06 September 2009

Amitāyus

I have re-evaluated my Sanskrit re-creation of the Amitāyus mantra from the Tibetan, which is on the Amitābha page. The Tibetan reads (in Unicode)

ཨོཾ༌ཨཱ༌མ༌ར༌ནི༌ཛི༌ཝན༌ཏེ༌ཡེ༌སྭཱ༌ཧཱ།

This is usually transliterated: om amarani dziwantaye soha which reflects Tibetan pronunciation. The actual syllables are: oṃ ā ma ra ṇi dzi wan te ye svā hā, from which I have now reconstructed the Sanskrit:

oṃ amaraṇi jīvantaye svāhā
ओं अमरणि जीवन्ताये स्वाहा

More details and Siddhaṃ calligraphy on the Amitābha page. Ideally I'd find a Sanskrit source for this mantra to clarify the matter - if you know one please let me know.

2 comments:

  1. Dharani Sangraha has:

    अपरिमितायुर्ज्ञानलघुधारणी

    ॐ अमराणि जीवन्तीये स्वाहा।

    aparimitāyurjñānalaghudhāraṇī

    oṁ amarāṇi jīvantīye svāhā|

    http://www.dharanisangraha.com/devnagari/dharani/dev_dharani09.html

    V

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  2. Thanks Vinodh

    Sadly the Dharani Sangraha website seems infested with worm viruses and kept setting off my virus protection.

    It's a potentially interesting site otherwise.

    I can't see that jīvantīye makes any more sense - do you understand the construction?

    Jayarava

    PS
    ॐ is not oṃ but auṃ औं (the distinction is clearer in Siddhaṃ) and auṃ is not used in Buddhist mantras. They are not the same. It should be ओं.

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