Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields

The sūtra Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields takes place in the kingdom of Magadha where the Buddha is dwelling amid an incalculable assembly of bodhisattvas. Among the bodhisattvas is the sūtra’s primary speaker, Acintya­prabha­rāja, who offers a discourse on the relativity of time between buddhafields. He enumerates eleven buddhafields, with an eon in the first being equivalent to a day in the following buddhafield, where an eon is, in turn, the equivalent of a day in the next, and so forth. The sūtra thus presents a hierarchy of buddhafields that begins with our world and culminates with the paramount buddhafield, Padmaśrī. This language of incredibly vast scales of time has the effect of testing the limits of human conception, thereby demonstrating that the qualities of the buddhas and their buddhafields are beyond quantification or conceptualization. Acintya­prabha­rāja concludes his discourse by presenting the benefits of engaging with this sūtra, foremost of which is being visited by buddhas from an infinite number of buddhafields at the moment of death.

Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields is nearly identical to “The Chapter on the Scale of Life,” the thirty-seventh chapter of the Ornaments of the Buddhas (Toh 44, Skt. Buddhāvataṃsaka),1 and The Sūtra of King of the Inconceivable (Toh 268).2 Of the three texts, Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields is the most elaborate in that it includes an introductory narrative (Skt. nidāna) and a conclusion whereas “The Chapter on the Scale of Life” does not, and it explicitly names the buddhafields and their buddhas while The Sūtra of King of the Inconceivable gives only the names of the buddhas.

Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields is not mentioned in either the Denkarma (Tib. ldan/lhan dkar ma) or Phangthangma (Tib. ’phang thang ma) catalogs, the two extant indexes of translations from the Imperial Period (629–841 ᴄᴇ). Despite this, the Tibetan translation might be roughly dated between the late eighth to the early ninth century based on its colophon, which states that it was translated by the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé alongside the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla. It is worth noting, however, that the colophon that contains the names of the Indian and Tibetan translators is not found in any of the Thempangma (them spangs ma) Kangyurs.

There is an extant Sanskrit witness for Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields with the nearly identical title Ananta­buddha­kṣetraguṇodbhāvana­nāma-mahāyāna­sūtra (The Mahāyāna Sūtra: Proclaiming the Qualities of the Infinite Buddhafields).

This sūtra is the seventeenth in a manuscript collection of twenty sūtras that is presently held in Lhasa at the Potala Palace. The full manuscript, which was scribed by a single hand, is missing the final colophon that would have provided key information on the date and provenance of the collection, making it impossible to say when, where, or by whom the Sanskrit manuscript was compiled.3 In terms of content, the Sanskrit witness and Tibetan translation align closely, with only a handful of variants that have been noted below. The Sanskrit witness is particularly noteworthy for stating in its colophon that it belongs to “the extensive collection, Ornaments of the Buddhas,” making it one of the few Sanskrit sources to attest to the possible existence of an Ornaments of the Buddhas collection in India.4 The Tibetan translation of Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields does not explicitly identify itself as part of an Ornaments of the Buddhas collection as the Ananta­buddha­kṣetraguṇodbhāvana does, suggesting that the former arrived in Tibet as an independently circulating sūtra that was not recognized as a part of the Ornaments of the Buddhas collection as it was transmitted to Tibet. Because both “The Chapter on the Scale of Life” of the Ornaments of the Buddhas and The Sūtra of King of the Inconceivable are nearly identical in content to Expounding the Qualities of the Thus-Gone Ones’ Buddhafields, the Ananta­buddha­kṣetraguṇodbhāvana serves as an important Sanskrit resource for studying those texts as well.

The translation offered here is based on the version found in the Degé Kangyur in close comparison with the Sanskrit text of the Ananta­buddha­kṣetraguṇodbhāvana. Additionally, the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace Kangyurs were also consulted, and “The Chapter on the Scale of Life” and The Sūtra of the Inconceivable King informed this translation. A Chinese translation of the sūtra was produced by Faxian (337–ca. 422) and is included in the Chinese canon (Taishō 290 Jiao liang yi qie fo cha gong de 較量一切佛刹功德). An English translation of the Ananta­buddha­kṣetraguṇodbhāvana has been published in Vinītā 2010 alongside a critical edition of the Sanskrit text and transcription of the Tibetan and Chinese translations.