A Tibetan Hymn to Uṣṇīṣavijayā from Khara-Khoto Kept at the British Library

This article continues a series of publications on Tibetan texts dedicated to various Buddhist deities, discovered in Khara-Khoto within a large corpus of texts from the Tangut State period (11th–13th centuries). While the main part of this corpus was brought by Petr Kozlov to Saint Petersburg in 1909, a small yet significant collection was later acquired by Aurel Stein as a result of his 1913–1915 expedition. Among Stein’s collection kept at the British Library (London) is a single manuscript folio, IOL Tib M 143, which contains what appears to be an entire text entitled Gtsug gtor rnam par rgyal ma’i bstod pa byin brlabs can (“The Hymn to Uṣṇīṣavijayā with the Blessing”), the colophon lacking any other details including the author’s name. It is one of several pieces of textual evidence highlighting the important role of the cult of the goddess Uṣṇīṣavijayā, one of the most popular long-life deities, in 12th and early 13th century Tangut Buddhism. I would date the manuscript to this period as it features some elements of old orthography. This hymn is not found in the Tibetan Buddhist canon and may have been composed by a Tibetan-speaking author. This assumption is indirectly supported by the analysis of the assonances, alliterations and sometimes even rhymes in the text, which reveal a high level of poetic craftsmanship. Such sophistication might be less expected from a translation, although this does not preclude the possibility of a translation being equally skillful. The text consists of eight stanzas of praise and two stanzas of prayer, the latter seemingly referred to as “the blessing” in the title. The praising part moves from describing Uṣṇīṣavijayā’s divine nature, merits, and main iconographic features to her spiritual and soteriological roles. The iconographic part is not very detailed, it omits attributes held by her in the eight hands or colors of her three faces. However, I provide these details in my paper for a fuller picture. The text of the manuscript is published as a diplomatic transliteration, where I attempted to address several issues with unclear places, particularly reconstructing lacunas caused by holes in the folio. I believe that, except for one or two instances, I was able to arrive at a reliable version. The full English translation of the text is also supplied. While the hymn does not explicitly provide any historical information concerning the cult of Uṣṇīṣavijayā among the Tanguts, this edition may prove useful for scholars of Tangut Buddhism. Perhaps they will be able to identify its Tangut or Chinese version among Khara-Khoto fragments.