འཕགས་པ་སངས་རྒྱས་བཅ་གཉས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro: 84000's introduction
The Twelve Buddhas intro
- Language
- English
84000's introduction
intro.1
The Twelve Buddhas opens at Rājagṛha with a dialogue between the Buddha Śākyamuni and the bodhisattva Maitreya about the eastern buddhafield of a buddha whose abbreviated name is King of Jewels. This buddha prophesies that when he passes into complete nirvāṇa, the bodhisattva Incomparable will take his place as a buddha whose abbreviated name is Victory Banner King. Śākyamuni then provides the names of the remaining ten tathāgatas, locating them in the ten directions surrounding Victory Banner King’s buddhafield Full of Pearls. After listing the full set of names of these twelve buddhas and their directional relationship to Victory Banner King, the Buddha Śākyamuni provides an accompanying mantra-dhāraṇī and closes with a set of thirty-seven verses outlining the benefits of remembering the names of these buddhas.
intro.2
The Twelve Buddhas opens in Rājagṛha, where the Buddha Śākyamuni is accompanied by a large gathering of monks and bodhisattvas. The Buddha begins with a description of the eastern buddhafield Full of Pearls, where there resides a buddha whose long name could be abbreviated as King of Jewels. After King of Jewels is identified to Maitreya and the assembly, the Buddha Śākyamuni explains that whoever remembers this buddha’s name will renounce cyclic existence. We are told that King of Jewels has prophesied that once he attains parinirvāṇa and his teachings have faded from the world, the bodhisattva Incomparable will succeed him as a buddha whose name (in abbreviated form) is Victory Banner King. The Buddha Śākyamuni then names the buddhas who will populate the buddhafields surrounding that of Victory Banner King in the ten directions, instructs the audience to remember their names and prostrate to them, and outlines the form of a sixfold service for their worship. He describes the benefits that accrue from reciting the names of these twelve buddhas, and then teaches a verse aspiration and a dhāraṇī to be recited in order to attain the results of the practice. The text ends with a set of thirty-seven verses describing the benefits of bearing the names of the twelve buddhas in mind.
intro.3
There are no available Sanskrit versions of this text. The first Chinese translation of this text was completed by Jñānagupta in 587 ce (Taishō 1348)¹ and the second was produced by Yijing in 711 ce (Taishō 1349).² The translator’s colophon to the Tibetan translation tells us that The Twelve Buddhas was translated by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla along with the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé (c. eighth century). The text is listed as a sūtra in both the Denkarma³ and Phangthangma⁴ royal Tibetan catalogues of translated works, which tells us that the Tibetan translation was completed prior to the compilation and publication of the Denkarma catalogue in 812 ce.
intro.4
This translation was completed in consultation with the versions of the text from the General Sūtra Section (mdo sde), the Tantra Collection (rgyud ’bum), and the Compendium of Dhāraṇīs (gzungs ’dus)⁵ of the Degé Kangyur in conjunction with the text as it appears in the Stok Palace Kangyur and the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma). The only notable variant between these versions of the text is that the witnesses in the General Sūtra Section of the Degé and in the Stok Palace Kangyur refer to the bodhisattva prophesied to become the next buddha presiding over the buddhafield Full of Pearls by the name Stainless (dri med) instead of the more common name Incomparable (’dra ba med).⁶ The dhāraṇī in this text is rendered in Sanskrit transliteration based on the Degé, with significant variants noted.⁷ A tentative English translation of the dhāraṇī is also provided in a note.