Bhadrakalpika Sūtra

Bhadrakalpikasūtra (Full Sanskrit: Āryabhadrakalpikanāmamahāyānasūtra, Wylie: ’phags pa bskal pa bzang po zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo, The Noble Great Vehicle Sūtra “The Good Eon”) is a Mahāyāna sutra which discusses the names and deeds of over one thousand Buddhas of this "Fortunate Aeon" (bhadra kalpa).[1][2] Most of the Buddhas in this sutra are future Buddhas, thus the sutra provides a future Buddhological long history of our world system.[3]

Buddhist stele with the Thousand Buddha motif, Northern Wei dynasty, early 6th century CE. The motif of a "thousand buddhas" (or 10,000) is a common one in Mahayana Buddhism.

The sutra contains 24 chapters and dates to around 200-250 CE.[4] The sutra is the first sutra in the Kangyur's general sutra section and is one of the longest sutras translated into Tibetan.[2] Other parallel versions of the sutra are available in Chinese, Mongolian, and Khotanese in variants that differ slightly as to the number of Buddhas. For example, the Khotanese version has one thousand and five Buddhas.[5]

In 2017, United States Representative, Colleen Hanabusa, was sworn in on a copy of the Fortune Aeon.[6]

History and background
A wall of Buddhas at the Thousand Buddha Mountain (千佛山; pinyin: Qiān Fó Shān), southeast of Jinan, the capital of Shandong.
Photo showing Dunhuang Cave 16 and the manuscripts piled up for Aurel Stein near the entrance to Cave 17, the “library cave” at the Mogao Caves

The original Indic text is now lost, though fragments in Gandhari and Sanskrit do survive.[3] One early Chinese translation of the Bhadrakalpikasūtra was done by Dharmarakṣa, a native of Dunhuang, between third and fourth centuries. However this version is incomplete according to Peter Skilling.[3] That the thousand Buddha motif was popular in the Dunhuang region is evidenced by the "Thousand-Buddha Cave", which are world-renowned grottoes at Dunhuang. Various lists of thousand Buddhas have also been found in Khotanese sources, verifying the importance of this narrative theme for the Buddhist Iranian Kingdom of Khotan.[3] Ajanta Cave no. II also includes epigraphic evidence for the idea of the one thousand Buddhas.[3]

The Indian Vidyakarasimha and the Tibetan Dpal-dbyans translated the text into Tibetan in the 8th century, during the early translation era.[7]

The theme of the "good eon" (Skt.: bhadrakalpa, Pali: bhadda-kappa) is found in earlier sources, such as the Mahāvadāna (Pali: Mahāpadāna) sutra in which the Buddha states:

In this very Fortunate Eon, four truly and fully Awakened Ones arise in the world: Krakasunda, Kanakamuni, Kāśyapa, and myself, Śākyamuni, at present. This is the nature of things.[3]

According to Skilling, the idea that one thousand Buddhas will arise in this good eon "circulated in the north and northwest of the Indian subcontinent by the beginning of the Christian Era, if not earlier."[3] The idea of one thousand Buddhas is also mentioned in the Mahāvastu.[3] Various schools had different ideas about this. Some held that just five Buddhas will arise in this eon, others that five hundred Buddhas will arise (which seems to have been common in some Sarvastivada circles) and others held that one thousand Buddhas will arise. Numerous Mahayana sutras mention the idea of one thousand Buddhas in this good eon, including the Lotus sutra, the Vimalakirti, and the Surangamasamadhi.[3]

Overview

The Good Eon depicts the names and circumstances of the one thousand and four (or one thousand and two) Buddhas of this current eon. The frame narrative states that sutra was taught by Shakyamuni Buddha in Vaiśālī on the request of bodhisattva Prāmodyarāja.[8] In the frame narrative, the Buddha states that far in the past, a monarch (which was a past life of the Buddha Akṣobhya) helped a Dharma teacher who was the Buddha Amitāyus. As a result of the good merit of this, the monarch and his thousand sons spend eighty eons serving over three billion Buddhas.[2]

The sutra then presents a long teaching by Shakyamuni on the six perfections.[2] This long section on the six perfections contains around one hundred past life stories ( jātakas, pūrvayogas, avadānas) which illustrate the practice of the perfections.[9]

After this teaching the Buddha proceeds to enumerate the names of all the Buddhas in this eon in a set of verses. The list of thousand plus (the numbers varies in the different versions) Buddhas starts with Krakucchanda, Kanakamuni, Kasyapa, Shakyamuni, and Maitreya and ends with Rochasimhakhya ("Roca, the One Called Lion").[10]

Following this enumeration is the most extensive part of the entire sutra, which contains extensive accounts of the details of each Buddha in mixed prose and verse. This includes their birthplaces, families, physical appearance, their sangha, chief disciples, lifespans, length of their teaching career and their relics.[2]

The sutra then contains a third listing of the thousand plus Buddhas. This third enumeration (all in verse) explains the past life circumstances which lead each of the Buddhas to give rise to bodhicitta (the compassionate resolve aimed at awakening).[2]

The sutra closes with a story about all the thousand Buddhas and how they were all sons of a king (who was a past life of Amitāyus) and with another story about a universal emperor (a previous life of Dīpaṅkara Buddha).[2]

See also

Notes
  1. “One Thousand Buddhas from Gandhara: the Bhadrakalpikasutra and its place in Gandhari literature,” Stefan Baums, 44th Annual South Asian Conference of the Pacific Northwest, March 4–6, 2010.
  2. Dharmachakra Translation Committee (2022). "The Noble Great Vehicle Sūtra "The Good Eon" (Introduction)". 84000 Translating The Words of The Buddha. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
  3. Skilling, Peter (2010). Note On the Bhadrakalpika-sūtra. 創価大学国際仏教学高等研究所年報=Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University=ソウカ ダイガク コクサイ ブッキョウガク コウトウ ケンキュウジョ ネンポウ. pp. 195 - 230
  4. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, By Robert E. Buswell Jr., Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2013 p. 106
  5. BHADRAKALPIKASŪTRA, Ronald E. Emmerick, Encyclopaedia Iranica, December 15, 1989, Vol. IV, Fasc. 2, pp. 190-191 http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bhadrakalpikasutra-the-name-of-a-buddhist-mahayanist-text
  6. "Hawaii's Colleen Hanabusa makes a 'bittersweet' return to Congress". NBC News.
  7. Dr. Shailendra K. Verma, "Emergence and Evolution of the Buddha Image (From its inception to 8th century A.D.)" a doctoral thesis. At http://www.exoticindiaart.com/product/TK70/
  8. The Fortunate Aeon: How the Thousand Buddhas Became Enlightened (Tibetan Translation Series), 4 volume set (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1986).
  9. Skilling, Peter; Saerji. Jātakas in the Bhadrakalpika-sūtra: A provisional inventory(1). 創価大学国際仏教学高等研究所年報 Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University (ソウカ ダイガク コクサイ ブッキョウガク コウトウ ケンキュウジョ ネンポウ). 2019, pp. 125 - 169
  10. The Fortunate Aeon: How the Thousand Buddhas Became Enlightened, p. 1733
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