The Tibetan Avalokitesvara Cult in the Tenth Century: Evidence from the Dunhuang Manuscripts
https://www.academia.edu/2039964/The_Ti ... anuscripts
A compendium of short texts also concerned with death and theafter-death state was examined by Yoshiro Imaeda. One of these, called Overcoming the three poisons (Gdug gsum ’dul ba), contained Avalokiteśvara’s six-syllable mantra.8 Like the text studied by Stein, this one seemed to be addressed to an audience familiar with pre-Buddhist rituals. Imaeda pointed out that this was the only example of the six-syllable mantra found in the Pelliot collection, and suggested that the role of Avalokiteśvara in ancient Tibet might be much less significant than the later tradition tells us. His work, along with Macdonald’s examination of ancient material related to King Srongbtsan sgam po, challenges the traditional accounts of the significance of Avalokiteśvara in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. Based on these studies, Matthew Kapstein has argued in his recent book The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism that the Tibetan cult of Avalokiteśvara is primarily a product of the period of the later spread of the teachings, that is, from the eleventh century onwards.
The Avalokiteśvara chapter from the Lotus sutra was very popular, while the Kārandavyūha sūtra wasn`t:
There are dozens of Chinese manuscript copies of The Universal Gateway in the Dunhuang collections.
We have two stotras:The other major sūtric source for the cult of Avalokiteśvara found in the Ldan dkar ma is the
Kārandavyūha sūtra. This late sūtra displays several features found in tantric literature, including a mantra (the six-syllable mantra itself) and a mandala. In the sūtra, Avalokiteśvara has the role of a universal saviour. There is no Tibetan translation of the Kārandavyūha in the Dunhuang collections
Hymn to the deity in the six-armed form of Cintāmanicakra.
108 epithets of Avalokiteśvara - in this text Avalokiteśvara has four arms, holding a lotus,a vase, a staff and a rosary.
Dharanis: "Different texts are dedicated to the eleven-headed form, the thousand-armed form, and the Amoghapāśa form."
Sadhanas:
Yogatantra sadhanas have mantra based on the seed syllables of Avalokiteśvara according to the Vajradhātu mandala of the Sarvatathāgatatattvasamgraha.
The sadhana, which might be classified as Mahāyoga - red Avalokiteśvara, with one face and two arms.
Some ritual texts, which invoke Avalokiteśvara in his thousand-armed form, or in the form of Amoghapāśa.
Only one ritual, where the six-syllable mantra makes cryptic appearance.
Pictorial representations of Avalokiteśvara in the wall-paintings and painted silk hangings from Dunhuang:
The eleven-headed form is the most often represented, followed by the thousand-armed form and Cintāmanicakra form, with Amoghapāśa being the least popular.The majority of these paintings date from the mid-eighth century to the early eleventh: exactly the same period covered by the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts.
So the mani mantra doesn`t seem to be so important around that time, it was Nyangral Nyima Özer terton who has "popularized" this mantra - he has discovered this terma century after this mantra has been already popularized by the followers of Atisha, Bhikshuni Lakshmi and some other sarma lineages.In fact, the first firm Tibetan textual evidence for the centrality of the six-syllable mantra are the
Bka’ ’chems ka khol ma and Mani bka’ ’bum collections, both of which date from the twelfth century.