༄༅། །ན་གང་བ་་ན་ལ་གས་་གདབ་པ།

A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When

Administering Them
sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa

· Toh 505a ·
Degé Kangyur, vol. 87 (rgyud, da), folio 286.a
 Translated by Catherine Dalton
under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha

First published 2023

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co. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ti. Title
im. Imprint
co. Contents
s. Summary
ac. Acknowledgements
i. Introduction
tr. The Translation
1. A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them
n. Notes
b. Bibliography
· Primary Sources
· Secondary Sources
g. Glossary
s. SUMMARY
s.1 A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is a short work that
pays homage to the Three Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, and provides a
mantra to be used for incanting medicines.
ac. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ac.1 This text was translated and introduced by Catherine Dalton and edited by
members of the 84000 editorial team.
ac.2 The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of
84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.

The generous sponsorship of May, George, Likai, and Lillian Gu, which
helped make the work on this translation possible, is most gratefully
acknowledged.
i. INTRODUCTION
i.1 A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is a short work that
pays homage to the Three Jewels and the Medicine Buddha, Bhaiṣajyaguru-
vaiḍūryaprabharāja, and provides a mantra to be used for incanting
medicines. The text itself does not mention the original source of the mantra,
but it may have been extracted from The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505),1
where it appears as the final part of the longer dhāraṇī taught there. The
short mantra presented in A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering
Them was later incorporated into the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā and Aṣtāṅga-
saṅgraha, two important works of the Indian Āyurvedic medical tradition that
are believed to have been composed by Vāgbhaṭa (ca. 600 ᴄᴇ).2 In both works
the mantra is used in an emetic procedure (vamanavidhi) to incant a medicinal
beverage immediately before it is administered to the patient.3 The mantra
incorporated into Vāgbhaṭa’s texts includes both the mantra formula itself
and the initial homage to Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja.
i.2 A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them is included in
both the Tantra section (Toh 505a) and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (Toh
1059a) in the Degé Kangyur and other Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs that
include a Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section.4 In the Tshalpa-lineage
Kangyurs that do not include a separate dhāraṇī section, as well as in the
Thempangma-lineage Kangyurs, it is included in the Tantra section. There
are no significant variations between the recensions in terms of their textual
content.5
i.3 The present work lacks a Sanskrit title at the beginning and a translator’s
colophon at the end. It is possible that like A Mantra for Incanting Medicines,
Extracted From “Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm” (Toh 1059),6 the short work
that immediately precedes it in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section, it may
have been extracted from its source text and given its present form in Tibet,
rather than in India. It is perhaps not surprising then that A Mantra for
Incanting Medicines When Administering Them does not appear to be extant as
 an independent work in Sanskrit or in Chinese translation. A work with this
title is not found in the Denkarma or Phangtangma imperial catalogs of
Tibetan translations, but the Denkarma catalog does include one prayer to
Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha and the Phangtangma lists two,7 thus
indicating that Medicine Buddha practices were being translated into
Tibetan in the eighth and ninth centuries.
i.4 Additionally, The Dhāraṇī of Vaiḍūryaprabha, from which the mantra found in
this text may have been extracted, was translated by the imperial-period
translator Yeshé Dé, working with the Indian paṇḍitas Jinamitra, Dānaśīla,
and Śīlendrabodhi, and was later revised by Atiśa and Tsültrim Gyalwa.
However, although its colophon suggests it was translated during the
imperial period, a text with that title does not appear in either of the imperial
catalogs.
i.5 The present English translation of A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When
Administering Them was made on the basis of the two Degé Kangyur
recensions of this work (Toh 505a and Toh 1059a), with additional reference
to the notes from the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and the single
recension of the work found in the Stok Palace Kangyur. We also compared
the mantra against its occurrence in the Degé recension of The Dhāraṇī of
Vaiḍūryaprabha (Toh 505) and found it to be nearly identical with that
presented in this work.8
A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When
Administering Them
1. The Translation
[F.286.a]

1.1 Homage to the Three Jewels!

Homage to the blessed, thus-gone, worthy, completely perfect Buddha

Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja!

1.2 tadyathā oṁ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye samudgate svāhā9

1.3 This completes “A Mantra for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them.”
n. NOTES
n.1 84000 Translation Team, trans., The Vaiḍūryaprabha Dhāraṇī
(https://read.84000.co/translation/toh505.html), Toh 505 (84000: Translating the
Words of the Buddha, 2024).

n.2 It has been argued, tentatively, that Vāgbhaṭa was a Buddhist. For more on
Vāgbhaṭa and his works, see Meulenbeld 1999, pp. 597–656 and Wujastyk
1998, pp. 236–39.

n.3 See the Aṣtāṅga Hṛdaya of Vāgbhaṭa, pp. 188–89, and the Aṣṭāṅga Samgraha of
Vāgbhaṭa, pp. 466–69.

n.4 An explicitly named Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section is found in the Degé

and Urga Kangyurs, as well as in the peripheral Kangyurs of the Tshalpa
lineage (Dodedrak, Phajoding, and Ragya). In contrast, the Berlin, Choné,
Lithang, and Peking Qianlong Kangyurs include the same collection of
dhāraṇīs in a separate part of their Tantra sections, which has no distinct
label. With or without the label, these collections of dhāraṇīs contain many
duplicates of texts also found in the General Sūtra or Tantra sections, and in
the latter group of Kangyurs many dhāraṇī texts therefore appear twice in
different parts of the Tantra section.

n.5 It is nonetheless notable that the recension in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs

section preserves the older orthography for the concluding particle rdzogs sho
at the end of the work, whereas the recension in the Tantra section of the
canon, in all but one (the Narthang) of the recensions we consulted in both
the Tshalpa and Tempangma Kangyur lineages, has been updated to the
more common—and later—orthography, rdzogs so. The two recensions also
have one minor spelling difference that is consistent across recensions (sman
gyi lha in the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section recension and sman gyi bla in
the Tantra section recension), suggesting that the two recensions were
transmitted separately. This may indicate that the recension adopted into the
 Compendium of Dhāraṇīs section was incorporated into the canon due to its
being part of an earlier collection or collections of dhāraṇīs and associated
ritual texts that were brought together to constitute the canonical
Compendium of Dhāraṇīs collection. Indeed, apart from the canonical
dhāraṇī collection appearing in several of the Tshalpa-lineage Kangyurs,
these popular dhāraṇī collections, known in Sanskrit as dhāraṇīsaṅgraha,
appear in South Asia as well as in Tibet—including at Dunhuang, and as
extracanonical Tibetan dhāraṇī collections —and it appears that the
canonical dhāraṇī collection may have been created on the basis of an earlier
such collection or collections (see Hidas 2021, p. 7, n. 56; see also Dalton 2016
and Dalton and van Schaik 2006 on the dhāraṇīsaṅgraha collections preserved
at Dunhuang; see Hidas 2021 for the catalogs of eighteen Sanskrit dhāraṇī-
saṅgraha collections). It therefore seems likely that one recension of A Mantra
for Incanting Medicines When Administering Them entered the canon via its
inclusion in a dhāraṇīsaṅgraha collection that was brought into the canonical
Compendium of Dhāraṇīs, while the very same text, in a different recension
that had been updated to a more modern orthography, was then adopted
into the Tantra section of a wider range of Kangyurs in a fitting place —
immediately following the work from which its mantra was extracted.

n.6 Dalton, Catherine. trans., A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted from
“Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm”
(http://read.84000.co/translation/toh1059.html), Toh 1059 (84000: Translating the
Words of the Buddha, 2023).

n.7 The Denkarma includes the ’phags pa de bzhin gshegs pa sman gyi bla bai DU rya
’od kyi sngon gyi smon lam gyi khyad par rgyas pa (no. 148; Hermann-Pfandt 2008,
p. 81) and the Phangthangma lists de bzhin gshegs pa sman gyi bla be dur rya’i
sngon gyi smon lam chen po (no. 117) and the de bzhin gshegs pa sman gyi bla be
dur rya’i ’od kyi smon lam chen po chung ngu (no. 179; Kawagoe 2005, pp. 11 and
13).

n.8 The mantra in the present work includes an additional repetition of the word
bhaiṣajye, which is not found in the dhāraṇī in Toh 505. The mantra in the
present work reads tadyathā oṁ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye mahābhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye
samudgate svāhā. The final line of dhāraṇī in Toh 505 (1.38) reads tadyathā oṁ
bhaṣajya bhaiṣajya mahābhaiṣajya samudgate svāhā.

n.9 The final line of the dhāraṇī that appears in Toh 505 (1.38) reads tadyathā oṁ
bhaṣajya bhaiṣajya mahābhaiṣajya samudgate svāhā.
b. BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Primary Sources ·

sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. Toh 505a, Degé Kangyur vol. 87
(rgyud, da), folio 286.a.

sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. ka’ ’gyur (dpe bsdur ma)
[Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste
gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation
Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing:
krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing
House), 2006–9, vol. 87, pp. 850–51.

sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. Toh 1059, Degé Kangyur vol. 101
(gzungs ’ dus, waM), folios 189.b–190.a.

sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. ka’ ’gyur (dpe bsdur ma)
[Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste
gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation
Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing:
krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing
House), 2006–9, vol. 98, pp. 689–90.

sman gtong ba’i tshe sman la sngags kyi gdab pa. Stok Palace Kangyur vol 109
(rgyud, tsha), folios 277.b–278.a.

’phags pa de bzhin gshegs pa’i ting nge ’dzin gyi stobs bskyed pa bai dūrya’i ’od ces
bya ba’i gzungs. Toh 505, Degé Kangyur vol. 87 (rgyud, da), folios 284.a–
286.b.

· Secondary Sources ·
84000 Translation Team. trans. The Vaiḍūryaprabha Dhāraṇī
(https://read.84000.co/translation/toh505.html), Toh 505. 84000: Translating the
Words of the Buddha, 2024.

Anonymous, trans. Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdaya of Vāgbhaṭa: The Book of Eight Branches of

Āyurveda. Text and English Translation, vol 1. Delhi: Sri Satguru
Publications, 1999.

Denkarma (pho brang stod thang ldan dkar gyi chos kyi ’gyur ro cog gi dkar chag).
Toh 4364, Degé Tengyur vol. 206 (sna tshogs, jo), folios 294.b–310.a.

Dalton, Catherine. trans. A Mantra for Incanting Medicines, Extracted from

“Destroyer of the Great Trichiliocosm”
(https://read.84000.co/translation/toh1059.html), Toh 1059. 84000: Translating
the Words of the Buddha, 2023.

Dalton, Jacob P. “How Dhāraṇīs WERE Proto-Tantric: Liturgies, Ritual

Manuals, and the Origins of the Tantras.” In Tantric Traditions in
Transmission and Translation, edited by David Gray and Ryan Richard
Overbey, 199–229. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Phangthangma (dkar chag ʼphang thang ma). Beijing: mi rigs dpe skrun khang,
2003.

Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. Die lHan kar ma: ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische
übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008.

Hidas, Gergely. Powers of Protection: The Buddhist Tradition of Spells in the

Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha Collections. Boston: de Gruyter, 2021.

Kawagoe, Eshin. Dkar chag ’Phang thang ma. Sendai: Tōhuku indo chibetto
kenkyūkai (Tohuku Society for Indo-Tibetan Studies), 2005.

Lalou, Marcelle. “Les textes Bouddhiques au tempes du Roi Khri-sroṅ-lde-

bcan.” Journal

Asiatique 241 (1953): 313–53.

Meulenbeld, G. Jan. A History of Indian Medical Literature, vol. 1A. Groningen:

Egbert Forsten, 1999–2002.

Murthy, K. R. Srikantha, trans. Aṣṭāṅga Samgraha of Vāgbhaṭa, vol. 1. Varanasi:

Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1995.

Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Āyurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical

Writings. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1998.
g. GLOSSARY

· Types of attestation for names and terms of the corresponding ·

source language

AS Attested in source text

This term is attested in a manuscript used as a source for this translation.

AO Attested in other text

This term is attested in other manuscripts with a parallel or similar context.

AD Attested in dictionary
This term is attested in dictionaries matching Tibetan to the corresponding
language.

AA Approximate attestation
The attestation of this name is approximate. It is based on other names
where the relationship between the Tibetan and source language is attested
in dictionaries or other manuscripts.

RP Reconstruction from Tibetan phonetic rendering

This term is a reconstruction based on the Tibetan phonetic rendering of the
term.

RS Reconstruction from Tibetan semantic rendering

This term is a reconstruction based on the semantics of the Tibetan
translation.

SU Source unspecified
This term has been supplied from an unspecified source, which most often
is a widely trusted dictionary.

g.1 Atiśa
a ti sha

ཨ་་ཤ།
atiśa
 Atiśa Dīpaṅkaraśrījñāna (982–1054 ᴄᴇ), often referred to in Tibetan as jo bo,
“(The) Lord,” was a renowned figure in the history of Tibetan Buddhism
famous for coming to Tibet and revitalizing Buddhism there during the early
eleventh-century.

g.2 Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja
sman gyi bla bai DUr+ya ’od kyi rgyal po

ན་ི་་་་ད་་ལ་།
bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabharāja
A name for the Medicine Buddha.

g.3 blessed
bcom ldan ’das

བམ་ན་འདས།
bhagavat
Definition from the 84000 Glossary of Terms:
In Buddhist literature, this is an epithet applied to buddhas, most often to
Śākyamuni. The Sanskrit term generally means “possessing fortune,” but in
specifically Buddhist contexts it implies that a buddha is in possession of six
auspicious qualities (bhaga) associated with complete awakening. The
Tibetan term—where bcom is said to refer to “subduing” the four māras, ldan
to “possessing” the great qualities of buddhahood, and ’das to “going
beyond” saṃsāra and nirvāṇa—possibly reflects the commentarial tradition
where the Sanskrit bhagavat is interpreted, in addition, as “one who destroys
the four māras.” This is achieved either by reading bhagavat as bhagnavat
(“one who broke”), or by tracing the word bhaga to the root √bhañj (“to
break”).

g.4 Dānaśīla
—
—
dānaśīla
An Indian paṇḍita who was resident in Tibet during the late eighth and
early ninth centuries.

g.5 Jinamitra
—
—
jinamitra
 An Indian paṇḍita who was resident in Tibet during the late eighth and
early ninth centuries.

g.6 Śīlendrabodhi
—
—
śīlendrabodhi
An Indian paṇḍita who was resident in Tibet during the late eighth and
early ninth centuries.

g.7 Three Jewels

dkon mchog gsum

དན་མག་གམ།
triratna
The Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha—the three objects of Buddhist refuge. In
the Tibetan rendering, “the three rare and supreme ones.”

g.8 thus-gone
de bzhin gshegs pa

་བན་གགས་པ།
tathāgata
Definition from the 84000 Glossary of Terms:
A frequently used synonym for buddha. According to different explanations,
it can be read as tathā-gata, literally meaning “one who has thus gone,” or as
tathā-āgata, “one who has thus come.” Gata, though literally meaning “gone,”
is a past passive participle used to describe a state or condition of existence.
Tatha(tā), often rendered as “suchness” or “thusness,” is the quality or
condition of things as they really are, which cannot be conveyed in
conceptual, dualistic terms. Therefore, this epithet is interpreted in different
ways, but in general it implies one who has departed in the wake of the
buddhas of the past, or one who has manifested the supreme awakening
dependent on the reality that does not abide in the two extremes of existence
and quiescence. It is also often used as a specific epithet of the Buddha
Śākyamuni.

g.9 Tsültrim Gyalwa

tshul khrims rgyal ba

ལ་མས་ལ་བ།
—
 Prolific eleventh-century Tibetan translator also known as Naktso Lotsawa
(nag tsho lo tsā ba). He was sent to India by Lhalama Yeshé Ö (lha bla ma ye shes
’od), the king of Western Tibet, and his grand-nephew Jangchup Ö (byang
chub ’od) to invite Atiśa to Tibet.

g.10 Yeshé Dé
ye shes sde

་ས་།
—
Definition from the 84000 Glossary of Terms:
Yeshé Dé (late eighth to early ninth century) was the most prolific translator
of sūtras into Tibetan. Altogether he is credited with the translation of more
than one hundred sixty sūtra translations and more than one hundred
additional translations, mostly on tantric topics. In spite of Yeshé Dé’s great
importance for the propagation of Buddhism in Tibet during the imperial era,
only a few biographical details about this figure are known. Later sources
describe him as a student of the Indian teacher Padmasambhava, and he is
also credited with teaching both sūtra and tantra widely to students of his
own. He was also known as Nanam Yeshé Dé, from the Nanam (sna nam)
clan.