Drum Sound Buddha

Overview

The Drum Sound Buddha is the buddha in the best-known origin story of Tara, the female bodhisattva whom Tibetan Buddhists call the Saviouress. His Sanskrit name is Dundubhisvara, "drum-voice" or "the sound of a kettledrum." In Tibetan he appears as rnga sgra or rnga dbyangs, both meaning drum sound.¹²

In the story, as the Tibetan historian Tāranātha told it in 1604, a princess called Wisdom Moon made offerings to this buddha for an immense span of time. When monks told her to pray for rebirth as a man, she refused and vowed to work for all beings in a female body until the world of rebirth was empty. Dundubhisvara then foretold that she would be known as the goddess Tara.¹

That is almost all the story says about him. He witnesses the vow and makes the prophecy, and then the text moves on. Outside the Tara story his name turns up in a handful of older scriptures: as the buddha of the north in the Golden Light Sutra, as a northern buddha in the Mahāvairocana Sūtra, as one name among hundreds in a Chinese repentance rite, and as a bodhisattva and a gandharva king elsewhere.³⁴⁵⁶ Many modern sources say he is another name for Amoghasiddhi, the green buddha of the north in the later five-buddha scheme. That identification is real but late, and Tāranātha's own text treats the two as different buddhas.¹

In context

Buddhist scripture places the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, at the end of a very long line. Before him came other buddhas, each in a distant age, and the stories of Shakyamuni's past lives often turn on a meeting with one of them. A future buddha makes a vow in front of a buddha of the past, and that buddha confirms it with a prophecy. The Tara story uses the same pattern for a woman who will become a female buddha.

It also has to be read as what it is. Tāranātha was a Tibetan scholar of the Jonang school who never traveled to India. His translator, David Templeman, describes the book as a string of episodes heard from other sources, probably his Indian teacher Buddhagupta, and calls its legends charming and its history "colored by pious wish."¹ The Drum Sound story is sacred narrative set in an age "before which there was nothing else." It records what later Tibetans believed about Tara's beginnings. It is not a historical record of anything.

1. 400s Golden Light Sutra in Chinese Dharmakṣema's version names a northern buddha "Subtle Wonderful Sound."
2. ~700 Yijing's Golden Light The northern buddha becomes "Heavenly Drum Sound."
3. 1604 The Golden Rosary Tāranātha tells the Wisdom Moon story with Dundubhisvara as witness.
4. 1902 Das's dictionary Dundubhisvara is listed as another name for Amoghasiddhi.

Research

The story as Tāranātha tells it

Tāranātha's The Origin of the Tara Tantra, known in Tibetan as The Golden Rosary, was finished in 1604. In Templeman's English translation of 1981 it opens in an age before which nothing else existed, when the Tathāgata Dundubhisvara appeared and was known by the title "Light of the Various Worlds."¹

Princess Moon of Wisdom (Sanskrit Jñānacandrā, Tibetan Yeshe Dawa) honored his teaching and made offerings "for ten million, one hundred thousand years" to him, his disciples and countless bodhisattvas. Each day's offering, the text says, was worth all the precious things that would fill twelve yojanas, a distance of roughly a dozen miles, in each of the ten directions with no gaps.¹ At the end of this she first woke to bodhicitta, the wish to become enlightened for the sake of all beings.

Then comes the exchange the story is famous for, and the vow that made her Tara. After meditating for the same span again and freeing millions of beings every morning and evening, she was renamed the Saviouress, and Dundubhisvara prophesied that for as long as she kept showing supreme awakening she would be known only as the goddess Tara.¹

Deep Dive: Green Tara: the vow, the tears and the twenty-one praises

The vow. In Templeman's translation of Tāranātha, the monks tell Princess Wisdom Moon that her merit has given her a woman's body, and that if she prays rightly it will be changed to a man's, as is fitting. After much discussion she answers that ultimately there is no male or female, no self and no person, so clinging to the idea of male and female is worthless, and only the weak-minded are fooled by it.¹

Then she makes her vow. Many want to reach awakening as men, she says, and few want to work for beings as women, so she will work for the welfare of beings "in a female body" until samsara is empty.¹

Popular versions shorten her reply. The World History Encyclopedia gives it as "Here, no man, no woman," and Tricycle as "Here there is no man; there is no woman, no self, no person, and no consciousness."⁷⁸ Wikipedia's retelling makes the buddha Tonyo Drupa, Amoghasiddhi, in place of Dundubhisvara.⁹

What the reply echoes. Her argument is the Mahāyāna teaching that male and female, like self and person, have no fixed essence. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra makes the same point with a joke. A goddess uses her powers to switch bodies with the monk Śāriputra, who had asked why she does not change her female form.¹⁰ The Lotus Sutra takes the opposite route: the eight-year-old daughter of the dragon king Sāgara answers Śāriputra's doubt by turning instantly into a male bodhisattva and then attaining enlightenment.¹¹ Tara's story keeps the argument of the first and refuses the solution of the second.

The later eons. Tāranātha does not stop at the prophecy. He carries Tara through a chain of named eons, and each one adds a piece of who she later became. In the eon "Very Vast" she vows before the buddha Amoghasiddhi to protect beings in the ten directions from harm, and spends a long meditation subduing armies of demons. Here she gains the names that later fill her hymns: Saviouress, Mainstay, Swift One and Heroine.¹ In the eon "All-Pervading" a monk called Radiant Pure Light receives the blessings of the buddhas and becomes Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and Tara is born "from the heart of Avalokiteśvara" out of that light. In "Vastly Good" and "Asanka" all the buddhas of the ten directions turn themselves into Mother Tara. Finally, "in this very eon," Avalokiteśvara teaches her tantra on Mount Potala.¹

Read as a whole, the sequence looks like a way of reconciling stories. Tara the independent heroine with her own vow comes first, Tara the emanation of Avalokiteśvara comes later, and the compiler lets both be true by placing them in different ages. That is a reading of the structure; Tāranātha does not say so himself.

The tears. The other origin story is better known in popular books. Avalokiteśvara weeps at the suffering of beings; his tears form a lake, a lotus rises from it, and Tara appears in the flower.⁷ An early Indian version is credited to Sūryagupta, a commentator of the seventh or eighth century, who says Avalokiteśvara wept on seeing that rescuing beings did not reduce their number, and that Tara "sprang from the opening filaments" of a blue lotus in the water.⁹ Sūryagupta wrote at least five commentaries on the twenty-one praises, and his is the earliest Indian explanation of their twenty-one forms.⁹ One story makes Tara a being with her own vow and career; the other makes her the compassion of Avalokiteśvara given a body.

The twenty-one praises. The best-known Tara text is the Praise to Tara in Twenty-One Verses, recited daily across the Himalayan world. It sits inside the Tara Tantra (Tohoku 726), which calls it a dhāraṇī, a spell to be recited, and it also stands as a separate text in the Tibetan canon (Toh 438).⁹¹² The same tantra calls Tara a mother who gives birth to the buddhas of the past, present and future.⁹ Tāranātha's list of names from the Amoghasiddhi episode reappears in the verses, and her short mantra, oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā, calls on her as the Swift One (ture).¹⁹

Tibetan schools picture the twenty-one in different ways. Sūryagupta gives each Tara her own body, color, number of arms and emblem, with Khadiravaṇī, Tara of the Acacia Forest, at the center. Atiśa's system makes the twenty-one look alike apart from color, each holding a vase, and ties each to a task through her mantra: śāntiṃ kuru, "make peace," for White Tara, puṣṭiṃ kuru, "make increase," for Golden Tara, and so on. The Nyingma school follows a third list handed down by Longchenpa and Jigme Lingpa.⁹

What history can say. The record starts much later than the legend. Tara appears in Indian art in the sixth century, beside Avalokiteśvara and the goddess Bhṛkuṭī in Cave 90 at Kanheri near Mumbai, and again in Cave 6 at Ellora in the seventh. The Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa, compiled between about the fifth and eighth centuries, calls her the compassion of Avalokiteśvara.⁹ By the eighth century her cult was well established in eastern India under the Pala kings, and a sculpture of that century from Sirpur in central India already shows Green Tara attended by White Tara.⁹ Her Khadiravaṇī form is known from texts of the late eighth or early ninth century and from images from the ninth onward.¹³

Atiśa. Tara reached Tibet as a major cult with the Bengali teacher Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (982 to 1054). His biographers make her his guide from boyhood. A short life used by the FPMT says she appeared to him when his parents planned his marriage and steered him toward religious life, and that at Bodh Gaya he saw two Taras discussing which practice matters most, with the answer being bodhicitta.¹⁴ When envoys of the west Tibetan king Jangchub Ö begged him to come, he asked Tara, who told him the journey would bring the greatest benefit to the teachings and to beings.¹⁴ He left the monastery of Vikramaśīla in 1040 and spent three years in Purang, where he wrote his best-known work, the Lamp for the Path to Awakening.¹⁵ He composed a praise of Tara and three practices for her. His Sādhana of the Twenty-One Tārās is the main source for the twenty-one-Tara system most Tibetans use.⁹ He died at Nyetang, southwest of Lhasa, in about 1054, and the temple founded there the next year, which holds relics including his begging bowl, is called Drolma Lhakhang, the Tara Temple.¹⁵¹⁶ His disciple Dromtönpa founded the Kadam school, which carried his Tara practices forward.¹⁵

Green and White. Tibetan art has many Taras, and two dominate. Green Tara (Sanskrit Śyāmatārā, Tibetan sgrol ljang) is the form of awakened activity and of rescue from the eight fears: lions, elephants, fire, snakes, robbers, water, disease and demons.⁹ She sits with her left leg folded and her right leg stepping down onto a small lotus, ready to rise and help; her right hand is open in the gesture of giving and her left, at her heart, holds the stem of a blue utpala lily.¹³ Her green is the color of Amoghasiddhi's karma family, the family of action, and he counts her as his consort.¹⁷ White Tara (Sitatārā, Tibetan sgrol dkar) sits on a white lotus and has seven eyes: the usual two, one on her forehead, and one on each palm and sole. She is a deity of long life and healing, often painted in a trio with the buddha Amitāyus and the goddess Uṣṇīṣavijayā.⁹¹⁸

Tibetan tradition also gives the pair a royal history. The two foreign wives of the seventh-century king Songtsen Gampo are both remembered as incarnations of Tara: the Nepalese princess Bhṛkuṭī as the green one and the Chinese princess Wencheng as the white.¹⁹ Like the Drum Sound story, this is how later Tibetans told their own beginnings.

1. 500s Kanheri Cave 90 Tara beside Avalokiteśvara and Bhṛkuṭī.
2. 600s Ellora Cave 6 Another early image.
3. 1040 Atiśa leaves India He brings his Tara practices to Tibet.
4. 1604 The Golden Rosary Tāranātha sets down the Drum Sound story.
5. 1981 Templeman's translation The story reaches English readers in full.

Set against that record, the Drum Sound story is very late. As far as the sources here show, it is first attested a thousand years after the Kanheri image, in Tāranātha's book.

The detail of a "million million years," which turns up in some online retellings, does not match Templeman's text. His figure is ten million and one hundred thousand years, for the offerings and again for the meditation.¹ The other popular detail, a world called "Multicolored Light" or "Manifold Light," is also a matter of translation. In Templeman's English the phrase is a title of the buddha, "the Light of the Various Worlds." Modern retellings such as Joshua J. Mark's in the World History Encyclopedia and an online Tara course make it the name of the world where the story happens.⁷²⁰ The Tibetan phrase behind both readings has not been checked here.

Is Drum Sound the same as Amoghasiddhi?

Many sources say so. The 84000 translation project's glossary calls Dundubhisvara "a bodhisattva who only appears in Mahāyāna sūtras" and adds that it is "also a name for various buddhas, including an alternative name for Buddha Amoghasiddhi."² A 2013 summary of Tāranātha's account on the Theosophy Trust site adds "some say Amoghasiddhi" after the name.²¹ Wikipedia's article on Tara, drawing on a 2017 retelling, names the buddha of the story Tonyo Drupa, which is simply the Tibetan for Amoghasiddhi (don yod grub pa).⁹

The trail is short. Templeman's note on the name says that Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary lists Dundubhisvara only as "the name of a former Buddha," while Sarat Chandra Das's Tibetan-English Dictionary (1902) "interprets this as an alternative name for the previous Buddha Amoghasiddhi."¹ Das is the earliest source for the equation found in this research. Why he made it may come down to which buddha sat in the north.

Deep Dive: The buddha of the north: how the five buddhas formed

There is a plausible reason the two names were joined, and it has to do with direction. To see it, it helps to follow how Buddhist texts came to arrange buddhas around the points of the compass.

Buddhas in every direction. Early Mahāyāna sutras imagine many buddhas at once, each teaching in a world of his own, a buddha-field, somewhere off in space. One of the earliest buddha-fields in the literature is Abhirati, the eastern land of the buddha Akṣobhya. The sutra describing it was put into Chinese by Lokakṣema between about 178 and 186, and a fragment in the Kharoṣṭhī script has turned up among the Bajaur manuscripts from what is now Pakistan.²² In the west lay Amitābha's Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land. The short Amitābha sutra goes further and has the buddhas of each direction praise him in turn, though its northern list has no Drum Sound.²³ At this stage east and west have their famous buddhas, and the other directions are filled from long, shifting lists.

Four around a center. The Golden Light Sutra tidies this into a square. Its four buddhas sit on lotus thrones around the central figure, Shakyamuni: Akṣobhya in the east, Ratnaketu in the south, Amitāyus in the west and Dundubhisvara in the north.³²⁴ Three of the later five-buddha families are already there.²⁴ The earliest Chinese version, Dharmakṣema's of the early fifth century, calls the northern buddha "Subtle Wonderful Sound"; Yijing's version of around 700 makes him "Heavenly Drum Sound."²⁵²⁶ Indian builders used the same plan in stone. Stupas at Sanchi, Udayagiri in Odisha and elsewhere set four buddhas facing the four directions, and at Udayagiri they are Vairocana, Amitābha, Akṣobhya and Ratnasambhava.²⁴

The drum in the Womb mandala. The Mahāvairocana Sūtra, probably composed in the mid seventh century and put into Chinese by Śubhakarasiṃha and Yixing in 724 and 725, keeps a drum-voiced buddha in the north. Its Chinese text names "the Drum Sound Tathāgata of the north" (北方鼓音如來) beside Ratnaketu in the east and Amitāyus in the west.⁵²⁷ In the Japanese Womb Realm mandala built from it, the central lotus has Vairocana in the middle, Ratnaketu above in the east, Saṅkusumitarāja in the south, Amitābha in the west, and in the north Divyadundubhimeghanirghoṣa, "Heavenly Drum, Thunder-Cloud Sound."²⁸ Two of the four seats still differ from the scheme that later became standard.²⁴

Amoghasiddhi takes the north. The standard five appear in the Compendium of Principles (Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha), a tantra of about the late seventh century. Vajrabodhi made a partial Chinese version in 723 and 724, and his pupil Amoghavajra retranslated it in 753.²⁴²⁹ Here Vairocana sits in the center, Akṣobhya in the east, Ratnasambhava in the south, Amitābha in the west and Amoghasiddhi in the north. Each heads a family with its own color and wisdom: Vairocana's Buddha family is white, Akṣobhya's Vajra family blue, Ratnasambhava's Jewel family yellow, Amitābha's Lotus family red, and Amoghasiddhi's Karma family, the family of action, green.²⁴ Amoghasiddhi makes the gesture of fearlessness, rides on garudas, carries the double vajra of his family, and has Tara as his consort.¹⁷

The Japanese scholar Kimiaki Tanaka argues that the five came from combining the old four-direction plan with Vairocana, the cosmic buddha of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, with Amoghasiddhi and Ratnasambhava replacing two of the older names.²⁴ The transition was not clean. The Amoghapāśakalparāja puts Shakyamuni at the center and a buddha called Lokendrarāja where Amoghasiddhi would be, and the Guhyasamāja Tantra moves Akṣobhya to the center.²⁴ Later tantras kept the five-family frame and filled it with other deities.²⁴ When Kūkai returned to Japan from China in 806 he brought both the Womb and the Diamond mandalas, so the drum-voiced north and Amoghasiddhi's north have hung side by side in Shingon temples ever since.²⁸

1. ~180 Akṣobhya's eastern land Lokakṣema puts the sutra into Chinese.
2. 400s Golden Light Sutra Four buddhas, Dundubhisvara in the north.
3. 724 Mahāvairocana Sūtra The Drum Sound Tathāgata of the north, in Chinese.
4. 806 Kūkai Both mandalas reach Japan.

Why the names merged. So a drum-voiced buddha sat in the north for centuries before Amoghasiddhi took that seat, and the Womb mandala kept him there even after. Once both schemes were known, the northern buddha of the older one could easily be read as the northern buddha of the newer, and the Japanese descriptions of the Womb mandala do exactly that.²⁸ Tara adds a second pull. She is green, Amoghasiddhi's color, and his consort, so a reader who already knew her as part of his family had a reason to want her first buddha to be him as well. That would explain Das's entry and the modern retellings that name Tonyo Drupa.⁹ It remains an inference, since no source found here argues it directly.

The strongest case against it is Tāranātha's own text. Right after Dundubhisvara names her Tara, the story moves to a new eon, "Very Vast," in which Tara makes a second vow "in the presence of the Tathagata Amoghasiddhi" to protect all beings, and receives the names Saviouress, Mainstay, Swift One and Heroine.¹ In this telling they are two buddhas in two ages. Templeman's note on that passage treats Amoghasiddhi as the head of one of the five buddha families and does not equate him with Dundubhisvara.¹

Where else the name appears

The name is old and scattered, and it does not always belong to the same figure. Wisdomlib collects the dictionary entries.⁴ Edgerton lists four people called Dundubhisvara: a former buddha in the Lalitavistara, a life of the Buddha; the buddha of the north in the Golden Light Sutra; a king of the gandharvas, the heavenly musicians, in the Kāraṇḍavyūha; and a young man of the Shakya clan in the Avadānaśataka. The sixth-century Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa has both a tathāgata Dundubhisvara and a bodhisattva Dundubhīśvara among its audience.⁴ The 84000 project groups several Tibetan forms under one name, including rnga sgra, lha'i rnga sgra ("divine drum sound") and rnga bo che'i sgra ("great drum sound"), with the Chinese 天鼓音.³⁰

The Golden Light Sutra. This is the clearest early home of the name as a buddha. The Chinese versions show it changing over time. Dharmakṣema's translation of the early fifth century calls the northern buddha 微妙聲, "Subtle Wonderful Sound." Yijing's fuller version, made around 700, calls him 天鼓音, "Heavenly Drum Sound," and in a list of homages 天鼓音王佛, "Heavenly Drum Sound King Buddha."²⁵²⁶

The same sutra has a second, more famous drum.

The Liang Emperor's Repentance. This long Chinese rite of confession, the Cibei daochang chanfa, is traditionally said to have been composed for Emperor Wu of Liang (reigned 502 to 549), whose dead wife appeared to him as a snake. Scholars date the version we have much later, possibly to the tenth century.³¹³² It includes thousands of buddha names to which the participants bow. One of them, in a run beginning "Homage to Maitreya Buddha, homage to Shakyamuni Buddha," is 南無鼓音王佛, "Homage to Drum Sound King Buddha."³¹ He is one name in a litany, with nothing said about him.

Amitābha's lists. The Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha, the short Amitābha sutra, lists the buddhas of each direction who praise Amitābha's Pure Land. Kumārajīva's Chinese gives the northern ones as Flame Shoulder, Most Excellent Sound, Hard to Defeat, Sun Born and Net Light. No Drum Sound appears there.²³ The Lotus Sutra in Kumārajīva's Chinese also has no buddha of that name.

Amitābha does have a drum of his own in China.

Buddhas who witness vows

Is the Drum Sound Buddha unusual? In one way he is entirely typical. Buddhist scripture is full of past buddhas who exist in the story mainly to hear someone's first vow and confirm it. What makes him unusual is how little else is attached to him.

The seven buddhas. The Pali Mahāpadāna Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 14) gives the oldest list. "Ninety-one eons ago, the Buddha Vipassī arose in the world," it begins, followed by Sikhī and Vessabhū thirty-one eons ago, and then Kakusandha, Koṇāgamana and Kassapa in "the present fortunate eon," the age of Gotama himself.³⁴ Each gets a clan, a lifespan, a tree of awakening and a pair of chief disciples. Only Vipassī gets a full life story.³⁴

Dīpaṃkara and Sumedha. The model for the Tara scene is the story of Sumedha. In the Pali Buddhavaṃsa, a late canonical book usually dated to the first or second century BCE, the future Gautama is a hermit named Sumedha who lies down in the mud so the buddha Dīpaṃkara can walk over him. Dīpaṃkara foretells that he will become a buddha.³⁵³⁶ The rest of the Buddhavaṃsa gives one chapter each to the twenty-four buddhas between Dīpaṃkara and Gautama, and the merit Gautama made under each. With three earlier buddhas and Gautama, the full count is twenty-eight.³⁵

The thousand buddhas of this age. The Mahāyāna Bhadrakalpika Sūtra, "the Fortunate Eon," lists about a thousand buddhas who will appear in the present age, with each one's birthplace, family, followers, lifespan and relics. Shakyamuni is fourth, after Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni and Kāśyapa, and Maitreya is fifth. It was first put into Chinese by Dharmarakṣa around the turn of the fourth century.³⁷

Dharmākara and Lokeśvararāja. The closest parallel to Tara is Amitābha's origin. In the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, a king hears the buddha Lokeśvararāja teach, gives up his throne and becomes the monk Dharmākara. He contemplates all the buddha-fields for five eons and then makes forty-eight vows, refusing to become a buddha unless he can create the best of all pure lands. He became Amitābha ten eons ago.³⁸ The Chinese version opens with a long run of earlier buddhas, starting with Dīpaṃkara ("Lamp Light," 錠光), before reaching Lokeśvararāja.³⁹

The White Lotus of Compassion. The Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka Sūtra puts many of these vows in one scene. Before the buddha Ratnagarbha, a king named Araṇemin vows to become Amitābha, his sons vow to become bodhisattvas including Avalokiteśvara, and a brahmin named Samudrareṇu makes five hundred vows to become a buddha in this impure world. He is the future Shakyamuni.⁴⁰

Ratnaśikhin. In Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa, the bodhisattva career of Shakyamuni takes three immeasurable eons, and the first of them ends under a buddha called Ratnaśikhin.⁴¹

The thirty-five buddhas. The Sutra of the Three Heaps, part of the Heap of Jewels collection, gives thirty-five buddhas to whom practitioners confess and prostrate. It is a list for ritual use, much like the Liang litany, and has no drum-named buddha.⁴²

All of these follow the same plan as the Tara story: an unimaginably distant age, a buddha already awake, a person who makes a vow, and a prophecy. In most of them, as with Dundubhisvara, the past buddha is little more than a name. Lokeśvararāja and Ratnagarbha are known almost only as the buddhas before whom Amitābha and Shakyamuni made their vows.³⁸⁴⁰

The one past buddha with a monument

Past buddhas belong to scripture, but the cult of them left a few physical traces, and one is unusually precise.

At Nigali Sagar in southern Nepal stands a broken pillar of the emperor Ashoka with an inscription in Brahmi script. In the usual translation it says that Ashoka, "in the 14th year of his reign enlarged for the second time the stupa of the Buddha Kanakamuni," and that "in the 20th year of his reign, having come in person, paid reverence and set up a stone pillar." That visit is dated to about 249 BCE.⁴³ Kanakamuni is the second buddha of the present age, Koṇāgamana in Pali.⁴⁴ The inscription shows that a stupa said to hold a past buddha's relics was already old enough to need enlarging in Ashoka's time.

There are caveats. The pillar is not where it was first put up, since no foundation lies under it, and it may have been moved from Taulihawa or Gotihawa some miles away. It was first studied by Alois Anton Führer, who is known to have forged other inscriptions and invented a large stupa near the site. Harry Falk and Charles Allen both accept the inscription as genuine.⁴³ The Chinese pilgrims Faxian and Xuanzang described a stupa and pillar of Kanakamuni there in the fifth and seventh centuries.⁴³⁴⁴

Nigali Sagar is the best-known case, though it is not the only one. On the railing of the Bharhut stupa, from the middle of the second century BCE, carved bodhi trees carry labels such as Bhagavato Vipasino bodhi, "the bodhi tree of the Blessed Vipassī." Five of the seven buddhas' trees survive.⁴⁵ A panel at Sanchi shows six past buddhas as stupas and trees.⁴⁴

Some Buddhists worshiped only the past buddhas.

No such traces exist for Dundubhisvara. He has no stupa, no inscription and no image of his own that this research could find. He lives entirely in texts, and in the north of a few mandalas.

Where it stands

The Drum Sound Buddha is a name with a long history and almost no biography. As a buddha of the north he goes back at least to the Golden Light Sutra, whose earliest Chinese version dates from the fifth century, and the drum-voiced northern buddha survives in the Mahāvairocana Sūtra and its mandala.³⁵²⁶ As the witness of Tara's vow he appears in a Tibetan history written in 1604, which strings together older stories whose sources are unknown.¹ As Amoghasiddhi he appears in a dictionary of 1902 and in modern retellings, though the 1604 text keeps the two apart.¹²

The thinness is typical of the role. In the stories of Sumedha, Dharmākara and Samudrareṇu, the past buddha is a fixed point that makes a vow official, and readers learn little about him.³⁵³⁸⁴⁰ Only one past buddha, Kanakamuni, can be tied to a datable monument, and even that rests on one moved pillar.⁴³ The rest, Dundubhisvara included, exist in scripture and ritual, where their job is to hear the vow.

Footnotes

1. Jo-nang Tāranātha, The Origin of the Tara Tantra, translated and edited by David Templeman, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, 1981 (scanned text; opening chapter, introduction and notes 3, 20, 21 and 25 read). archive.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸

2. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, glossary entry "rnga dbyangs / Dundubhisvara" (the definition quoted from earlier notes and a search summary; the live page now loads its entries by script and did not display them). 84000.co ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. The Sutra of Golden Light, chapters 1 to 4, translated from the Tibetan for the FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition), 2007. fpmt.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Wisdom Library, "Dundubhisvara" (collects Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, Monier-Williams, Böhtlingk and Roth, the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa and the DILA glossary). wisdomlib.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Mahāvairocana Sūtra (大毘盧遮那成佛神變加持經), Taishō no. 848, CBETA edition (passage naming 北方鼓音如來 read). cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Wikipedia, "Golden Light Sutra" (secondary source, for the four directional buddhas, the golden drum chapter and the Chinese translations). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩²

7. Joshua J. Mark, "Tara," World History Encyclopedia, 9 August 2021 (a general reference; its historical claims for Tara in the Rigveda and the Indus Valley are not used here). worldhistory.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. "Nasty Woman Meditation," Tricycle (read through a search summary). tricycle.org ↩

9. Wikipedia, "Tara (Buddhism)" (secondary source; cites Arni 2017 for the Tonyo Drupa retelling, Willson 1996 for Sūryagupta, Stevens 2022 and Ghosh 1980 for early images and texts; first half of the article read). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

10. Wikipedia, "Vimalakirti Sutra" (secondary source). en.wikipedia.org ↩

11. Wikipedia, "Longnü" (secondary source, citing Kubo 2007). en.wikipedia.org ↩

12. The Praise in Twenty-One Homages, Toh 438, translated by Samye Translations, 84000 (catalog entry). 84000.co ↩

13. MAP Academy, "Green Tara" (read through a search summary, for her posture, hands and the dating of the Khadiravaṇī form). imp-art.org ↩ ↩²

14. "Atisha's life story," FPMT Education Services, 2009 (a devotional short biography, author unknown). fpmt.org ↩ ↩²

15. Wikipedia, "Atiśa" (secondary source, citing Roesler in Brill's Encyclopedia of Buddhism for the 1040 departure). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

16. The Treasury of Lives, "Nyetang Drolma Lhakang" (read through a search summary). treasuryoflives.org ↩

17. Wikipedia, "Amoghasiddhi" (secondary source, for his family, emblem, gesture, mounts and consort). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩²

18. "White Tara (Wish-Fulfilling Wheel)," Tibetan Art (read through a search summary, for the seven eyes and the longevity trio). tibetanart.com ↩

19. Wikipedia, "Songtsen Gampo" (secondary source, for the two wives as the white and the green Drolma). en.wikipedia.org ↩

20. "Origins of Tārā: Story of Jñānacandra or Wisdom Moon," Tara Illuminated online course (a modern teaching page; no source named). tara-illuminated.teachable.com ↩

21. Elton A. Hall, "Taranatha," Great Teachers series, Theosophy Trust, 16 March 2013 (quotes an unnamed translation of Tāranātha). theosophytrust.org ↩

22. Encyclopedia of Buddhism, "Akṣobhyavyūha," and the 84000 translation of the Display of the Array of Akṣobhya, Toh 50 (both read through a search summary, for Lokakṣema's translation, Abhirati as an early buddha-field, and the Bajaur fragment). encyclopediaofbuddhism.org 84000.co ↩

23. Kumārajīva, trans., Amituo jing (阿彌陀經), Taishō no. 366, CBETA edition (the northern list read). cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ↩ ↩²

24. Wikipedia, "Five Tathāgatas" (secondary source, for the Golden Light four, the four-direction stupas, Kimiaki Tanaka's An Illustrated History of the Mandala (2018), the Compendium of Principles, the competing schemes and the family table; first two-thirds read). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

25. Yijing, trans., Jin guangming zuisheng wang jing (金光明最勝王經), Taishō no. 665, CBETA edition (北方天鼓音 and 天鼓音王佛 read). cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ↩ ↩²

26. Dharmakṣema, trans., Jin guangming jing (金光明經), Taishō no. 663, CBETA edition (北方名微妙聲 read). cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ↩ ↩² ↩³

27. Wikipedia, "Mahavairocana Tantra" (secondary source, for its date and the 724–725 Chinese translation, citing Rolf Giebel). en.wikipedia.org ↩

28. Wikipedia, "Mandala of the Two Realms" (secondary source, for the northern buddha of the central court glossed as Amoghasiddhi). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

29. NTI Reader catalog entry for Taishō no. 865, Amoghavajra's Compendium, with the Encyclopedia of Buddhism on Vajrabodhi (read through a search summary). ntireader.org encyclopediaofbuddhism.org ↩

30. 84000 authority record "dundubhisvara" (name variants only). 84000.co ↩

31. Cibei daochang chanfa (慈悲道場懺法), Taishō no. 1909, CBETA edition (the litany containing 南無鼓音王佛 read), with the NTI Reader catalog entry. cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ntireader.org ↩ ↩²

32. Wikipedia, "Buddhist legends about Emperor Wu of Liang" (secondary source, citing Michel Strickmann, for the later dating of the rite; read through a search summary). en.wikipedia.org ↩

33. Amituo gu yin sheng wang tuoluoni jing (阿彌陀鼓音聲王陀羅尼經), Taishō no. 370, translator unknown, CBETA edition (read in full). cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ↩ ↩²

34. Mahāpadāna Sutta, Dīgha Nikāya 14, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato, SuttaCentral. suttacentral.net ↩ ↩²

35. Wikipedia, "Buddhavamsa" (secondary source, citing Hinüber 1996 and Horner 1975). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

36. Wikipedia, "Dipankara" (secondary source; tagged as needing more citations). en.wikipedia.org ↩

37. Wikipedia, "Bhadrakalpika Sūtra" (secondary source, citing Peter Skilling and the 84000 translation of 2022). en.wikipedia.org ↩

38. Wikipedia, "Dharmakara" (secondary source; first part read). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

39. Foshuo wuliangshou jing (佛說無量壽經), Taishō no. 360, CBETA edition (the list of past buddhas read). cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw ↩

40. Encyclopedia of Buddhism, "Karuṇāpuṇḍarīka" (read through a search summary). encyclopediaofbuddhism.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

41. 84000, translation of Toh 537, a note citing the Abhidharmakośa on Ratnaśikhin (read through a search summary). 84000.co ↩

42. Wikipedia, "Thirty-five Confession Buddhas" (secondary source). en.wikipedia.org ↩

43. Wikipedia, "Nigali Sagar" (secondary source, for the inscription, the pillar's position and the Führer question, citing Harry Falk and Charles Allen). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

44. Wikipedia, "Kanakamuni" (secondary source). en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

45. "The Past Buddhas and Kāśyapa in Indian Art and Epigraphy," full text on the NTU Buddhist library site (read through a search summary). buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw ↩

46. Wikipedia, "Devadatta," and Max Deeg's article on Faxian's account (both read through a search summary). en.wikipedia.org icabs.repo.nii.ac.jp ↩ ↩² ↩³