མཆག་ཏ་གདགས་པའ་མད intro: 84000's introduction
The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
In The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme”, the Buddha, while spending the rainy season at the Bamboo Grove in Rājagṛha, teaches his saṅgha of śrāvakas that the Buddha is supreme among all beings, the Dharma of being free of attachment is supreme among all dharmas, and the Saṅgha is supreme among all communities and groups. Those who have faith in these three will be reborn as supreme among gods or humans.
intro.2
The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” is a short discourse set in the Bamboo Grove at Rājagṛha, in which the Buddha teaches that the Three Jewels are supreme: the Buddha is supreme among all beings, the Dharma of being free of attachment is supreme among all dharmas, and the Saṅgha is supreme among all communities and groups. In this way, the sūtra presents a declaration of faith in the Three Jewels. The Buddha also states that the reward of being well disposed toward the Three Jewels is rebirth as a supreme god or human.
intro.3
Little is known about the history of The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” as an independent text in India, but the existence of similar texts in the Pali and Chinese canons testifies to its antiquity.¹ The closest Pali parallel is the Aggappasādasutta (Iti 90), while the Aggappasādasutta (AN 4.34) and the Cundīsutta (AN 5.32) are also closely related.² In the Aggappasādasutta (Iti 90), the Three Jewels are taught to be supreme, using similar language, and they are said therein to be the objects of the supreme kinds of confidence, faith, or favorable disposition.
intro.4
The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” may have had a significant status in early Buddhist Central Asia, since we find Sanskrit fragments of the sūtra and its commentaries in a variety of manuscripts unearthed in present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. In addition to an unpublished fragment in the Hoernle Collection,³ a fragment in the Pelliot Collection was published by Bernard Pauly.⁴. The Turfan Collection also holds two fragments from commentaries on the sūtra: a Sanskrit fragment partially edited by Ernst Waldschmidt that includes the colophon,⁵ and an Old Turkish and Sanskrit bilingual fragment containing the beginning of a commentary on the sūtra.⁶
intro.5
A version of this teaching is also found in the Avadānaśataka, a Sanskrit anthology of avadānas, where this teaching appears almost in its entirety in two different passages (stories 9 and 57). The Tibetan translation of the Avadānaśataka is included in the Kangyur (Toh 343) ⁷ and the wording in these passages is almost identical to the present sūtra. Moreover, an abridged form of this teaching is also contained in the Divyāvadāna ⁸ as well as in the Great Upholder of the Secret Mantra (Toh 563, –).⁹
intro.6
Several versions of The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” are extant in the Chinese Tripitaka: the closest version is found as part of the Ekottarikāgama (Zeng yi a han jing 增壹阿含經, Taishō 125).¹⁰ The Chinese translation of the Ekottarikāgama was, for the most part, completed by Zhu Fonian (竺佛念) in 384 ce.¹¹ However, the discourse in this text has a different setting, and unlike Toh 305, it is presented by means of similes and in verse. The other versions of this teaching in the Chinese canon are three sūtras (nos. 902–904) in the Saṃyuktāgama (Za a han jing 雜阿含經, Taishō 99), which likewise teach that the Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha are supreme. The Saṃyuktāgama was translated into Chinese between 435 and 443 ce by Guṇabhadra (394–468) and Baoyun 寶雲 (376–449) in Jiankang (today’s Nanjing).¹²
intro.7
The translators of The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” into Tibetan remain unidentified and the sūtra is not listed in any catalogs of the Tibetan imperial period. However, the striking similarity between the Tibetan of the sūtra and the version that appears in the Tibetan translation of the Avadānaśataka (Toh 343) suggests that these translations were unlikely to have been made independently of one another. The colophon of the Tibetan translation of the Avadānaśataka (Toh 343) states that it was translated by the scholars Jinamitra and Devacandra who were active in Tibet in the early ninth century. By extension therefore, the Tibetan translation of the The Sūtra “Declaring What Is Supreme” can perhaps also tentatively be dated to the early ninth century.
intro.8
The sūtra is only found as an independent text in the Sūtra section of Kangyurs of the Tshalpa line, the Lhasa and Narthang Kangyurs, and in the Tholing Collection from Western Tibet. The Tibetan title of the text is the same in all Kangyurs included in the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma), mchog tu gdags pa’i mdo, while the Tholing Collection has ’phags pa mchog tu gdags pa’i mdo.¹³ Versions such as the Yongle, Lithang, Kangxi, Narthang, and Choné, do not present the name of the text at the beginning. The Sanskrit title of the sūtra is missing in all versions. Nevertheless, the colophon of the abovementioned fragmentary Sanskrit commentary clearly refers to the sūtra using the title Agraprajñaptisūtra.¹⁴
intro.9
This English translation is based on the Degé Kangyur print of Toh 305, in consultation with the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and Pauly’s edition of the Sanskrit fragment. We also compared the Tibetan text line by line with the corresponding passages in the Avadānaśataka in both Sanskrit¹⁵ and Tibetan. The translators also consulted Léon Feer’s early French translation of the Avadānaśataka ¹⁶ and Naomi Appleton’s more recent partial English translation of the same.¹⁷