Zá zhòu jí «雜呪集» "Miscellaneous Spell Collection" in 9 scrolls).
• T 55.325a24：陀羅尼集(十卷一百八十七紙一名雜呪集九卷)"Dhāraṇī Collection" (10 scrolls, 187 sheets; also known as Zá zhòu jí «雜呪集» "Miscellaneous Spell Collection" in 9 scrolls).

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Capitanio, Josh. (2017) "‘The Ritual Altar of Kuṇḍalī Vajra for Treating Illnesses’ from the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras." In Buddhism and Medicine - An Anthology of Premodern Sources, edited by P. Salguero, 314-321. New York: Columbia University Press.

Davidson, R.M. (2012). “Some Observations on an Uṣṇīṣa Abhiṣeka Rite in Atikūṭa’s Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha.” In Transformations and Transfer of Tantra in Asia and Beyond, edited by I. Keul, 77-79. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Giebel, Rolf W. (2015) "Tantric Ritual Manuals in East Asia". Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism.

Glucklich, Ariel. (1997). The End of Magic. New York, Oxford University Press.

Shinohara, K. (2014) Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. New York: Columbia University Press.

Silk, J.A., “The Jifayue sheku tuoluoni jing: Translation, Non-translation, Both or Neither?,” JIABS 31/1–2, 2008, 369–420.

Strickmann, M. 1996. Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine. Paris: Gallimard.

~~oOo~~

APPENDIX Sòng gāosēng chuán 宋高僧傳biography of Atikūṭa

T50n2061_p0718b18：釋無極高，中印度人，梵云阿地瞿多，華云
T50n2061_p0718b19：無極高也。出家氏族未憑書之。高學窮滿
T50n2061_p0718b20：字，行潔圓珠，精練五明，妙通三藏。永徽三
T50n2061_p0718b21：年壬子歲正月，自西印度齎梵夾來屆長
T50n2061_p0718b22：安，勅令慈門寺安置。沙門大乘琮等十六人、
T50n2061_p0718b23：英公李世勣、鄂公尉遲德等十二人，同請高
T50n2061_p0718b24：於慧日寺浮圖院建陀羅尼普集會壇，所須
T50n2061_p0718b25：供辦。法成之日，屢現靈異，京中道俗咸歎希
T50n2061_p0718b26：逢。沙門玄楷等固請翻其法本。以四年癸
T50n2061_p0718b27：丑至于五年，於慧日寺從《金剛大道場經》
T50n2061_p0718b28：中撮要而譯，集成一部，名《陀羅尼集經》一
T50n2061_p0718b29：十二卷，玄楷筆受。于時有中印度大菩提寺
T50n2061_p0718c01：阿難律木叉師、迦葉師等，於經行寺譯《功德
T50n2061_p0718c02：天法》，編在《集經》第十卷內，故不別出焉。

Wú Jí Gāo 無極高, a man from Central India, is called Atikūṭa 阿地瞿多 in Sanskrit, which translates to 'Supreme and Lofty' (無極高) in Chinese. His background and family details are not recorded. His studies were exhaustive, his conduct was pure and rounded like a perfect pearl. He was proficient in the Five Sciences and thoroughly versed in the Tripiṭaka.

In the third year of the Yǒnghuī 永徽 era, during the rénzǐ 壬子 year and the first month, he brought Sanskrit texts from Western India to Cháng’ān 長安 and was ordered by imperial decree to reside at Címén Sì 慈門寺. Sixteen śramaṇas, including Dàchéng Cóng 大乘琮, and twelve officials, including Duke Ying Lǐ Shìjí 英公李世勣 and Duke È Yùchí Dé 鄂公尉遲德, jointly invited Wú Jí Gāo to the Fútú Yuàn 浮圖院 at Huìrì Sì 慧日寺 to establish a universal assembly altar for dhāraṇī, providing all necessary offerings.

On the day the Dharma was accomplished, numerous auspicious signs repeatedly appeared, and the people, both lay and ordained, in the capital marveled at this rare event. The śramaṇa Xuānkǎi 玄楷 and others earnestly requested to translate the original Dharma texts. From the fourth year, guǐchǒu 癸丑, to the fifth year, at Huìrì Sì 慧日寺, they extracted and translated essential parts from the Vajra Great Altar Sūtra (Jīngāng Dàdàochǎng Jīng 金剛大道場經), compiling it into a single work named the Dhāraṇī Collection Sūtra (陀羅尼集經), consisting of twelve scrolls. Xuānkǎi 玄楷 transcribed the texts.

At that time, there were monks from Mahābodhi Monastery 大菩提寺 in Central India, such as Ānán Lǜmùchā 阿難律木叉師 and Kāshé 迦葉師, who translated the Sūtra on the Merit of the Deva Method 功德天法 at Jīngxíng Sì 經行寺. This was included in the tenth volume of the collected sūtra, so it was not separately published.

Svāhā in The Heart Sutra Dhāraṇī

Jan Nattier showed that the Xīnjīng (T.251) is the original Heart Sutra. All my work on the text confirms this essential observation. It was composed as a digest text (抄經 chāo-jīng) in the period 645-661 CE. Given this, we expect the Chinese version of the text to be consistent with few variations. This is largely true except that the witnesses to the Xīnjīng contain a few character substitutions and other minor variants. Weirdly, the authoritative version of the Chinese Canon, the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō, has the least likely reading (and not the one that millions of people chant everyday). In this essay I will focus on a particular transliterated Sanskrit word in the dhāraṇī, i.e. svāhā. I will say a little about the Sanskrit word, but the main focus of this essay will be the plethora of Chinese forms of this word in the earliest witnesses to the text.

Dhāraṇī

The earliest commentaries are ambivalent about the dhāraṇī. In fact, Kūijī (T.1710) declines to comment on it. Woncheuk (T.1711) takes an oblique approach. He notes that the words of the dhāraṇī cannot be translated without losing their magical powers (鬼神). Then he notes that the dhāraṇī contains Buddhist Sanskrit words that can, in fact, be translated and translates them. For example: 揭諦言度度 "gate means: go beyond, go beyond" (33.551c21). The character 度 dù is used by Kumārajīva (and in the Heart Sutra) to translate samatikramati "go beyond, transcend" and related verbs. Another example is 後莎婆呵此云速疾。"Lastly, svāhā: it means quickly (速疾)" (551c24). This definition is echoed by 法藏 Fǎzàng in his commentary (T.1712).

This turns out to be the standard approach for the dhāraṇī. The words that can be discerned and translated become the basis of various poetic riffs on one's beliefs about Buddhism. Each word becomes a cipher from which one can unpack Buddhist doctrines. The metaphor of crossing a river for transcendence is one of the most popular approaches to unpacking the word gate.

Note that svāhā does not mean "quickly". It is usually analysed as related to the past perfect form of a defective verb √ah, the only surviving form of which is the 3rd person past perfect āha "was said". The first literary occurence of svāhā is in the Yajurveda where it is used to "activate" offerings. An offering to, say, Agni would be made while chanting, angaye svāhā "For Agni. It was well said". The expression has the same illocutionary force as amen in Christian prayers or hitting the <enter> key for computer programming. Svāhā is two syllables and just two akṣara (or characters) in Indian scripts, e.g. स्वा हा. Here  स्व (sva) uses the combining form of स (sa) with व (va), but the result is one akṣara. Note that the vowel a is inherent in the written akṣara, though for final consonants it can be deleted using the virāma, so that final -s is स्.  The long vowels are indicated by the extra vertical stroke.

Also note that dhāraṇī were probably created in Prakrit or at best Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. The -e ending in a context that strongly implies the nominative case points us to this conclusion.

Such poetic attempts at exegesis of the dhāraṇī have an ad hoc feel to them and seldom match up with other attempts. More so than with other aspects of the Heart Sutra, the dhāraṇī presents challenges to the would be exegete. We've some some way since D T Suzuki wrote:

Dhāraṇī is a study by itself. In India where all kinds of what may be termed abnormalities in religious symbology are profusely thriving, Dhāraṇī has also attained a high degree of development..." - D T Suzuki. The lankavatara Sutra. p.223, n.1.

However, I'm not sure we have yet found a positive way to understand the role of magic in Buddhism. Indeed, we seem to be in denial about the place of magic in pre-modern Buddhism, partly, no doubt, because of the outrageous suggestion that Buddhism is a "rational religion". In 2013, I blogged about dhāraṇī in general and about Ariel Glucklich's approach to magic (Why is there a Dhāraṇī in the Heart Sūtra?18 October 2013), which I think is quite a useful way of thinking about it. However, Glucklich remains quite unknown in Buddhism Studies, as far as I can tell, and no one seems to study Buddhist magic, though Jeffrey Kotyk and Bill Mak do study Buddhist astrology.

I've previously blogged about why I call the Heart Sutra spell a dhāraṇī rather than a mantra (Heart Sutra Mantra. 30 August 2013) and published a refined version of the argument in 2017 (‘Epithets of the Mantra’ in the Heart Sutra), and about the -e ending. Because my thesis on this has not caught on, I want to quickly rehearse the argument that the "mantra" is a dhāraṇī before getting into transliterations of svāhā.

vidyā → dhāraṇī → mantra

The Chinese character 呪 (and the variant咒) means "incantation, spell, curse" and was adapted for a Buddhist context, where it meant dhāraṇī for a time, and then, when mantras were introduced to China in the mid-late 7th Century, it was used again for mantra. And this led to some confusion; crucially, the Heart Sutra spell was called a mantra when, in fact, it is a dhāraṇī.

The section of the epithets was originally something like this 6th Century Sanskrit text:

mahāvidyeyaṃ bhagavan yaduta prajñāpāramitā | anuttareyaṃ bhagavan vidyā yaduta prajñāpāramitā asamasameyaṃ bhagavan vidyā yaduta prajñāpāramitā (Gilgit Ms 146v: 12-13)

Kumārajīva translated:

世尊！般若波羅蜜是大明呪、無上明呪、無等等明呪。(T223, 8.286b28)

Bhagavan, perfection of insight is a great spell, an unsurpassed spell, an unequalled spell.

Note that vidyā is translated as 明呪. However, 200 years later, Xuanzang translates vidyā as 呪 and treats 明呪 as two separate words:

如是般若波羅蜜多是大神呪、是大明呪，是無上呪，是無等等呪，是一切呪王 (T220-ii, 7.156.a17-22: fasc. 429)

Comparing the original and the two translations...

Sanskrit	Kumārajīva	Xuanzang
mahāvidyā	大明呪	大神呪/大明呪
anuttarā vidyā	無上明呪	無上呪
asamasamā vidyā	無等等明呪	無等等呪
*sarvavidyārājñī		一切呪王

Xuanzang is famous for the accuracy of his translations, but here he has done us a disservice. Curiously, he adds two epithets of prajñāpāramitā that have no Sanskrit counterpart. Firstly, 神呪 is probably a synonym of 明呪 (vidyā). And secondly, 一切呪王, would probably correspond to sarvavidyārājñī "queen of all the spells", but this term is not found in Sanskrit in this context.

In any case, the trend of treating 明呪 as two words, combined with the influence of Tantra, led to 呪 being translated into English as mantra. In 1863, twenty years before the appearance of a Sanskrit Heart Sutra in England, Rev. Samuel Beal was the first to translate the Heart Sutra into English. He translated 呪 as dhāraṇī, suggesting that his local informants and the Tang Dynasty commentary he was using both supported this reading.

When translating a word like 呪 we have to pay careful attention to the context and especially the era in which the character was used, but also the context in which the source was composed. In this context it means dhāraṇī. In the major Prajñāpāramitā sūtras dhāraṇī is not a magic spell, but the ongoing effects of the insight (see Aṣṭasāhasrikā: Insight and Ongoing Transformation. 1 December 2017). Later, in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā, it also refers to the Arapacana acrostic. And later still (by some centuries), it came to be associated with apotropaic magic spells consisting of standalone words, repeated and reiterated with different prefixes, and finished with svāhā. These are related in intention to the Pāli paritta texts.

A mantra is ideally situated in the context of a Tantric ritual (with abhiṣekha, mudrā, and maṇḍala) and performs a function within that ritual (On the importance of context for tantra see Abe 1999). The function may be invoking a deity, or a quality (such as peace śānti), or one the magic rites of pacification (śāntikakarman), subjection (vaśyakarman), prospering (puṣṭikarman), or destruction (raudrakarman). A mantra usually begins and ends with magical symbols called bījākṣara or "seed syllables" such as hūṃ, hrīḥ, or dhīḥ; beginning always with the bījākṣara oṃ (not auṃ which is exclusively used in Hindu contexts).

There are, of course, hybrid forms, such as the Tārā mantra oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā which has features of both dhāraṇī and mantra, but it comes from a distinctive Tantric context and performs the function of recollecting the name of the deity (nāmānusmṛti) or recollection of the Buddha (buddhānusmṛti) within the context of a sādhana or ritual including mantra, mudrā, and maṇḍala (speech, body, and mind).

The Heart Sutra is clearly not a Tantric text, though it was adopted as such and included into various sādhana during the Pala Era in India (8th – 12th Centuries). Oṃ was often added to the dhāraṇī in such contexts. In the case of the Xīnjīng we are not yet in the Tantric realm, though as we will see the dhāraṇī comes from a source translated by one of the first Tantrikas to arrive in China.

The Xīnjīng Dhāraṇī

The text of the section that includes the dhāraṇī as it appears in the printed Taishō Edition of the Chinese Tripiṭaka is:

故說般若波羅蜜多咒即說咒曰
Gù shuō bōrěbōluómìduō” zhòu Jí shuō zhòu yuē

Therefore recite the Prajñāpāramitā dhāraṇī, that is to say the dhāraṇī that says:

揭帝　揭帝　般羅揭帝　般羅僧揭帝　菩提　僧莎訶
jiēdì jiēdì bānluójiēdì bānluósēngjiēdì pútí sēng shāhē

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

Note that Taishō does not punctuate the dhāraṇī but there are spaces between the words. Anyone familiar with this text will be struck by the last three characters. This is not what people who chant the Heart Sutra chant. What they chant is 薩婆訶 sà pó hē. A note in the Taishō tells us that in the Song, Yuan and Ming versions of the Tripiṭaka the dhāraṇī does end 薩婆訶 sà pó hē. We can now also say that the Fangshan Stele ends with 莎婆訶:

揭諦　揭諦　般羅揭諦　般羅僧揭諦　菩提　莎婆訶 (my transcription)

jiēdì jiēdì bānluójiēdì bānluósēngjiēdì pútí shāpóhē

I hope to publish an English language study of the Fangshan Stele very soon (2019). There is one other character variation in the Fangshan inscription dhāraṇī, i.e. 諦 for 帝, but the sound and tone are the same. This romanization sà pó hē  for svāhā makes good sense because the two sounds sà pó are intended to represent the consonant cluster svā. This is a standard technique when transliterating Sanskrit using Chinese characters.And the sounds would have been closer in medieval Chinese or Middle Chinese (MC).

A whole Sanskrit Heart Sutra  is preserved in the Tripiṭaka as a Chinese transliteration (T.256. See The Other Heart Sutra). This text is now attributed to Amoghavajra and dated to the early 8th Century. We also have a manuscript of the same text, from the 8th Century, which has some minor variations. It was preserved at Dunhuang and is now held in the British library (manuscript no. Or.8210/S.5648). Note that this text is accompanied by a Chinese text, but the dhāraṇī is not translated. The dhāraṇī in T 256 is quite different from the standard Xīnjīng (T 251):

誐諦　誐諦　 播囉誐諦　播囉僧誐諦　冒地　娑嚩賀 

édì édì bōluō'édì bōluōsēng'édì màode suōpóhè

In T.256, svāhā is represented by 娑嚩賀 suō pó hè. Along with the first two characters is the annotation 二合引 "two characters together, long vowel) and with the last is 引 "long vowel". The Pinyin romanization looks off and we need to know that the Middle Chinese was something like sa-ba ha, where saba together represent svā. And this was a very common way of rendering svāhā in Tantric texts (see Jeffrey Kotyk's blog Reconstructing Sanskrit Mantras from Chinese).

Of the two commentaries composed by Xuanzang's associates, Woncheuk's text has 莎婆呵 shā pó hē for svāhā (T. 1711. 33.551c10), while Kuījī's has 莎訶 shā hē (T. 1710. 33.542c8). Another early Tang dynasty commentary by 法藏 Fǎzàng (702 CE) has 薩婆訶 sà pó hē (T.1712. 33.555a6) which is the Fangshan/popular version.

In which case what do we make of 僧莎訶 sēng shā hē as found in the Taishō version of T 251? It seems to me that the character 僧 occurs earlier in the dhāraṇī and could easily have been copied here by mistake (an "eye-skip" or haplography). Correcting this mistake would leave us with 莎訶 shā hē which might pass for a rendering of svāhā, which is what we find in Kuījī's text. More importantly, we also find this transcription in another text that we will meet shortly.

To summarise, then, in the various early Witnesses of the Xīnjīng, svāhā in the dhāraṇī takes many forms (with Pinyin romanization).

T.251	僧莎訶	sēng shā hē
Popular	薩婆訶	sà pó hē
Fangshan	莎婆訶	shā pó hē
T.256	娑嚩賀	suō pó hè
Woncheuk	莎婆呵	shā pó hē
Kuījī	莎訶	shā hē

Note 2.9.2019: Huilin’s 一切經音義 Yīqièjīng yīnyì "Pronunciation and Meaning of All the Sūtras", published 807 CE, lists the spelling in T 250 as 僧婆訶 whereas Taishō has 僧莎呵 with no notes.

I now want to introduce a text that was proposed by the late John McRae as a possible source of the dhāraṇī (1988: 107 n.10). [McRae was Jan Nattier's husband]  See Nattier 1992: 211 n 53 for other possible sources.

Dhāraṇīsamuccaya

The Indian bhikṣu, Atikūṭa, whose name we infer from the Chinese 瞿多 (Qú duō) or 阿地瞿多 (Ādìqúduō) was a contemporary of Xuánzàng. He arrived in Chang’an in 651 and was installed in 慈恩寺 Ci’en Monastery by the Emperor. This monastery is also closely associated with Xuánzàng, so it's quite possible that they knew each other. However, Xuanzang seems to have had little interest in the tantric side of Buddhism and was focussed on establishing his Fǎxiāng School (法相宗) of Yogācāra Buddhism.

Atikūṭa translated a number of texts into Chinese, including some of the first Tantric texts (which had already started to arrive in China without the context of Tantric doctrines and practices (e.g. abhiṣekha, sādhana, mantra, mudrā, and maṇḍala). He may have conducted the first abhiṣekha ritual in China. In particular, we are interested in him because, in 654, he translated a text called the 《陀羅尼集經》 Dhāraṇīsamuccaya "Collection of Spells" (T 901). The text was translated at Huirisi 慧日寺 a monastery associated with the 三階教 "Teaching of Three Levels" movement that was proscribed in 600 CE, but favoured by Sui Wendi and later by Wu Zetian. In this text we find the very dhāraṇī that occurs in the Xīnjīng.

Here is the relevant section, laid out horizontally, but preserving the lines in Taishō, Vol 18, p.807, register b, then arranged more naturally, followed by my very literal translation.

[19] 般若大心陀羅尼第十六呪曰。
[20] 跢姪他(一)揭帝揭帝(二)波羅揭帝(三)波囉僧揭
[21] 帝(四)菩提(五)莎訶(六)
[22] 是大心呪。用大心印。作諸壇處一切通用。
[23] 般若小心陀羅尼呪曰。
[24] 跢姪他(一)揭帝揭帝(二)波囉民(彌忍反)揭帝(三)波
[25] 囉若(若冶反)他(四)莎訶(五)
[26]用小心印通一切用。

We can usefully arrange this into connected passages. I'm not sure that the numbers add anything, but let's leave them in for now.

般若大心陀羅尼第十六
呪曰。跢姪他 (一) 揭帝揭帝 (二) 波羅揭帝 (三) 波囉僧揭帝 (四) 菩提 (五) 莎訶 (六)
是大心呪。用大心印。作諸壇處一切通用。

般若小心陀羅尼呪曰。
跢姪他 (一) 揭帝揭帝 (二) 波囉民 (彌忍反) 揭帝 (三) 波 囉若 (若冶反) 他 (四) 莎訶(五)
用小心印通一切用。

Spell of the great mind of insight. (prajñā-mahāhṛdaya-dhāraṇī). (16th)
The dhārāṇī says: tadyathā (1) gate gate (2) pāragate (3) pārasaṃgate (4) bodhi (5) svāhā (6)
This is the spell of great heart. Employ the gesture of great heart. Make many magic circles empowering all on the same basis.

Spell of the great mind of insight. (prajñā-cūla-hṛdaya-dhāraṇī).The dhāraṇī says: tadyathā (1) gate gate (2) pāramī (彌忍反) gate (3) paraya (若冶反) tā (4) svāhā (5)
Use the mudra of the lesser mind on the same basis.

Our focus has been on the Chinese rendering of svāhā. I noted that the canonical Heart Sutra has the problematic phrase: 僧莎訶 sēng shā hē. Now, in the Dhāraṇīsamuccaya we see that Atikūṭa transcribes svāhā as 莎訶, just as Kuījī's text does.

Note also that if the dhārāṇī comes from the Dhāraṇīsamuccaya then it may have lent its name to the Xīnjīng. It is called 般若大心陀羅尼  Bōrě-dàxīn-tuóluóní = Prajñā-mahā-hṛdaya-dhāraṇī.

Discussion

The obvious question is, did Atikūṭa copy this dhāraṇī from the Heart Sutra or did the "author" of the Heart Sutra borrow from the Dhāraṇīsamuccaya? The Dhāraṇīsamuccaya does associate the dhāraṇī with a minimal context, in that it is associated with a mudrā and empowerment (adhiṣṭhāna).

用大心印。作諸壇處一切通用。 

Employ the mahāhṛdaya-mudrā. Make many maṇḍalas empowering (adhiṣṭhāna) all on the same basis.

The language used here suggests a tantric context, though, at best, it is partial. Looking at the Heart Sūtra we usually presume that the epithets section is what contextualises the dhārāṇī. As discussed above, I have shown that this is not the case and the epithets are not a reference to the dhāraṇī, which stands alone (decontextualised) in the Heart Sutra. This leads me towards seeing the Dhāraṇī-samuccaya as the immediate source of the dhāraṇī (though as a samuccaya or "anthology", it cannot be the original source).

One thing to note is that the early Tang appears, from looking at the character changes here, to be a time of phonetic change. For example, Kumārajīva has 般若波羅蜜 (MC banya baramit) allowing the final consonant of 蜜 to carry the sound of tā, whereas Xuanzang opts for 般若波羅蜜多 (banya bara mitda) suggesting that the final consonant is on its way out already. It is completely absent in Mandarin: 蜜 mì.

If we accept the Dhāraṇīsamuccaya as the source then we can make fairly straight-forward stemma diagram by looking for single character additions or substitutions. Note that this diagram indicates sequence rather than chronology. I will discuss chronology below.

Dhāraṇīsamuccaya 

莎訶 

↓

Kuījī 

莎訶

↓

Fangshan 

莎婆訶

↙                 ↘

Woncheuk         popular 
莎婆呵             薩婆訶
↓                     
Huilin (T 250)                   
(807 CE)                     
僧婆訶                       
↓                                                               
Taishō                                                               
僧莎呵                                                               

This gives us a neat explanation of the variant readings. The Dhāraṇīsamuccaya transcription 莎訶 shāhē (MC saha) is transmitted directly to the text used in Kuījī's commentary. At some point a scribe makes a (haplographic) mistake, adding an extraneous character from earlier in the dhāraṇī giving us 僧莎訶 sēngshāhē (MC seung saha). This version must circulate and is adopted as the preferred reading in the Taishō, but the editors note other editions consulted have the popular transcription. It's not the weirdest thing in the Taishō, but given how popular the text is and which version is chanted, one wonders why they adopted the defective reading for their main text.

The Fangshan Stele, the oldest dated Heart Sutra (661 CE), has a three character transcription of svāhā, i.e. 莎婆訶 shāpóhē (MC sabaha). This was created by inserting 婆 pó (ba) between 莎 and 訶, to better represent svā. As noted, using two characters to represent Sanskrit conjuncts is common. 

Woncheuk's text alters the final character: 訶 → 呵.  i.e. 莎婆呵 shāpóhē (MC sabaga or sabaxa). Again, this change may have been inspired by changes in Middle Chinese pronunciation.  The pronunciation of 呵 was probably already moving towards the modern pronunciation of hē. On the other hand, the initial 莎, which I conjectured was changed for the same reasons, remains in this version. We know that different regions experience different sound changes and different rates of change, so perhaps some of that is reflected here.

The popular version of the Heart Sutra is created from the Fangshan version by substituting the initial character 莎 → 薩. This may be because the pronunciation of 莎 was moving from sa towards the modern shā and was starting to sound wrong. 

Amoghavajra also wanted a three character transcription to better capture the consonant cluster svā and opts for 娑嚩賀 suō pó hè, which is an entirely new transcription.

It would be interesting to see where the other character variations showed the same pattern (I may do some more on this).

Chronology

If we accept this explanation of the variants then we can narrow the window during which the Heart Sutra was composed to 654 – 661 CE. The terminus post quem is now defined by the translation of the Dhāraṇīsamuccaya in 654 and terminus ante quem is still the date on the Fangshan Stele, 13 March 661.

These dates are at least not inconsistent with the earliest literary reference to the Xīnjīng. As I wrote a year ago:

On the 5th day, 12th Month of Yǒnghuī 6 (永徽六年十二月五日) i.e., 6 January, 656, Xuánzàng sent a letter to the emperor celebrating the birth of a new prince the month before. He wrote in a letter: "I dare to offer a copy of the Prajñā Heart Sutra in gold letters, one scroll and a case." (輒敢進金字《般若心經》一卷并函 T 50.272b.12). This piece of information is quite a big deal because this is the earliest literary reference to the Heart Sutra with a precise date that I know of. It is five years before the earliest physical evidence (661 CE) and definitely before Xuánzàng began translating Prajñāpāramitā texts in ernest (660 CE). (Critical Thinking in Buddhist Historiography)

The Taishō edition has added punctuation here, and it's quite likely before they got hold of it, the text read 金字般若心經, i.e. "gold-lettered Prajñā-hṛdaya-sūtra". The Biography by Huili and Yancong records Xuanzang translating a text called 金剛般若經 (i.e. Vajracchedikā Sūtra) for Taizong around the time he died (T 2053. 50.259a13-a28). And I note the graphical similarity to the name of the text we have just been discussing, i.e. 金字般若心經. Indeed, in the previous essay on my blog, I noted that in Chinese, vajra is translated as 金剛 (jīngāng), i.e. "gold hard" (not that gold is particularly hard).

This might not be such an issue, except that we know that the Xīnjīng was a synthetic construction and that the Sanskrit text is a Chinese forgery. Thus, what appears to be a "gold-lettered Heart Sutra" could conceivably have originally been a reference to the Vajracchedikā.

This sequence is, of course, conjectural. Occam's razor gets us to the most likely answer, not the truth. And we have to be careful about drawing further inferences. For example, we may think it likely that the Xīnjīng evolved in this way because each step only requires a single character change.

僧莎訶 ← 莎訶 → 莎婆訶 → 莎婆呵 &  薩婆訶

In addition, we associate the texts with various people or objects, e.g. Kuījī, Woncheuk, and the Fangshan Stele. We would be mistaken, however, to infer that Kuījī was commenting before the Fangshan Stele. The only inference we can draw is that the text he was commenting on predated the Fangshan Stele. Similarly, the fact that Woncheuk was commenting on a later iteration is not an indication of even the relative chronology of the commentaries.

Conclusion

A forensic comparison of the Heart Sutra continues to unexpectedly throw up interesting and previously unknown data points which contribute to our understanding of the history of the text. Imagine what is lurking in our texts waiting to be discovered! 

I think we can tentatively say that the Dhāraṇīsamuccaya is the likely source of the dhāraṇī. The fact that assuming this helps to explain the variant transcriptions of svāhā by linking them through single character changes is significant. A lot more painstaking work will be required to see if other variant readings. But if it's true, then we can say that the Heart Sutra was composed 654 – 661 CE.

At this point we have a sequence of development, but not an absolute chronology. 

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Abé, Ryūichi (1999). The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press.

Attwood, Jayarava. (2017). ‘Epithets of the Mantra’ in the Heart Sutra. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, 12, 26–57. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/155

Glucklich, Ariel. (1997). The End of Magic. New York, Oxford University Press.

McRae, John R. (1988). "Ch'an Commentaries on the Heart Sûtra: Preliminary Inferences on the Permutation of Chinese Buddhism". Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 11, no. 2: 87-115. Online: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=19327107



Notes

17.8.2019. 僧莎訶 is only found in T251 and a later text T 849 (a tantric text related to the Mahāvairocana cycle of texts).