Buddhist practitioner, they constitute a major part of historic Buddhist literature. Most dharanis are in Sanskrit written in scripts such as Siddham as can be transliterated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Sinhala, Thai and other regional scripts. They are similar to and reflect a continuity of the Vedic chants and mantras.

Dharanis are found in the ancient texts of all major traditions of Buddhism. They are a major part of the Pali canon preserved