278 sØrensen
a: Namo, jite, mite, Vyākaraṇa ja[?]te, buddha, svāhā!
(Chin. 南謨 吉帝 64 伊帝, 毗伽羅 65 賦帝, 婆陀, 薩婆訶.)
b: Oṃ, sabhamite, svāhā!
(Chin. 唵 薩婆彌帝 薩婆訶)
So far there are no other Northern Chan scriptures—outside the Dunhuang
manuscripts—which actually contain any of these two mantras, but the way
they occur and the fact that they appear more than once in the manuscripts
may allow us to consider them part of some Northern Chan-related curricu-
lum. It is not possible to be too precise as to the date when this may have taken
place, but it may not have happened until late in the Kaiyuan period (713–741),
if not slightly later.
One interesting case of Chan influence on Esoteric Buddhism, and not
the other way around, can be found in the manuscripts of a lengthy scrip-
ture recovered from among the manuscripts at Dunhuang, namely the The
Lofty Vajra Scripture, Vajroṣṇīṣa of All the Tathāgatas, the Deep and Wonderful,
Secret Vajradhātu, Great Samaya, the Scripture for Cultivating the Forty-two
Kinds of Methods [for Setting up] the Altar Employing the Awesome Methods
of Ritual Proceedings, The Mahāvairocana Vajra Mind Ground Dharma Door,
Esoteric Dharma Precepts Altar Methods of Ritual Proceedings (Chin. Jingang
junjing jingang ding yijie rulai shenmiao bimi jingang jie da sanmeiye xiu-
xing sishier zhongtan fa jing zuoyong wei tanfa yize—Da Piluzhena jingang
xindi famen mi fajie tan fayi ze 金剛峻經金剛頂一切如來深妙秘密
金剛界大三昧耶修行四十二種壇法經作用威法儀則大毘盧那金剛心
地法門秘法戒壇法儀則)—hereafter referred to as Esoteric Dharma Precepts
Altar Methods of Ritual Proceedings—, falsely attributed to Amoghavajra.66 In
this apocryphal, ritual scripture, which is loosely based on the Vajraśekhara,
the historical section of the Esoteric Dharma Precepts Altar Methods of Ritual
Proceedings, entitled the Chapter on the Transmission of the Dharma (Chin.
Fufazang pin 付法藏品) features the orthodox patriarchal lineage of Southern
Chan Buddhism in verseform, integrating it with the formal transmission of
both the Vajraśekhara and the Vajradhātu maṇḍala as well as Amoghavajra’s
64 This segment occurs as part of a string of identical, meaningless sounds in a spell found
in an early translation of the Saptabuddhakasūtra. Cf. T. 1333.21, 563a.
65 This part of the spell is identical with the name of Vyākaraṇa, one of the twelve zodiacal
spirits in the entourage of Bhaiṣajyaguru. Cf. F. 88.3, 2b.
66 Fang Guangchang 方廣錩, ed., Zangwai fojiao wenxian 藏外佛教文獻 [Buddhist Texts
Outside the Tripiṭaka] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2008), 17–231.