འཕགས་པ་བྱམས་པས་ཞས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད notes.7

notes.7

7. Of the three sūtras called The Question of Maitreya (byams pas zhus pa) listed in the Denkarma, the first is most likely the aforementioned longer sūtra from the Ratnakūṭa, Toh 85. The second is listed among the general Mahāyāna sūtras (theg pa chen po’i mdo sde sna tshogs) and described in the catalog as having the length of seventy ślokas (a śloka equaling sixteen syllables in the Sanskrit), which is far too long for this text. Finally, the “small” Question of Maitreya (’phags pa byams pas zhus pa chung ngu) has a lacuna in the printed text where the number indicating its length would normally be visible; however, since the texts listed in the catalog are ordered by descending length, it can be surmised that it is between fifteen and thirty ślokas in length (Denkarma, folio 300.a). This correlates with the “small” Question of Maitreya (spelled slightly different, ’phags pa byams pas zhus pa nangs kyi chung ngu) found in the Phangthangma, which is listed as having sixteen ślokas (Phangthangma (2003), p. 18). Although these lengths listed in the catalogs tend to be somewhat unreliable, this length closely matches our text. As a side note in regard to the seventy-śloka Question of Maitreya, the Phangthangma does not mention the seventy-śloka text in the catalog’s section for general Mahāyana sūtras, but it does mention a Question of Maitreya of forty ślokas in a miscellaneous section for texts that were not found in the official catalogs but in a list recorded by a certain monk, Shönu Nyingpo (ban dhe gzhon nu snying po; see ibid., p. 50). See also Halkias (2004), pp. 75–76.