Fetching
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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1translation from the Chinese gives us on the whole a true idea of the Sanskrit original, I was so much disappointed at the contents of the Sutra, that I hesitated for some time whether I ought to publish it in this volume. What determined me at last to do so was partly the wish of my friends in Japan who expected a complete translation of their three sacred books, partly my own wish that nothing should be suppressed that might lead us to form a favourable or unfavourable, if only a correct judgment of Buddhism in its Mahayana dress, as professed by millions of people in China and Japan. What gives to these Sutras their highest interest in the eyes of Sanskrit scholars is their date, which can be determined with considerable certainty. Those who know how few certain dates there are in the history of Sanskrit literature will welcome these Mahayana Sutras as a new sheet-anchor in the chronology of Sanskrit literature. We have as yet only three, the date of /iTandragupta (Sandrokyptos) as fixed by Greek historians, and serving to determine the dates of Aj-oka and his inscriptions in the third, and indirectly of Buddha in the fifth century. The second was supplied by Hiouen-thsang's travels in India, 629-645 A. D., and the third by I-tsing's travels in India in the years 671-690 A. D. I was able to show in my lectures on ' India, what can it teach us?' delivered at Cambridge in 1882, that Hiouenthsang, while in India, had been the pupil of G^ayasena and Mitrasena, which supplied scholars with a fixed date for the literary activity of Gu/^aprabha, Vasubandhu, and their contemporaries and immediate predecessors and successors. Still more important was the date which I-tsing supplied for BhartrAari and the literary period in which he moved. Bhartr/hari's death, fixed by I-tsing at 650 A. D., has served as a rally ing-point for a number of literary men belonging to what I called the Renaissance of Sanskrit literature. I pointed out at the same time that the period between the end of the Vedic literature, represented in its last efforts by the numerous Sutra- works, and the beginning of the Renaissance in the fourth century A. D., would have to be filled to a great extent by Buddhist works. I hardly *b3
2Xxii THE AMITAYUK-DHVANA-S^^TRA. thought then that MahayAna texts like the Sukhavativyuha, which seemed to be of so secondary a character, would claim a foremost place in that period. But there can be little doubt that the first Chinese translation of it by Lokaraksha was made between the years 147-186 A. D. ; the second by K' K/iien between 223-253 A. D. ; and the third and best by Saiighavarman, an Indian 6'rama;/a of Tibetan origin, in 252 A. D., whereas the first translation of a Sanskrit text into Chinese, that of the Sutra in fortytwo sections by Kajyapa Matanga, is ascribed to the year 67 A.D. I need hardly say that there are no Sanskrit texts the date of which can be fixed with so much certainty as those of the Sanskrit originals of the Chinese translations. The doctrine of Amitabha and his paradise Sukhavati seems to have acquired great popularity in China and afterwards in Japan. We need not wonder when we see how easy salvation was made by it, particularly according to the teaching of the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha and the Amitayurdh>-ana-sutra. The Buddhists who, as I have pointed out on several occasions, are the debtors of the Brahmans in almost all their philosophical speculations, seem to me to have borrowed also their half-mythological conception of Sukhdvati or the Land of Bliss from the same source. In the Vishwu and other Pura;/as, when the cities of the Lokapalagods are mentioned, in the different quarters of the sky, the city of Varu;/a is placed in the West, and it is called Mukhya, the cliief, or Sukha, the happy, or NimloX'ani, the city of sunset. This Sukha is, I think, the prototype of Sukhavati ^ Though it would be rash to conclude that therefore the Puraz/as, as we now possess them, because they mention the Land of Bliss or Sukhd, must be older than our text of the Sukhavati, say 100 A. D., we may say that Paura;/ik legends must certainly have existed at that early time, and this is a matter of some importance. I have not found any I^rahnianic antecedents of Avalokitejvara, ' See .ilso Anandngiri on .9ankara'b commentary on the A7iandog)'a-upanish.id, III, 10, 4, c<l. Cnlc. p. 172.
3INTRODUCTION. XXUl but the occurrence of his name in the Sukhavati-vyuha shows that he was known much earHer than is commonlysupposed, that is about loo A. D. In Japan, where Buddhism was introduced by way of Corea in 552 A. D., we hear of the Sukhavati-vyuha for the first time in 640 A. D., when the emperor Jomci held a reh'gious service at his palace to hear an exposition of the Sutra on Sukhavati from the lips of Ye-yin, a vSramawa invited from China. Many works were composed in Japan as well as in China on Amitabha and his Paradise, as may be seen from the Catalogue of the Chinese Tripi/aka, published by my friend and former pupil Bunyiu Nanjio in 1883 (Clarendon Press). I have to thank Dr. Winternitz and Mr. Takakusu for their kind help in preparing the indices and reading the proof-sheets of this volume. F. MAX MULLER. Oxford : Jan. 26, i< The following List of Buddhist Texts, translated in the Sacred Books of the East, may be useful to students in China and J a tan : Sanskrit Title. Chinese Title. Translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha, A. u. 420. From Chinese into Enf,'lish by S. Beal, Fo-sho-hing-lsanking, S.B. E., vol. -xi.x. I. Buddha>tarita (-kavya), ' Life of Buddha,' a poem, by An-aghosha, of India. See Anccdota Oxonicnsia, Aryan Series, vol. i, part vii, 1S93. Translated by E. B. CowcU, S. B. E., vol. xlix.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1translation from the Chinese gives us on the whole a true idea of the Sanskrit original, I was so much disappointed at the contents of the Sutra, that I hesitated for some time whether I ought to publish it in this volume. What determined me at last to do so was partly the wish of my friends in Japan who expected a complete translation of their three sacred books, partly my own wish that nothing should be suppressed that might lead us to form a favourable or unfavourable, if only a correct judgment of Buddhism in its Mahayana dress, as professed by millions of people in China and Japan. What gives to these Sutras their highest interest in the eyes of Sanskrit scholars is their date, which can be determined with considerable certainty. Those who know how few certain dates there are in the history of Sanskrit literature will welcome these Mahayana Sutras as a new sheet-anchor in the chronology of Sanskrit literature. We have as yet only three, the date of /iTandragupta (Sandrokyptos) as fixed by Greek historians, and serving to determine the dates of Aj-oka and his inscriptions in the third, and indirectly of Buddha in the fifth century. The second was supplied by Hiouen-thsang's travels in India, 629-645 A. D., and the third by I-tsing's travels in India in the years 671-690 A. D. I was able to show in my lectures on ' India, what can it teach us?' delivered at Cambridge in 1882, that Hiouenthsang, while in India, had been the pupil of G^ayasena and Mitrasena, which supplied scholars with a fixed date for the literary activity of Gu/^aprabha, Vasubandhu, and their contemporaries and immediate predecessors and successors. Still more important was the date which I-tsing supplied for BhartrAari and the literary period in which he moved. Bhartr/hari's death, fixed by I-tsing at 650 A. D., has served as a rally ing-point for a number of literary men belonging to what I called the Renaissance of Sanskrit literature. I pointed out at the same time that the period between the end of the Vedic literature, represented in its last efforts by the numerous Sutra- works, and the beginning of the Renaissance in the fourth century A. D., would have to be filled to a great extent by Buddhist works. I hardly *b3
2Xxii THE AMITAYUK-DHVANA-S^^TRA. thought then that MahayAna texts like the Sukhavativyuha, which seemed to be of so secondary a character, would claim a foremost place in that period. But there can be little doubt that the first Chinese translation of it by Lokaraksha was made between the years 147-186 A. D. ; the second by K' K/iien between 223-253 A. D. ; and the third and best by Saiighavarman, an Indian 6'rama;/a of Tibetan origin, in 252 A. D., whereas the first translation of a Sanskrit text into Chinese, that of the Sutra in fortytwo sections by Kajyapa Matanga, is ascribed to the year 67 A.D. I need hardly say that there are no Sanskrit texts the date of which can be fixed with so much certainty as those of the Sanskrit originals of the Chinese translations. The doctrine of Amitabha and his paradise Sukhavati seems to have acquired great popularity in China and afterwards in Japan. We need not wonder when we see how easy salvation was made by it, particularly according to the teaching of the Smaller Sukhavati-vyuha and the Amitayurdh>-ana-sutra. The Buddhists who, as I have pointed out on several occasions, are the debtors of the Brahmans in almost all their philosophical speculations, seem to me to have borrowed also their half-mythological conception of Sukhdvati or the Land of Bliss from the same source. In the Vishwu and other Pura;/as, when the cities of the Lokapalagods are mentioned, in the different quarters of the sky, the city of Varu;/a is placed in the West, and it is called Mukhya, the cliief, or Sukha, the happy, or NimloX'ani, the city of sunset. This Sukha is, I think, the prototype of Sukhavati ^ Though it would be rash to conclude that therefore the Puraz/as, as we now possess them, because they mention the Land of Bliss or Sukhd, must be older than our text of the Sukhavati, say 100 A. D., we may say that Paura;/ik legends must certainly have existed at that early time, and this is a matter of some importance. I have not found any I^rahnianic antecedents of Avalokitejvara, ' See .ilso Anandngiri on .9ankara'b commentary on the A7iandog)'a-upanish.id, III, 10, 4, c<l. Cnlc. p. 172.
3INTRODUCTION. XXUl but the occurrence of his name in the Sukhavati-vyuha shows that he was known much earHer than is commonlysupposed, that is about loo A. D. In Japan, where Buddhism was introduced by way of Corea in 552 A. D., we hear of the Sukhavati-vyuha for the first time in 640 A. D., when the emperor Jomci held a reh'gious service at his palace to hear an exposition of the Sutra on Sukhavati from the lips of Ye-yin, a vSramawa invited from China. Many works were composed in Japan as well as in China on Amitabha and his Paradise, as may be seen from the Catalogue of the Chinese Tripi/aka, published by my friend and former pupil Bunyiu Nanjio in 1883 (Clarendon Press). I have to thank Dr. Winternitz and Mr. Takakusu for their kind help in preparing the indices and reading the proof-sheets of this volume. F. MAX MULLER. Oxford : Jan. 26, i< The following List of Buddhist Texts, translated in the Sacred Books of the East, may be useful to students in China and J a tan : Sanskrit Title. Chinese Title. Translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha, A. u. 420. From Chinese into Enf,'lish by S. Beal, Fo-sho-hing-lsanking, S.B. E., vol. -xi.x. I. Buddha>tarita (-kavya), ' Life of Buddha,' a poem, by An-aghosha, of India. See Anccdota Oxonicnsia, Aryan Series, vol. i, part vii, 1S93. Translated by E. B. CowcU, S. B. E., vol. xlix.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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