Bhadrakalpikasutra

Garden of One Thousand Buddhas Arlee, Montana

Bhadrakalpikasūtra (Sanskrit; Wylie: bskal pa bzang po’i mdo ) is a Mahayana sutra with 24 chapters written in c. 200-250 CE,[1] said to have been taught by Gautama Buddha in Vaishali.[2] It includes the names of the 1002 Buddhas of this "Fortunate Aeon."[3] The title of this text means the Fortunate Aeon Sūtra.

The thousand buddhas

Photo showing Dunhuang Cave 16 and the manuscripts piled up for Aurel Stein near the entrance to Cave 17, the “library cave” at the Mogao Caves
Temple of One Thousand Buddhas, in la Boulaye, Saône-et-Loire, Burgundy

The list of 1002 (or 1004) names starts with:[4]

... and ends with ...[5]

  • Harivaktra
  • Chuda and
  • Rocha

It is included in the first volume of the sutra section of the Kangyur of Tibetan Buddhism. It is also available in Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and other languages in variants that differ slightly as to the number of Tathāgatas enumerated. For example, the Khotanese version is the proponent of a 1005-Tathāgata system.[6]

Dharmarakṣa, a native of Dunhuang, between third and fourth centuries had translated the Bhadrakalpikasutra into Classical Chinese. Note that "A cave of the Thousand-Buddhas" is the name of the world-renowned grottoes at Dunhuang. Vidyakarasimha and Dpal-dbyans translated the text into Tibetan.[7]

The original Sanskrit text is now lost.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, By Robert E. Buswell Jr., Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2013 p. 106
  2. ↑ The Fortunate Aeon: How the Thousand Buddhas Became Enlightened (Tibetan Translation Series), 4 volume set (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1986).
  3. ↑ “One Thousand Buddhas from Gandhara: the Bhadrakalpikasutra and its place in Gandhari literature,” Stefan Baums, 44th Annual South Asian Conference of the Pacific Northwest, March 4–6, 2010.
  4. ↑ The Fortunate Aeon: How the Thousand Buddhas Became Enlightened, p. 1733
  5. ↑ The Fortunate Aeon: How the Thousand Buddhas Became Enlightened, p. 1733
  6. ↑ BHADRAKALPIKASŪTRA, Ronald E. Emmerick, Encyclopaedia Iranica, December 15, 1989, Vol. IV, Fasc. 2, pp. 190-191 http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bhadrakalpikasutra-the-name-of-a-buddhist-mahayanist-text
  7. ↑ Dr. Shailendra K. Verma, "Emergence and Evolution of the Buddha Image (From its inception to 8th century A.D.)" a doctoral thesis. At http://www.exoticindiaart.com/product/TK70/
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