Powers of Protection

This study explores the most extensive tradition of Buddhist dharani literature and provides access to the earliest available materials for the first time. The Dhara?isa?graha collections have been present in South Asia, and especially in Nepal, for more than eight hundred years and served to supply protection, merit and auspiciousness for those who commissioned their compilation. For modern scholarship these diverse compendiums are valuable sources of incantations and related texts, many of which survive in Sanskrit only in such manuscripts.