Updates

I've updated the Prajñāpāramitā and Śākayamuni pages with some extra info, and fixed a number of typos.

Four Great Kings

I have added a page for the Four Great Kings after finding some mantras for them in the reference book Bonji Taikan. Because I don't read Japanese I can't say what the source of these mantras is, but it won't be the Mahāvairocana Sūtra where the mantras do not begin with oṃ, but with namaḥ samanta buddhānaṃ.

I have been interested in the Kings -Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Virūḍhaka, Virūpākṣa, and Vaiśravaṇa - since my ordination retreat when we carried out rituals involving them. The kings are not originally Buddhist and still show signs of their origins in Indian folk religion, as well as influences from Brahminism. However they must has been widely popular even at the time of the Buddha because they make frequent appearances in the Pāli Canon. They are devas from the lowest devaloka, and are therefore the closest to the human realm. As kings they are lords over the various chthonic spirits such as yakṣas, nāgas, kumbhāṇḍas, and gandharvas that inhabit the Buddhist mythic landscape.

I hope to do more thorough research on the kings in the future. The fact that there are mantras to these, and other Vedic/Hindu gods (such as Agni, Indra, and Śiva) is a very interesting facet of esoteric Buddhism.

Meditating on Arapacana

I've added a page which pulls together some of the information on the Arapacana as a meditation practice, particularly the relevant passages from the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra in Conze's translation. These give a general idea of how the verses might have been used as a meditation, and I have used them to reconstruct a meditation on śunyata - links on the page.

Vajrasattva Mantra Audio

A few people now have asked me if I'll do some audio for Visible Mantra. So I've started with the most popular mantra on the site : the hundred syllable Vajrasattva Mantra. My Sanskrit pronunciation is not perfect by any means, but you get the idea. I've also done it chanted FWBO style, although this is not as straight-forward as it might be because there is now more than one version. This is my preferred version with (an attempt at) accurate Sanskrit pronunciation, correcting the mispronunciations that have crept into due to transmission. This is one good thing about preserving the tradition in writing - even if pronunciation shifts one can still here how it sounded at the time when it was written down. This is still not guarantee of perfection due to what the scholars call "scribal error" but it is helpful especially when the mantra gets transmitted through non Indo-European speaking cultures such as Japan and Tibet.

Anyway have a listen and see what you think. Feel free to comment. Any requests?

Bonji taikan

Today I discovered a most amazing reference book in the Cambridge University Library. Although the text is mostly in Japanese the rest is in Siddhaṃ and Romanised Sanskrit. It is nothing less than a complete calligraphy manual for Siddhaṃ including what looks like every possible combination of consonants (more than 100 pages of them!). It also includes many mantras which look to have come from the Mahāvairocana Sūtra, and other examples of Siddhaṃ, particularly grave markers. I'd say that John Stevens must have consulted this book in writing Sacred Calligraphy of the East because many of the letter charts look identical to what he gives. What a boon! I learned things just by leafing through it and I'm looking forward to giving it a more thorough going over.

Title:	Bonji taikan ( 梵字大鑑).
Published:	Tôkyô : Meicho Fukyûkai, 1983.5.
Description:	2satsu ; 27cm.
ISBN:	4895511154

Amazon Japan are clocking it at ¥ 69 660 which Google tells me is UK£ 336.57. Thank goodness for libraries is all I can say.

Siddham in Tricylce Magazine

The Spring 2008 issue of Tricycle Magazine has an article by David Schneider on the Siddhaṃ script. If you are an online subscriber you can also read it online. David Schneider has his own art website, with some attractive calligraphy and some designs that have clearly been photoshopped.

Fonts and Keyboards

As I keep saying: diacritics matter. If anyone is interested I picked up a self-installing version of the official Windows Times Unicode font recently. I've also created a keyboard map so that I can type diacritic characters in Firefox and Notepad - it's very handy. It comes as a zip file with an installer and some instructions on how to install and activate it.

• Times Ext Roman font
• Indic Keyboard Map

If anyone is really keen to have one I could do a US keyboard map - leave a comment.