Mañjuśrī’s Teaching

Mañjuśrī’s Teaching takes place in the Jeta Grove in Śrāvastī, where the Buddha is giving a teaching to congregations of monks and bodhisattvas. Mañjuśrī emerges from the audience with a parasol and holds it over the Buddha’s head as an offering. The god Susīma, who is in the audience, asks Mañjuśrī whether he is satisfied with his offering. Mañjuśrī replies that those who seek enlightenment should never be content with making offerings to the Buddha. Susīma then asks which purpose one should keep in mind when making offerings to the Buddha. In response, Mañjuśrī lists a set of four purposes: (1) the mind of awakening, (2) liberating all sentient beings, (3) preserving unbroken the lineage of the Three Jewels, and (4) purifying the buddha realms.

This list of the four purposes seems to be uncommon in the Buddhist tradition. Although there are a few other sets of fourfold purposes found in the Kangyur and Tengyur in various contexts, there is only one other occurrence of this list, which is found in the Catuṣka­nirhāra­sūtra.1 This sūtra is interesting as it begins with a passage closely resembling Mañjuśrī’s Teaching; its setting and opening are the same and are followed by the same dialogue between Mañjuśrī and the god, although here the god’s name is Śrībhadra (dpal bzang) rather than Susīma. In the Catuṣka­nirhāra­sūtra the four purposes are phrased in somewhat different terms but have essentially the same meaning.2 The sūtra is considerably longer, too, since after receiving Mañjuśrī’s reply regarding the four purposes Śrībhadra proceeds to ask a series of questions, all regarding things that are taught in sets of four.

There was no known Sanskrit witness of Mañjuśrī’s Teaching until recently, when a manuscript containing twenty texts, all of them sūtras, was found in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā published a critical edition and English translation of this collection in the series Sanskrit Texts from the Autonomous Region (2010). Unfortunately, due to the inaccessibility of the manuscript collection and because it is missing a final colophon, its origin and date are currently unknown.3 Citations of the Sanskrit are given using Vinītā’s emendations of the handwritten manuscript. There seems to be a thematic connection among the twenty sūtras. Vinītā gives the example of moral discipline (śīla) as a recurrent theme in the manuscript,4 and we also can note the prevalence of themes of karmic cause and effect and the hierarchy of merit. Interestingly, this sūtra is quoted among others, including several sūtras from the Potala manuscript, by Kawa Paltsek (ska ba dpal brtsegs, eighth century ᴄᴇ) in a text contained in the Tengyur called the gsung rab rin po che’i gtam rgyud dang shAkya’i rabs rgyud.5 Here we can identify the same recurrent themes among the quotations.

There is no Chinese translation of this sūtra,6 but there is a Chinese translation of the Catuṣka­nirhāra­sūtra, which, as mentioned above, has an opening passage that closely parallels that of Mañjuśrī’s Teaching. This Chinese version of the Catuṣkanirhāra was translated by Śikṣānanda between 695–700 ᴄᴇ.7

According to the Tibetan translators’ colophon, Mañjuśrī’s Teaching was translated into Tibetan by the Indian preceptor Surendrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé, who were active during the late eighth–early ninth centuries ᴄᴇ. The Denkarma and Phangthangma imperial catalogs, which are dated to the early ninth century, both list Mañjuśrī’s Teaching among their inventories of sūtras.8

We have based our translation on the Degé edition of the Tibetan Kangyur in consultation with the Sanskrit and other Kangyur editions, and compared this scripture to the parallel section found in both the Tibetan and Chinese versions of the Catuṣka­nirhāra­sūtra. These various Tibetan witnesses, along with the Sanskrit, are generally consistent. Any instance in which we have diverged from the Degé has been noted, and significant differences found in the various versions of the sūtra are recorded in the notes.