འཕགས་པ་དཔལ་སྦས་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་མད intro: 84000's introduction
The Śrīgupta Sūtra intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
The Śrīgupta Sūtra tells the story of a plot against the life of Śākyamuni Buddha. At his guru’s instigation, a wealthy young Jain named Śrīgupta invites the Buddha to the midday meal at his house in Rājagṛha, where he has secretly prepared a fire trap and a poisoned meal. The Buddha is aware of these plans, but instead of simply avoiding the trap he accepts the invitation and uses the occasion to demonstrate his invulnerability to such harms, due to his realization and the power of his past deeds. He tells three stories from his previous lives as a pheasant chick, a hare, and the peacock king Suvarṇāvabhāsa—lives in which he similarly overcame fire and poison. After Śrīgupta’s attempts fail, Śākyamuni recounts yet another of his former lives in which Śrīgupta, this time as a brahmin teacher, similarly attempted to trap him in a pit of fire. Ashamed of his actions, Śrīgupta apologizes for his mistakes, takes refuge, and receives the vows of a lay devotee in the Buddha’s community.
intro.2
The Śrīgupta Sūtra tells the story of a plot to kill Śākyamuni Buddha by fire and poison, a narrative that frames four additional stories of the Buddha’s past lives that demonstrate examples of his invulnerability. In the framing narrative, the assassination attempt is carried out by the titular Śrīgupta. He is ordered to kill the Buddha by his Jain teacher, Jñātiputra, who disputes Śākyamuni’s claim to omniscience. However, because the Buddha is in fact omniscient, he sees through the plot and uses it as an opportunity to bring Śrīgupta to the Buddhist path. In its broad strokes, this story is similar to the one found in the Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā, a fourth- or fifth-century Pali scriptural commentary.
intro.3
Interwoven with the dramatic narrative of the assassination attempt are scenes in which the Buddha recounts four of his past lives: as a pheasant chick, a hare, the peacock king Suvarṇāvabhāsa, and a young brahmin boy named Dharmakāma. Each of these stories is told to demonstrate why Śrīgupta’s plot was doomed to fail; but on a deeper level, each one underscores the infallibility of the consequences—good and bad—of actions from one’s previous lives.
intro.4
The third of these vignettes is particularly noteworthy for recounting the tale of Śākyamuni’s previous incarnation as Suvarṇāvabhāsa, a peacock king who similarly escaped a plot to poison him. Stories of Suvarṇāvabhāsa appear throughout the Buddhist literature, and though they can differ substantially, they generally share the feature of Suvarṇāvabhāsa’s escape from some kind of snare or attempt on his life through the recitation of a series of verses, a dhāraṇī, or a mantra.¹ The version of the story found in The Śrīgupta Sūtra is unique, but it too includes a series of verses that can be recited over food to neutralize any poisons it may contain. In this sūtra, once the Buddha has finished the story of his life as Suvarṇāvabhāsa and his escape from death by poisoning, he gives Śrīgupta a liturgy to recite over the food he has poisoned, thus rendering it safe for the Buddha and his monks to eat. It is possible that this series of verses may have been intended to be extracted for use in a more general apotropaic fashion to avert poisoning.
intro.5
There is no known Sanskrit witness of The Śrīgupta Sūtra. It was translated into Chinese in 583 by Narendrayaśas (516–89) under the title De hu zhangzhe jing (德護長者經, Taishō 545). The sūtra must have been well-known in China, as the famous seventh-century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang felt it important to record in Book Nine of his Records of the Western Regions the existence of a stūpa in Rājagṛha marking the site of Śrīgupta’s house.
intro.6
The Tibetan translation was made by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla with the Tibetan monk Yeshé Dé. The sūtra is likewise recorded in the Denkarma (Tib. ldan dkar ma),² a ninth-century catalog of translations made during Tibet’s Imperial Period. Thus we can safely date the original Tibetan translation to the late eighth or early ninth centuries ce.
intro.7
The English translation presented here was made based on the Tibetan translation as preserved in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and the version found in the Stok Palace Kangyur.