A Harivamsa Hymn in Yijing's Chinese Translation of the Sutra of Golden Light‪.‬

A HYMN IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS The Harivamsa (first to third century), well known as an account of the life of the god Krsna, contains also a few hymns to the goddess Durga. These hymns are extremely inter-esting in that they are amongst the earliest written sources on Durga and represent one of the early efforts at establishing the identity, significance, and worship of Durga as the great goddess. (1) One of these hymns appears in Chinese translation in the Buddhist Sutra of Golden Light (Suvarnabhasottama Sutra), in Yijing's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (635-713) rendering of 703, (2) for which the original Sanskrit version does not survive. The presence of the hymn in a Buddhist context is not particularly surprising, given that the Indic Buddhist cosmos is populated with numerous Indic deities of Vedic, Brahmanical, Hindu, as well as folk origin. In the Indic Buddhist context as reflected in Yijing's translation, however, the hymn does not retain the same purpose that it had in the Harivamsa. In fact, it is no longer addressed to Durga, but instead to the goddess Sarasvati. And yet, despite the change of context, purpose, and deity addressed, the hymn remains remarkably effective: a warrior-like nature and countenance adds a fittingly fierce aspect to Sarasvati's role in a sutra for the protection of the state. (3) The effectiveness of the hymn in the sutra context renders its presence justifiable at the level of conventional truth, as the sutra itself suggests, (4) and its inclusion is indeed revealing in terms of the composition and compilation of the Sanskrit sutra.