Stryi and the Karaṇḍamudrā Dhāraṇī

Back in Feb 2009 I was intrigued by a complex seed-syllable seen carved on the side of a Japanese stūpa. I could see the Siddhaṃ elements but wanted to understand the context. Eventually, with a little luck, I managed to identify the bīja as stryi which is associated with an important Japanese liturgical text: the Karaṇḍamudrā Dhāraṇī. I put some notes into this blog, but have now put this material on its own page: Karaṇḍamudrā Dhāraṇī and stryi.

At some point I want to do some Siddhaṃ calligraphy of the dhāraṇī itself, but here at least you can see where the syllable stryi originates from.

Some other versions of stryi can be seen in this Flickr Gallery: Stone Siddhaṃ.

aṃ

'GBH' asked on the blog about this form of the seed syllable aṃ which is an image in the Japanese Wikipedia commons. The text accompanying it is in Japanese but it appears the the image was scanned from a book called 悉曇章の研究 (and is therefore a breach of copyright!)

This is simply a variety Siddhaṃ. It looks like it was either done with a Chinese Calligraphy brush or is designed to look that way. Note that even contemporary Siddhaṃ calligraphy can vary quite widely in style.


Compare with my pen style 'a' (left, and here) - the shape is the same: a shape like a number 3 linked by a mid-height line to a vertical stroke on the right. The contemporary a in Devanāgarī is similar as well: अं. The dot above the aṃ is the basic anusvāra which indicates nasalisation of the vowel. Anusvāra (anu + svāra) means after-sound, or following sound. Often with bīja mantras the anusvāra is exchanged for the chandra-bindu (moon and dot) which has the same phonetic effect, but which involves a more elaborate symbollism.

Seed Syllable: Stryi

Sanskrit
Originally uploaded by Woesinger

This seed-syllable often seen carved onto stūpas in Japan is associated with the Karaṇḍamudrā or Casket Seal dhāraṇī. This texts begins:

namastryadhvikānāṁ sarva tathāgatānāṁ
homage to all the Tathāgatas of the three times.

Broken down into syllables for writing this becomes:

na ma strya dhvi kā nāṁ

For more information see the stryi bīja page on visiblemantra.org

Avalokiteśvara and the bīja sa

Doug wrote recently to ask about the association of the bīja sa (left) with the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. He had taken a photo of a Tendai altar dedicated to Avalokiteśvara which showed a Siddhaṃ sa. I should mention that in the Tibetan tradition, and on the Visiblemantra.org Avalokiteśvara page the bīja is hrīḥ.

I looked around for more info on this, but couldn't find much. Shingon sources all seem to make the association, but it's not clear why. I did find this in Lokesh Candra's Dictionary of Buddhist Iconography:

Sa, for all forms of Kwannon specially for Shō-Kwannon (ie Ārya Avalokiteśvara). Sa means 1. to see the spiritual lotus in sentient beings; 2. purity of the spiritual lotus; 3. attainment of nirvāṇa. The source of this remark is cited as the Asaba-shō by Shōchō (AD 1205-1282). [v.2, p.463]

This doesn't really explain why sa. Often the syllable relates to the Bodhisattva's name, or a prominent quality, but sa doesn't seem to fit this pattern. If anyone has any thoughts please either leave a comment or email Jayarava.

Update

I've tweaked the mantra page which was starting to get very image heavy and taking an appreciable time to load. It also means I don't have to make all those little mantra images.

Also added svāhā and phaṭ to the bija page and created pages for them - still need to fully link them into the rest of the site. I know they aren't really seed-syllables, but they had to go somewhere, and they are in fact used like seed syllables.

A few more updates

The page on hūṃ has been expanded with information from Kūkai' Ungi gi and a new calligraphy which demonstrates the elements which make up the seed syallbale.

There is a new calligraphy section which has links to projects which go beyond the basics. There are a couple of projects there already and I'll add more as I can.

Another new section is words which has some common Buddhist terms in the Siddhaṃ script.

The shop now has two sections: you can buy books, calligraphy equipment, and incense from Amazon; and clothing and giftware with selected Visible Mantra designs. I'm open to suggestion about adding design to the shop.

Updates

I've made some more additions to the site.

I've added a shop which beefs up my Amazon Associate relationship. In the last 12 months links to Amazon have generated the enormous sum of £9 (with a payout threshold of £25). Hopefully the new shop will boost that a little. There are some Japanese Siddham books I'd like to get which are rather expensive!

I've added Siddham calligraphy of the Refuge formula - the three refuges.

Also some Lantsa bijas.