Amoghapāśakalparāja

Amoghapāśakalparāja (T. don yod pa’i zhags pa’i cho ga zhib mo’i rgyal po). A ritual text dedicated entirely to the deity Amoghapāśa, a form of Avalokiteśvara who appears in both peaceful and wrathful iconographies.

Kriya-tantra aspect

The Dharmachakra Translation Committee states:

As a Kriyātantra, the AP [Amoghapāśakalparāja] firmly adheres to Mahāyāna principles and declares itself, explicitly and implicitly, to be part of the Mahāyāna system. The Mahāyāna philosophical tenets reflected in the tantras of this class tend to fall into the category of Yogācāra rather than Madhyamaka, as it is the illusory aspect of things and its corollary, the ability to produce miraculous displays, that is prominent in these texts. The efficacy of the Kriyā ritual is itself founded upon the notion of the indivisibility of mind, mantra, and deity. The AP’s Yogācāra affiliation is also confirmed by explicit statements such as “If [the practitioner] casts the seeds among the leaders of assemblies, they will become followers of Yogācāra.”

Text

The text of the AP exists today in Sanskrit and in Tibetan and Chinese canonical translations.

Sanskrit text

The Dharmachakra Translation Committee states:

There is only one complete Sanskrit manuscript (China Library of Nationalities, manuscript 69), which has been published as a transcript (Kimura 1998) and as an edition (Kimura 2015). The transcript, however, covers only part of the manuscript, from the beginning to folio 97 (out of the 162 folios), and the edition, still in process, consists only of a short section from folio 97 to folio 101.

Chinese translation

The Dharmachakra Translation Committee states:

The first chapter, at the time an independent work called Amoghapāśa-hṛdaya-sūtra, was translated into Chinese by Jñānagupta in 587 as Bukong juansuo zhou jing (不空胃索咒經 = Amogha­pāśa Dhāraṇī Sūtra, Taishō 1093). It was translated again by Xuanzang in 659 (Taishō 1094), by Bodhiruci in 693 (Taishō 1095), and by Dānapāla in the tenth century (Taishō 1099), with the titles varying slightly as Xuanzang and Bodhiruci called their translations not dhāraṇī - but hṛdaya-sūtra.

The remainder of the work was translated by Bodhiruci from 707–9 as Bukong juansuo shenbian zhenyan jing (不空胃索神變真吉經 = Amoghapāśa Supernatural Display Mantra Sūtra, Taishō 1092); however, this Chinese version diverges significantly from the Sanskrit manuscript and Tibetan translation (Toh 686) that have been used in our translation.

And also :

The Chinese canonical translation represents a version of the AP that is shorter than both the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions. The differences in composition between all three versions are listed in the collation tables in Kimura 1997.

Tibetan translation

The Dharmachakra Translation Committee states:

The names of the Tibetan translators of the AP, described in the final colophon of the Tibetan translation as the “four learned translators of the past,” are not available. The same colophon gives the names of two later translators, both active in the fourteenth century, Chödrak Pel Sangpo and Rinchen Drup. These two lotsāwa s added and translated additional material not found in the existing canonical translation.

The title in Tibetan is:

• don yod pa’i zhags pa’i cho ga zhib mo’i rgyal po །དོན་ཡོད་པའི་ཞགས་པའི་ཆོ་ག་ཞིབ་མོའི་རྒྱལ་པོ།

English translation

• Dharmachakra Translation Committee (2026), The Noble Sovereign Ritual of Amoghapāśa, 84000 Collection

See also

• Mantra of Light

Sources

• Dharmachakra Translation Committee (2026), The Noble Sovereign Ritual of Amoghapāśa, 84000 Collection