Notes on Kuýjarakarna

In the pantheon of Kunjarakarna (KK) Vairocana is supreme.It is He who proclaims the Dharma after having attained enlightenment.In Esoteric Buddhism there are three Vairocanas: 1. Rocana, in the Avatarhsaka text Gandavyüha; 2. Vairocana (with crown), in the Garbha mandala of the carya-tantras; 3. Mahavairocana (with a crown of Five Tathagatas), in the Vajradhatu mandala of yoga-tantras.1.The Gandavyüha (Suzuki and Idzumi 1949), 441-443, hasa long list of future Tathagatas, beginning with Maitreya and Sirhha as the first two, and ending with Abhyuccadeva or Rocama (sic).'Rocama' is an erroneous form, which was not recognized as such by the editors, Suzuki and Idzumi.The reading in Gandavyüha 443.16 is 'Rocama Tathagata', where m is an error for n.The two may be easily confüsed in the Nagari script.Edgerton (1953:457) has already pointed out that 'we should expect in place of the impossible Rocama the last name of the list, which is Abhyucca-deva in the text, intending Atyucca-deva'.It escaped Edgerton that the name might be 'Rocana', designating the trans-historical, symbolical Supreme Being; 'The Buddha shifts from an individual to a cosmic principle'.Thus he is the highest (abhyucca) divine being (deva).There is no semantic difference between abhyucca and atyucca.Abhi is the intensifying prefix as found in abhi-dharma, abhisambodhi, and is parallel to 'meta-' in 'meta-physical'.It denotes evolving transcendance.So it is desirable to retain abhyucca of the manuscripts in preference to the efnended (and unattested) atyucca.The fact that Rocana and Abhy° are used synonymously points to an early stage when Rocana was evolving as the highest Tathagata.The English translation of the Avatamsaka sütra by Thomas Cleary (Cleary 1984:254) has the term 'Vairocana 1 .The word 'Vairocana' needs to be checked against the Chinese sütra itself.The Japanese

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