Dear all,

I recently came across a reference to the āmalaki fruit in the Buddhist Mahāmāyātantra and in its commentary, the Guṇavatī by Ratnākaraśānti. The citations are as follows:

First from the root tantra, in Tibetan (there is no extant Sanskrit manuscript): lag tu skyu ru ra bzhag bzhin.

Which Ratnākaraśānti glosses with: svahaste sthitamekamāmalakam yathetyarthaḥ

I initially took this to mean simply that the referent was as clear to the subject as a fruit placed in one's own hand. However, two Tibetan colleagues both asserted that the āmalakī fruit, as understood in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition at least, is a translucent fruit which reveals its inner structure to the subject (not my personal experience with the contemporary version of Amalaki fruit). Thus for a situation to be "like an āmalakī fruit in one's own hand" means one is able to see the referent inside and out, that is, in totality. My question then is this: is this analogy common in Indic traditions and, more importantly, are there any known references to these properties of the āmalakī in Sanskrit works?

Much thanks,

Ryan


Ryan Damron
Graduate Student 
Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies
University of California, Berkeley