Annotated Translation of the Manchu Enduringge eiten ehe banjin be biretei geterembure giyolongnggo umesi etehe eme gebungge toktobun tarniHu Chin-shan Buddhism, one of the three major world religions, has been spreading throughout Asia for more than two thousand years. Its scriptures which have come down to us in many different languages are very rich indeed and constitute not only a treasure house for Buddhological research but provide also valuable material for linguistic studies. Manchu is one of the languages and scripts employed Buddhists employed. Out of religious and political necessity, the Manchus used their own language to render Buddhist scriptures even before they subjugated China, and after the conquest, in the Ch’ien-lung era, the complete canon was under imperial patronage translated and produced as wood block print in several thousand fascicles. Most of these texts were translated from the Chinese, less than twenty scriptures are based on Tibetan originals. Probably due to the difficulty of obtaining Manchu texts, relatively little academic research on Manchu Buddhist texts has been done. In order to ameliorate the situation somewhat, the present writer decided to study the Enduringge eiten ehe banjin be biretei geterembure giyolongnggo umesi etehe eme gebungge toktobun tarni. This scripture, a tantric sadhana translated from the Tibetan, is found in the Manchu canon. The present paper provides a word by word translation of the Manchu version and a comparison with the Tibetan together with a discussion of the differences and the translation of the special Buddhist vocabulary in Manchu by way of detailed footnotes in order to show the peculiarities of Manchu Buddhist texts.
