Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Strotras, Dhāraṇīs, Tantras – 134
was a personage distinguished for his liberality and according to
Tāranātha a son-in-law of the king of Kashmir. After he had given
away in charity all his treasures he is reported finally to have had
recourse to the life of an itinerant monk. Once he happened to
encounter a Brahman on the way who appealed to him in his poverty
and besought him for money for the marriage of his daughter. In
order to furnish money to the man Sarvajñāmitra sold himself to a
king who had just instituted a great human sacrifice for which he
was in need of a hundred men. But when the poet heard the laments
of his brothers in sorrow with whom he was about to be sacrificed he
sung his hymn to Tārā and the goddess descended and rescued the
hundred victims condemned to death. Whilst the Sragdharāstotra has
poetic value the Āryatārānāmaśatottaraśatakastotra or the eulogy in
one hundred and eight names of the noble [112] Tārā is only a litany
of names and epithets of the goddess. The Ekaviṁśatistotra, the song
of praise in thirty-one or twenty-one strophes is but a loose string of
invocations to the goddess Tārā.
According to L.A. Waddell, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, p.
63 ff, the cult of Tārā was introduced about 600 A.D. History of
Buddhism, p. 168 ff.
These three stotras have been edited and translated by O. de Blonay,
Materiaux pour servir a l’histoire de la deesse Buddhique Tārā (Bibl.
de l’ecole des hautes etudes, fasc. 107). The Sragdharāstotra with a
commentary and two Tibetan versions have also been edited by Satis
Chandra Vidyabhusana. In the introduction the editor enumerates no
less than ninety-six texts relating to Tārā. Of these only sixty-two are
preserved in Tibetan translation. A great adorer of this goddess Tārā