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110-528: The Hyakumantō Darani ( 百万塔陀羅尼 ) , or the "One Million Pagodas and Dharani Prayers", are a series of Buddhist prayers or spells that were printed on paper and then rolled up and housed in wooden cases that resemble miniature pagodas in both appearance and meaning. Although woodblock-printed books from Chinese Buddhist temples were seen in Japan as early as the 8th century, the Hyakumantō Darani are

220-404: A tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong . Each tone can be denoted with its numeral the order listed above. The neutral tone can either be denoted with no numeral, with 0, or with 5. Briefly, tone marks should always be placed in the order a, e, i, o, u, ü , with the only exceptions being iu and io where the tone mark is placed on

330-425: A "large and important" part of Mahayana Buddhism, and that they were magic formulae and "protective spells" as well as amulets. Benefits of chanting a dharani [For one reciting this Great Peacock Spell], there will be no fear of kings’ [capricious punishment], no fear of thieves or of fire, or of death by drowning. Nor will poison afflict his body, nor weapons, and he will live long and prosper, only excepting

440-600: A Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin", worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the People's Republic was established. Earlier attempts to romanize Chinese writing were mostly abandoned in 1944. Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai, and when the Ministry of Education created

550-657: A GB recommendation in 1996, and were last updated in 2012. In practice, however, published materials in China now often space pinyin syllable by syllable. According to Victor H. Mair , this practice became widespread after the Script Reform Committee, previously under direct control of the State Council , had its power greatly weakened in 1985 when it was renamed the State Language Commission and placed under

660-588: A Japanese priest named Chishu supports the ordination of his student Hata no kimi Toyotari by listing that he can recite following dharanis: "the Greater Prajna-paramita , Amoghapasa Avalokiteshvara, Eleven-faced Avalokiteshvara, the Golden Light , Akashagarbha, Bhaisajyaguru, consecrating water, concealing ritual space" with the dharani rituals of prostration after eight years of training. A study of numerous such ubasoku koshinge recommendation letters from

770-549: A Pali chant text used during rites such as the consecration of a Buddha image. The text, states Donald Swearer, includes a "unique dharani in praise of the Buddha" and his victory over the evil Mara . Though the dharani appears at the end of the text and the associated chant in Thai Buddhist practice occurs at the close of the ceremony, they highlight their key role in "the buddhabhiseka ritual". The Buddhist dharani invocations are

880-799: A Sanskrit root √ dhṛ meaning "to hold or maintain". This root is likely derived from the historical Vedic religion of ancient India, where chants and melodious sounds were believed to have innate spiritual and healing powers even if the sound cannot be translated and has no meaning (as in a music). The same root gives dharma or dhamma . According to the East Asian Buddhism studies scholar Paul Copp, some Buddhist communities outside India sometimes refer to dharanis with alternate terms such as "mantra, hṛdaya (hridiya), paritrana (paritta), raksha (Pali: rakkha), gutti, or vidyā" though these terms also have other contextual meanings in Buddhism. According to

990-500: A dharani resembles the incantations found in the Atharvaveda and Yajurveda of Hinduism. The dharani-genre of Buddhist literature includes mantra, states Étienne Lamotte , but they were also a "memory aid" to memorize and chant Buddha's teachings. This practice was linked to concentration ( samadhi ) and believed to have magical virtues and a means to both spiritual and material karma -related merit making. According to Braarvig,

1100-410: A form of proto-tantrism. According to Richard McBride, as well as Richard Payne, the "proto-tantra" proposal too is problematic because it is a meaningless anachronistic teleological category that "misleads" and implies that the dharanis somehow anticipated and nurtured Buddhist tantra tradition. There is no evidence for such a sequential development. Instead, the evidence points to an overlap but that

1210-598: A part of various suttas , while others are dedicated texts. Illustrations include: Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin , or simply pinyin , is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese . In official documents, it is referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet . Hanyu ( 汉语 ; 漢語 ) literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin

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1320-456: A series of magical formulae such as "sara sire sire suru suru naganam java java jivi jivi juvu juvu etc." , states Moriz Winternitz. The historic Mahayana dharanis have survived as single manuscripts as well as large collections. The versions found in Nepal and China include spells to end sickness, lengthen life, recovery from poison, magic for luck in war, drive away demons and snakes, protection from

1430-662: A small piece of paper (typically 6 x 45 cm) printed with a Buddhist text, the Vimalasuddhaprabhasa mahadharani sutra ( Mukujōkō daidarani kyō ( 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經 ) ). It is thought they were printed in Nara , where the facilities, craftsmen and skills existed to undertake such large scale production. Marks on the bases of the wooden pagodas indicate that they were worked on lathes and studies of these have identified that more than 100 different lathes were used in their production. More than 45,000 pagodas and 3,962 printed dharani survive in

1540-400: A trailing -r is considered part of a syllable (a phenomenon known as erhua ). The latter case, though a common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications. Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals ( 复韵母 ; 複韻母 ; fùyùnmǔ ), i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example,

1650-579: Is "almost certain" that some of the East Asian Buddhist literature on dharani were indigenous Chinese texts and syncretic with the Daoist practices. For example, the Guanding jing composed in mid-5th century in China is largely a collection of magical spells in the dharani-genre in twelve semi-independent chapters. It includes spells such as those of the 72,000 spirit kings to protect Buddhist monks, spells of

1760-475: Is about the Buddha reciting six dharanis . The first part states its significance as follows (Japanese version of the Chinese text): People who wish to perform the ceremony for it should, on the 8th, 13th, 14th or 15th day of the month, walk round and round the pagoda containing the relics a full seventy-seven times, with it on their right, reciting this charm [dhāraṇī] also seventy-seven times: they should build an altar and keep its surface clean. They should have

1870-491: Is attached as a grammatical suffix . A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a southern Chinese language such as Cantonese , reflecting final consonants in Old Chinese ), or indicates the use of a non-pinyin romanization system, such as one that uses final consonants to indicate tones. Technically, i, u, ü without a following vowel are finals, not medials, and therefore take

1980-656: Is based on the phonological system of Beijing Mandarin. Other romanization schemes have been devised to transcribe those other Chinese varieties, such as Jyutping for Cantonese and Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien . Based on the "Chinese Romanization" section of ISO 7098:2015, pinyin tone marks should use the symbols from Combining Diacritical Marks , as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in bopomofo. Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212 ; thus Unicode includes all

2090-410: Is believed to result from it containing words or wisdom in nunce from a Buddhist Sutta. The Japanese Horiuzi manuscript of Prajna paramita hrdaya sutra and Usnisha Vijaya dharani dated to 609 CE illustrate both, with the latter being only invocations consisting of meaningless series of syllables. In Buddhism, a dharani has been believed to have magical virtues and a means to earn merit to offset

2200-493: Is both a medial and a coda, the nucleus may be dropped from writing. In this case, when the coda is a consonant n or ng , the only vowel left is the medial i, u , or ü , and so this takes the diacritic. However, when the coda is a vowel, it is the coda rather than the medial which takes the diacritic in the absence of a written nucleus. This occurs with syllables ending in -ui (from wei : wèi → -uì ) and in -iu (from you : yòu → -iù ). That is, in

2310-895: Is dated to 690 to 699. This coincides with the reign of Wu Zetian , under which the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra , which advocates printing apotropaic and merit making texts and images, was translated by Chinese monks. The oldest extant evidence of woodblock prints created for the purpose of reading are portions of the Lotus Sutra discovered at Turpan in 1906. They have been dated to the reign of Wu Zetian using character form recognition. The Hyakumantō Darani found as charms in wooden pagodas of Japan were broadly accepted as having been printed between 764 and 770 CE. In 1966, similarly printed dharani were discovered in stone pagoda of Pulguksa temple in Gyeongju, Korea. These are dated to

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2420-411: Is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v is sometimes used instead by convention. For example, it is common for cellphones to use v instead of ü . Additionally, some stores in China use v instead of ü in the transliteration of their names. The drawback is a lack of precomposed characters and limited font support for combining accents on

2530-590: Is found in a Chinese text dated between 317 and 420 CE. This text is the Qifo bapusa suoshuo da tuoluoni shenzhou jing (or, Great Dharani Spirit-Spell Scripture Spoken by the Seven Buddhas and Eight Bodhisattvas). The Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras , for example, were compiled in the mid-seventh century. Some of the oldest Buddhist religious inscriptions in Stupas (Dagoba, Chörten) are extracts from dharani-genre compositions such as

2640-518: Is found in both esoteric and exoteric rituals. In the Nara and early Heian period of Japanese history, a monk or nun was tested for their fluency and knowledge of dharanis to confirm whether they are well trained and competent in Buddhist knowledge. Their appointment letters listed the sutras and dharanis that he or she could recite from memory. In an appointment recommendation letter dated 732 CE, as an example,

2750-487: Is generally described in terms of sound pairs of two initials ( 声母 ; 聲母 ; shēngmǔ ) and finals ( 韵母 ; 韻母 ; yùnmǔ ). This is distinct from the concept of consonant and vowel sounds as basic units in traditional (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Chinese language). Every syllable in Standard Chinese can be described as a pair of one initial and one final, except for the special syllable er or when

2860-567: Is not limited only to pinyin, since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively also assign different values to the same letters. A recent study on Chinese writing and literacy concluded, "By and large, pinyin represents the Chinese sounds better than the Wade–Giles system, and does so with fewer extra marks." As pinyin is a phonetic writing system for modern Standard Chinese , it is not designed to replace characters for writing Literary Chinese ,

2970-590: Is not ordinarily reflected in pinyin spelling. Standard Chinese has many polysyllabic words. Like in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet, spacing in pinyin is officially based on word boundaries. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word. The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational and National Language commissions. These rules became

3080-409: Is rarely used due to difficulty of entering it on computers. (Starts with the vowel sound in f a ther and ends in the velar nasal ; like s ong in some dialects of American English) An umlaut is added to ⟨ u ⟩ when it occurs after the initials ⟨ l ⟩ and ⟨ n ⟩ when necessary in order to represent the sound [y] . This is necessary in order to distinguish

3190-504: Is spelled in terms of an optional initial and a final , each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials ( semivowels coming before the vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant). Diacritics are used to indicate the four tones found in Standard Chinese, though these are often omitted in various contexts, such as when spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts. Hanyu Pinyin

3300-504: Is symbolic on multiple levels. The dharanis have been a large and important part of Mahayana Buddhist literature. They are particularly abundant in the esoteric tradition of Buddhism (Vajrayana, Tibetan). However, the dharanis were not unique to esoteric Mahayana texts. The most significant and popular Mahayana sutras such as the Lotus Sutra , Heart Sutra and others prominently include dharani chapters. The dharanis are prominent in

3410-676: Is the official romanisation system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations . Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters , to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet . Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries . In pinyin, each Chinese syllable

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3520-630: Is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú , not as * yǘ . This practice is opposed to Wade–Giles, which always uses ü , and Tongyong Pinyin , which always uses yu . Whereas Wade–Giles needs the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju ) and chu (pinyin zhu ), this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin, so the more convenient form ju is used instead of jü . Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu / nü and lu / lü , which are then distinguished by an umlaut. Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü . Likewise, using ü in input methods

3630-630: The Prajñāpāramitā Sutras wherein the Buddha "praises dharani incantation, along with the cultivation of samadhi , as virtuous activity of a bodhisattva ", states Ryûichi Abé. The Megha-Sutra is an example of an ancient Mahayana magico-religious text. In it, the snake deities appear before the Buddha and offer him adoration, then ask how the suffering of snakes, as well as people, can be alleviated. The text suggests friendliness ( maitri ) and lists numerous invocations such as those to female deities, exorcisms, means to induce rains, along with

3740-703: The Bodhigarbhalankaralaksa-dharani . Manuscript fragments of Sumukha-dharani discovered in Central Asia and now held at the Leningrad Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences are in the Sanskrit language and the Brahmi script , a script that was prevalent before the early centuries of the common era. The Chinese text Wugou jing guangda tuoluoni jing of the influential Empress Wu 's era – 683 to 705 CE –

3850-864: The Heart Sutra , the Great Compassion Mantra and the Shurangama Mantra . The Theravada Paritta texts are a type of the Dharani texts, providing protective charm through chanting of hymns. According to Buddhist studies scholars Sarah LeVine and David Gellner, Theravada lay devotees traditionally invite the monks into their homes for rites of "protection from evil" and the monk(s) chant the paritrana hymns. These rituals are particularly common during rites-of-passage ceremonies such as baby naming, first rice-eating and others. According to Buddhologist Karel Werner, some Mahayana and Vajrayana dharani texts influenced

3960-560: The Hōryū-ji temple near Nara, but globally fewer than 50,000 pagodas are known to still exist. Their creation was completed around 770, and they were distributed to temples around the country. There are various theories around Shōtoku's motives for commissioning the Hyakumantō Darani . One is that of remorse and thanksgiving for the suppression of the Emi Rebellion of 764, and another is as an assertion of power and control over resources, but

4070-482: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r , which are omitted, the following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals. The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n , -ng , and -r , the last of which

4180-422: The Ministry of Education . Mair claims that proponents of Chinese characters in the educational bureaucracy "became alarmed that word-based pinyin was becoming a de facto alternative to Chinese characters as a script for writing Mandarin and demanded that all pinyin syllables be written separately." Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade–Giles and postal romanization , and replaced bopomofo as

4290-429: The Ministry of Public Security standardized the practice to use "LYU" and "NYU" in passports. Although nüe written as nue , and lüe written as lue are not ambiguous, nue or lue are not correct according to the rules; nüe and lüe should be used instead. However, some Chinese input methods support both nve / lve (typing v for ü ) and nue / lue . The pinyin system also uses four diacritics to mark

4400-480: The dhamma , to remember the dhamma , to remember virtue". There is very little prescriptive or practical difference between dharani and mantras except that dharani are much longer, states Eugene Burnouf. According to Winternitz, a Buddhist dharani resembles the incantations and mantras found in Hinduism. A dharani may contain simple magical syllables and words without any literal meaning ( mantra-padani ), or its power

4510-482: The tones of Mandarin . In the pinyin system, four main tones of Mandarin are shown by diacritics: ā, á, ǎ, and à. There is no symbol or diacritic for the neutral tone: a. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus , unless that letter is missing. Tones are used in Hanyu Pinyin symbols, and they do not appear in Chinese characters. Tones are written on the finals of Chinese pinyin. If

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4620-409: The "dharani incantations and related mystic phrases and practices have been integral parts of nearly all Buddhist traditions since at least the early centuries of the common era". Dhāraṇīs are a form of amulet and believed in the various Buddhist traditions to deliver protection from malign influences and calamities. Mantra and dharani are synonymous in some Buddhist traditions, but in others such as

4730-589: The "oldest authenticated printed texts in the world", states Robert Sewell. These were mass-produced as a set consisting of miniature hollow wooden pagodas each containing a printed dharani prayer or charm in Sanskrit on thick paper strips. The Japanese records state a million dharanis were so produced and distributed through Buddhist temples by the order of Empress Shōtoku – previously a Buddhist nun – after an attempted coup against her court. According to Ross Bender, these events and Empress Shōtoku's initiatives led to

4840-510: The 120,000 spirit kings to protect the Buddhist nuns, incantations of spirit kings to protect one's surroundings, seals and spells to subdue devils, chants to summon dragon kings to treat infections and remove pests, and seeking rebirth in pure lands of one's desire. The significance of dharanis was such that both the government and monastic organization had stipulated, by the 7th century, how and when dharanis may or may not be used. A ritsuryo code for Buddhist clerics dated 718 CE, promulgated by

4950-404: The 19th-century French Indologist and a scholar of Buddhism, dharanis are magical formulas that to Buddhist devotees are the most important parts of their books. Burnouf, states Davidson, was the first scholar to realise how important and widespread dharani had been in Buddhism sutras and Mahayana texts. The Indologist Moriz Winternitz concurred in the early 20th century that dharanis constituted

5060-549: The 1st-millennium Japan confirm that dharanis were an essential and core part of monastic training, though the specific group of dharanis memorized by a monk or nun varied. Kūkai classified mantras as a special class of dhāraṇīs and argued that every syllable of a dhāraṇī was a manifestation of the true nature of reality – in Buddhist terms, that all sound is a manifestation of śūnyatā or emptiness of self-nature. Thus, rather than being devoid of meaning, Kūkai suggests that dhāraṇīs are in fact saturated with meaning – every syllable

5170-511: The 2nd century and 4th century CE of Mahayana texts do contain dharanis. The Dunhuang manuscript collections include extensive talismanic dharani sections. The dharanis as conceptualized by medieval era Buddhist intellectuals and eminent Chinese monks were an "integral component of mainstream Sinitic Buddhism", states Richard McBride. The popularity of Buddhist spells in China was probably because older native Chinese religions valued spells already. According to Robert Buswell and Donald Lopez, it

5280-500: The Buddha stays, "non-humans do not harm the people of that town or village", states the Buddhism scholar Peter Skilling. This and similar statements are also found in the early Chinese translations of Indian Buddhist texts. According to Skilling, these "protective Buddhist literature" are used by both the monks and the laypeople of Theravada countries. These texts are a part of any "meagre library of Buddhist Sri Lankan households" and they are called Pirit Pota . In Myanmar, all classes of

5390-591: The Buddha. In this context, dharani were acknowledged in the Buddhist tradition by about the second century BCE, and they were a memory aid to ground and remember the dharma teachings. The term dharani as used in the history of Mahayana and tantric Buddhism, and its interpretation has been problematic since the mid-19th century, states Ronald Davidson. It was initially understood as "magical formula or phrase", but later studies such as by Lamotte and Berhard interpreted them to be "memory", while Davidson proposes that some dharani are "codes". According to Eugène Burnouf ,

5500-463: The Buddhist lay devotees may have led to the development of textual printing innovations. The dharani records of East Asia are the oldest known "authenticated printed texts in the world", state Robert Sewell and other scholars. The early-eighth-century dharani texts discovered in the Bulguksa of Gyeongju , Korea are considered as the oldest known printed texts in the world. Dharani recitation for

5610-662: The Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language in 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned him the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he was not a linguist by trade. Hanyu Pinyin incorporated different aspects from existing systems, including Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), Latinxua Sin Wenz (1931), and the diacritics from bopomofo (1918). "I'm not the father of pinyin", Zhou said years later; "I'm

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5720-520: The Eyes and Ears of Western Literati' ( 西儒耳目資 ; Xīrú ěrmù zī )) in Hangzhou. Neither book had any influence among the contemporary Chinese literati, and the romanizations they introduced primarily were useful for Westerners. During the late Qing, the reformer Song Shu (1862–1910) proposed that China adopt a phonetic writing system. A student of the scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan , Song had observed

5830-659: The Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems; this change followed the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the United States and China in 1979. In 2001, the Chinese government issued the National Common Language Law , providing a legal basis for applying pinyin. The current specification of the orthography is GB/T 16159–2012. Chinese phonology

5940-788: The Korean dharani were likely printed in China, the evidence confirms that the Japanese dharani were printed in Japan from Buddhist chants that arrived through China. The tradition of printing and distributing the Buddhist dharanis, as well as transliterated Sanskrit sutras, continued in East Asia over the centuries that followed. By the 9th century, the era of mass printing and the sale of books had begun covering additional subjects such as " astrology , divination of dreams, alchemy , and geomancy ". According to languages and ancient manuscripts scholar Ernst Wolff, "it

6050-402: The Nara government in Japan, forbid the use of dharani for any unauthorized medical treatment, military and political rebellion. The code explicitly exempted their use for "healing of the sick by chanting dharanis in accordance with the Buddha dharma". Another document dated 797 CE mentions "healer-meditation masters" ( kanbyo zenji ) in dharanis to protect the family of the ruler. Others evidence

6160-593: The Private Use Areas, and some input methods (e.g. Sogou Pinyin) also outputs the Private Use Areas code point instead of the original character. As the superset GB 18030 changed the mappings of ⟨ḿ⟩ and ⟨ǹ⟩ , this has caused an issue where the input methods and font files use different encoding standards, and thus the input and output of both characters are mixed up. Other symbols are used in pinyin are as follows: The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become

6270-595: The Tathagata Buddha and Ananda being the last chapter. This dharani chapter, states Buswell, "encodes ( dharayati ) the important meanings, without forgetting them, and it reminds and codes the points to remember. The Indologist Frits Staal who is known for his scholarship on mantras and chants in Indian religions, states the Dharani mantras reflect a continuity of the Vedic mantras. He quotes Wayman to be similarly stressing

6380-510: The Theravada community more widely know about the paritta incantation literature than any other Pali Buddhist work. The average Theravada monk in other southeast Asian countries who may not know much about a Tipitaka , states Skilling, is likely to "be able to recite numerous chants [paritta, dharani] from memory". In northern Thailand, the Suat Boek Phranet (lit. Eye-Opening Sutta) is

6490-554: The Tibetan tantric traditions a dharani is a type of mantra. According to Jose Cabezon, in the tantric traditions, mantra ( sngags ) is all knowledge and the mind of all the Buddhas, that which possesses the dharma-dhatu (essence of dhamma). The mantra exist in three forms – guhya (secret), vidya (knowledge) dharani (memory aid). The guhya mantra are about male deity and female deity relationships and union. The vidya mantra represent

6600-547: The United Nations began using it in 1986. Taiwan adopted Hanyu Pinyin as its official romanization system in 2009, replacing Tongyong Pinyin . Matteo Ricci , a Jesuit missionary in China, wrote the first book that used the Latin alphabet to write Chinese, entitled Xizi Qiji ( 西字奇蹟 ; 'Miracle of Western Letters') and published in Beijing in 1605. Twenty years later, fellow Jesuit Nicolas Trigault published 'Aid to

6710-416: The absence of a written nucleus the finals have priority for receiving the tone marker, as long as they are vowels; if not, the medial takes the diacritic. An algorithm to find the correct vowel letter (when there is more than one) is as follows: Worded differently, The above can be summarized as the following table. The vowel letter taking the tone mark is indicated by the fourth-tone mark. Tone sandhi

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6820-483: The act could equally serve both political and devotional aims. Either it was felt that printing as a technology had served its ritual purpose through the creation of the Hyakumantō Darani , or simply that the cost of this mass production proved prohibitive, but printing technology did not become widespread until the tenth century and the production, and distribution of books continued to rely heavily on hand-copying manuscripts. Dharani Dharanis are found in

6930-693: The ancient texts of all major traditions of Buddhism. They are a major part of the Pali canon preserved by the Theravada tradition. Mahayana sutras such as the Lotus Sutra and the Heart Sutra include or conclude with dharani. Some Buddhist texts, such as Pancarakṣa found in the homes of many Buddhist tantra tradition followers, are entirely dedicated to dharani. They are a part of the regular ritual prayers as well as considered to be an amulet and charm in themselves, whose recitation believed to allay bad luck, diseases or other calamity. They were an essential part of

7040-536: The basis of Pinyin standard later after incorporating a wide range of feedback and further revisions. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and officially adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on 11 February 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. Despite its formal promulgation, pinyin did not become widely used until after

7150-401: The charm copied out seventy-seven times, and out of respect for the ceremony should give the copyist perfume, flowers, food and drink, clean clothes and a bath, and reward him either by anointing and covering him with perfumes or by giving him much money, or by paying him according to his ability. Then they should take these copies of the charms, place them inside the pagoda, and make offerings at

7260-599: The common accented characters from pinyin. Other punctuation mark and symbols in Chinese are to use the equivalent symbol in English noted in to GB 15834. According to GB 16159, all accented letters are required to have both uppercase and lowercase characters as per their normal counterparts. GBK has mapped two characters ⟨ḿ⟩ and ⟨ǹ⟩ to Private Use Areas in Unicode respectively, thus some fonts (e.g. SimSun) that adhere to GBK include both characters in

7370-460: The death of the Buddha in a grove provided by Ashoka , where the knowledge was compiled again, but it too did not write anything down. The third council gathered in Kashmir a century later, according to the Tibetan tradition, and the teachings were put down in writing for those "who had not obtained the power ( dharani ) of not-forgetting" because people were reciting corrupted forms of the teachings of

7480-463: The dharani spells and incantations. It demonstrates that dharanis were valued and in use within Buddhist communities before the 1st century CE, state Charles Prebish and Damien Keown. The role of dharanis in Buddhist practice of mid-1st-millennium CE is illustrated by numerous texts including the systematic treatises that emerged. According to Paul Copp, one of the earliest attestable literary mandate about writing dharanis as an effective spell in itself

7590-409: The dharanis and related rituals may have been an influence on Buddhism of other Indian religions such as from the esoteric tantra traditions of Hinduism around the mid-1st-millennium CE. This assumption, along with the view that early Buddhism was an "abstract philosophy or even a broad-based social movement" is now a part of a scholarly debate. With increased access to the primary texts of Buddhism and

7700-506: The dharanis are "seemingly meaningless strings of syllables". While they may once have been "memory aids", the dharanis that have survived into the modern era do not match with any text. In later practice, the dharanis were "hardly employed as summaries of doctrine, but were employed as aids to concentration and magical protection benefits". According to Jan Nattier, Vedic mantras are more ancient than Buddhist dharani, but over time they both were forms of incantations that are quite similar. In

7810-475: The discoveries of historical manuscripts in China, Korea and Japan, such as those about early Silla Buddhism, McBride and others state that dharani incantations and ritualism had widespread significance in East Asia from the early years. Coupled with Waddell's scholarship on the "dharani cult in Buddhism" in the early 20th century, the post-colonial era scholarship proposed that dharanis did not develop with or after tantric Buddhism emerged, but preceded it and were

7920-594: The earliest mass printed texts that have survived. The earliest extant example of printing on paper is a fragment of a dhāraṇī miniature scroll in Sanskrit unearthed in a tomb in Xi'an , called the Great spell of unsullied pure light ( Wugou jingguang da tuoluoni jing 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經). It was printed using woodblock during the Tang dynasty, c. 650–670 AD. Another print, the Saddharma pundarika sutra,

8030-520: The earliest surviving examples of printing in Japan and, alongside the Korean Dharani Sutra , are considered to be some of the world's oldest existent printed matter. The production of the Hyakumantō Darani was a huge undertaking. In the year of her resumption of the throne, 764, the Empress Shōtoku commissioned the one million small wooden pagodas (Hyakumantō ( 百万塔 ) ), each containing

8140-818: The early texts of Buddhism, proposes Nattier, "it would appear that the word dharani was first employed in reference to mnemonic devices used to retain (Skt. "hold") certain elements of Buddhist doctrine in one's memory". In Nattier's view, the term dharani is "peculiar to Buddhism". A dhāraṇī can be a mnemonic to encapsulate the meaning of a section or chapter of a sutra . According to the Buddhism-related writer Red Pine , mantra and dharani were originally interchangeable, but at some point dhāraṇī came to be used for meaningful, intelligible phrases, and mantra for syllabic formulae which are not meant to be understood. According to Robert Buswell and Ronald Davidson, dharani were codes in some Buddhist texts. They appeared at

8250-477: The effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning during his visits to Japan. While Song did not himself propose a transliteration system for Chinese, his discussion ultimately led to a proliferation of proposed schemes. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles , presented in Chinese–English Dictionary (1892). It was popular, and

8360-527: The effects of ill-omened constellations, release from a confessed sin, birth of a son or daughter to a woman wanting a baby, rebirth into sukhavati heaven or avoiding a bad rebirth. The snake-charm dharani is found in the Bower Manuscript found in Western China. While a 443 CE Chinese translation of Lankavatara Sutra does not contain some of the dharani chapters, other Chinese translations dated to

8470-612: The emergence of the Mahayana Buddhism tradition, the dharanis became closely related to mantras. Later, as the Vajrayana Buddhism tradition grew, they proliferated. The dharanis and mantras overlap because in the Vajrayana tradition. There exist "single seed-syllable bija like dharanis, treated as having special powers to protect chanters from dangers such as "snakes, enemies, demons and robbers". The bija (seed) mantra condenses

8580-569: The end of the text, and they may be seen as a coded, distilled summary of Buddhist teachings in the chapters that preceded it. For example, the Vajrasamadhi-sutra – a Korean Buddhist text likely composed in the 7th century by an unknown monk, one important to the Chan and Zen Buddhist tradition in East Asia, the Dharani chapter is the eighth (second last), with a brief conversational epilogue between

8690-416: The finals rather than as part of them; this convention is followed in the chart of finals below. The conventional lexicographical order derived from bopomofo is: In each cell below, the pinyin letters assigned to each initial are accompanied by their phonetic realizations in brackets, notated according to the International Phonetic Alphabet . In each cell below, the first line indicates

8800-424: The first half of the 8th century. According to Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, the Korean dharani scrolls were printed after the era of Empress Wu in China, and these date "no earlier than 704 CE, when the translation of the sutra was finished, and no later than 751, when the building of the temple and stupa was completed". The printed Korean text consists of "Chinese characters transliterated from the [Indian] Sanskrit". While

8910-466: The founding of major new Buddhist temples, a "great acceleration" and the "active propagation of Buddhism" in Japan . Empress Shōtoku's million dharanis are among the oldest known printed literature in the world. While dharanis are found inside major texts of Buddhism, some texts are predominantly or exclusively of the dharani-genre. Some illustrations include, The Theravada compilations of paritta (dharani) are ancient and extensive. Some are

9020-434: The front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. 驴 ; 驢 ; 'donkey') from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. 炉 ; 爐 ; 'oven'). Tonal markers are placed above the umlaut, as in lǘ . However, the ü is not used in the other contexts where it could represent a front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j , q , x , and y . For example, the sound of the word for 'fish' ( 鱼 ; 魚 )

9130-681: The historic Chinese dazangjing (scriptures of the great repository) and the Korean daejanggyeong – the East Asian compilations of the Buddhist canon between the 5th and 10th centuries. A dharani example Tuṭṭe, tuṭṭe–vuṭṭe, vuṭṭe–paṭṭe, paṭṭe–kaṭṭe, kaṭṭe–amale, amale–vimale, vimale–nime, nime–hime, hime–vame, [...] sarkke-cakre, cakre–dime, dime–hime, hime–ṭu ṭu ṭu ṭu– ḍu ḍu ḍu ḍu–ru ru ru ru–phu phu phu phu–svāhā. — Buddha to monk Mahamati, in Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra 9.260 Translator: D. T. Suzuki The word dhāraṇī derives from

9240-548: The letter v , ( v̄ v́ v̌ v̀ ). This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports, affecting people with names that consist of the sound lü or nü , particularly people with the surname 吕 ( Lǚ ), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames 陆 ( Lù ), 鲁 ( Lǔ ), 卢 ( Lú ) and 路 ( Lù ). Previously, the practice varied among different passport issuing offices, with some transcribing as "LV" and "NV" while others used "LU" and "NU". On 10 July 2012,

9350-415: The medials [ i ] and [ u ] are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of a final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce yī ( 衣 ; 'clothes'), officially pronounced /í/ , as /jí/ and wéi ( 围 ; 圍 ; 'to enclose'), officially pronounced /uěi/ , as /wěi/ or /wuěi/ . Often these medials are treated as separate from

9460-760: The method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China . The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:2015). The United Nations followed suit in 1986. It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore , the United States's Library of Congress , the American Library Association , and many other international institutions. Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from those of most languages. This has drawn some criticism as it may lead to confusion when uninformed speakers apply either native or English assumed pronunciations to words. However, this problem

9570-428: The mind of male Buddhist deities, while dharani mantras of the female Buddhist deities. Theologically, the vidya mantras constitute that knowledge in tantric Buddhism, according to Cabezon, which "pacifies the suffering experienced in the existential world ( samsara ) and the heaps of faults such as desire". The dharani mantras, in contrast, constitute that knowledge in tantric Buddhism which "causes one to hold onto

9680-434: The monastic training in Buddhism's history in East Asia. In some Buddhist regions, they served as texts upon which the Buddhist witness would swear to tell the truth. The dharani-genre of literature became popular in East Asia in the first millennium CE, with Chinese records suggesting their profusion by the early centuries of the common era. These migrated from China to Korea and Japan. The demand for printed dharani among

9790-464: The monks. The emerging evidence and later scholarship increasingly states that "dharani and ritual procedures were mainstream Mahayana practices" many centuries before the emergence of tantric and esoteric Buddhism and Vajrayana, states McBride. The Buddhist tantra traditions added another layer of sophistication and complexity to the rituals with deities and mandalas. Dharanis are not limited to an esoteric cult within Buddhism, states Paul Copp, rather

9900-440: The most common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant Chinese input method in mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan, where bopomofo is most commonly used. Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. Chinese families outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use

10010-751: The pagoda. Alternatively they should make seventy-seven small clay pagodas, place one copy inside each, and make offerings. If they duly perform this, people who are about to die will prolong their lives to old age, all their previous sins and evil deeds being completely destroyed. Early mentions of dharani in the European literature are from the records left by John of Plano Carpini (1245–7) and William of Rubruck (1254) where they wrote in their respective memoirs that Uighurs and Mongols chanted "Om man baccam", later identified with "Om mani padme hum". They also mention that these Asians write "short sorcery sentences on paper and hang them up". Other than such scant remarks, little

10120-565: The paritta texts of Theravada tradition, such as the Gini (fire) Paritta, as the hymns are identical in parts and the Theravada text uses the same terms, for example, "dharani dharaniti" . The Pali canon makes many references to protective ( raksha , paritta ) incantations and magical spells. These invocations provide protection from "malignant spirits, disease and calamity". For example, in Digha Nikaya (DN I.116.14), Sonadanda remarks that wherever

10230-471: The past karma , allay fear, diseases and disasters in this life, and for a better rebirth . To the lay Buddhist communities, states Davidson, the material benefits encouraged the popularity and use of dharanis for devotionalism, rituals and rites in Buddhism. According to Janet Gyatso , there is a difference between mantras and dharanis. The mantras are more than melodious sounds and have meaning, and these were found sporadically in pre-Mahayana Buddhism. With

10340-506: The protective powers of a Buddhist deity or a Buddhist text into a single syllable. For example, the single letter "a" (अ) condenses the 100,000 verses of the Prajna-paramita sutras into a single syllable. The Japanese Buddhist monk Kūkai drew a distinction between dhāraṇī and mantra and used it as the basis of his theory of language. According to Kūkai, a Buddhist mantra is restricted to esoteric Buddhist practice whereas dhāraṇī

10450-561: The purposes of healing and protection is referred to as Paritta in some Buddhist regions, particularly in Theravada communities. The dharani-genre ideas also inspired Buddhist chanting practices such as the Nianfo ( Chinese : 念佛; Pinyin : niànfó ; Rōmaji : nenbutsu ; RR : yeombul; Vietnamese : niệm Phật ), the Daimoku , as well as the Koshiki texts in Japan. They are a significant part of

10560-480: The results of prior karma . And he will awake happy from dreams. He will be content, not experience a catastrophe, lead a life lacking terror, his enemies destroyed, his opponents ruined, himself untouched, freed from fear of any poison, living long and prosperously, only excepting the results of prior karma. — Buddha to monk Svati, in Mahamayuri 58.20–59.6 Translator: Ronald Davidson According to Winternitz,

10670-418: The second vowel instead. Pinyin tone marks appear primarily above the syllable nucleus—e.g. as in kuài , where k is the initial, u the medial, a the nucleus, and i is the coda. There is an exception for syllabic nasals like /m/ , where the nucleus of the syllable is a consonant: there, the diacritic will be carried by a written dummy vowel. When the nucleus is / ə / (written e or o ), and there

10780-533: The significance of the dharanis in mainstream Buddhist traditions and the esoteric Buddhist tantra tradition co-existed independent of each other. Phonic mysticism and musical chanting based on dharanis – parittas or raksas in the Theravada Pali literature – along with related mantras were important in early Buddhism. They continue to be an essential part of actual Buddhist practice in Asia, both for its laypersons and

10890-595: The son of pinyin. It's [the result of] a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today. But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect." An initial draft was authored in January 1956 by Ye Laishi , Lu Zhiwei and Zhou Youguang. A revised Pinyin scheme was proposed by Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei and Li Jinxi, and became the main focus of discussion among the group of Chinese linguists in June 1956, forming

11000-493: The standard written language prior to the early 1900s. In particular, Chinese characters retain semantic cues that help distinguish differently pronounced words in the ancient classical language that are now homophones in Mandarin. Thus, Chinese characters remain indispensable for recording and transmitting the corpus of Chinese writing from the past. Pinyin is not designed to transcribe varieties other than Standard Chinese, which

11110-527: The tone mark is written over an i , then it replaces the tittle, as in yī . In dictionaries, neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable—e.g. ·ma . When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone, a combination of tone marks may be used: zhī·dào ( 知道 ) may be pronounced either zhīdào or zhīdao . Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing

11220-550: The tone marks, but they are more concisely displayed as above. In addition, ê [ɛ] ( 欸 ; 誒 ) and syllabic nasals m ( 呒 , 呣 ), n ( 嗯 , 唔 ), ng ( 嗯 , 𠮾 ) are used as interjections or in neologisms ; for example, pinyin defines the names of several pinyin letters using -ê finals. According to the Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet , ng can be abbreviated with the shorthand ŋ . However, this shorthand

11330-721: The traditional belief in Tibetan texts, states José Ignacio Cabezón, there were three councils and the term dharani was recorded and became the norm after the third council. The first council, according to this belief, compiled the sūtrānta , the Vinaya and the Abhidharma in Vimalabhada to the south of Rajagriha in India. The first council was held in the year Buddha died, but the compiled dhamma consisted of spoken words that were not written down. The second council occurred about 200 years after

11440-578: The tumult of the Cultural Revolution . In the 1980s, students were trained in pinyin from an early age, learning it in tandem with characters or even before. During the height of the Cold War the use of pinyin system over Wade–Giles and Yale romanizations outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the mainland Chinese government. Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing mainland China began using

11550-505: The use of dharani chanting by monks and nuns as "one of the common methods of healing during the Nara period", states Ryûichi Abé. The dharanis were an essential part of the rokujikyoho (six-syllable sutra) liturgy ritual in Japan. They were greatly popular between the 11th and 15th centuries and a part of comprehensive solution to various ailments, a ritual performed by Buddhist monks and practitioners of onmyōdō . In Chinese Buddhism, some important dharanis include Ten Small Mantras ,

11660-472: The view that the Buddhist chants have a "profound debt to the Vedic religion". The Yogacara scholars, states Staal, followed the same classification as one found in the Vedas – arthadharani , dharmadharani and mantradharani , along with express acknowledgment like the Vedas that some "dharani are meaningful and others are meaningless" yet all effective for ritual purposes. The early Buddhism literature includes

11770-429: Was Buddhism, above all, that eminently stimulated and sustained printing activities". Its chants and ideas were in demand in East Asia, and this led to the development of wood-block based mass printing technology. The oldest known dharanis were mass-produced by the 8th century, and later in the 10th century the canonical Tripitaka in addition to 84,000 copies of dharanis were mass printed. The 8th-century dharanis are

11880-509: Was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Wang Li , Lu Zhiwei , Li Jinxi , Luo Changpei and Zhou Youguang , who has been called the "father of pinyin". They based their work in part on earlier romanization systems . The system was originally promulgated at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress in 1958, and has seen several rounds of revisions since. The International Organization for Standardization propagated Hanyu Pinyin as ISO 7098 in 1982, and

11990-641: Was known about the Dharani-genre of literature or its value in Buddhism till the mid-19th-century colonial era, when Brian Hodgson began buying Sanskrit and related manuscripts in Nepal, Tibet and India for a more thorough scholarship, often at his personal expense. According to Hodgson, as quoted by Ronald Davidson, dharani were esoteric short prayers "derived from [Buddhist tantric] Upadesa" that are believed to be amulet to be constantly repeated or worn inside little lockets, something that leads to "a charmed life". The colonial era scholarship initially proposed that

12100-615: Was used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. In 1943, the US military tapped Yale University to develop another romanization system for Mandarin Chinese intended for pilots flying over China—much more than previous systems, the result appears very similar to modern Hanyu Pinyin. Hanyu Pinyin was designed by a group of mostly Chinese linguists, including Wang Li , Lu Zhiwei , Li Jinxi , Luo Changpei , as well as Zhou Youguang (1906–2017), an economist by trade, as part of

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