འཕགས་པ་གྲང་ཁྱར་གྱས་འཚ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.2

intro.2

The City Beggar Woman is a short Mahāyāna sūtra that tells of a poor woman in Śrāvastī who lights an oil lamp in veneration of the Buddha Śākyamuni, makes a vow to become a buddha in the future, and then receives a prophecy of her future buddhahood from the Buddha. As Peter Skilling notes in the introduction to his translation of this sūtra, there are at least two other iterations of this story found elsewhere in the Tibetan Kangyur.¹ One is in The Chapter on Medicines in the Vinayavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya,² and the other is chapter 37 of The Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish .³ The version in the Tibetan Vinaya also has a close parallel preserved in Sanskrit in the Divyāvadāna.⁴ Skilling also notes that the story was among those selected for illustration in Ming dynasty woodcuts of events from the Buddha’s life and in other Chinese artworks.⁵