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JIABS

Journal of the InternationalAssociation of Buddhist Studies

Volume 31 Number 1.2 2008 (2010)

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The Journal of the InternationalAssociation of Buddhist Studies (ISSN0193-600XX) is the organ of theInternational Association of BuddhistStudies, Inc. As a peer-reviewed journal,it welcomes scholarly contributionspertaining to all facets of BuddhistStudies.JIABS is published twice yearly.

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¨Ï Copyright 2010 by the InternationalAssociation of Buddhist Studies, Inc.

Print: Ferdinand Berger & SohneG bH, A 3580 H

EDITORIAL BOARD

KELLNER Birgit

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KRASSER HelmutJoint Editors

BUSWELL RobertCHEN JinhuaCOLLINS StevenCOX ColletGOMEZ Luis O.HARRISON PaulVON HINUBER OskarJACKSON RogerJAINI Padmanabh S.KATSURA Sh.ry.KUO Li-yingLOPEZ, Jr. Donald S.MACDONALD AlexanderSCHERRER-SCHAUB CristinaSEYFORT RUEGG DavidSHARF RobertSTEINKELLNER ErnstTILLEMANS Tom

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JIABS

Journal of the InternationalAssociation of Buddhist Studies

Volume 31 Number 1.2 2008 (2010)

Obituaries

Jonathan A. SILKIn memoriam, Erik Zurcher (13 Sept. 1928 . 7 Feb. 2008) . . . . . . 3

Articles

Diwakar ACHARYA

Evidence for Mah.y.na Buddhism and Sukh.vat. cult in Indiain the middle period . Early fifth to late sixth centuryNepalese inscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Early Chinese Buddhist translationsContributions to the International Symposium ¡°Early ChineseBuddhist Translations,¡± Vienna 18.21 April, 2007

Guest editor: Max Deeg

Max DEEG

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Max DEEGCreating religious terminology . A comparative approach toearly Chinese Buddhist translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 83

Hubert DURT

Early Chinese Buddhist translations . Quotations from theearly translations in anthologies of the sixth century . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Toru FUNAYAMA

The work of Param.rtha: An example of Sino-Indian cross-

cultural exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

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Contents

Andrew GLASSGu.abhadra, B.oyun, and the Sa.yukt.gama . . . . . . . . . . 185

Paul HARRISON

Experimental core samples of Chinese translations of twoBuddhist S.tras analysed in the light of recent Sanskrit manuscriptdiscoveries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Elsa I. LEGITTIMO

Reopening the Maitreya-files . Two almost identical earlyMaitreya s.tra translations in the Chinese Canon: Wrong attributionsand text-historical entanglements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Jan NATTIERWho produced the Da mingdu jing ÓÞÙ¥ÓøÌè (T225)? A reassessmentof the evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Jungnok PARK (¢Ó)

A new attribution of the authorship of T5 and T6 Mah.parinirv..as.tra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Jonathan A. SILK

The Jifayue sheku tuoluoni jing . Translation, non-translation,both or neither?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Stefano ZACCHETTI

The nature of the Da anban shouyi jing ÓÞäÌÚõáúëòÌè T 602reconsidered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

ZHU QingzhiOn some basic features of Buddhist Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . 485

Book review

Tsunehiko SUGIKIDavid B. Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra (The Discourse of

.r. Heruka): A Study and Annotated Translation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505.Notes on the contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 543

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Evidence for Mah.y.na Buddhism andSukh.vat. cult in India in the middle period

Early fifth to late sixth centuryNepalese inscriptions*

Diwa kar Acha r ya

During the last three decades, the perception of Indian Buddhismin the middle period has drastically changed. A few scholars havesignificantly contributed to bring about this change, and GregorySCHOPEN is the foremost of them. He has surveyed and analysedlarge bodies of textual and epigraphical data. He has singled outinscriptions significant for the history of Indian Bud dhism in Indiain the period from the beginning of the Common Era to the fifth/sixth century, reflected upon them carefully, and matched the inscriptionalevidence with textual evidence. In this way, he has convincinglydemonstrated that ¡°it is virtually impossible to characteriseIndian Buddhism in the middle period ¡¦ as in any meaningfulsense Mah.y.na¡± (p. 12).1 As he remarks, ¡°the Mah.y.na in India,

* An abridged version of this paper was presented as a special lectureunder the title ¡°Mah.y.na Buddhism and Sukh.vat. Cult in AncientNepal¡± at the 14th biennial conference of the International Association ofShin Buddhist Studies held at Ryokoku University, Kyoto, in June 2009.I am grateful to Paul HARRISON, Shoryu KATSURA, Werner KNOBL, JanNATTIER, Vincent TOURNIER, and Yuko YOKOCHI for their comments andvaluable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. I would like to thankArlo GRIFFITHS for improving my English and making valuable remarkson the fi nal draft.1 If not specified otherwise, all references to Schopen are from his2005 collection Figments and Fragments of Mah.y.na Buddhism inIndia.

Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies

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Diwakar Acharya

how ever, appears to have continued very much on the margins¡± (p.11), and ¡°however mainstream the early Mah.y.na was in China,it was in India constituted of a number of diff eren tially marginalizedminority groups¡± (p. 17). This clearly suggests that we needto pay proper attention to the Buddhist communities living in themarginal areas, including Nepal, while dealing with the history ofIndian Buddhism of this period. However, Licchavi inscriptionsfrom Nepal, many of them Buddhist, have not been carefully studied,though they have been published several times. SCHOPEN himselfrefers to two undated Nepalese inscriptions from the seventhcentury but misses other important ones.2 So, in this article, I willpresent some inscriptions from the early fifth to the late sixth centurythat have not been rightly read and interpreted until now, andmake a few observations here and there, attempting to analyse thedata in the light of textual evidence.

The earliest inscription from India which clearly refers to Amit.bhaBuddha is the Govindnagar inscription from the time ofHuvi.ka, dated 26 of the Kani.ka era (equivalent to 104 or 153 CE),inscribed on the pedestal of an image of Bud dha Amit.bha.3 This

2 After the publication of Dhanavajra VAJRACHARYA¡¯s Nepali book onLicchavi inscriptions, all books on the topic are unoriginal; they rely onhim for the reading and interpretation of inscriptions. REGMI (1983) whopublished these inscriptions with an English translation and notes hasheavily relied on him. RICCARDI (1980) has tried in an article to studyall available Licchavi inscriptions which have to do with the history ofBuddhism but, materials being muddled, his study reveals very little andconfuses more. Recently LEWIS (2004) has published a study on traces ofthe Sukh.vat. cult in Newar society but, his starting point being SCHOPEN¡¯sconclusions, the historical aspect of Sukh.vat. has remained beyond hisscope. In the same way, while writing the entry on Nepal in Encyclopediaof Buddhism, he has relied on earlier publications.

3 Though published several times, this inscription was not edited andinterpreted properly before SCHOPEN. He reread and translated it in his1987 paper (now included in his 2005 collection, pp. 247.277). In 1999,FUSSMAN published his own reading of the inscription with a translationwhich is different in a few places. FUSSMAN¡¯s understanding of the dateof the inscription is better than SCHOPEN¡¯s; unlike the latter, he has not

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Mah.y.na Buddhism and Sukh.vat. cult in India

is the first indirect evidence to the early phase of the Mah.y.na,

ignored ¡®va¡¯ before ¡®2,¡¯ in the first line, and has rightly interpreted it as anabbrevia tion for var..m.sa, the rainy season. Otherwise, I fi nd SCHOPEN¡¯sreading more accurate.

However, I am bothered with one thing in the second line of the inscription:the reading p[i]t[- x](.)[- x] and its interpretation as an instrumentalsingular of pit.. As SCHOPEN has stated, the upper parts of the ak.aras arebroken, leaving only the conso nants certain, but the vowel sign on top ofthe first ak.ara is still partially visible. So, SCHOPEN has conjectured thefirst ak.ara as pi and suggested to read the word as pit.... He himself,how ever, has noted a negative point against his sugges tion: ¡°pit...inepigraphical sources has generally been interpreted as genitive plural¡±

(p. 252). FUSSMAN has tried to get rid of this negative point by suggestinganother reading, pite.a, keeping the meaning unchanged.On logical, contextual and palaeographical grounds, I see problems inaccepting either one of these conjectures. I find it less likely that the donoris first introduced as the father of his son, and then as the grandson

and son of his ancestors. We do not have any parallel for such a description.Instead, what is logically likely is that he is introduced as someone¡¯sgreat-grandson, grandson and son successively. We have parallelsfor such a description even from one of the Ku...a inscriptions fromMathur. (Luders 1961: 194.195, ¡× 162). However, this parallel is notfrom an inscription in Buddhist Sanskrit but standard Sanskrit, and so, itdoes not help us to conjecture the word we need. Nevertheless, I proposethat the donor is not the father of Sax-caka/Sancaka but a great-grandson.

If we look at the undamaged pi in line 3, we can see that the sign of istarts on the top of the frontal bar of pa, extends to the right, curves in,and rises up turning counterclockwise and making a shape resembling toa swan¡¯s neck. Now if we look at the proposed pi in line 2, what we see is

a stroke starting at the frontal bar of pa and extending to the left withoutrising up. This sign is very close to the sign of o, so the ak.ara at issuemust be po. I present here both of these ak.aras:

Altogether the word in the inscription seems to be potre.a which onlymeans grandson, but the proper term in the language of the inscriptionshould be papotre.a. I see two possibilities: either we have a case of haplography,I mean, the fi rst pa is dropped, or potra-itself is used here to

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Diwakar Acharya

which is not referred to by name in Indian inscriptions until the latefifth and early sixth centuries.4

According to SCHOPEN, ¡°the earliest known [inscriptional] referenceto Amit.bha prior to the Govindnagar inscription occurredin a fragmentary slab inscription from S.nc. ¡¦ dated to the endof the seventh century¡± (p. 247). This is not true. About a centurybefore the S.nc. inscription, a Nepalese inscription refers not onlyto Amit.bha in Sukh.vat. but also to his attendant Bodhi sattvasLoke.a and Mah.sth.mapr.pta. Following the proper chronologicalorder, I will deal with this inscription in detail as the last itemin this article.

I

A lady wants to get rid of her female nature

In front of the Dha.do caitya/Bhagav.nth.n in Chabahil (Kathmandu),there lies an important inscription which contains someclues hinting at the nature of Buddhism practiced in Nepal at thevery beginning of the fifth century. This is the first half of an original

inscription inscribed on the lotus base5 pedestal of a lost imageof Mah.muni.6 Unfortunately, the other half of the lotus is missing.

mean great-grandson, when its original meaning is con veyed by anotherequivalent term n.ttika.

4 Schopen 2005: 11. However, in a mixed Indian and Chinese contextsuch an inscriptional reference is found one century earlier (ibid. 13).

5 This inscribed base, which was placed earlier facing downward,serving as a support to a stone pillar used for offering lamps, in frontof the west face of the caitya, is now turned into the right position since2003, the time of renovation of the caitya. Now that the base was turned

into the right position, it is possible to see part of a lotus rising above thebase which was under the ground before. See photo on p. 27.

6 Mah.muni is generally regarded as an epithet of the historical Buddha,but the situa tion might be different in our inscription, and it might havebeen used as an independent substantive, like ..kyamuni, referring to thehistorical Buddha. When some donation is made to a newly consecratedtemple and recorded in an inscription, the proper designation of the de

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It contained the other half of the inscription with the second half ofeach line including the year of the religious gift as well as the nameof the then ruling king.7 On palaeographical grounds, VAJRACHARYA

ity in that temple is used, not an adjective. So, there is a high chance thatthe image of the Buddha referred to in our inscription was wor shipped asMah.muni. It is noteworthy that the second Bahubuddhas.tra from theMah.vastu records Mah.muni as one of the Buddhas (SENART 1897: 230).Also in the versified core of the Da.abh.mika section of the Mah.vastu,the name ..kya muni is used in a similar way, where ..kyamuni is usedonly once but Mah.muni 15 times. See also fn. 31.

7 VAJRACHARYA relates this inscription to the lime-washed white caityain front of which it is currently placed. However, the inscription itselfdoes not speak of any caitya/st.pa but of an image of Mah.muni and acommunity of the nobles (.ryasa.gha).

It appears clear to me that the lime-washed caitya surrounded by severalvotive caityas and more than one Buddha image was in the south end of alarger vih.ra complex. The vih.ra in an inverted U-shape opening to the

caitya, which must have suffered damage and got repaired several timesin later periods, is now occupied by the Pashupati Mitra High School. Anarrow motorable road separates the caitya and present-day school. Theschool has built new buildings in place of the old ones on one side and rebuiltthe old buildings with additional floors on the other sides. Hopefullythe original foundation is not yet completely destroyed. The complex alsosuffered loss to the east side by the construction of the Ring Road; at that

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Diwakar Acharya

makes this inscription the first inscription in his book of Licchaviinscriptions arranged in chronological order. And more, followinglate chronicles, he suggests that it can be dated to the time ofM.nadeva¡¯s great grand father V..adeva, who is described as ¡®sidingwith Buddhism¡¯ (sugata..sanapak.ap.t.) in an eighth centuryinscription of King Jayadeva and late chronicles.

There are in fact some clues in the inscription itself which canhelp us to guess at its time. First, donative formulas in Licchaviinscriptions after King M.nadeva¡¯s time never begin with theexpression asy..divasap.rv.y...8 So, this can be taken as oneclue to assign it in or before the period of M.nadeva. Second, thisinscription refers to a Jovian year with the atypical expressionm.ghavar.e k.le, but such a reference is not found again in anyother Licchavi inscription. This system was abandoned in NorthIndia earlier than in the rest of India, though it was still in use inthe south until the beginning of the sixth century.9 References toJovian years appear in Gupta inscriptions only between 475.528CE10 where we find them in a standardised expression . a monthname prefi xed with mah.-and compounded with sa.vatsara. Two

more references appear also in Kadamba inscriptions of about themiddle of the fifth century, but there the expression is not standardised.11 The expression in our inscription is still diff erent butis closer to those found in Kadamba inscriptions. Therefore, it issave enough to place it before M.nadeva, but there is no proper

time, as local people recall, some votive caityas on the track of the roadwere pushed inside the caitya complex and minor objects were destroyed.

8 Even during M.nadeva¡¯s time, it appears only twice, in inscriptionsdated to .aka 419 (VAJRACHARYA 1973: no. 15, p. 65) and 425 (VAJRACHARYA1973: no. 16, p. 67).

9 DIKSHIT 1888: 316, fn. 16.10 See, FLEET 1888, DIKSHIT 1888.

11 The expression pau.e sa.vatsare occurs in one of the Halsi grantsof M.ge.varavarman dated in his third regnal year (line 8), and vai..khesa.vatsare in the other dated in his eighth regnal year (line 10). FLEET(1888: 334, fn. 9) relates the use of the prefix mah.-to the heliacal-risingsystem and absence of it to the mean sign system.

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ground to say that this inscription really belonged to the time ofM.nadeva¡¯s great grandfather V..adeva (circa 410 CE) as VAJRACHARYAsuggested.12 The fi rst available inscription of M.na deva isdated .aka 381 (459/460 CE) and it does not contain a refer ence toa Jovian year. Before this date, the Jovian year of M.gha fell in.aka 371 (449/450 CE), 359 (437/438 CE), 347 (425/426 CE), and 335(413/414 CE).13 So, the image of Mah.muni with this inscriptionmust have been installed in one of these years.14

The inscription, except the last line, is composed in twelve Anu..ubhstanzas. The metre has helped me to determine the numberof missing ak.aras in each line.

(1)durddharair indriyai. k.tsn. v.hyate yair iyam praj.d.savat t.ni sandh.ryya k.pay. parip..ya t.[.]15 [1](1)d.na..la<k.am.v.ryadhy.naprajn.ni.eva..t>1612 In the mediaeval period, the caitya in front of which our inscriptionis found was called Dha.do caitya. This has prompted some scholarsto relate the caitya with M.nadeva¡¯s father King Dharmadeva. I think

this is a very weak argument in the light of the fact that any st.pa/caityacan be named after dharma/dharmar.ja, and we have a few examples ofsuch names, like the Dhammekha st.pa in Sarnath and the Dh.rmar.jikast.pa in Taxila. No doubt, Dha.do can be imagined as a Newar renderingof Dharmadeva, but it is much more likely that as a name of caitya itrefers to the Dharma-god, the Buddha.

13 My calculation of these years with the Jovian year of M.gha is basedon KETKAR¡¯s table (1923: 195, table 20).

14 An allusion to the Buddha¡¯s identity as a Bodhisattva in our inscriptioncan be considered as yet another clue for assigning it to a relativelyearly date. As Bud dhologists and historians have noted, early Buddhist

cult images are overwhelmingly referred to as Bodhisattva in their accompanyinginscriptions, even when they iconographically representBuddhas. See SCHOPEN 2005: 116.

15 VAJRACHARYA reads t. and interprets that as a plural, obviously assumingthat the visarga has been dropped by irregularly observing sandhibetween two verses.

16 The acts of the Buddha are described here incorporating the essentialcompo nents of the Bodhisattva path: restraint of the senses, cultivation

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Diwakar Acharya

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +17 [2]

(2)sampr.py.nuttara.jn.na.praj. du.kh.t pramocit.pramocya sarvvadu.khebhyo yo ¡¯sau ..nta. pada.gata.[3][ma]<h.muni.> 18+ + + + + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [4]

(3)sa.khidya sucira. k.lam bhavanam bhavavicchida.kinnar.j.tak.k.r..a.19 n.n.citravir.jitam [5]of compassion and the six perfections, attainment of the ultimate knowledge,release of all people from sorrow, and departure. The Mah.vastudescribes it and says that these acts of the Buddha are purposeful:

kalpako.isahasr..i aprameyam acintiy. | carito bhoti arth.ya sarvajnodvipadottamo || d.na...la. ca k..nti ca dhy.n.ni ca nisevit. | pra jnaca carit. p.r vamkalpako.i.at.. bah.. || (SENART 1890: 296).

17 The language of this inscription is colloquial and structurally loose.In the third stanza, when two successive actions are stated in two verse-halves, the first action stated with a finite verb form in the first half is narratedin concatenation in the other half with an absolutive form togetherwith its object. The writing style suggests that the same was true in thelost second half of the second stanza and the first half of the third. Thelatter, which has survived, states the second action ¡®released people fromthe sorrow¡¯ narrating the previous action in absolutive ¡®having obtainedthe ultimate knowledge.¡¯ Therefore, the last p.da of the second stanzacan be reconstructed as <pr.p ta. jn.nam anuttaram>, on the basis ofthe narrating phrase in the next stanza.

18 The 9th stanza below tells us that the Buddha image the lady donatedwas named Mah.muni, and we can judge from the context that stanzas1. 4 are dedicated to praise the inaugurated Buddha, the Mah.muni.Whether these opening verses were written in the form of veneration ofthe Buddha or blessing to the folks, the name of the god is expected here,most likely in the nominative case like in the first verse of M.nadeva¡¯sCh..gun.r.ya.a inscription (VAJRACHARYA 1973: inscription no.2).Another possibility is the dative case. In any case it is most likely that thename of Mah.muni appeared here.

19 Normally it should be ¡Æk.r..an. In Nepalese manuscripts and sometimeseven in Licchavi inscriptions a homorganic nasal before a sibilant is

written as guttural ., but guttural . before nasal is a rarity. VAJRACHARYAmisses to record this irregularity.

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+20 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [6]

(4)catv.ri..at sapanceha yatra dh.nyasya m.nik..var.e var.e ¡¯tha j.yante k.etran tat t.d..an dadau [7]+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [8]

(5)bh.ya. sa.ghasya bhakt.rttha. p.j.rtthan ca mah.mune.k.etran dattan tay. hy atra a...vi..atim.nik.. [9]+ + + + + + + + + + +21 + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [10]

(6)vicitra. deyadharmmam me k.rayitveha yac chubhamstr.bh.va.

hi vir.gy.ha. puru.atvam av.pya ca22 [11].okak.mamay.t pa<.k.t>23 + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [12]

<samvat> + + + (7) m.ghavarse k.le ....ha.udiva 10 224 asy.ndivasa p.rvv.y.m bha...rakamah.r.ja.r.+ + + + + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +25

20 VAJRACHARYA reads .r. here which I cannot see on the stone or photo.21 The context asks for an expression meaning ¡®of paddy are producedevery year¡¯ in the lost part, something close to dh.nyasya var.e var.e¡¯tha j.yante as in stanza 7.22 The usage of vir.gya here is noteworthy. This peculiar form is attested

in the Da.a bh.mika, and other forms of the denominative verbalstem vir.gay are found also in other Mah.y.na s.tras. See EDGERTON, s.v.vir.gayati.23 The ligature of tpa is rather clearly visible but VAJRACHARYA doesnot read pa. I have completed the word by supplying <.k.t>. In theA..as.hasrik., all those Bodhisattvas who reach the land of Abhirati aresaid to ¡®have gone across the mire¡¯ (utt.r.a pa.k..). For this passage, see

below, pp. 62.63.24 VAJRACHARYA misses the symbol of 2 and takes the day as the 10th.25 If we wanted to guess at the lost part of this line, adapting to the for

mula found in the inscrip tion of .aka 425 mentioned before and using thepossible names of the King V..adeva and the donor C.rumat., it wouldbe something closer to this: .v..adevasya s.gra.var.a.ata.sam.jn.

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Diwakar Acharya

Like a slave,26 having restrained the hardly restrainable senses .by which all these people are carried away . [and] having closelyembraced them, [i.e. the people,] with compassion, <throughthe cultivation of> charity, good conduct, <per sever ance, valour,meditation, and wisdom> ¡¦ <he obtained the su preme knowledge>;after obtaining the supreme knowledge, <he> freed thepeople from sorrow; [and] after freeing them from all sorrows, heattained the place of peace. That Ma<h.muni>¡¦27 [ll.1.2=vv.1.4]

Taking a lot of trouble28 for quite a long time, [she built] the abodeof the destroyer of the worldly existence, [i.e. Mah.muni,] which

payata.c.rumaty.sth.pito bhagav.n mah.muni..26 The comparison ¡®like a slave¡¯ can logically be associated either withMah.muni or the senses, respectively the subject and object. I feel thatour inscription is alluding, here too, to a specific Buddhist concept like in

v.11 below. Therefore, I am associating the comparison with the subjectfollowing the description of one of the arthacary.s in the Bodhisattvabh.mi.

There, a Bodhisattva, though he is abiding in the best and foremoststate of success, is said to be fulfilling the purpose of the beings,like a slave, with his mind lowered (in kindness), and his vanity, pride andego destroyed: punar bodhisattva. pravar.y.m agry.y.m api sa.padivartam.no d.savat pre.yavad va.yaputravac canalad.rakavan n.cacittonihatama da m.n.ha.k.ra. (WOGIHARA 1936: 225 reads nihita¡Æ = ¡®laidaside¡¯) sattv.n.m artham .carati (DUTT 1966: 154).Following Arlo GRIFFITHS¡¯ suggestion, I present the following alternativetranslation of the first verse: Having restrained them . the sensesby which all these people are carried away, and having squeezed these[people], as [one oppresses] a slave, [but] with compassion (rather thanstringency)¡¦ .

The root parip.. literally means ¡®to squeeze properly from all sides¡¯ ormore negatively ¡®to oppress in all ways.¡¯ As I need something quite positivefor the interpretation I favoured, I have taken it in its fi gurative sense,¡®to embrace closely.¡¯

27 The statement might have concluded with something like ¡®thatMah.muni ex cels all¡¯ or ¡®that Mah.muni may show us/you the way.¡¯

28 The literal meaning, ¡®being deeply depressed¡¯ or ¡®having forcedproperly,¡¯ does not work well here. So I take it figuratively with positiveimplications.

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is bril liant with many depictions illustrating [scenes] from theKinnar.j.taka ¡¦ [l.3=vv.5. 6]

Here [in the same locality] she donated such a piece of land whereevery year 45 M.nik.s of paddy are produced29 ¡¦ [l.4=vv.7.8]

Again, for the purpose of [providing] food for the Community andalso for the purpose of [financing the daily] worship of Mah.muni,another piece of land is donated by her where 28 M.nik.s <ofpaddy are produced every year.> ¡¦ [l.5=vv.9.10]

Whatsoever merit I have by making here this wonderful religiousgift (deyadharma), <by that> I may lose attachment to womanhoodand attain manhood, and <get out of> this <mire> consistingof sorrow and longing, ¡¦30 [l.6=vv.11.12]

<The year>¡¦, the time of ¡®the year of M.gha,¡¯ the bright half of....ha, the 12th day. On this day the lord great king Illustrious ¡¦

[l.7]The inscription mentions that the Kinnar.j.taka was depicted on

the walls of the temple of Mah.muni. The likely candidate for thisrefer ence is the Kinnar.j.taka of the Mah.vastu. There is anotherversion of this narrative in the Bhai.ajyavastu of the M.la sarv.s tiv.davinaya, which seems to be followed later in the Divy.vad.na.But in that version, unlike in the Mah.vastu, the narrative is notnamed ¡°Kinnar.j.taka¡± and the character of the Kinnar. is nothighlighted.31

29 Since the next piece of land is allocated for sustenance of theCommunity and daily worship of Mah.muni, it can be said that this pieceof land with a larger amount of income was allocated for maintenanceand repair of the abode, and proba bly to finance the annual ceremony

(var.avardhana) which is known from many Licchavi inscriptions.30 Following the parallels from the Mah.vastu and the A..as.hasrik.,we can say that the next thing our lady donor is expected to wish is herrebirth in one of the bodhisattvabh.mis, if not yet in the peaceful abodeof Mah.muni. See below, p. 34.

31 I am aware of the fact that the Mah.vastu is a composite text andthe Kinnar.j.taka might not have been part of it from the beginning.However, my supposition is that this j.taka was already integrated in theMah.vastu by the time of our inscrip tion.

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It is interesting that this inscription praises the Buddha asMah.muni, alluding to the path of the Bodhisattva, and it is almostcertain that the inscription makes a reference to the six p.ramit.s:two of them appear in the beginning of a compound, and the metreeasily allows us to include the rest in the proper order in the samecompound. Again, the six p.ramit.s are present in early Mah.y.natexts and also in the Mah.vastu.32

The lady donor of the image of Mah.muni with this inscriptionfirst wishes to lose her attachment to womanhood and become aman by the merit of this donation. A woman on the Bodhisattvapath is expected to change her gender and become a man at somepoint prior to the attainment of Buddhahood. Early Buddhist textsindeed hold a strict view on the spiritual limitations of women. Alsothe Mah.vastu implies this in the Da.abh.mika section, thoughquite vaguely, when it states that those Dharma followers who arein any of the ten stages are all men, not born again as a woman.33This idea is found in many of the Mah.y.na s.tras including theA..as.hasrik., where Sister Ga.gadev. is predicted to becomea man and reach the land of Ak.obhya to undertake the Bodhi

32 If, as I suggested in fn. 6 above, a cult which worshipped the ..kyamuniBuddha as Mah.muni had existed, that possibly had a link with theschool of Mah.s..ghikas whose offshoot, the Lokottarav.dins, preservethe Mah.vastu in their Vinaya. Our inscrip tion relates Mah.muni and theKinnar.j.taka of the Mah.vastu. The name Mah.muni appears 27 timesin the Mah.vastu, more than in any other text (the Saddharmapu..ar.kacomes second with 11 occurences).

It is worth mentioning here that the presence of the Mah.s..ghikas inNepal in the subsequent period has been considered to follow from afragmentary inscription ascribed to the middle of the seventh century.This is a two line inscription damaged on the right side, fi rst published by

Levi (no. 17, plate 18). It reads the following preceded by an auspicioussign: (1) deyadharmo ya..r.dh.rmar.jik.m.tya-su[pa] // (2) s..ghikabhik.usa.ghasa // (LEVI does not read pa.). Unfortunately, the prefixmah.- is missing, which limits the importance of the inscription.

33 SENART 1882: 103: atha khalu sarv.su da.abh.mi.u puru.. bhavantisarv..gapratya.gopet..avikalendriy.[.]. (The edition omits visarga,probably because of ya.ca in the following.)

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sattva vow there, and become finally the Buddha Suvar.apu.pa.34Even the wording in our inscription reminds us of the phrase in the

A..as.hasrik..35

II

It is known that Buddhists were present in Nepal before M.nadeva,

i.e. the early fi fth century CE, but how strong they were in the societyis not known well. No Buddhist inscription has yet been discoveredfrom the time of M.nadeva.36 How ever, I would like to draw34 This idea is found also in the nineteenth chapter of the A..as.hasrik.(WOGIHARA 1935: 745): seyam .nanda ga.gadev. bhagin. str.bh.va.vivartya puru.abh.va. pratilabhya ita. cyutv. ak.obhyasya tath.gatasy.rhata.samyaksa.buddhasya buddhak.etre abhiraty.. lokadh.t.vupa patsyate.

35 The wording of the inscription, str.bh.va.hi vir.gy.ha.puru.atvamav.pya ca, is very close to the A..as.hasrik. wording: str.bh.va.vivartya

(vivarjya in the Pancavi..atis.hasrik.) puru.abh.va.pratilabhya.

Here are two more statements close to the expression in the inscription:Sam.dhir.ja 32.157cd.158ab: vivartayitv. str.bh.va. sa bhaved dharmabh..aka.,na s. puno ¡¯pi str.bh.vam ita.pa.c.d grah..yati. Ratnaketuparivarta(II.27: KURUMIYA p. 50): str.bh.vam antardh.ya puru.abh.va.sa.v.tto. Ratnaketuparivarta speaks also of transformation ofmarks and organs of women into those of men in the same chapter.

36 Because the major caityas of the Kathmandu valley have been renovatedcontinuously, and since mediaeval times such renovations are done

by Tibetan monks or under their guidance, these caityas have taken newcomponents from time to time, reflecting ongoing changes in contemporarytraditions. That is why we have to rely on person ally donated imagesor caityas of comparatively small size in order to have an idea ofBuddhism in the Licchavi period.

No excavation in the vicinity of the major caityas of Kathmandu valleyhave yet been carried out. It is not easy to excavate a main shrine orst.pa as they are still places of active worship, but it is not impossible todo so in a courtyard. The Buddhist tradition was never discontinued inNepal. So, such excavations, I must say, would be of great help for theunderstanding of Buddhism in the middle period and its transformationin later times.

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attention to an interesting and exceptional case of the Buddhistdonative formula yad atra pu.ya.¡¦ being blended in a .aivainscription from Budhanilakantha (Kathmandu) inscribed on thebase of a .ivali.ga and dated in [.aka] sa.vat 398 (476/477 CE).37The related portion of the inscription runs this way:

<.r.m.nadeva>n.pati. pra.ato jag.da

tvatsth.pan.janitam asti yad atra pu.yam

tat sarvvalokasahitasya viv.ddham.lam

du.khak.ay.ya bhagavan mama sarvath.stu.

The king <Illustrious M.nadeva>, bowed to [the god], said: ¡®Whathere is the merit produced from this action of founding you, [i.e.the .ivali.ga,] O lord, its roots properly grown, may that be forthe complete destruction of sorrow of me together with all [my]people.

This indicates that Buddhist ideas were already popular in Nepal

by this period and were even adopted by other religious groups.Further more, we know from Anuparama¡¯s Dvaip.yanastotrainscription, installed before 540 CE, that the Buddhists had madegood advance by that time, and the orthodox Brahmanical sectionof society had got alarmed at that development.38 The two inscriptionspresented below are further evidence for their growing influence.

There are not many inscriptions until the late fifth and earlysixth centuries in India which could even indirectly be related toMah.y.na. So, these inscriptions deserve attention and should beadded to the list of inscriptions related to Mah.y.na. First I presenta quite dam aged inscription from the pedestal of a lost image of

Avalokite.vara39 which is dated in [.aka] sa.vat 479 (558 CE):(1) sa.vat 479 dvit.y....ha¡¦ ¡¦yaj.va¡¦ ¡¦(2) ¡¦ ¡¦ bhagavad.ryy.37VAJRACHARYA 1973: 41. 42, no. 7. The year of this inscription, fi rstread 396, has been corrected to 398 in PANT 1986: 275.276.

38 For an elaboration on this, see ACHARYA 2007.

39 At present, this pedestal supports an image of Vi..u in a small templelocated in Brahma Tol, Kathmandu, but the inscription on it clearlysuggests that it once supported a Buddhist image.

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<valo kite.vara>¡¦ ¡¦m.nen.rddha¡¦ ¡¦ (3) ¡¦ ¡¦ sarvvajnajn.n.v.ptaye bha vatu40

The [.aka] year 479, the second ....ha ¡¦ ¡¦ <Pri>yaj.va ¡¦ ¡¦ [animage of] the Blessed One, Ary.<valokite.vara> ¡¦ ¡¦ half the sizeof (?) ¡¦ ¡¦ may that be for the obtaining of the knowledge of theOmniscient.

Though only a few words of this inscription are preserved, it stillcontains the last part of a variant of the Mah.y.na formula, sarvajnajn.n.v.ptaye,and parts of the donor¡¯s and the deity¡¯s names.

There is another similar inscription which has almost everythingintact except the date in the beginning. The king¡¯s name isalso damaged partially, but GNOLI reads it R.madeva (circa 547 CE).VAJRACHARYA reads only -deva, which is clearly visible; nevertheless,he places it before the above inscription of 558 CE in his bookon Licchavi inscriptions, obviously following GNOLI¡¯s suggestion.However, as I can read the lower part of the ligature before devaas ga in the rubbing produced by Gnoli, I am of the opinion that

it should be Ga.g.deva (circa 567 CE). This will make the inscriptionten years younger than the one cited above. The place of finding,nature and palaeography suggest that the two inscriptions aresomehow related. I present here my reading and translation of theinscription:

(1) o. sva<sti sa.vat> ++++++++++ bhatt.rakama<h.r.ja.r.ga.>[g.]devasya s.gra. var.a.ata. sam.jn.<payata.> (2) sarvvasattvahitasukh.rtth.ya bhagavata .ryy.valokite.varan.tha41 prati..h.pita.[SPACE] deyadharmmo ¡¯ya.paramop.sakama.iguptasya(3) bh.ryyay. mahendramaty. saha yad attra pu.ya.

tad bha[va]tu m.t.pit.p.rvva.gama.k.tv. sarvvasattv.n.. sarvv.k.ravaropeta(4)+++++sarvvajnajn.n.v.ptaye4240 I am unable at present to go and read this inscription on the spot.Therefore I simply reproduce VAJRACHARYA¡¯s reading. See VAJRACHARYA1973: 185, no. 43.

41 This sentence is grammatically incorrect. It needs to be either bhagav.n.ryy.valokite.varan.tha. or bhagav.n .ryy.valokite.varan.thasyavigraha..

42 VAJRACHARYA 1973: 177, no. 40.

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Om, good <luck! In the year¡¦,> when the lord great <king IllustriousGa.>g.deva is ruling for hundred years and further, [an image of]the lord .ry.valokite.vara, the Blessed One, has been set up. This isa charity of Paramop.saka Ma.igupta together with his wife Mahendramat..Whatever merit [is obtained through this action], may thatbe for all beings, first and foremost his mother and father, for theobtaining of the ¡¦ knowledge of the Omniscient endowed with allexcellent forms.

Both of these inscriptions are special as they contain the term sarvajnajn.na,which is attested in many Mah.y.na s.tras includingthe K..yapaparivarta, A..as.hasrik., larger Sukh.vat.vy.ha andalso in Asa.ga¡¯s Bodhisattvabh.mi. Compared to sarvajnajn.na,anuttarajn.na is poorly represented in the s.tras, although it seemsto be the predominant expression in inscriptions (SCHOPEN 2005:241, fn. 14; 265).

From the second of the two inscriptions we can tell that sarvajnajn.nawas the last member of a tripartite compound whichcontained sarv.k.ravaropeta as the first and another word offive ak.aras as the second member. Sarv.k.ravaropeta appears

once qualifying ..n yat. in the A..as.hasrik. (WOGIHARA 1935:750), and once in the Lalitavistara qualifying supari.odhitajn.na(VAIDYA 1958: 309). In the Da.abh.mika (KONDO 1936: 61), sarv.k.ravaropetasarvajnajn.nais found as a compound without anyintervening element, and in the Pancavi..atis.hasrik. (KIMURA2006: 166), we find sarv.k.ravarope ta compounded with sarv.k.rajnat..In a seventh century Nepalese inscription, anuttara iscombined with sarvajnajn.na in a similar donative formula,43 andthis combination is also attested in the Ga..a vy.ha. However, inour inscription just anuttara is not possible, because we have spacefor five ak.aras, and - ta- at the end of the first word is intact, whichwould not have been so if the following ak.ara had begun with a

vowel. I therefore guess that the damaged word was sarv.n uttara(¡®supremest¡¯) which is attested as an adjective to sam yaksa.bodhiin the K..yapaparivarta.44

43 SCHOPEN 2005: 256 and fn. 15.44 Following STAEL- HOLSTEIN (1926: 8), VOROBYOVA- DESYATOVSKAYA

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III

The inscription on a caturvy.hacaitya from Tyagal

As I mentioned earlier, a Nepalese inscription that mentions thetriad of Amit.bha and his Buddha world Sukh.vat. comes secondchronologically only to the Govindnagar inscription and is to beplaced before the S.nc. slab inscription. This inscrip tion is significantin many respects. It is inscribed on four sides of one of the twostone caityas in a courtyard of Tyagal Tol in Patan district of Kathmandu valley.45 It is not dated but on palaeographical grounds it isplaced about the time of A..u varman, i.e. the late sixth or earlyseventh century, by VAJRACHARYA.

Each side of the square base of the caitya, like the one seen inthe photo on the next page, contains a verse, inscribed in two lines,which praises the Tath.gata worshipped on that side together withhis two Bodhi sattvas. The odd and even p.das of each verse areseparated by the niche of each Tath.gata lying in the middle of thewall. In the following pages, as I have placed the photos of the twosides on top of each other, the a and c p.das precede b and d in

these photos.This inscription was published for the first time by the Sa..odha na Ma..ala team in the fifth issue of their Nepali journal

et al (2002: 5 . 6) introduce a wrong word division and read ¡°y.. casatv[.n] parip.cayati t.n sarv.n uttarasy.(.) samyaksa.bodh[au].¡±Since anuttarasy.. sam yak sa.bo dhau is attested dozens of times inMah.y.na s.tras, I suggest to read sarv.nuttarasy.. as a compound.

One more expression found in our inscription, sarvasattvahitasukha-, appearsin several Mah.y.na s.tras including the Pancavi..atis.hasrik.and the larger Sukh.vat.vy.ha.

45 I am grateful to Nepali historian and writer Devichandra SHRESTHAfor his help in locating the caitya. I am also grateful to two researchers,Nirajan KAFLE and Rajit Bahadur SHRESTHA, and photographer YogeshBUDHATHOKI, all from the Nepal Research Centre, for their help in preparingphotographs of the caitya and the inscrip tion. As the inscribed part ofthe caitya was covered with lime and other sub stances, the photo qualityis not so good. I regret the resulting inconvenience involved.

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Diwakar Acharya

P.r.im., and ithas been includedin VAJRACHARYA¡¯sbook.46 But the valuableinformationcontained in thisinscription has yetto be revealed, soit is necessary toread and interpret itagain. It consists offour verses in threemetres: the fi rst inUpaj.ti, the secondin .ikhari.., andthe third and fourthin Vasantati laka.The first and secondverses are in fi rstperson singular andthe other two are in

second person plural.This inscription

does not say anythingabout the donor of the caitya or the context of the donation.

Let me now present my reading of the inscription, which includesfive improvements as compared to VAJRACHARYA¡¯s edition,and translate it.

East side:

1) [siddham]47 ak.obhyam ak.obhya.it.gram.rtintath.gata.staumy abhito bhiraty.m

46 VAJRACHARYA 1973: inscription no. 98, 387.388. He has misjudged thedirections of the Buddhas and placed Ak.obhya in the north, ..kyamuniin the west, Samantakusuma in the south and Amit.bha in the east.

47 VAJRACHARYA (1973: 387) reads o..

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2) samantabhadram bhuvi bhadrac.ri.antathaiva sannirmalak.rtim.linambhiraty.m ] bhiramyam V; bhadrac.ri.an ] bhadrak.ri.an V

South side:

1)mah.prajn.lokak.atabhavamah.mohatimira.sukh.vaty.. vande satatam amit.bhan jinaravim

2) saloke.a.lokodbhavabhayaharam pa.kajadharammah.sth.mapr[.]<ptam aniyatak.>p.snigdhamana[sam]

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Diwakar Acharya

West side:

1)saddharmaratnakusumastavak.cit..gambuddha. samantakusuman namat.bjavaty.m

2)manju.riyam paramadharmavida. kum.rannityan ca susthitamati. karu.aikat.nam

North side:

1)[yo va]m ¢¨ .¢¨¢¨¢¨.¢¨¢¨.¢¨ . .mbhakty.dya tan namata ..kyamunim mu[n..a.]48

2) maitry..hya .¢¨¢¨¢¨.¢¨

¢¨.¢¨ . ..guhy.dhipa.vimalavajradhara.sah.[y.m]yo va ] y.va V; maitry..hya ] maitr y.rddha V; sah.y.m ] sah.bjam V

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[East side:] From the front, I praise Ak.obhya Tath.gata [residing] inthe world of Abhirati, who is the embodiment of the imperturbableand sharp-pointed [nature].49 [I praise] Samantabhra [Bodhisattva],who performs good [deeds] on earth, and in the same way, Sannirmalak.rtim.lin[Bodhisattva].

[South Side:] I always venerate Amit.bha, the Sun-like Jina, in theworld of Sukh.vat., who has destroyed the darkness of the great illusionof existence with the light of great wisdom; Mah.sth.mapr.pta,whose mind is aff ectionately disposed due to <unlimited> compassion,and Loke.a,50 who holds a lotus and wards off the dangers ofarising in the world.

[West Side:] [O people,] you must bow to the Buddha Samantakusumain the world of Abjavat., whose limbs are covered with bunches of theprecious fl ow ers of the True Dharma, to Manju.r. [Bodhisattva], theprince who knows the Dharma best, and to Susthitamati [Bodhisattva],whose mind is fixed on compassion eternally.51

[North Side:] [O people,] you must bow now devotedly to ..kyamuni,the lord of ascetics, who ¡¦, to the one who is rich in benevolence

(maitry..hya) ¡¦, [and] to the lord of Guhyas who holds the stainlessVajra, [i.e. Vajrap..i]; [all] in the Sah. world.

In this caitya, the four Tath.gatas are placed on four sides of thesquare lower level, and the eight Bodhisattvas at the higher levelbefore the dome begins. Even though the inscribed verses place

49 The original meaning of .ita is ¡®sharpened,¡¯ and this meaning fitswell here, but VAJRACHARYA (1973: 387) has taken it as ¡®blue.¡¯ Thoughthis wrong interpretation is a result of phonetic confusion of . and s, onecan find its roots in Ak.obhya¡¯s visualisations from Tantric texts whichattribute to him a bluish/blackish complexion. Besides, one could alsosplit a compound like ours where ak.obhya and .ita appear together into

ak.obhy and a.ita, and thus, get closer to ¡®black¡¯ (asita). Something likethis could be lying behind the attributed complexion of Ak.obhya.

50 The inscription reads saloke.a., which means ¡®together with Loke.a.¡¯If we translate it faithfully, the next words in the p.da, which in factdescribe Loke.a, will be adjectives to Amit.bha. So I have translatedsalo ke.a.as ¡®and Loke.a¡¯ following the demand of the context.

51 As an alternative, one can probably take nitya. adverbially with theimperative ¡®namatha.¡¯

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Diwakar Acharya

Tath.gatas and Bodhisattvas side by side in their respective worlds,the lower level houses four niches and the higher level eight.52 Thisclearly suggests that, in this caitya, the Tath.gatas are placed in thelower level and the Bodhisattvas in the higher.53 In the lower level,though bodily shapes are still visible in the images of four Tath.gatas,they are damaged beyond recognition; and there is no certaintythat these are remains of the original images. The same is true with

52 As one Bodhisattva is exactly above the Tath.gata, the secondBodhisattva is a little bit to the side. Probably this was not the originalway that the Bodhisattvas were placed. If the block of Bodhisattvas isrotated just a little, two Bodhisattvas come in the center of each side. Itis possible that at a time of renovation people forgot to fix the upper partrightly.

53 This appears a bit odd, but it is also true that in early images theBuddha is depicted in human/ascetic form, while the attending Bodhisattvasare depicted in godly or rather royal forms. Anyway, the fact thatsometimes Bodhisattvas seem to supplant the Buddha in importance andstature is not new. To some extent, SCHOPEN (2005: 278.279) has dealt

with this problem while identifying a Mah.y.na scene painted at Aja....

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the niches in the higher level, but four of them now contain lateimages of the Buddha, Manju.r., Padmap..i, and probably T.r.,which are already damaged to some extent, and the other four areeither empty or contain pieces of defaced stones (see photo on p.44).54 So, we do not know how these Tath.gatas and Bodhisattvaswere originally represented. The original top structure above thedome has been lost, and at present, a rather late and unmatchingstructure covered with painted metal plates is superimposed on topof the dome (see photo on p. 40).

Four image cults fitted in the caitya

Apart from the evidence it provides for a rather unique form ofMah.y.na practiced in Nepal in the late sixth century, this lastinscription provides evidence for early eff orts in fi tting variousTath.gatas and Bodhi sattvas in four directions, and thus producinga cult object acceptable to the followers of specific books, or ratherdiff erent Mah.y.na mod els. The set of four triads found here is notfound anywhere else.

The cult of Ak.obhya

The beginning of the inscription on the east side of the caitya isindicated by an auspicious symbol, and here is housed Ak.obhyaTath.gata together with Samantabhadra and Sannirmalak.rtim.linin the Abhirati world. We know Ak.obhya¡¯s Abhirati world inthe east from several Mah.y.na and Vajray.na sources, but theBodhisattvas associated with him in Vajray.na texts are generallyMaitreya and K.itigarbha. This triad is unique in itself and providesevidence of an archaic cult of Ak.obhya or the eastern/earliest¡®pure land.¡¯

We know from the Ak.obhyavy.ha, one of the early Mah.y.natexts translated into Chinese, which is also made part of the Mah.

54 As ALSOP has argued, the Licchavi stone caityas were originallybuilt with empty niches. It is highly probable that this was the case withour caitya, and whatever we see now under the niches, defaced stones orrecognisable images, are unoriginal.

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Diwakar Acharya

ratnak..a collection,55 and the portions of the A..as.hasrik. regardedas additions (but made before the second century CE)56 that thecult of Ak.obhya predated the cult of Amit.bha,57 though we do nothave epigraphical evidence for it. Ak.obhya appears in the Mah.vastuas one of the irreversible (avaivartika) Bodhi sattvas in theninth bh.mi.58 The Ak.obhyavy.ha describes how a Bodhisattvaattained Buddhahood to become the Buddha Ak.obhya; however,in added portions of the A..as.hasrik., he is already the Buddhaof the east in Abhirati.

The Bodhisattva Samantabhadra is generally associated withS.kya muni in mediaeval Mah.y.na sources. However, he is said tobe com ing from the east, the direction of Ak.obhya, in the Samantabhadrots.hana chapter of the Saddharmapu..ar.ka.59 This way,there is at least one scriptural indication for Samantabhadra¡¯s associationwith the east, but except for our inscription we do not haveany other scriptural or epigraphical evidence for his direct associationwith Ak.obhya. He is already associated with Vairocana in theGa..a vy.ha,60 and finally depicted as the primordial Buddha inlater Tantric traditions.

The name of the other Bodhisattva, Sannirmalak.rtim.lin, isnot attested anywhere as a Bodhisattva, if we are to take the nameas it features in the verse. We could consider that the real name ofthis Bodhisattva is Vimalak.rti, who narrates Dharma to Manju.r.,

55 The Bajaur manuscripts in Kharosthi script and Gandhari languagealso include a large portion of an early Mah.y.na s.tra related with theAk.o bhyavy.ha, see STRAUCH 2007: 47. 60.

56 For identification of these portions, see CONZE 1967: 172.173.

57 NATTIER 2000: 101.102.

58 SENART 1882: 139.59 Saddharmapu..ar.ka 26: atha khalu samantabhadro bodhisattvomah.sattva. p.r vasy.. di.i ga.an.samatikr.ntair bodhisattvairmah.sattvai.s.rdha.pariv.ta. ¡¦

60 For example, SUZUKI & IDZUMI 1934: 425: yath. ceha sah.y.. lokadh.taubhaga vato vairocanasya p.dam.lagata. samantabhadro bodhisattvodak.i.a. p..i. pras.rya sudhanasya m.rdhni prati..h.pay.m.sa,tath. sarvalokadh.tu.u ¡¦

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..riputra and others in the Vimalak.rtinirde.a, and that the namein our verse is a descriptive term, as it is almost parallel in meaningwith the original name.61 We in fact have a secure case of an extensionof a Bodhisattva¡¯s name with an extra adjec tive, Vimalavajradharafor Vajradhara, in one of the verses from our inscription.How ever, the ..ra.gamasam.dhi hints at a greater possibility ofthis Bodhisattva¡¯s name being a bit longer than Vimalak.rti, somethingvery close to the term in our inscription. This s.tra mentionsthe Bodhisattva *Matyabhimukha who visits ..kyamuni from theBuddha Ak.obhya¡¯s world of Abhirati, and is predicted to becomethe Buddha *Vimalaprabh.k.rtir.ja in a future aeon.62 As indicatedby the application of asterisks, both of these names are reconstructedinto Sanskrit from Chinese by LAMOTTE. If we consider chancesof error in such reconstructions, we can presume that the originalshape of the name reconstructed as *Vimalapra bh.k.rtir.ja was notfar from the name in our inscription.63 The substitution of vimala-with sannirmala- can be metri causa; the former does not fi t anywherein the verse. I would say, vimalaprabh.k.rti- (¡®fame of stainlessbrilliance¡¯) of the reconstruction is not so logical or suitable toSanskrit word order, but if we correct it to vimalak.rtiprabh.- (¡®bril

61 I do not think that Vimalak.rti.s identity as a layman poses problemto his inclu sion in the triad of Ak.obhya as an object of devotion. It is notnecessary that both of the Bodhisattvas included in a triad are of equalstatus. In fact in all four triads from our inscrip tion, the fi rst Bodhisattva is superior to the second in the same set (see p. 70).

Because in the Vimalak.rtinirde.a Vimalak.rti is made to narrate Dharmaeven to Manju.r., a celestial Bodhisattva with the role of a saviour, onecan imagine how much importance is attached to him in certain traditions:he is regarded virtually superior in knowledge and its transmissioneven though he is a layman. However, it is true that he is dropped off

inlater traditions (with a few exceptions).

62 LAMOTTE 1998: ¡×¡× 78.79.

63 Here I remind the reader that when Khotanese fragments of the ..ra.gamasam.dhiwere discovered, EMMERICK was able to correct threeBodhisattva names reconstructed by LAMOTTE: Meru.ikharadhara toMeru.ikharak..ar.ja, Vimala can dragarbha to .a.ivimalagarbha, Sarvaratnaracit.to Sarvaratnapratyupta. See, LAMOTTE 1998: xv.

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liance of stainless fame¡¯), it becomes natural and also equivalentto the metaphorical expression sannirmalak.rtim.l.. As the lastcomponent of the reconstructed name, -r.ja means nothing morethan the -in suffix. Thus, this much can be said that Vimalak.rti or*Vimalaprabh.k.rtir.ja64 is the closest match for Sannirmalak.rtim.linof our inscription.

Vimalak.rti appears also in the first two chapters of the TantricManju.r.m.lakalpa (S.str. 1920: 8, 40), and in the second occurrencehe is made one of sixteen Mah.bodhisattvas. It is noteworthythat the Vimalak.rtinirde.a contains a passage which proves hisassociation with Ak.obhya. When asked by ..riputra, Vimalak.rtitells that he comes from Abhirati, the world of Ak.obhya Tath.gata,and S.kyamuni confirms his statement. Vimalak.rti further clarifiesthat he has come to an impure world from a pure world for thesake of purification of all beings.65 What is more, upon a request ofthe assembly, he brings the Abhirati world into the Sah. world, i.e.our world.66

This way, we can prove an earlier association of Vimalak.rti aswell as Samantabhadra with the Buddha Ak.obhya on the basis of

these hints from the Vimalak.rtinirde.a and Saddharmapu..ar.ka.However, neither of the s.tras can be the source for the triad ofAk.obhya mentioned in our inscription, because both s.tras mentiononly one of the two Bodhisattvas and lack the other.

The Ak.obhyavy.ha and A..as.hasrik., the earliest s.traswhich are related to Ak.obhya, do not even mention either ofthe two Bodhi sattvas from our inscription. However, both ofthese s.tras relate the Bodhisattva Gandhahasti with the BuddhaAk.obhya, as the one whose future Buddhahood is predicted atthe time of Ak.obhya¡¯s departure. If observed properly, it is possibleto see that the same motif lies behind the names Gandha

64 On the identification of *Vimalaprabh.k.rtir.ja with Vimalak.rti,see LAMOTTE, 1998: 170, fn. 181.

65 The concept that the land of Ak.obhya is pure lies behind this statement.It seems that by the time of the composition of the Vimalak.rtinirde.aa general concept of ¡®pure land¡¯ was already at work.

66 Vimalak.rtinirde.a 11.2. 4.

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hasti and Samantabhadra. Gandhahasti literally means ¡®fragrantelephant,¡¯ which is a descriptive adjective to an elephant of the besttype. Bhadra is the best of elephant types,67 and Samantabhadra¡¯sassociation with elephants is suggested in iconography by placinghim on a seat with elephants on all sides (samantabhadra). Inthis way, both of these names mean almost the same thing. Thissuggests that Samantabhadra is a metamorphosis of Gandhahasti,which took place after the Ak.obhya vy.ha and the ¡®additions¡¯ tothe A..a s.hasrik.,68 and before the longer Sukh.vat.vy.ha whereSamantabhadra appears. It appears that there existed a traditionthat connected Samantabhadra to Ak.o bhya slightly posterier tothe ¡®additions¡¯ to the A..a s.hasrik..

As for the triad of Ak.obhya, it must have been formed alreadyalong with other triads by the time of composition of the longerSukh.vat.vy.ha which mentions Amit.bha¡¯s triad, and the Pancavi..atis.hasrik.which mentions in passing Samantakusuma¡¯striad in a world-system far away (see below).

The cult of Amit.bha

Moving to the south in the path of circumambulation, we fi nd themost famous triad of Amit.bha Tath.gata and his two Bodhisattvas,Avalokite.vara (here spelt Loke.a possibly for metre¡¯s sake)and Mah.sth.mapr.pta. This set is found in two s.tras of PureLand Buddhism: the longer version of the Sukh.vat.vy.ha andthe Contemplation Sutra.69 The fi rst s.tra says that, in the west in

67 The three types of elephants are bhadra, mandra and m.ga. Threesubtypes, bhadraman dra, bhadram.ga and m.gamandra are also mentionedin the R.m.ya.a (I.6.22).

68 Apart from these two texts, Gandhahasti appears also in theVimalak.rtinirde.a and the shorter Sukh.vat.vy.ha as a member of

the assembly of ..kyamuni, when the Sam.dhir.ja makes him visit..kyamuni from the world of Ak.obhya. Samanta bhadra does not appearin these texts. Both of these names are used only in the relatively lateKaru..pu..a r.ka and Manju.r.m.lakalpa.

69 The other s.tra, the shorter version of the Sukh.vat.vy.ha, spells thename of the Tath.gata Amit.yus instead of Amit.bha, and does not men

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Sukh.vat. Lokadh.tu is Amit.bha Tath.gata, the Arhat; he hastwo Bodhisattvas: the first of them is Avalokite.vara, and Mah.sth.mapr.ptais the other.70 The second s.tra states in the sameway, for example, in one place, ¡°when these words were spoken,Amit.yus appeared in the air above, attended on his left and rightby the two Mah.sattvas, Avalokite.vara and Mah.sth.mapr.pta.So brilliant was their radiance that it was impossible to see them indetail¡± (INAGAKI 1995: 328).

This triad is well known and widespread. It arrived in Chinain the early phase of transmission of Buddhism and is worshippedtoday in East Asian countries, but in the Indian context our inscriptionis the first incontrovertible evidence71 for the existence of theSukh.vat. cult proper.

The cult of Samantakusuma

Moving to the west, we find Samantakusuma Tath.gata withManju.r. and Susthitamati. In the Pancavi..atis.hasrik. at the endof the introductory section, exactly this triad of the Bud dha Samantakusumais mentioned. As the s.tra describes, ten Bodhisattvas

from the Buddha worlds of the ten directions visit ..kya muni inSah., and worship him with jewel lotuses of golden colour as hedelivers his sermons. At the end flowers are scattered all around,and he is covered with them and so is his world. It is now com

tion Avalokite.vara and Mah.sth.mapr.pta even among the assembledBodhisattvas. For the two alternative names Amit.bha and Amit.yus, seeNATTIER 2007.

70 pa.cim.y..di.i ¡¦ sukh.vaty.. lokadh.t.v amit.bho n.ma tath.gato¡¯rhan ¡¦ (ASIKAGA 1965: 26); ekas tayor .nanda avalokite.varo bodhisattvomah.sattva. dvit.yo mah.sth.mapr.pto n.ma (ASIKAGA 1965:

49). VAIDYA¡¯s edition of the text has Mah.sth.mapr.pto instead of Sth.mapr.pto.

71 The celebrated Mohammad Nari stele of uncertain date (third orfourth century CE or even later?) could serve as such evidence but it has become quite controversial regarding the date and identifi cation. However,its identification as a depiction of Sukh.vat. is rejected by many scholarsbut accepted by some (e.g. HUNTINGTON 1980, QUAGLIOTTI et al 1996).

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posed of jewels and precious stones, and fi lled with fl owers andfruits ¡°just like the world system Padm.vat., the Bud dha-fi eld ofthe Tath.gata Saman ta kusuma, where Manju.r. the Crown Princeresides, and the Bodhi sattva Susthitamati, and other very powerfulBodhisattvas.¡±72

Though a Buddha of this name does not appear in the A..a s.hasrik.,an almost synonymous term, Avak.r.akusuma, ¡®ScatteredFlowers,¡¯ appears there as the name given to a large group of futureBuddhas. In the same s.tra, we find yet another Buddha calledSuvar.a pu.pa who is named after a similar concept and describedin a similar way. The name Samantakusuma means ¡®Flowers AllAround¡¯ and Suvar.apu.pa means ¡®Golden Flowers.¡¯ While theBuddha Samantakusuma is described in our inscription as havinghis limbs covered with bunches of flowers of True Dharma,73Suvar.a pu.pa is also described as a future Buddha in a similarfashion in the A..as.hasrik.: S.kyamuni shines a ¡®golden¡¯ smilewhen Sister Ga.gadev. appears in his assembly. When .nandaasks why he is smiling, he tells that Sister Ga.gadev. will becomethe Buddha Suvar.apu.pa in the future, and relates the name of thefuture Buddha with the lady¡¯s brahmacarya vow under the Buddha

D.pa.kara, and her act of covering the latter with golden fl owers.7472 CONZE 1975: 44; Sanskrit text (DUTT 1934: 17): tadyath.pi n.mapadm.vat. lokadh.tu. samantakusumasya tath.gatasya buddhak.etra.yatra manju.r.. kum.rabh.ta. prativasati susthitamati. ca bodhisattva.anye ca mahaujask. bodhisattv...

The world of Samantakusuma is named Abjavat. in our inscription forthe sake of metre. The world of Padm.vat. is rarely attested. Beyond thePancavi..atis.hasrik. and Ajitasenavy.kara.a (see fn. 80 below), it appearsonce in the Ga..avy.ha (SUZUKI & IDZUMI 1949: 82) but is speltPadmavat. and the Buddha there is also diff erent.

73 Ratnakusumasa.pu.pitag.tra, a name almost identical in meaningto this attribute of Samanta kusuma, appears as the name of one of theTath.gatas in the Smaller Sukh.vat.vy.ha. In both places the key wordratnakusuma is common. Besides, in the Ga..a vy.ha (VAIDYA p. 66), wefind a Bodhisattva situated in the southwest whose long name incorporatesthe phrase samantakusuma.

74 See A..as.hasrik. 19 (WOGIHARA 1935: 747).

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The Ak.obhyavy.ha, however, mentions the same Buddha underthe name ¡®Golden Lotus¡¯ (as rendered into English from Chinese).The topos is basically the same (though it adds the theme of thepreced ing Buddha¡¯s parinirv..a) but the charac ters involved aredifferent: on the day of his parinirv..a, the Buddha Ak.obhya¡°will predict Bodhisattva Fragrant Elephant¡¯s attainment ofBuddhahood, saying, ¡®After my parinirv..a, you will become aBuddha, named Tath.gata Golden Lotus.¡¯ ¡¦ At that time, the godsand humans will all scatter over the Buddha garlands of fl owers,many kinds of incense, and clothing. The scattered fragrant fl owerswill pile up around the Buddha to a height of one league¡± (CHANG1983: 331).

The Buddha figure behind these different names, it appears tome, is the Buddha on the seat of enlightenment (bodhima..a).75 Letus read the following two representative76 passages from the Mah.vastu,a small portion of a long description of the veneration of theBuddha by the deities:

75 The bodhima..a was once the most important symbol of Buddhism.It had a status comparable to the caitya; or rather, it was the bodhima..a

which used to make the caitya worthy of veneration. I cite here a passagefrom the A..as.hasrik., as quoted by SCHOPEN in one of his articles,which highlights the importance of the bodhima..a:

¡°Just Kau.ika, as those men and ghosts who have gone to the terrace ofenlightenment, or its circumference, or its interior or to the foot of thetree of enlightenment, cannot be hurt by men, or ghosts, or be injured bythem, or taken possession of, even with the help of evil animal beings,except as a punishment for former deeds.¡± ¡¦ (CONZE¡¯s translation quotedin SCHOPEN 2005: 29)

Once Buddha images were introduced, they took the place of thebodhima..a and also of other aniconic symbols. It appears to me that

some of the early Buddha fi g ures were held to be connected with certainaniconic symbols which indicated the Bud dha¡¯s presence when his imageswere not yet introduced. So, perhaps, Ak.obhya and Samantakusumahave to be connected with the seat of enlightenment, ..kyamuni with theBodhi tree, and Amit.bha with the wheel of Dharma.

76 Other passages of interest from the Mah.vastu are: SENART 1890:303, 309, 352.353, 1897: 277.278.

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For seven days while he sat on his solitary seat thousands of ko.isof devas paid him honour. Over that seat they scattered powder ofsandal-wood tree and flowers of the coral tree. Above it celestial musicalinstruments struck up and played. Then devas from above scattereddown powder of the celes tial sandal-wood tree; of the celestialaloe-wood, of the celestial ke.ara, of celes tial tam.la. They showereddown flowers of the celestial coral tree, of the celestial great coraltree, of the kark.rava, of the great kark.rava, of the rocam.na, ofthe bh..ma, of the samantagandha, of the great samantagandha, ofthe manj..aka, of the great manj..aka, celestial flowers of the p.rij.taka,flowers of gold, of silver, of all precious jewels. There appearedin the sky thirty thousand celestial and bejewelled sunshades shadingthe Conqueror¡¯s body, which was like a rock overlaid with preciousstones, like a tope of gold, blessed with the root of virtue acquired inseveral ko.is of kalpas (JONES 1952: 269.270).77

Again, monks, when the Tath.gata had awakened to the unsurpassedperfect enlightenment, for a full seven-days he sat alone cross-legged.Then devas of earth, devas of sky, ¡¦ and the Akani..ha devas,for a full seven-days hon oured, revered, worshipped, and adored theTath.gata on his noble bodhi throne. And for a full seven-days the

whole universe of three thousand worlds became one vision of splendour.

On that occasion the Exalted One uttered these verses:

For a full seven-days the perfect Buddha, the monument of thewhole world, after awakening to the supreme enlightenment did

77 SENART 1890: 286 .287: sapt.ha. ek.sane devako..sahasr..i p.jayensu..tasmi..sane divya. candanac.r.a. okirensu. pu.pehi cam.n d.ravehi okirensu. divy.ni t.r y..i upari agha..it.ni prav.dyensu.tad. dev. ca divy.ni candanac.r..ni uparito prakirensu. divy.ni ca

aguruc.r..ni divy.ni ca ke.alac.r..ni divy.ni tam.lapatrac.r.nidivy.ni m.nd.rav..i pu.p..i pravar.ensu. mah.m.nd.rav..i pu.p..ikark.rav..i mah.kark.rav.ni rocam.n.ni mah.rocam.n.nibh..m..i mah.bh..m..i samantagandh.ni mah.samantagandh.nimanj..ak.ni mah.manj..ak.ni p.rij.takapu.p..i divy.ni suva.a pu.p..irupyapu.p..i sarvaratan.may.ni pu.p..i pravar .e nsu. divy.nitri..ac- chatasahasr..i divy.ni ratnamay.ni antar.k.asmi. pr.durbh.t.nicch.dayensu. jinak.ya..aila. ratn.maya. st.pa. v. suvar.amaya. naikakalpako.iku.alam.lasamanv.gata..

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not rise from his seat.

Thousands of ko.is of devas assembled in the sky, and for a fullseven- nights poured down a shower of blossoms. Blue lotuses, redlotuses, campaka, and white lotuses, lovely thousand-petalled andbrilliant, did the devas pour down (JONES 1952: 317.318).78

The Buddhacarita briefly describes this episode in the second halfof the fourteenth canto, while the Lalitavistara elaborates it in fourchapters, 19.23, and even beyond in the twenty-fourth. There, differentclasses of deities and beings are made to venerate the Buddhawith various materials: incenses, lights, flowers, jewels and so on.Both the Buddha ca rita (15.5) and Lalitavistara (the last paragraphof the prose opening of the twenty-fourth chapter) mention thename Samanta kusuma at the end of this episode, though not as theBuddha but as a god who approaches ..kyamuni after the latter¡¯sweek-long uninterrupted meditation on the seat of enlightenment.

It seems that the name Samantakusuma can be assigned to theentire episode, or one of the signifi cant figures involved there, particularlyto the Buddha being worshipped or the deities worshipping

him. Indeed, we have two sets of information, one from theBuddha carita and Lalitavistara, where this name is given to a representativedeity, and the other from our inscription and the Pancavi..atis.hasrik.(subsequent Prajn.p.ramit.s.tras included),where the name is assigned to the Buddha. In this way, we can see

78 SENART 1890: 348.349: punar apara. bhik.. tath.gato anuttar..sam yak sa.bo dhim abhisa.bodhitv. sapt.hap.ra. ekaparya.kena atin.mesi.atha khalu bh.my avacar. dev. antar.k.ecar. dev. caturmah.r.jik.ca dev. ¡¦ y.va akani..h. ca dev. sapt.hap.ra. tath.gata.bo dhi ma..a varagata. satkaronti gurukaronti m.nayanti p.jayanti sarv.vat.ca tris.hasramah.s.hasr. lokadh.tu. sapt.hap.ra. ek.la.k.r.

abh..i. atha khalu bhagav.. t.ye vel.ye im.. g.th.m abh..i .sapt.hap.ra. sa.buddho bodhi. buddhitva uttam.. |

.san.to na utthesi sarvalokasya cetiyo ||

devako..sahasr..i gaga.asmi. sam.gat. |

pu.pavar.a. pravar.ensu saptar.tram an.naka. ||

utpal.. padum.. camp.. pu..ar.k.. manoram.. |

sahasrapatr.. rucir.. tatra dev. pravar.i.u ||

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how this name was coined, and realise its antecedents.79 Anyway,it seems that diff erent names were tried for this Buddha presidingthe Padm.vat. world covered with fl owers/jewel-fl owers/jewels. Inthe Ajitasenavy.kara.a, Padm.vat. is retained as the name of oneof the cities of the Tath.gatas but the Tath.gata there is namedRatna.ikhin.80

Manju.r. is the best- known Bodhisattva. He begins to appearalready in earliest Mah.y.na s.tras and his images are widelyproduced.81 However, his association with the Buddha Samantakusumais not known from any other source than the passagefrom the Panca vi..atis.hasrik. cited earlier. Fortunately, hisassociation with Susthitamati, the other Bodhisattva of our triad,is known from one more source. In the Susthitamati devaputraparip.cch.,82 which makes part of the Mah.ratnak..a collection,Manju.r. teaches Susthitama ti the perfection of wisdom. Susthitamatias a devaputra is also pre sent in the Buddha¡¯s assembly in theR...rap.laparip.cch.. It is also noteworthy that Susthitamati appearsas a devaputra/-kany. in Khotanese materials.83 Susthitamatilater disappears from the scene but Manju.r. rises to prominence.

79 An association of flowers with the attainment of Buddhahood seemsso strong that the A..as.hasrik. makes ..kyamuni worship the BuddhaD.pa.kara with five lotuses in his previous life, so that the latter predictsthat he will become the ..kyamuni Buddha. See A..as.hasrik. 19:WOGIHARA 1935: 747.

80 DUTT 1984: 111.112.

81 See HARRISON 2000.

82 This text surviving in Chinese translation is rendered into Englishin CHANG 1983, pp. 41.72, under the title ¡®How to Kill with the Sword ofWisdom.¡¯

83 A reconstruction of the name of this devaputra/-kany. from TibetanBlo-rab-brtan into Sanskrit in both THOMAS (1935: 94, 179) and EMMERICK(1967: 9) is Susthiramati, which is very close to the original.

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The cult of ..kyamuni

Moving now to the north, we find ..kyamuni Tath.gata withVajradhara, the king of the Guhyakas, and possibly Maitreya . theone who is richly endowed with maitr..84 It is well-known fromearly textual sources that Vajra dhara/Vajrap..i is associated with..kya muni. Unfortunately the name of the other Bodhisattva hasnot survived, but since he is said to be connected with maitr., it islogical to identify him as Maitreya. He is known as the Buddha¡¯scompanion or even as the future Bud dha from the Pali sources,and in several Mah.y.na s.tras he appears in the assembly of theBuddha asking questions to the Bud dha himself or other fellowBodhisattvas in the assembly.

The Mah.vastu mentions Indra as Vajravaradhara, the holder ofa choice Vajra, with ..kyamuni, depicting him as the latter¡¯s protecter.85 However, the A..as.hasrik. states that Vajrap..i, the greatYak.a, is the constant companion of the irreversible Bodhi sattva.86Though identified in this way variously as Indra or a Yak.a, there isno doubt that ¡®the holder of the Vajra¡¯ is associated with ..kyamunias his protector. I am not aware of any text which brings Maitreya

and Vajradhara together as the attendants of ..kyamuni or any84 The names ending in -eya are in principle metronymic, but oneshould not forget that there are so many words ending in -eya which donot have metronymic connotations (see Wackernagel 1987: 505.511). Allof them, however, can be interpreted as having some specifi c, mainlycausal, relation with the word they are derived from. But still, ¡®being richin X¡¯ is not one of the meanings attested and should be taken as an ¡®interpretation.

85 SENART 1882: 157: agrato vajravaradharo trida.agur..baddhama..c..o| indro sahasranayano gacchati purato naravarasya ||

86 A..as.hasrik. 17 (WOGIHARA 1935: 683): punar apara. subh.teavi ni vartan.yasya bodhisattvasya mah.sattvasya vajrap..ir mah.yak.onity.nubaddho bhavati | sa durdhar.o bhavati, anatikrama..ya. ca bhavatimanu.yair v. amanu.yair v., dur.sada. sarva sattv.n... ¡¦ ebhirapi subh.te .k.rair ebhir li.gair ebhir nimittai. samanv.gato bodhisattvomah.sattvo ¡¯vinivartan.yo ¡¯nuttar.y.. samyaksa.bodher dh.rayitavya..The Da.a bh.mika echoes the same idea.

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other Buddha, or as one of the interlocutors of Dharma. Since thereare no relevant textual sources, they are not identified even in therare cases that they appear in early images. Vajrap..i is rather thedefault identification of the first Bodhisattva, but Maitreya alwaysremains unidentified, if he is not misidentified either as Brahm. orsome other Bodhisattva.87 As ..kya muni disappears or is renamedin the scheme of pancajinama..ala, this triad of ..kyamuni,Maitreya and Vajra dhara has further special value.

The directions of the Buddhas

It is quite striking that Amit.bha is placed in the south in thisinscription, while the Pure Land s.tras, and some other Mah.y.nas.tras too, locate him in the west in Sukh.vat. together with histwo Bodhisattvas. This compels me to investigate further the issueof the assignment of the Buddhas in various directions.

The Ak.obhyavy.ha centres on Ak.obhya who presides over theworld of Abhirati in the east. The s.tra, however, mentions threeother Buddhas: ..kyamuni as the narrator of the s.tra, *Suvar.apu.pa/-padma as the successor of Buddha Ak.obhya, and Buddha

*Vi..lanetra88 under whose guidance the would-be Ak.o bhyaadopted the path of Bodhisattva in the past; but the s.tra does notspeak of their directions.

The A..as.hasrik. mentions that there are innumerable Buddha-fields with many Buddhas presiding over them in all ten directionsbut does not name them. However, in the nineteenth chapter,the s.tra implies a set of four Tath.gatas in a successive row:Ak.obhya in the world of Abhirati, D.pa.kara in the city of D.pavat.in the distant past (but it is unclear if it was in the Sah. worlditself or somewhere else), and Suvar.apu.pa and ..kya muni in their

87 The figures of the Ramnagar stele, which dates from the year 32

(equivalent to 110 or 159 CE) and is preserved at the National Museum, NewDelhi, can be identifi ed as ..kyamuni with Maitreya and Vajradhara. Seethe figure numbered 13 in MYER 1986. For representations of Maitreyaand his attributes in different periods, see BHATTACHARYA 1980.

88 For the name of this Buddha, see NATTIER 2000: 85, fn. 45.

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Buddha worlds unspecified as regards their name and location ina given direction. Amit.bha and his Bodhisattvas, Avalokite.varaand Mah.sth.mapr.pta, do not appear in this s.tra. Maitreya appearshere as a Bodhisattva, but Vajrap..i is merely a yak.a; andthe lord of Sah. is still Brahm., not ..kya muni.

In the Pancavi..atis.hasrik., one Buddha with one Bodhisattvais placed in each of the ten directions, but their names arenew and arbitrarily created, following an imaginary scheme. Forexample, the Buddha in the south is A.oka.r., his Buddha world isnamed Sarva.ok.pagata, and the Bodhisattva there is named Vigata.oka.Apart from this list, the s.tra now and again mentions fourBuddhas in their respective worlds, with which its redactor appearsto be intimately acquainted: Ak.obhya in Abhirati, S.kyamuni inSah., D.pa.kara in D.pavat. (though only a city, not a Buddhaworld),89 and Samantakusuma in Padm.vat. with his two Bodhisattvaattendants. Amit.bha does not appear in this s.tra thoughAvalokite.vara and Mah.sth.mapr.pta show up in the assembly.90

All these s.tras look to the east as the direction of Ak.obhya andbelieve the world of S.kyamuni to be located in the west. Another

one of the earliest s.tras which could be grouped together with theabove s.tras is the ..ra.gamasam.dhi, which makes a devaputranamed *Matyabhimukha come to the assembly of ..kyamuni fromthe world of Abhirati in the east; otherwise the Buddhas are notassigned to specific directions in this text.

The longer Sukh.vat.vy.ha places Amit.bha in the west with thetwo Bodhisattvas, and is not concerned with the direction of otherBuddhas. There ..kyamuni is also mentioned, located in Sah., butAk.obhya has been completely ignored; he does not feature evenin the long list of arbitrary names of Tath.gatas. But, as SCHOPENhas informed us, this s.tra ¡°explicitly refers to a saman tabhadracary.,¡±suggesting ¡°some kind of linkage between the Bhadracar.pra.i

dh.na and the cult of Amit.bha¡± (p. 179). Amit.bha¡¯s locationis fixed also in the Pratyutpannabuddhasammukh.vasthitasam.dhi

89 It seems permissible to speculate that the concept of a Buddha cityprecedes the concept of a Buddha world.

90 See DUTT 1934: 5.

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. a relatively early text that mentions Amit.bha even though it is notcon cerned with his cult proper. The other s.tras of the Sukh.vat.cult follow suit. The Bhai.ajyagurus.tra, which promotes a newcult of the Buddha Bhai.ajyaguru and shows its affi liation with thecult of Amit.bha, assigns the two in the east and the west respectively.Even after the introduction of the Buddha Amit.bha, however,many s.tras are reluctant to fix him in the west. The Sam.dhir.jagroups innumerable Buddhas in four directions,91 but does notname them. More than once the s.tra mentions Ak.obhya, Amit.bha,..kyasi.ha/-muni, and D.pa.kara, but locates only Ak.obhyain the east.92 If we compare these with the four Buddhasknown to the redac tor of the Pancavi..atis.hasrik., we can seethat the Buddha Samantakusuma of the world of Padm.vat. hasbeen dropped here in order to accomodate the Buddha Amit.bhaof the world of Sukh.vat.. Similarly, the Vimalak.rtinirde.a includes..kyamuni, Amit.bha, Ak.obhaya and Pra bh.ta ratna in alist of thirteen Tath.gatas without specifying their directions.

The Mah.y.na s.tras of the subsequent period present a seriesof new Tath.gatas and locate them in six, eight, or ten directions.The shorter Sukh.vat.vy.ha, like other Mah.y.na s.tras, fi rst

mentions that innumerable Tath.gatas exist in ten directions butnames only a few of them, and only from six directions. Unlikethe longer version, it does not drop Ak.obhya but places him inthe east. The Sad dharmapu..ar.ka places sixteen princes of theBuddha Mah.bhijn.jn.n.bhibh. in pairs in eight directions, whereAk.o bhya and Amit.bha appear in their usual directions. In theMukta ka chapter of the Ga..avy.ha (SUZUKI & IDZUMI 1949:

91 Sam.dhir.ja 28.82f: p.rvasy.. di.i apramey.n asa.khyey.n buddh.nbhagavata. pa.yati. eva. dak.i.asy.. pa.cim.y.m uttarasy..di.i apramey.n asa.khyey.n buddh.n bhagavata. pa.yati. so ¡¯virahitobha vati buddha dar.anena.

92 Sam.dhir.ja 14.68 . 69: gandhahasti purim.di.. gato ¡¯k.obhyak.etradi.i lokavi.ruta. | bodhisattvanayutai. purask.ta...kyasi.hu dvipadendrup.cchan. || sukh.vat.ya varalokadh.tuto mah.sth.mapr.ptaava lokite.vara. | bodhisattvanayutai. purask.ta...kyasi.hu dvipadendrup.cchan. ||

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81.82), Merchant Muktaka first says that he sees ten Tath.gatasin their Buddha worlds (the names of both Tath.gatas and theirlands sound arbitrary and long), and once again (ibid. 82) says thatwhenever he wants he can see Amit.bha in Sukh.vat., Vajr.bhain Candanavat., Ratn.bha in Gandhavat., Ratnapadm.bha inPadmavat., ..n t.bha in Kanakavat., Ak.obhya in Abhirati, Si.hain Suprati..h., Candrabuddhi in .dar.ama..alanirbh.s., andVairocana in Ratna .r.ha.sacitr.. This time the number is nine,the order is unusual, and directions are not specified.93

Several mediaeval Mah.y.na s.tras composed subsequentlymention Amit.bha in the world of Sukh.vat. without specifyingthe direction. The Ratnaketuparivarta mentions ..kyamuni andAmit.yus without assigning them to specific directions. Instead,it states a promise of Amit.yus that he would be doing this andthat in the future (pa.cime k.le); a reference to time instead ofspace. The R...rap.laparip.cch., however, mentions only threeBuddhas: Amit.yus, Ak.obhya, and Siddh.rthabuddhi (proba blyan allusion to ..kyamuni) in passing without specifying their directions.The La.k.vat.ra mentions Amit.bha¡¯s Sukh.vat. as thesource of everything including Jinas and Bodhisattvas. Similarly,

the Sarva tath.gat.dhi..h.na shows its afiliation with the cult ofAmit.bha by mentioning him alone and depicting an access to hisSukh.vat. as the fi nal reward.94

Now we have a more or less clear picture: the Prajn.p.ramit.and affiliated s.tras invariably assign Ak.obhya in the east; thes.tras of the Sukh.vat. cult and those s.tras which are under theinfl u ence of this cult assign Amit.bha in the west (and Ak.obhya

93 It is noteworthy that the list of Tath.gatas in this passage of theGa..avy.ha begins with Amit.bha and it is even possible that he isplaced in the east in that scheme. In the same way, ..kya muni¡¯s world,Sah., is positioned in the west in the Larger Prajn.p.ramit.s.tra.

94 The Suvar.aprabh.sa, which is regarded as comparatively late,gives what appears to be a scheme of a caturvy.hacaitya and namesAk.o bhya as the Tath.gata of the east, Amit.bha of the west, Ratnaketuof the south, and Dundubhisvara of the north. See the s.tra 1.4: ak.obhyar.ja.p.rvasmin dak.ine ratnaketun. | pa.cim.y.m amit.bha uttaredundubhisvara. ||

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in the east if they mention him). However, most of the s.tras whichcombine both of these traditions are reluctant in fixing the directionsof Amit.bha and other Buddhas, though they generally pinpointthe direction of Ak.obhya.

Implications and outcomes

In the light of the above observations, another important issue canbe better explained: the process of inclusion of the cult of Amit.bhain a unified cult and identification of access to Sukh.vat. asthe ultimate religious goal. Once this process is properly explained,it will help us to understand the formation of our caturvy.hacaityain a better way, and it can also shed new light on the chronology ofa few early Mah.y.na s.tras.

According to SCHOPEN, who identifi ed Sukh.vat. as ¡®a generalisedreligious goal,¡¯ ¡°the fact that rebirth in Sukh.vat. is promisedas a reward in conjuction with the cult of the book, or the cultof a specific book ¡¦ clearly indicates that Sukh.vat. here[, in theSam.dhir.ja and subsequent s.tras,] must have been conceived ofas a generalised religious goal in no way attached specifi cally to

the cult of Amit.bha¡± (p. 166). However, SCHOPEN was unable todetermine ¡°the degree to which this process of generalisation anddisassociation effected a decline and weakening of the specifi c cultof Amit.bha as a separate entity¡± (p. 183), and expressed the hopethat future studies would shed light on this issue.

He was looking at the issue, I would say, from only one side.His starting point was Sukh.vat.¡¯s attestation in the Bhai .ajyaguru,Sam.dhir.ja and subsequent mediaeval Mah.y.na s.trasas a generalised religious goal. He did not inquire into the prevailingsituation at the time the cult of Amit.bha came into existence.Consequently, he was unable to realise the important pointthat Amit.bha¡¯s Sukh.vat. arose only after Ak.obhya¡¯s Abhirati as

such a goal.95 There was a stage when Ak.obhya¡¯s world of Abhirati95 He was, however, aware of the need for defining the relation ofAk.obhya with early s.tras. This need has by now been served, to certainextent, by Jan NATTIER¡¯s articles on the cult of Ak.obhya.

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was known but Amit.bha¡¯s world of Sukh.vat. was not. The Ak.o bhyavy.ha, A..a s.hasrik., A...vi..atis.hasrik., Pancavi..a tis.hasrik.,and ..r a.gamasam.dhi represent this stage. Let mefirst quote some lines from the Ak.obhyavy.ha:

..riputra, if good men or good women [who follow the Bodhisattvapath] after their death in this Buddha-land or another Buddha-land,have been born, are being born, or will be born in the Buddha-land of Tath.gata Ak.o bhya ¡¦ (CHANG 1983: 327). ..riputra, thoseBodhisattvas who have received my prophecy and attained nonregressionwill be born in Ak.obhya Buddha¡¯s land (ibid. 329).

Now here are two passages from the ninteenth Chapter of the A..a s.hasrik.with my translation. Both of these fall in the portions identifiedas additions by CONZE:

seyam .nanda ga.gadev. bhagin. str.bh.va.vivartya puru.abh.va.pratilabhya ita. cyutv. ¡¯k.obhyasya tath.gatasyarhata.samyaksa.buddha sya buddhak.etre ¡¯bhiraty..lokadh.t.v upapatsyate.

tatra copapan n. ak.o bhyasya tath.gat.syarhata.samyak sa.buddhasyantikebrahmacarya.cari.yati. tata. cyut.sat. buddha-k.etr.dbuddha-k.e tra.sa.krami.yati avirahit. tath.gata-dar.anena. (WOGIHARA1935: 745)

This goddess of the Ganges, .nanda, when she vanishes from thisworld, she will sever her existence as a woman, assume manhood,and be born in the Abhirati world, the Buddha-field of the Tath.gataAk.o bhya, the Arhat, the fully enlightened. Having reached thereshe will observe the brahmacarya vow in the presence of Tath.gataAk.obhya, the Arhat, the fully enlightened. When vanished from this

world, she will pass from one Buddha-field to another, never deprivedof the sight of the Tath.gatas.

utt.r.a- pa.k.s te bodhisattv.mah.sattv.., ye ak.obhyasya tath.gatasyarhata.samyaksa.buddhasya buddha-k.etre brahma-carya.caranti. bodhi-parini.patty-upagat.s te .nanda bodhisattv. mah.sattv.veditavy... (WOGIHARA 1935: 746)

Those great Bodhisattvas, who conduct the brahmacarya vow in theBuddha-field of Tath.gata Ak.obhya,96 the Arhat, the fully enlight

96 This role of the teacher or guide of the Bodhisattvas born in hisworld is found attributed also to Amit.bha in the Sam.dhir.ja. See

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ened, should be known as the ones who have got rid of the mire, whohave reached near the accomplishment of enlightenment.

The ..ra.gamasam.dhi and Vimalak.rtinirde.a, though they donot refer to access to the world of Abhirati as a religious reward,are engaged with Ak.obhya. They narrate stories of a Bodhisattvawho comes to the Sah. world from the Buddha Ak.obhya¡¯s worldof Abhirati for the sake of perfection of all beings. In this respect,these two texts are different from the rest. However, I think thispecularity is intended. These two texts are intended for more advancedand intellectually oriented people; their motive is differentfrom that of the Ak.obhyavy.ha and Prajn.p.ramit. texts, and sothe process has been reversed to suggest that they can have thesame purity in this world.

In the s.tras cited or discussed above, except the Vimalak.r tinirde.a,Amit.bha or his two Bodhisattvas are not attested. The Vimalak.rtinirde.a includes Amit.bha and his two Bodhisattvas, thoughonly in two separate lists of assembled Tath.gatas and Bodhi sattvas.97 Amit.bha appears in the same way in the .atas.hasrik.,and his Bodhisattvas are included in the assembly in the Pancavi..a

tis.hasrik. also. My guess is that these s.tras stand at theseam point of the first and second stages.

At some time in this stage the Amit.bha cult, which must haveexisted as a minority cult in certain secluded regions, rose to prominenceto compete with and finally eclipse the cult of Ak.obhya.The proven existence of Amit.bha in the Northwest of the Indiansubcontinent earlier than anywhere else in India might support this

SCHOPEN 2005: 171.

97 As NATTIER (2000: 80, fn. 19) has pointed out, two translations ofthe Vimalak.r tinirde.a made in the third and fifth centuries present ¡°a

particularly intriguing tidbit of evi dence¡± for the rise of the Amit.bhacult by a change in the sequence of names in a list of Buddhas. As shenotes, ¡°Ak.obhya appears fi rst after ..kyamuni in the list of Buddhasgiven in Chih Ch¡¯ien¡¯s translation of the Vimalak.rtinirde.a, while by thetime of Kum.raj.va¡¯s translation Amit.bha has now been moved to thefirst place¡± from the sixth. This ¡°suggests that the cult of Ak.obhya wasgradually being eclipsed by that of Amit.bha.¡±

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argument. Even though the longer version of the Sukh.vat.vy.hadoes not mention Ak.obhya, a reference to Samantabha dra¡¯s vowsin the s.tra is enough to hold that the redactor of this s.tra wasaware of some earlier cult, in which Samantabhadra had an importantrole. Unless and until the existence of an independent andarchaic cult of Samantabhadra is confi rmed, we cannot ignore theevidence of our inscription which makes Samantabhadra subordinateto Ak.o bhya.98

There was another stage when both of the two Buddhas wereknown, and their lands were regarded simultaneously as the ultimatereligious goal or reward, as two alternatives. The Sam.dhir.jaand Ajitasenavy.kara.a contain some traces of it. In theSam.dhir.ja, access to the Buddha Ak.obhya and his world Abhiratiis described as the final religious goal, side by side with accessto the Buddha Amit.bha and his world of Sukh.vat..99 Let us lookagain at the following very exceptional Budhist San skrit verse fromthe Sam.dhir.ja:

tatha punar amit.yu te.a tatro bh..ate buddha-aneka-.nu.a.s.m sarva imi [sukh.vat..

pravi..o abhirati gatva] ak.obhya pa.yibuddha..

So also the Buddha Amit.yus, to those there declares various kindsof bless ings: all these have entered Sukh.vat., and having gone toAbhirati, will see the Buddha Ak.obhya.100

98 The lexicon Amarako.a, which perhaps belongs to the sixth century(see Vogel 1979: 309.310), lists Samantabhadra as a name of the Buddha,while it does not list any name of celestial Buddhas or Bodhisattvas.This alone cannot be conclusive but can keep open the possibility ofSamantabhadra being in the centre of an independent and earlier cult.

99 Sam.dhir.ja 34.48: susa.g.h.tv.n ima buddhabodhi. dh.retvanitya. ca hi gaurave.a | te arthu k.tv. vipula. praj.n.. drak.yantiak.obhya nar..am uttamam ||

100 SCHOPEN 2005: 163.164; Sanskrit verse as cited by SCHOPEN; he haschosen the reading of the oldest manuscript from Gilgit, sarva imi againstthe reading of the edition, sarvi imi. However, his translation is problematic.It runs as follows:

¡°So also the Buddha Amit.yus, to those there declares various kinds of

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Here Amit.bha declares that his devotees go and see Ak.obhya,the Buddha spanning all three times, after entering his Sukh.vat.world. This might point to a stage where the cult of Amit.bha wastrying to engulf the cult of Ak.obhya. This goes well with one ofthe boons promised to all inhabitants of Sukh.vat. which statesthat they can fl y to other Buddha-fi elds to make merit by worshippingthe other Buddhas in them.

In the Ajitasenavy.kara.a too, the pure lands of Ak.obhya andAmit.bha, Abhirati and Sukh.vat., are shown as available goals,but it is less likely that they are ¡°conceived of as being of the sameorder¡± as Schopen (p. 158) argued. In the whole of the Ajitasenavy.kara.a,Ak.obhya¡¯s Abhirati is mentioned only once. As thepassage states, when the Buddha entered the city of .r.vast. nintynineko.is of niyutas of hundreds of thousands of beings were establishedin the Buddha world of Sukh.vat. and eighty-four ko.isof niyutas of hundreds of thousands of beings were established inthe Buddha world of Abhirati.101 Here the number of people establishedin Abhirati is smaller that the number of beings establishedin Sukh.vat., and Abhirati comes second to Sukh.vat. in order.This suggests that the cult of Amit.bha has not yet entire engulfed

the cult of Ak.obhya but was in the process of subduing it.It seems that even this subordinative reconciliation was short-lived. We soon fi nd Sukh.vat. being unanimously described as thefinal religious reward in the last phase of this process of identificationof such a reward. All the passages SCHOPEN selected and analysed,except those from the Sam.dhir.ja and Ajitasena vy.kara.a,represent this stage.

In sum, the following observations can be made: a) the presenceand infl uence of the Buddha Ak.obhya is seen in earlier s.tras, b)soon Amit.bha arrives on stage, and for some time the new cult

blessings: ¡®You will all go to my Sukh.vat..¡¯ Having gone to Abhirati,they see the Buddha Ak.obhya.¡±

101 SCHOPEN (2005: 158) quotes this passage but arrives at the conclusionthat ¡°Abhirati and Sukh.vat. are here clearly conceived of as being of thesame order, and there is no distinction of, or preference for, one over theother.¡±

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struggles to engulf the older cult, c) gradually Amit.bha becomesso prominent that all other Buddhas including Ak.obhya are subordinated,and d) newer Mah.y.na s.tras do not even mention manyof the subordinated Buddhas.

* * *

At this juncture, I am tempted to produce a relative chronology ofearly Mah.y.na s.tras, using their affinity or affiliation with thecults of Ak.obhya and Amit.bha as a criterion.

Original parts of the A..as.hasrik.: Originally Ak.obhya is foreign tothe s.tra; cf. CONZE 1967.

Ak.obhyavy.ha: This s.tra mentions the genesis of the Buddha Ak.obhya,his parinirv..a is imagined, and his career is modeled after that of..kya muni.

Ak.obhya additions to the A..as.hasrik.: Ak.obhya is already a Buddha,his genesis is not discussed.A...da.as.hasrik.

and Pancavi..atis.hasrik.: These do not mentionAmit.bha or his Bodhisattvas.

Longer Sukh.vat.vy.ha: This s.tra mentions the making of the BuddhaAmit.bha styled after the Ak.obhyavy.ha, and adopts Samantabhadra¡¯svows.

Pratyutpannabuddhasammukh.vasthitasam.dhi: The ..ra.gamasam.dhirefers to this s.tra, which mentions Amit.bha.

..ra.gamasam.dhi: This s.tra mentions Ak.obhya but is more interestedin the conduct of the heroes than the devotional path that providesrebirth in a Bud dha world; it refers to the Pratyutpannabuddhasammu

kh.vasthitasam.dhi though not to Amit.bha..atas.hasrik. and Vimalak.rtinirde.a: These s.tras mention Amit.bhaand Avalokite.vara only in passing.Shorter Sukh.vat.vy.ha: The Buddha of Sukh.vat. becomes Amit.yus;the Buddhas of six directions are specified.

Sam.dhir.ja and Ajitasenavy.kara.a: The cults of Ak.obhya and Amit.bhaoverlap, but there are indications that the cult of Amit.bha isrising into promi nence. Most of the time, he is referred to with hisnew name.

* * *

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Now let us return to our caitya- inscription. The fact that Amit.bhais placed in the south in our caitya- inscription, suggests that thepresentation of a unified cult was the first priority in the choice ofscheme followed in this caitya, rather than assigning Amit.bha tohis original place. In spite of this, his triad has remained intact inthe unified cult of our caturvy.hacaitya.

Most probably the cults united in the caitya did not lose theirindivid ual identities. Though not separate and independent, theyexisted embedded in the united cult, as long as the Mah.y.na perspectiveprevailed. The reality was that the independent identitiesof all individual cults involved in the caitya were not highlightedin the ¡®books¡¯ promoting particular cults.102 It is not even necessarythat what is going on in the realm of lay practices is alwaysreflected in high ¡®books¡¯ of philosophical or mythological nature.

Since the triad of the Buddha Amit.bha is known from theSukh.vat.vy.ha which was translated already in the second century;since the triad of the Buddha ..kyamuni is depicted in theRamna gar stele dated year 32 (equivalent to 110 or 159 CE); andsince the other triad of the Buddha Samantakusuma is attested

in the Pancavi..atis.hasrik. which could be placed around thesame period (the Chinese translation requires a mid-third centurydate at the latest), no doubt remains about the fact that triads of theBuddhas were well known by the early second century CE. Let ustry to find out when a fusion of these four triads into a caitya wouldhave occurred. This must have happened before the time assignedto our inscription, the late sixth century.103 We can use the contentsof the inscription to find an answer to this question.

102 However, these books sometimes exceptionally allude to some componentsof these cults. For example, the Saddharmapu..ar.ka and Vimalak.rtinirde.aallude to the fact that Samantabhadra and Vimalak.rti areassociated with Abhirati.

103 The late sixth century is rather the time of late Mah.y.nic developmentgradually heading towards Tantrism. The caturvy.hacaitya was theworking ground for Tantric traditions in the next phase of Buddhism.There we find a set of five Buddhas, four in four directions and onein the centre or pinnacle. In those traditions the set of five Buddhas iscompleted adding Vairocana at the top of the dome. In this set of five

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As I argued earlier, the triad of Ak.obhya found in our inscriptionrepresents a rare and archaic cult of Ak.obhya, which couldhave existed even before the available s.tras at the level of devotionalpractice. The triad of ..kyamuni, too, is quite archaic, andcannot help us determine the date of the scheme of our caturvy.hacaitya.The triad of Samantakusuma, too, is archaic, but theevidence of the Pancavi..atis.hasrik. suggests that it was knownto the redactor of this s.tra but probably not to the redactor ofthe A..as.hasrik.. Above all, it should be noted that in our caitya..kyamuni and Samantakusuma, like Ak.obhya and Amit.bha,are placed in their own Buddha worlds. This phenomenon is nothighlighted in later periods. We know that the Buddhas fl ankedby two attendants on four sides of the S.nc.st.pa I were added inthe fi fth century.104 It is possible that the idea of combining fourBuddhas or four triads was in place, at least in a formative state,already in the fourth century.

The source of the exact scheme followed in this caitya- inscriptionremains unknown.105 Nevertheless, what we can sim

Dhy.n. Buddhas, the Buddha Samantakusuma is transformed into Ratnasambhavaand ..kyamuni, too, is replaced by Amoghasiddhi.

104 DALLAPICCOLA 2004: 805.

105 I think we cannot expect to find the exact scheme of this caitya inone Mah.y.na s.tra, as it actually draws individual cults related withdifferent books or traditions together, and we do not have access to ritualmanuals of the period which might have recorded such schemes.

There are only six Licchavi caityas with their Buddha images intact, andtwo of them do not place the Buddhas in customary directions (GUTSCHOW

1998: 32, and a review: DECLEER 2000). This suggests that more thanone scheme was imple mented to form caturvy.hacaityas. Things areless clear particularly when standing Buddha/Bodhisattva images are involved(These caityas with standing fi gures probably predate those withtriads). Art historians have offered competing theories to identify theseimages but dis pute remains. They have also found ¡®erroneous cases¡¯ likeAmit.bha appearing twice (see GUTSCHOW 1998: 32). If we keep in mindthat there were diff erent schemes at work, it becomes easier to interpretsuch irregularities, and we do not need to assume any ¡®errors.¡¯ I think thesecond fi gure identifi ed by GUTSCHOW or other art historians as Amit.bha

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ply observe here is that it combines the three major streams ofMah.y.na known to us, the cult of Ak.obhya,106 the Prajn.p.ramit.cult, and the cult of Amit.bha, and perhaps the stream of olderNik.ya Buddhism with many cult-branches in which ..kya muniwas worshipped under this or that name.

For early Mah.y.na s.tras, as SCHOPEN argues, ¡°the image cult

. like the st.pa cult . is an already established part of Bud dhist cultpractice,¡± and they promote ¡°a whole series of already establishedreligious actions undertaken with a specifi cally defi ned intention¡±(p. 118). However, as he states, ¡°early Mah.y.na was neither involvedwith nor even interested in the early cult of images¡± (p. 116).¡°It was trying, most simply, to send its monks back to their books¡±(pp. 138.139) by promoting the cult of the book or specifi c books.On this ground, SCHOPEN concludes, ¡°we are left, it seems, with theapparent fact that, at least in regard to major Bud dhist cult forms .the st.pa and the image cult . the appearance of early Mah.y.nas.tra literature had no effect¡± (p. 138).Though they sound important, these conclusions are a bitexaggerated. We cannot say that the appearance of early Mah.y.na

s.tra literature had no effect on the cult forms. There wassome effect . rather mutual effect . and because of that the cult ofthe st.pa, specific cults of images, and the cults of specifi c bookseventually coa lesced into a caitya. Buddha images were not an essentialpart of the st.pa/caitya earlier, but by the time of mediaevalMah.y.na they became so.

No doubt, ¡°since each text placed itself at the centre of its owncult, early Mah.y.na, rather than being an identifiable single group,was in the beginning a loose federation of a number of distinctthough related cults, all of the same pattern, but each associatedwith its specific text¡± (p. 52). As it is a general tendency, at leastof the laity, to reconcile and identify heterogeneous entities, there

could be some other similar looking Buddha venerated in specifi c cults.

106 As I speculate, the cult of Ak.obhya, the Imperturbable, probablywas originally associated with the heroic path later attached toSamantabhadra, and his name was a constant reminder to a would- beBodhisattva not to stumble on the path.

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Diwakar Acharya

was a clear need of reconcilation and fusion of these specifi callyheterogeneous but interrelated cults into one unified cult. For thispurpose, specifi c Bud dha/Bodhisattva images linked with specificbooks were made part of the st.pa. This fusion took place at a timewhen another fusion between the cult of the book and the cult ofthe st.pa was already at work.107

If I may take liberty of speculating a bit, I find some scheme inthe arragement of the Tath.gatas in our caitya. In a sense, thesefour Tath.gatas also represent different aspects of the Buddha, ora Bodhi sattva. He is Ak.obhya, the Imperturbable, when he cultivatesthe six perfections and is on the path of universal good. Heis Amit.bha, the Buddha of unmeasurable light, when he radiatesrays of omniscience, compassion and so on. He is Samantaku sumawhen he is enthroned in the bodhima..a and enjoys the bliss ofenlightenment, at the time when his achievement is celebrated byall divine and mortal beings. And, he is ..kyamuni, the ..kyasage, when he wanders and imparts the knowledge he has achieved.

I want to make one more observation about the arrangementof Bodhisattvas in these sets. In each set, one Bodhisattva is relatively

more exalted compared to the other. Samantabhadra has thereputation of a celestial Bodhisattva but Vimalak.rti is a laymanliving in Vai..l., as the Vimalak.rtinirde.a describes. Maitreya isa celestial Bodhisattva, but Vajra dhara is a king of lower beings,the Guhyakas. Again, Manju.r. is depicted as a godly Bodhisattvasince early times but Susthitamati is a son of god with no importantrole. Similarly, the name of Avalokite.vara itself suggests hisinnate divine nature and texts describe him as such, but the otherattendant Mah.sth.mapr.pta was once in the mundane realm andhas attained the Bodhisattva status with his eff orts.

107 On the issue of the fusion of the two cults of the st.pa and the book,see BENTOR 1995. As BENTOR has stated, early textual evidence for the

practice of depositing texts or text portions in st.pas is found in thePratyutpannas.tra.

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