The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa
Translation of གསར་མདག་ག་སྔན་གྱ་སྦྱར་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ (གསེར་མདོག་གི་སྔོན་གྱི་སྦྱོར་བ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ)
- Language
- English
- Translator
- Thomas Cruijsen
- Extent
- 127 passages, 11,289 words
- Text
- complete digital text
- Source
- 84000 · Published by 84000 (v 1.0.1 2025). 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha,… · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha). Shown whole and unaltered, with its notes, on a…
Contents
Text
84000's introduction
intro.1
In The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa the Buddha Śākyamuni illustrates the power of generosity by narrating a distant past life as a magnanimous king named Kanakavarṇa, who ruled over the entire continent of Jambudvīpa. While faced with a devastating famine, this bodhisattva king decided to offer the last bit of food left in Jambudvīpa—which had been kept especially for him—to a pratyekabuddha who had come to his palace begging for alms. As a result of King Kanakavarṇa’s selfless gift, the whole continent was miraculously showered with all possible foods and goods, and the people of Jambudvīpa were saved. In addition to this immediate fruit of the king’s meritorious deed, a further fruit of the king’s good deed is implied when the Buddha discloses King Kanakavarṇa’s identity at the end of the story. The king’s generosity would reach full karmic fruition in his perfect awakening in a future life as the Buddha Śākyamuni.
intro.2
As a discourse in which the Buddha narrates one of his past lives, The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa can be placed in the same class of teachings as jātakas, “birth stories,” and avadānas, “exemplary tales.” In this type of teaching, the Buddha explains his present awakened state or the present conditions of others, whether fortunate or unfortunate, by narrating the past-life actions that led to these conditions, thus showing the workings of karma and the inevitable results of meritorious or unmeritorious deeds. Usually, texts of this kind begin with an extensive narrative section that is set in the present. This describes the situation or the individual’s circumstance that the text will then explain by means of a past-life story. However, this is not the case for The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa, which, as will be seen, consists almost entirely of a past-life story of the Buddha, narrated without preamble. Therefore, it was classified as a pūrvayoga, an account of a “past endeavor,” at least according to the title as given in the Tibetan translation.¹ There are no other standalone texts designated as pūrvayoga in the Kangyur, but the genre is represented in individual chapters of Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra and the Samādhirāja Sūtra.²
intro.3
The setting of this particular discourse is Jetavana, the grove outside Śrāvastī that had been gifted to the Buddha and the monastic saṅgha by a wealthy lay devotee called Anāthapiṇḍada. There, in the presence of an assembly of 1,250 monks, the Buddha begins his teaching by making a twofold statement on the virtue of generosity. First, he states that if beings were to know what he knows of the karmic results of generosity, they would always share whatever they have, even if, as it is tellingly put, it is their last bit of food. However, as the Buddha then points out, beings are often ignorant of the merit that comes from an act of generosity and tend to be guided by selfishness. This twofold proclamation by the Buddha is also found as a separate discourse, preserved in Pali as the Dānasaṃvibhāga Sutta ³ and in Sanskrit as the Dāna Sūtra.⁴ In the present text, the Buddha further illustrates these statements with a story of one of his past lives, thus demonstrating his first-hand knowledge of the immense power of generosity.
intro.4
The story is that of a king named Kanakavarṇa, who, we are told, lived in a remote past when people still had life spans of eighty-four thousand years. This king is described as possessing all possible worldly attainments: he had a “golden-colored” (the literal meaning of his name) bodily complexion, abundant riches, and a vast and thriving empire stretching across the whole of Jambudvīpa. More impressive, however, was his righteous and generous nature. The Buddha states that he governed his people unselfishly, engaging in all possible forms of charity. The king’s generosity was such that one day—and it was from this that the events narrated begin to unfold—he decided to abolish all taxes and levies for the people of Jambudvīpa.
intro.5
However, King Kanakavarṇa did not foresee that, after many years of prosperity and just governance for his people, the astrological conditions would become unfavorable. When the brahmins at the court noticed this adverse shift in the constellations and celestial bodies, they informed the king that there would be no rain for the next twelve years. Aware of the impending disaster this portended for his people, especially for the poor who were without the means to survive a drought of such length, the king immediately went into action. He issued the order that all available foodstuffs were to be collected and placed in a single storehouse, and from there they were to be distributed equally among the people of Jambudvīpa. For eleven years, this strategy was successful and famine was averted, but then in the twelfth year the food started to run out and people began to die of starvation. The situation became ever more dire in the course of the following eleven months, to the point that there was only a single portion of food left in the storehouse, which had been reserved for King Kanakavarṇa himself.
intro.6
The narrative here shifts to the key protagonist in the momentous event that is about to take place. The Buddha describes how in that particular period there was a bodhisattva—left unnamed—who had been on the bodhisattva path for forty eons, but who, after witnessing a particularly heinous act, had abandoned his aim of reaching perfect buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Applying himself instead to his own liberation from saṃsāra, this person, within a short span of time, had gained complete insight into the impermanent nature of phenomena and thereby attained the awakening of a pratyekabuddha, a “solitary awakened one.” In Buddhist traditions, a pratyekabuddha is someone who has attained complete liberation from saṃsāra without the guidance of a teacher. However, such liberation is distinguished from that of a perfectly awakened buddha like the Buddha Śākyamuni, since they are not able to verbally teach the path to liberation to others. This typology of buddhas who reach individual awakening arose early on in Buddhist tradition and was particularly associated with an early text known as the Rhinoceros Sūtra (Pali: Khaggavisāṇa Sutta) in which the practitioner is exhorted to “move alone like a rhinoceros.” ⁵ At some point during the early period, the individual verses that make up the Rhinoceros Sūtra came to be credited as the utterances of pratyekabuddhas of past times.⁶ The verse proclaimed by the pratyekabuddha upon his awakening in The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa (at folio 53.a) is an example of such a verse, which has direct parallels with the second verse of both the Pali Rhinoceros Sūtra as well as the recently discovered Gāndhārī Sanskrit version. In this extant Sanskrit of the story of King Kanakavarṇa, the verse reads as follows:
intro.7
saṃsevamānasya bhavanti snehāḥ
snehānvayaṃ saṃbhavatīha duḥkham |
ādīnavaṃ snehagataṃ viditvā
ekaś caret khaḍgaviṣāṇakalpaḥ || ⁷
intro.8
“Keeping close company, one comes to have attachment;
It is from attachment that suffering comes about here.
Realizing the danger coming from attachment,
One should move alone like a rhinoceros.”
intro.9
In the Pali version of The Rhinoceros Sutta it reads:
intro.10
saṃsaggajātassa bhavanti snehā
snehanvayaṃ dukkham idaṃ pahoti |
ādīnavaṃ snehajaṃ pekkhamāno
eko care khaggavisāṇakappo || ⁸
intro.11
“Having close contact, one comes to have attachment;
It is from attachment that this suffering comes about.
Seeing the danger that is born from attachment,
One should move alone like a rhinoceros.”
intro.12
And in the Gāndhārī version of The Rhinoceros Sūtra, it reads:
intro.13
saṃsevamaṇas̱a siyati s̄eho
s̄ehaṃvayaṃ dukham idaṃ prabhoti |
+ + + + + + + + + + +
eko care khargaviṣaṇagapo || ⁹
intro.14
“Keeping close company, one comes to have attachment;
It is from attachment that suffering comes about.
…
One should move alone like a rhinoceros.”
intro.15
The background story to this verse, however, as transmitted in the later Pali commentary to The Rhinoceros Sutta, is entirely different and unrelated to the story of the pratyekabuddha in The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa.¹⁰ It appears, therefore, that over the centuries these verses from The Rhinoceros Sutta became associated with different background stories connected to pratyekabuddhas.¹¹
intro.16
While the verses in The Rhinoceros Sutta urge a solitary way of life in view of the dangers of being in close company with others, they also emphasize the need to cultivate loving-kindness and compassion.¹² This quality is also given expression in the freshly awakened pratyekabuddha in The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa. The Buddha describes how, after attaining “individual awakening,” the pratyekabuddha compassionately thought of benefitting other beings by receiving alms from them, thereby giving them the opportunity to gather merit. Being the only awakened being in the world at that time, albeit lower in rank to a perfectly awakened buddha, the pratyekabuddha would have been the most “worthy of offerings” and the most fruitful “field of merit,” as it is traditionally put, in terms of yielding karmic benefit. As the pratyekabuddha scanned the whole world through his newly acquired supernormal abilities, he discovered that there was only one portion of food left—the one reserved for the king. Therefore, he decided to extend his compassion to King Kanakavarṇa by seeking alms from him.
intro.17
It is this alms round and its miraculous outcome that forms the centerpiece of the story. This crucial moment—when the pratyekabuddha becomes the recipient of King Kanakavarṇa’s ultimate act of generosity—brings to the fore the prime qualities of the two central actors: the bodhisattva king who accompanies his act of self-sacrifice with the deep wish that it bring an end to the destitution and suffering of his people, and the solitary buddha who teaches the Dharma “bodily, not verbally,” as he silently leaves in the same miraculous way as he had come, after having provided the king with the opportunity to generate immense merit. The “root of virtue” that King Kanakavarṇa has planted through this relinquishment of self-interest is such that, right after the pratyekabuddha has received his meal and departed, it immediately ripens into the fulfillment of the king’s wish, as narrated in the wondrous culmination of the story. Moreover, and more importantly still, when the Buddha reveals at the end of the story that he himself was King Kanakavarṇa at that time, it is implied that the merit of this “past endeavor” occasioned by the compassionate pratyekabuddha would eventually come to full ripening in the attainment of perfect and full awakening by the Buddha Śākyamuni in his present lifetime. Having thus illustrated the karmic potency of such an act of generosity, the Buddha concludes by repeating the twofold statement on the virtue of generosity that he had pronounced at the beginning of the discourse, followed by a verse on the imperishability of good karma.
intro.18
This story about King Kanakavarṇa’s feat has been preserved in several different versions and retellings. The earliest of these is found in a collection of the Buddha’s past life stories that was translated into Chinese in the fourth or early fifth century ce, entitled Pu sa ben xing jing (菩薩本行經), “The Sūtra about the Past Conduct of the Bodhisattva.”¹³ In this version, the story does not have a prelude containing a twofold statement on generosity. Instead, it is narrated by the Buddha upon the passing away of a miserly wealthy man from Śrāvastī named Mahānāman. When King Prasenajit comes to the Buddha to ask him where Mahānāman has been reborn, the Buddha tells him that the miserly Mahānāman has fallen into hell. Here he will be subject to great suffering for thousands of years, after which he will also have to endure rebirth as a hungry ghost for a long duration. In response to King Prasenajit’s distress upon hearing this, the Buddha states that a wise person should abandon miserliness and engage in generosity. It is by virtue of this that one obtains good fortune in the present life and merit for future lives, and the Buddha then narrates his past life as King Kanakavarṇa as an illustration. While in general the story told is the same as that found in The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa, there are several differences, the most notable being that the person who becomes the pratyekabuddha is not first described as being a bodhisattva, nor is there the verse from The Rhinoceros Sūtra that he exclaims upon his awakening.
intro.19
The first version in which all the elements found in The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa appear is a Chinese translation made at least over a century later, in the middle of the sixth century ce. In this separately transmitted text, which bears the title Jin se wang jing (金色王經), “The Sūtra about King Kanakavarṇa,”¹⁴ we find all the elements that are also present in the Tibetan and Sanskrit versions of The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa, with the exception of some phrases and passages that seem to have been abridged or paraphrased during translation by its Indian translator, Gautama Prajñāruci, a monk from Vārāṇasī who was active in China at the time. According to the original colophon at the end of the Chinese text, this translation was made by Gautama Prajñāruci in the year 542 ce.¹⁵
intro.20
The Tibetan translation that has been preserved in the Kangyur mostly agrees with this Chinese version, to the extent that one can assume the underlying Sanskrit text must have been very similar. We do not know when exactly the Tibetan translation was made, since the Kangyur text lacks the usual colophon that records the names of the translators and editors involved in the translation. However, the Tibetan title of the text, gser mdog gi sngon gyi sbyor ba, is listed in both the Denkarma and Phangthangma inventories of Tibetan imperial translations, which means that the unattributed Tibetan translation of The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa must have been made at some point in the eighth or early ninth century ce, during the early spread of the Buddhadharma to Tibet.¹⁶
intro.21
The Sanskrit text that has come down to us is part of the Divyāvadāna, a collection of thirty-eight avadānas that has proved to be popular in the Kathmandu Valley over the centuries. Under the title Kanakavarṇāvadāna, this Sanskrit version is practically the same as the Tibetan and the sixth-century Chinese version, leaving aside a number of additions and omissions that are the result of centuries of scribal transmission.¹⁷ There are a few places, however, in which the Sanskrit and the Chinese are more closely aligned with each other than with the Tibetan, as with the extra last verse included at the end. This suggests that the extant Sanskrit version found in the Divyāvadāna represents a somewhat different line of textual transmission than the Tibetan translation and its underlying Sanskrit text.
intro.22
Apart from these three closely related versions preserved in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, King Kanakavarṇa’s story is also found in the Avadānakalpalatā,¹⁸ an anthology of avadānas composed in succinct and poetic Sanskrit verse by the Kashmiri poet Kṣemendra in the middle of the eleventh century. In this concise form, the story also gained popularity in Tibet when the Avadānakalpalatā was translated into Tibetan in the thirteenth century and became the subject of a rich tradition of woodcut depictions and thangka paintings.¹⁹ Another later retelling of the story, also in versified Sanskrit, occurs in the Ratnamālāvadāna (alternatively titled Ratnāvadānamālā),²⁰ one of several collections of versified avadānas that were composed and compiled in the Kathmandu Valley from the fourteenth century onwards, for which the Divyāvadāna served as one of the main sources.
intro.23
The English translation of The Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa offered here is based primarily on the Tibetan translation contained in the Kangyur. In this, the text in the Degé Kangyur has been taken as the base text, but we have also consulted the Stok Palace Kangyur and the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) for variant readings. In several cases, this has provided readings that are evidently in better alignment with the Sanskrit text, as recorded in the endnotes. Despite these improved readings, there are several places in the Tibetan text where the textual transmission has proved to be faulty due to omissions or erroneous additions. In those instances, we have taken recourse to the extant Sanskrit text, in consultation with the Chinese translation. However, we have been careful not to uncritically adopt all readings found in the extant Sanskrit, since, as stated above, it appears to belong to a different lineage of textual recension than the Tibetan translation and its underlying Sanskrit text. There are, moreover, several places where the extant Sanskrit has problematic readings that need to be emended in light of the Tibetan translation.²¹ We have recorded all such discrepancies between the Sanskrit and the Tibetan in the endnotes, in which we have also included the most significant divergences found in the Chinese translation.
intro.24
In closing, we would like to refer the reader to two very similar past life stories of the Buddha, both of which are likewise narrated to illustrate the twofold statement on generosity as found in the Dāna Sūtra, from which they also very graphically draw upon the words apaścimakaḥ kavaḍaḥ, “last mouthful.” First, there is the Kavaḍāvadāna in the Avadānaśataka (Toh 343), in which the Buddha recounts his past life as King Brahmadatta in Vārāṇasī, a righteous and compassionate ruler whose generosity was such that during a devastating famine he was able to give up his own daily ration of food, his two “mouthfuls,” to a brahmin left out in the count and to Indra who, disguised as a brahmin, requested the second portion.²² The other related story is found in the Karmaśataka (Toh 340),²³ in which the narration is about a bodhisattva king named Candraprabha, who also reigned from the city of Vārāṇasī, and who, faced with a severe drought and famine that would last for twelve years, is tested by Indra, again disguised as a brahmin, in giving away both his “mouthfuls” of food—all of which the bodhisattva happily does in his complete dedication to attaining perfect and full awakening for the benefit of all.
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Homage to all buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was dwelling at Jetavana, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park, together with a large monastic community of 1,250 monks.
The Blessed One was respected, honored, revered, and venerated by monks, nuns, devoted laymen, devoted laywomen, kings, ministers, the various tīrthikas, ascetics, brahmins,
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practitioners, and wanderers, as well as by gods, nāgas, yakṣas, gandharvas, asuras, garuḍas, kinnaras, and mahoragas. The Blessed One received abundant and exquisite requisites—robes, alms, bedding and seating, and medicine in case of illness—both divine and human. Yet, the Blessed One remained untainted by them, like a lotus untainted by water. The Blessed One’s renown, fame, and acclaim,²⁴ was vast, excellent, and exalted.²⁵ In this way, the Blessed One, the tathāgata, arhat, perfectly awakened one, accomplished in knowledge and conduct, the well gone one, the knower of the world, the unsurpassed guide for people to be tamed, the teacher of gods and humans, the Buddha, the Blessed One, having directly understood and clearly perceived ²⁶ this world with its gods, māras, brahmās, ascetics, brahmins, gods, and humans,²⁷ was teaching the Dharma²⁸ that is excellent in the beginning, excellent in the middle, and excellent in the end, fine in meaning and fine in expression, and was expounding the entire and complete spiritual life that is completely pure and completely clean.
Then the Blessed One addressed the monks, “Monks, if beings were to know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts²⁹ as I know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts, they would not eat even their last mouthful, their last morsel, themselves³⁰ without giving, without sharing it with others,³¹ and the arisen defilement of selfishness would not remain in possession of their minds.³²
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But, monks, because beings do not know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts as I know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts, they eat even their last mouthful, their last morsel, themselves³³ without giving, without sharing it with others, and the arisen defilement of selfishness remains in possession of their minds. Why is this?
“Previously, monks, in a past time, there was a king named Kanakavarṇa, who was handsome, beautiful, and pleasing to behold, being endowed with a sublime golden complexion. That king Kanakavarṇa was rich, wealthy, and prosperous, having abundant possessions;³⁴ abundant wealth and means; abundant riches, grains, gems, pearls,³⁵ crystal, coral, gold, and silver; abundant elephants, horses, cows, and stud horses;³⁶ and treasuries and storehouses that were completely filled.
“King Kanakavarṇa had a royal capital called Kanakāvatī that was twelve yojanas in length from east to west and seven yojanas wide from south to north. It was prosperous, thriving, happy, well provisioned, pleasant, and bustling with many people. King Kanakavarṇa had eighty thousand such cities ³⁷ that were prosperous, thriving, happy, well provisioned, pleasant, and bustling with many people; five hundred and seventy million villages ³⁸ that were prosperous, thriving, happy, well provisioned, pleasant, and bustling with many people; and sixty thousand market towns that were prosperous, thriving, happy, well provisioned, pleasant, and bustling with many people. And, King Kanakavarṇa had eighteen thousand courtiers and a retinue of twenty thousand attendant women.
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“Monks, King Kanakavarṇa was righteous and he ruled his kingdom according to the Dharma as a Dharma king.³⁹ He engaged in all acts of generosity and there was nothing that he had not given away, including the flesh of his own body. During those times people would attain a lifespan of eighty-four thousand years.
“Now, at one time, when King Kanakavarṇa was alone, having withdrawn in private, a deliberation arose in his mind: ‘Let me free all merchants from customs duties and transit fees. Let me free all the people of Jambudvīpa from taxes and fees.’
“King Kanakavarṇa thereupon summoned his accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors, and announced to them, ‘As of today, sirs,⁴⁰ all merchants should be freed from customs duties and transit fees. All the people of Jambudvīpa should be freed from taxes and fees.’
“While ruling his kingdom by these means⁴¹ for many years, at a certain time, the constellations became adverse such that it would not rain for twelve years. The brahmins who could understand the indications read the signs⁴² and did divinations.⁴³ Having observed this in the movements of the constellations and the planet Venus, they went to King Kanakavarṇa and said, ‘Your Majesty, please know that the constellations have become adverse such that it will not rain for twelve years.’
“Upon hearing this news, King Kanakavarṇa broke down in tears, ‘Oh, my people of Jambudvīpa! Oh, my people of Jambudvīpa!⁴⁴ Oh, my Jambudvīpa that is prosperous, thriving,
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happy, well provisioned, pleasant, and bustling with many people—before long you will be empty and bereft of people!’
“After weeping sorrowfully for a moment, King Kanakavarṇa thought, ‘Those who are rich, wealthy, and prosperous will be able to support themselves, but those who are poor, with little wealth, and with little to eat and drink—how will they survive? Let me collect all the foodstuffs in Jambudvīpa, build a storehouse for all the villages, cities, and market towns, as well as for the royal capital,⁴⁵ and distribute an equal share to all the people of Jambudvīpa.’
“King Kanakavarṇa then summoned his accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors, and ordered, ‘Sirs, go and collect all the foodstuffs in Jambudvīpa, count them and measure them out, and place them in a storehouse for all the villages, cities, and market towns, as well as for the royal capital.’
“The accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors did as King Kanakavarṇa had ordered, and when they had stored the foodstuffs in the storehouse, they went to King Kanakavarṇa and said, ‘Your Majesty, please know that the foodstuffs from all the villages, cities, and market towns,
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as well as from the royal capital, have all been collected, counted, measured out, and stored in a storehouse for all the villages, cities, and market towns, as well as for the royal capital. What does Your Majesty deem fit now?’
“King Kanakavarṇa then summoned his counters, accountants, and scribes and ordered, ‘Sirs, go and count all the people of Jambudvīpa. Having properly⁴⁶ counted everyone starting with myself,⁴⁷ properly distribute an equal share of food to all the people of Jambudvīpa.’
“The counters, accountants, and scribes obeyed⁴⁸ and they properly counted all the people of Jambudvīpa. When they had properly counted everyone, starting with King Kanakavarṇa, they assigned an equal share of food to all the people of Jambudvīpa.
“For eleven years everyone survived, but during the first month of the twelfth year, many men, women, and children began to die from hunger and thirst. As the second, third, fourth, and fifth months passed, many more men, women, and children died.⁴⁹ This went on until the eleventh month, when all the food in Jambudvīpa had been exhausted,⁵⁰ apart from a single measure of food left for King Kanakavarṇa.
“Now, at that time, there was a bodhisattva who had been embarked upon the path for forty eons and who had reached this Sahā world. That bodhisattva saw, somewhere in a forest, a son having sexual intercourse with his mother. Seeing this, he thought, ‘Oh, how defiled,⁵¹ how defiled these beings are!
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It was in her womb that he stayed for nine months and it was from her breasts that he drank—and now he does this here!⁵² I’ve had enough of such⁵³ beings who are driven by craven desires not in keeping with the Dharma, who have wrong views, who are overcome by unbearable lust, who do not honor their fathers,⁵⁴ their mothers, monks, or brahmins, and who do not respect the elders of their family. Who would bother to practice the conduct of a bodhisattva for the sake of such beings? Surely I should practice for my own sake alone.’
“Then the bodhisattva went to a tree and sat down at its base. Having crossed his legs and made his body upright, he established mindfulness to the fore.⁵⁵ He then dwelled on observing the arising and passing away of the five aggregates that are subject to clinging: ‘This is form, this is the arising of form, this is the vanishing of form; this is feeling; this is perception; these are conditionings; this is consciousness, this is the arising of consciousness, this is the vanishing of consciousness.’ As he remained like this, observing the arising and passing away of the five aggregates that are subject to clinging, before long, he realized that whatever is of the nature to arise is all of the nature to cease,⁵⁶ and right there he reached individual awakening.
“Thereupon, after beholding the dharmas attained according to their conditions,⁵⁷ on that occasion the blessed pratyekabuddha spoke this verse:⁵⁸
Keeping close company, one comes to have attachments;
It is from attachment that this suffering comes about.⁵⁹
Realizing the danger coming from attachment,⁶⁰
One should move alone like a rhinoceros.⁶¹
“Then the blessed pratyekabuddha thought, ‘I have performed many difficult deeds for the sake of sentient beings, but no one has yet been benefitted.
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To whom should I now extend my compassion? Whose alms should I now receive and eat?’
“The blessed pratyekabuddha surveyed the whole of Jambudvīpa with his superhuman⁶² divine vision, and he saw that all the food in Jambudvīpa had been exhausted apart from a single measure of food left for King Kanakavarṇa. He then thought, ‘Let me extend my compassion to King Kanakavarṇa. Let me receive and eat the single measure of food that is left for King Kanakavarṇa.’⁶³
“Then the blessed pratyekabuddha, by such miraculous ability of his,⁶⁴ rose up into the sky, and, like a bird in bodily appearance, through his miraculous ability, proceeded to the royal capital Kanakāvatī.
“At that time King Kanakavarṇa was on the palace terrace, accompanied by five thousand courtiers. One minister saw the blessed pratyekabuddha coming from a distance. Seeing this, he called the other ministers, ‘Look, sirs, look! From the distance, a red-winged bird is coming toward us here!’
“Another minister said, ‘Sirs, this is not a red-winged bird—it’s a life-robbing demon that is coming here! It is now going to devour us!’
“Then King Kanakavarṇa rubbed his face with both hands and said to the ministers, ‘Sirs, this is not a red-winged bird, nor is it a life-robbing demon—it’s a sage who is coming out of compassion for us!’
“Thereupon that blessed pratyekabuddha alighted on top of King Kanakavarṇa’s palace. Rising from his seat, King Kanakavarṇa
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welcomed the blessed pratyekabuddha, bowed his head at the feet of the blessed pratyekabuddha, and invited him to sit on a seat that had been prepared. King Kanakavarṇa then asked the blessed pratyekabuddha, ‘Sage, for what purpose have you come here?’
“‘For the purpose of food, great king,’ the sage replied.
“Upon this, King Kanakavarṇa was very distraught, and weeping, he cried, ‘Oh, how poor I am! Even though I have dominion over Jambudvīpa, I am not able to provide alms to even a single sage!’
“Then the deity of the royal capital Kanakāvatī uttered this verse to King Kanakavarṇa:
What is suffering? It is to be poor.
What is greater suffering? It is poverty itself.
To be in poverty is the same as death.⁶⁵
I would not choose poverty over death!⁶⁶
“King Kanakavarṇa then summoned the person in charge of the storehouse and asked, ‘Sir, is there any food in the house that I could offer to this sage?’
“‘Your Majesty,’ he replied, ‘Please know that all the food in Jambudvīpa has been exhausted apart from a single measure of food that remains for Your Majesty.’
“King Kanakavarṇa thought, ‘If I eat it, I will live. If I do not eat it, I will die.’ But then he thought, ‘Even if I eat it,⁶⁷ I will certainly come to die—enough of this life of mine! How could such a virtuous and excellent sage leave my house today with an alms bowl as pristine as before he entered?’⁶⁸
“King Kanakavarṇa then gathered his accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors, and said, ‘Please rejoice, sirs! This is King Kanakavarṇa’s final act of charity.⁶⁹ By this root of virtue,
10
may there be a complete end to poverty for all the people of Jambudvīpa.’
“Thereupon King Kanakavarṇa put all there was of the measure of food into the bowl of that blessed pratyekabuddha and gave the bowl into the blessed pratyekabuddha’s right hand.⁷⁰
“Now, it is in the nature of things that blessed pratyekabuddhas teach the Dharma bodily, not verbally.⁷¹ So the blessed pratyekabuddha received the alms⁷² from King Kanakavarṇa and, in this way by miraculous ability,⁷³ departed into the sky. With folded hands, King Kanakavarṇa⁷⁴ stood looking on, without blinking, until he had passed from sight.
“Then King Kanakavarṇa summoned his accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors, and said, ‘Sirs, go to your respective homes. Please do not end your time by dying from hunger and thirst here at the palace.’
“They replied, ‘When Your Majesty possessed wealth and good fortune, we amused and enjoyed ourselves together with Your Majesty. How could we now abandon Your Majesty at the end, at this final hour?’
“Then, King Kanakavarṇa broke down in tears and wept. Wiping away his tears, he again said to his accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors, ‘Sirs, go to your respective homes. All of you, please do not end your time by dying from hunger and thirst here at the palace.’
“At this, the accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors also broke down in tears and wept. Wiping away their tears, they approached King Kanakavarṇa, bowed their heads at his feet, and with folded hands said to King Kanakavarṇa, ‘Today is our last sight of Your Majesty.
11
Please forgive us for anything we have done contrary to Your Majesty’s instruction.’ ⁷⁵
“But just as that blessed pratyekabuddha finished eating the alms, at that very moment, four masses of clouds emerged from all four directions, and cool winds began to blow that swept Jambudvīpa clean.⁷⁶ And then, during the second half of that day, it rained various kinds of foods and edible things. There were foods such as boiled rice, sattu, khichri, meat, and fish. There were edible things⁷⁷ such as edible roots, stalks,⁷⁸ leaves, flowers, fruits, sesame, sesame oil,⁷⁹ jaggery,⁸⁰ and cane sugar.⁸¹ And there were many other kinds of foods, edible things, and delicacies that rained down.
“King Kanakavarṇa was thrilled, exalted, and elated, and as he rejoiced, full of rapture and gladness, he said to his accountants, ministers, courtiers, gatekeepers, and councilors, ‘Look, sirs! Right now the sprout of giving that single portion of alms has appeared! Fruits, leaves, and flowers⁸² will come later!’
“On the second day, a week-long rain of goods and grains began. For seven days it rained sesame, rice, mung beans, black gram, barley, wheat, lentils, white rice, and all types of grains.⁸³ For seven days it rained ghee. For seven days it rained sesame oil. For seven days it rained cotton cloth. For seven days it rained various kinds of materials.⁸⁴ And for seven days it rained the seven precious substances, namely, gold, silver, crystal, beryl, ruby, emerald, and sapphire.
12
“So, by the power of King Kanakavarṇa, there was a complete end to poverty for all the people of Jambudvīpa.
“Monks, you might be uncertain or in doubt, thinking that it was someone else who was King Kanakavarṇa at that time, at that moment.⁸⁵ But, monks, it should not be seen in this way. I was that king named Kanakavarṇa at that time, at that moment.
“Monks, through this teaching, this should be understood: One⁸⁶ should know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts as I know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts. One should not eat⁸⁷ the last mouthful, the last morsel, oneself—without giving it or sharing it with others—and the arisen defilement of selfishness will not remain in possession of one’s mind. But because beings do not know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts as I know the fruit of giving and the karmic fruition of sharing gifts, they eat even their last mouthful, their last morsel, themselves—without giving, without sharing it with others—and the arisen defilement of selfishness remains in possession of their minds.⁸⁸
Past deeds, virtuous or unvirtuous, do not perish,
To have attended upon the wise does not perish,
What is well said by the noble ⁸⁹ does not perish,
What is done for the grateful does not perish.”⁹⁰
This is what the Blessed One said. Elated, the bodhisattvas, monks, and the world with its gods, humans, asuras, and gandharvas rejoiced at what the Blessed One had said.⁹¹
Notes
notes.1
1. The title of the extant Sanskrit text in the Divyāvadāna is Kanakavarṇāvadāna, which places it in the avadāna category. However, this designation is likely to have happened when the Divyāvadāna, the collection of texts in which it has been preserved, was compiled. At this time, the different individual texts, whether strictly belonging to the jātaka, avadāna, or pūrvayoga genres or not, were all given the avadāna designation. Historically, the avadāna and pūrvayoga genres, which involve the past lives of other figures apart from the Buddha, appear to be posterior to the jātakas, which exclusively narrate the Buddha Śākyamuni’s past lives. This development might be suggested by the fact that the avadāna genre is among the three added categories in the Sanskrit list of twelve types of teaching (dvādaśāṅga) that are not found in the Pali list of nine types of teachings (navaṅga), which, however, does include jātaka as a category. Both the avadāna and the pūrvayoga genres seem to have been especially popular in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, as can be inferred from the relatively large number of texts of this type among the recently discovered Kharoṣṭhī manuscripts in the Gāndhārī language (see Lenz 2003; 2010). In fact, the term pūrvayoga might have its provenance there, as has been suggested by von Hinüber (2001, p. 520) on the basis of the occurrence of the term in the Milindapañha, a Pali text that has its origin in Gandhāra. At the beginning of the Milindapañha, before the narration of the past lives of its two protagonists, Nāgasena and King Milinda, we also find a short definition of the term: “pubbayoga means their past actions” (pubbayogo ti tesāṃ pubbakammaṃ; Mil 2.23). Interestingly, within the surviving Gāndhārī corpus of avadānas and pūrvayogas, which has been dated to approximately the first half of the first century ce, a strict distinction is maintained in designating the two kinds of texts: while the pūrvayoga is an account of someone’s actions in a previous lifetime, the avadāna is always an account of actions performed in the present lifetime (Lenz 2003, p. 92). From this it would appear that the avadāna form that includes past-life stories, as found in such collections as the Avadānaśataka and the Divyāvadāna, arose only in later centuries, during which the avadāna genre came to encompass both jātaka and pūrvayoga stories.
notes.2
2. See The White Lotus of the Good Dharma (Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra, Toh 113), chapters 7, 22, and 25; and The King of Samādhis Sūtra (Samādhirājasūtra, Toh 127) chapters 2, 16, 21, 29, and 37. There are also two pūrvayoga chapters in the Mahāvastu, one at Mvu III 170–172 and one immediately following it at III 172–175.
notes.3
3. It 18–19.
notes.4
4. Tripathi 1995, p. 18. There is no Tibetan translation of the Dāna Sūtra, at least as a standalone text, in the Tibetan Kangyur. There is also an extant Sanskrit Dāna Sūtra in the Schøyen Collection, BMSC iv (from Bamiyan). Mentioned in Braarvig 2014, p.163.
notes.5
5. This phrase has given rise to considerable discussion in modern scholarship, since the compound word that is used in Sanskrit and Pali, khaḍgaviṣāṇa and khaggavisāṇa, can be interpreted in more than one way. The word khaḍga/khagga itself can mean “rhinoceros,” and since viṣāṇa/visāṇa means “horn,” the compound can be taken as “the horn of a rhinoceros,” which is the interpretation followed in the Pali commentarial tradition. In this interpretation, the entire phrase is understood as “move alone like a rhinoceros horn,” in reference to the fact that the Indian rhinoceros has a single horn, distinguishing it from animals that have two horns. On the other hand, khaḍga/khagga also has the meaning “sword,” and together with viṣāṇa/visāṇa, “horn,” the entire compound khaḍgaviṣāṇa/khaggavisāṇa can mean “[the animal which has] a sword-horn,” thus referring to the rhinoceros itself. In this understanding, which is mostly seen in Buddhist Sanskrit literature, the phrase “move alone like a rhinoceros” alludes to the solitary behavior of the Indian rhinoceros, which is known not to roam about in groups. It should be kept in mind, however, that both meanings could be intended at the same time in this particular phrase, as has been pointed out by Salomon (2000, p. 13; 2018, p. xx). For a recent discussion of this issue, see Jones 2014, and for a wider survey on the imagery of the wandering ascetic as a rhinoceros in Brahmanical, Jain, and Buddhist literature, see af Edholm 2021.
notes.6
6. The first texts in which these verses are attributed to pratyekabuddhas are the Pali Cullaniddesa, an old commentary on the Suttanipāta, and the Pali Apadāna, a collection of autobiographical poems ascribed to the Buddha Śākyamuni, the pratyekabuddhas of the past, and the foremost arhat disciples of the Buddha. Both texts are old enough to have been included in the Khuddakanikāya of the Suttapiṭaka of the Pali canon; the Apadāna was probably compiled around the second century bce (Walters 1997), which is perhaps also the time period of the Cullaniddesa (von Hinüber 1996, p. 58, §118, and p. 61, §121). In both texts, the verses are simply ascribed to pratyekabuddhas collectively, without narrating the specific occasion of each verse. This is also the case for the Mahāvastu, the voluminous Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravāda compilation on the life of the Buddha (parts of which have also been dated to the second century bce), in which several adapted verses from the Rhinoceros Sūtra are presented as having been uttered by a group of five hundred pratyekabuddhas living in a forest near Vārāṇasī—the site of the future Deer Park—just before the birth of the Buddha Śākyamuni in this world (Mvu I 357–359). Upon hearing of the coming of the Buddha to this buddhafield and the necessity for them to vacate, each of these pratyekabuddhas is said to have proclaimed such a verse before passing into parinirvāṇa by rising into the sky and incinerating themselves, after which their bodily remnants fell to the ground. This is then said to explain the other name for the site of the Buddha’s first teaching, the Sanskrit ṛṣipatana, which literally means “the falling of sages.” For a useful discussion of the different versions and a translation of the Gāndhārī verses of the Rhinoceros Sūtra, see Salomon 2018.
notes.7
7. This Sanskrit is from the extant Sanskrit version of the story of King Kanakavarṇa, which is included in the Divyāvadāna collection, as discussed further below. Cowell & Neil 1886, p. 294; Vaidya 1959, p. 182.
notes.8
8. Sn v. 36. This Pali verse occurs in the same form in the Paccekabuddhāpadāna (v. 11) and the Cullaniddesa (Cn 57). For a translation of the Pali Paccekabuddhāpadāna, the pratyekabuddha section in the Apadāna, see http://apadanatranslation.com/text/chapter-2/poem-001.html.
notes.9
9. Salomon 2000. The third line of this verse has not been preserved. Note that the second line is the same as in the Pali version, whereas the first word in the first line is in agreement with the Sanskrit verse in the Kanakavarṇāvadāna. The Gāndhārī verse is also closely related to the Prakritic Sanskrit verses uttered by the pratyekabuddhas in the Mahāvastu (Mvu I 357–359), such as for instance: saṃsevamānasya siyāti sneho snehānvayaṃ duḥkham idaṃ prabhoti | mitreṣu ādīnavaṃ saṃmṛśanto eko care khaḍgaviṣāṇakalpo || “Keeping close company, one comes to have attachment; It is from attachment that this suffering comes about. Fully reflecting upon the danger in friends, One should move alone like a rhinoceros.”
notes.10
10. In this later Pali commentary on the Suttanipāta, attributed to the fifth-century Pali scholar Buddhaghosa but based on earlier Sinhala commentaries, each verse of the Khaggavisāṇa Sutta is accompanied by its own background story. In the case of verse 36, this involves a paccekabodhisatta, a being striving for individual awakening, who grows up as a prince in Vārāṇasī. Upon hearing of the death of his future bride, the prince reflects upon the conditions of existence and attains individual awakening, after which he shares the verse in question with his ministers. For the full story, see Bodhi 2017, pp. 425–430.
notes.11
11. Salomon (2000, p. 6, n. 4) makes mention of a Sanskrit manuscript from Turfan that is said to contain another such text with pratyekabuddha stories around these verses. He points out that this part of the manuscript does not appear to have been published yet.
notes.12
12. This is stated in one of the concluding verses of The Rhinoceros Sutta in both the Pali (Sn v. 73) and the Gāndhārī (v. 36), but it is also expressed at the beginning of the Gāndhārī version and the Sanskrit verses in the Mahāvastu, in which the second half of the first verse reads: maitreṇa cittena hitānukaṃpī eko care khaḍgaviṣāṇakalpo, “With a mind of loving-kindness, being compassionate for the welfare [of others], one should move alone like a rhinoceros.”
notes.13
13. Taishō 155, 109c1–110b18. While we have taken the Chinese 本行 as a rendering of the Sanskrit pūrvacaryā, these characters could also very well be a rendering of pūrvayoga.
notes.14
14. Taishō 162.
notes.15
15. Bagchi (1927, p. 262) mentions that according to several Chinese scriptural catalogs, this Chinese translation of the Kanakavarṇapūrvayoga was the second to be made, after a first translation by Dharmaruci, a monk from southern India who resided at Luoyang at the beginning of the sixth century. This first translation is said to have been made in 507 ce and later corrected by Bodhiruci. However, at some point it was lost. On Dharmaruci, see Bagchi 1927: 246–47.
notes.16
16. Denkarma, folio 301.a; Herrmann-Pfandt 2008, p. 164; Phangthangma 2003, p. 22. In both the Denkarma and Phangthangma entries, the title is extended with bstan pa, which renders the translation of the entire title as “The Teaching on the Past Endeavor of Kanakavarṇa.”
notes.17
17. For this Sanskrit version of the Divyāvadāna, see Cowell & Neil 1886, pp. 290–98; and Vaidya 1959, pp. 180–84. Most of the Nepalese Divyāvadāna manuscripts are on Himalayan paper and date from the seventeenth century onwards. Cowell and Neil’s Sanskrit edition—from which Vaidya’s edition is derived—is based on four of these relatively late manuscripts. In recent years, however, two older manuscripts of the Divyāvadāna have been brought to light, which are written on palm leaf and dated on paleographical grounds to the eleventh century ce (Formigatti 2016, p. 127). Unfortunately, these palm-leaf manuscripts are only partially preserved and do not contain the text of the Kanakavarṇāvadāna. The Divyāvadāna was an important source for the nineteenth-century French scholar Eugène Burnouf in his pioneering study on Indian Buddhism, Introduction à l’histoire du Buddhisme Indien, in which he also included a translation of the Kanakavarṇāvadāna (1844, pp. 79–87; for a recent English translation, see Burnouf 2010, pp. 130–37). A German translation of the Kanakavarṇāvadāna was published about a century ago by Heinrich Zimmer (1925, pp. 85–101). Apart from a translation into Japanese by Satoshi Hiraoka (2007, I, pp. 51936), there is now also an English translation of the Kanakavarṇāvadāna in Andy Rotman’s second volume of Divyāvadāna stories (2017, pp. 218–38).
notes.18
18. Vaidya 1959, pp. 276–77. For an English summary of this version, see Tucci 1949, p. 485.
notes.19
19. On the Avadānakalpalatā (byang chub sems dpa’i rtogs pa brjod pa dpag bsam gyi ’khri shing or dpag bsam ’khri shing for short, Toh 4155) and its popularity in Tibet, both in textual and visual form, see Tucci 1949, pp. 437–41. For an example of such a woodcut depiction of the story of King Kanakavarṇa, see Rani 2005, p. 49 and woodcut 14.
notes.20
20. See Feer 1891, pp. 119–20 for a short summary of this versified version of King Kanakavarṇa’s story. One notable difference in this version seems to be that the bodhisattva abandons his bodhisattva path after seeing a child who had died due to insufficent breastmilk. The Sanskrit text, however, has not been published yet; the Sanskrit edition by Kanga Takahata is based on another recension of the Ratnamālāvadāna that does not contain the story of King Kanakavarṇa.
notes.21
21. Several of these emendations have also been proposed in Hiraoka 2009, p. 66.
notes.22
22. For a French translation from the Tibetan, see Feer 1891, pp. 117–19; for the Sanskrit text, see Speyer 1902–6, pp. 173–76.
notes.23
23. See The Hundred Deeds (Karmaśataka, Toh 340), .
notes.24
24. The Tibetan translators have here rendered the Sanskrit śloka as tshigs su bcad pa, “verse,” but since it is here used in conjunction with kīrti, “renown,” and śabda, “fame,” it is more appropriate to interpret śloka in its wider sense as “acclaim” or “praise.”
notes.25
25. The extant Sanskrit of the Divyāvadāna version (henceforth “the extant Sanskrit version”) here adds digvidikṣu, “in [all] directions and subdirections.”
notes.26
26. The extant Sanskrit version in the Divyāvadāna here adds dṛṣṭa eva dharme, “in this present life.”
notes.27
27. The extant Sanskrit version here adds the verbs upasaṃpadya pravedayate, “having attained which, he makes it known,” which then concludes the sentence. Both the Tibetan and the Chinese translation lack renderings of these verbs, which indicates that they were absent in the underlying Sanskrit versions from which they were made.
notes.28
28. The Tibetan translation has dam pa’i chos ston te (S, N, H: to), which may be translated as a present or an imperfect past tense. The phrase dam pa’i chos suggests that the translators had read saddharmaṃ, “the good Dharma,” in the underlying Sanskrit text. The standard reading of this set passage, however, is sa dharmaṃ deśayati, “he teaches the Dharma,” which is the reading in the extant Sanskrit. The Chinese translation likewise does not contain an equivalent for the Tibetan dam pa’i.
notes.29
29. Following S: sbyin pa la ’gyed pa; D, N: sbyin pa la ’ged pa; Y, J, C: sbyin pa la ’god pa; U: sbyin pa la dged pa. The Stok reading seems to be the older rendering for the Sanskrit dānasaṃvibhāgasya.
notes.30
30. The extant Sanskrit version here lacks an equivalent for the Tibetan bdag gis, “themselves.” The Chinese rendering 自, however, indicates that another Sanskrit version here did read ātmanas, “themselves.”
notes.31
31. The Tibetan translation reads gzhan dag la, “to others,” whereas the extant Sanskrit reads sacel labheran dakṣiṇīyaṃ pratigrāhakam, “if they were to meet a recipient worthy of offerings,” which is also the reading in the Dāna Sūtra (Tripathi 1995, p. 18). The Chinese translation here reads 他, in agreement with the Tibetan, which suggests that another Sanskrit version indeed read parān, “to others.” Similar to the extant Sanskrit, the parallel passage in the Pali Dānasaṃvibhāga Sutta (It 26) contains the phrase “if there were to be recipients” (sace nesaṃ paṭiggāhakā assu), and in the following verses the recommended recipients are specified as “noble ones” (ariyesu) and “those worthy of offerings” (dakkhiṇeyyesu).
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