BuddhistRoad Paper 2.7 "Tibetan Ritual Texts and the Uṣnīṣavijayādhāraṇī on the First Panel of IOL Tib J 466"

Abstract

This article explores prayer texts written on the first panel of a manuscript whose content links Dunhuang (敦煌) and Central Tibet, IOL Tib J 466. The wider Dunhuang corpus of which this manuscript is part offers scholars a time-capsule from the social and cultural world of first-millennium CE Dunhuang, a melting pot with connections to China, the eastern part of the Silk Road and Tibet. The corpus can also be used, with caution, to compare religious practice there with what we know of Buddhism at the court of the Tibetan emperors in the eighth and ninth centuries especially. One aspect of this is ritual, into which category fall prayer and the related genre of dhāraṇī (Tib. gzungs, Chin. tuoluoni 陀羅尼), and IOL Tib J 466 contains both of these. This article focuses on the first panel of this manuscript, containing invitations to the buddhas of the ten directions, praises to the eight great bodhisattvas and an exemplar of the Uṣnīṣavijayādhāraṇī (Tib. gTsug tor rnam par rgyal ba’i gzungs, Chin. Zunsheng zhou尊勝咒). Analysing these materials within the context of prayer and dhāraṇī literature evidenced in some of the other Tibetan-language documents from Dunhuang and later canonical Tibetan exemplars and references broadens the description of ritual traditions in the Tibetan imperial (ca. 600–850) and early post-imperial period and within Tibeto-Chinese Buddhist communities in Dunhuang during and after Tibetan imperial control over the region (up to 848).