Buddhist Prayer-sheet

Continuing with the Buddhist theme, I shall exhibit a Buddhist prayer-sheet.  This sheet is fairly old, dating perhaps from the 1970s-1980s. I found it in Singapore. Buddhist devotees there often sponsor the printing of Buddhist tracts, to gain merit. These tracts are then freely distributed. They are placed on shelves located in public places, for the interested to take home and study. Occasionally, prayer sheets like this one pop up. 

The prayer-sheet is a single piece of paper, printed on one side. What you see here is the top half of the sheet. On the right, we see an image of Guanyin, a Bodhisattva. She is sitting on a lotus, in the midst of what appears to be a pond. A child sits at her feet, and a small bird flies overhead. The caption reads 白衣大士神像 Baiyi Dashi Shen Xiang  "The image of the White-Robed great One". 

On the left of the sheet, is the mantra associated with Baiyi Dashi, written in Chinese characters. 

The bottom half of the sheet is occupied by a large grid of circles, 25 long and 24 wide. The upper half of the sheet explains this curious feature. The mantra is to be changed 12 000  times. There are precisely 600 circles. After saying the mantra twenty times, fill in one circle. When all 600 circles are filled in, you know you have chanted a sufficient number. 

The right-hand text shows a list of dates. Upon these dates vegetarian food is to be consumed. This is often done by those who wish to gain merit from abstaining from slaughter, but for whatever reason cannot be fully vegetarian. The dates mentioned are according to the Chinese Lunar calendar. In addition to these fasts, People often fast on the 1st and 15th days of each month. This is alluded to in the sheet as  The New and Full moon days of each month.

Below I transcribe the contents of the sheet. I have kept the line breaks of the original. Text in round brackets is printed in a smaller typeface. I have added line numbers for ease of reference. Here is the Chinese Baidu article upon this mantra. This is a youtube video of the Mantra being chanted. 

There are several differences in the 2 texts. The baidu article ends line 2 with the words  摩诃萨, Mo he sa, which are absent in this text.  

In line 4 of the prayer sheet, we find the phrase 旦只哆,Dan zhi duo  whilst the text in the Baidu article reads 怛垤哆.dá zhí duō.

Attempting to translate the Mantra itself would be difficult, owing to its esoteric significance. I will instead transliterate it into pinyin as best as I can. If any reader may find errors in my text/interpretation, I will be glad to know of them.

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[Above illustration of Guanyin] 白衣大士神像
Bai yi Dashi Shengxiang

1/ 南無大慈大悲救苦救難廣大靈感
觀世音菩薩   （三稱  三拜）
南無佛  南無法 南無僧 南無救苦救難
觀世音菩薩  旦只哆  庵  伽囉伐哆 伽囉伐哆
5 /伽訶伐哆   囉伽伐哆  囉伽伐哆 娑婆訶  天羅神
地羅神  人離難  難離身   一切災殃化爲塵
南無摩訶般若波羅蜜

（誦二十遍，點一圈：圈滿共一萬三千遍。
10/  印送一千二百張爲一願，所求必應. ）

1/Nan mo da ci da bei jiu ku jiu nan guang da ling gan
guan shi yin pu sa ( Recite thrice, Bowing after each repetition)
Nan mo fo, Nan mo Fa, Nan mo seng, Nan mo jiu ku jiu nan
guan shi yin pu sa.  Dan zhi duo, an,  qie la fa duo  qie la fa duo5/ qie he fa duo, la qie fa duo, la qie fa duo, suo po he, Tian luo shen
Di Luo shen, ren li nan, nan li shen, yi qie zai yang hua wei chen
Nan mo mo he buo re puo luo mi 

(Recite this twenty times, and fill in one circle; Once all circles are filled,[one has recited it] a total of Twelve thousand times.
10/  One thousand Two hundred copies have been printed for free distribution for [ to fufill??]  one wish;  Ask and you shall receive a result.

[in catrouche] 【白衣大士神咒】
1/齋  期

正月初八   二月初七初九十九
三月初三初六十三   四月廿一
五月初三十七   六月十六十八十九廿三
5/ 七月十三  八月十六
九月十九廿三  十月初一
十一月十九  十二月廿五

每逢朔望閏月同前

1/ Vegetarian fasts
8th day of First lunar month                  7th, 9th and 19th of the Second Lunar Month
3rd , 6th and 13th of 3rd lunar month   21st of Fourth lunar month
3rd and 17th of Fifth lunar month         16th, 18th 19th and 23rd of Sixth Lunar month
5/ 30th of Seventh Lunar month               16th of Eighth Lunar Month
19th, 23rd of Ninth Lunar Month         1st of Tenth Lunar Month
19th of Eleventh Lunar month              25th of Twelfth lunar Month

The Full and New moon days [of each month]. [For an] Intercalary month, [proceed] as the previous month.


[After grid of 600 circles]

鐘氏贈
Presented as a gift by Mr. Zhong.

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Unlike most tracts/religious publications I came across, this object performs a far more active role in devotion. In most cases, the prayer-card, etc. is merely a substrate for the religious text, which the devotee must perform by reciting. In this case, the object itself actively participates in the recitation, by being used as a counting-device.

" If this text gets picked up by web crawlers and becomes searchable, and if this is the only form in which it survives, [...] I will feel that my blog entry will have served a useful purpose, if only a small one. And if we had the time and resources to treat the countless pieces of ephemera in our libraries similarly, surely that would be a job worth doing."

(Source: David Helliwell's fascinating blog)