According to the Mahāvastu, a biography of the Buddha in the Lokottaravādin Vinaya, the bhāṇaka (memorizer of the sutras) was classified as a musician (gandharvika), together with jugglers, court bards, actors, dancers, athletes, wrestlers, singers, etc. The early Mahayana scriptures, however, looked on the dharma-bhāṇaka (preacher of the Dharma) as the transmitter of Mahayana, and forbade that he be slighted or ridiculed. The fact that the chapter of the Lotus Sutra entitled “A Teacher of the Law” (Dharmabhāṇaka-parivarta) sets forth the five kinds of practice for the dharma-bhāṇaka and the three rules of preaching shows that the dharma-bhāṇaka had been entrusted with the transmission of the Lotus Sutra.

As we have seen in the chapter called “Tactfulness,” advocates of the Lotus Sutra did not set out to deny the doctrines of the two vehicles that had already been preached; rather, they affirmed the value of each of the three vehicles (Ch., k’ai-ch’uan hsien-shih or k’ai-san hsien-erh) by embracing them all within the One True Vehicle as expedient means. The various motifs in each chapter concerning receiving and keeping the Lotus Sutra are the sermons based on the experience of faith chanted and transmitted by the various dharma-bhāṇakas, and the texts of the Lotus Sutra we now possess are the recorded forms of these.

The Commentary on the Lotus Sutra, Fa-hua lun (Saddharmapuṇḍarīkopadeśa, T. 1519, variant T. 1520), by Vasubandhu and translated into Chinese twice early in the sixth century, states:

The chapters following teach seven parables for the sake of living beings and the seven kinds of defilements they possess, in order to overcome the seven kinds of overweening pride.

It summarizes the seven parables as follows:

1. The parable of the burning house has been narrated for those who, seeking after power, perversely vaunt their assertion that they possess the Truth and seek after merits. In this world they burn the greatest from the fire of the various defilements and seek after reward in terms of the state of a heavenly being, which remains defiled with the outflows that obstruct enlightenment. These people are enabled to accumulate roots of goodness and the merits of samādhi in this world, and to be gladdened by expedients, so that later they will be able to enter true nirvana.
2. The parable of the poor son has been narrated for those who, seeking the liberation of a śrāvaka, possess a singly directed pride in superior knowledge. They reason perversely that their own vehicle is no different from that of the Tathāgata. Through this parable, such people will be enabled to board the Great Vehicle, the one revealed through the three.
3. The parable of the rain has been narrated for those who, seeking the Great Vehicle, have the arrogance of a singly directed resolve, reasoning perversely that there is no such thing as a śrāvaka or a pratyekabuddha vehicle. The parable allows them to know that there are other vehicles. Though the buddhas and tathāgatas preach the Dharma equally without discrimination, the seeds that sprout within living beings depend on the various roots of goodness.
4. The parable of the magic city has been narrated for those who arrogantly believe that what is not real has being. They perform the samādhis (concentrations) and samāpattis (final, unperturbed samādhis) that are still defiled by the outflows, and though they know that nirvana is not real, they still pursue it. They are enabled through skillful expedients to enter the magic city, the city of nirvana, which is the city of the dhyānas and the samādhis. They pass through this city and enter the city of true nirvana.
5. The parable of the priceless jewel has been narrated for those who, though not having false illusions, still do not realize that they have long possessed the roots of goodness of the Great Vehicle. They do not seek the Great Vehicle, but their narrow and inferior minds give rise to deluded understanding so that they think theirs is the first vehicle. Through the parable they are able to recall their past roots of goodness and learn to enter samādhi.
6. The parable of the king’s jewel has been narrated for those who are arrogant in the accumulation of merits. Though they hear the teaching of the Great Vehicle, they attach themselves to teachings that are not of the Great Vehicle. The parable enables them to hear the teachings of the Great Vehicle, and through them receive the secret predictions of the buddhas-tathāgatas, the same as if they had completed the ten stages.
7. The parable of the physician has been narrated for those who have pride in not accumulating merits. Remaining in the first vehicle, they have not in the past practiced and accumulated roots of goodness, so that even though they hear of the first vehicle, they cannot in their hearts believe in it. The parable shows them “the proper quantity of nirvana” … by enabling them to bring to fruition those roots that have not yet borne fruit.

There also appeared the cult of Maitreya, who, it was believed, would appear as a savior in the future. “Maitreya” is derived from the Sanskrit mitra (friend); Mithra (Mitra) was an ancient Iranian and Indian deity whose cult extended to Greece and Egypt. Maitreya the benevolent savior, it was believed, would appear in the world after 5,670,000,000 years. At present dwelling in Tuṣita Heaven, Maitreya would cause those with faith in him either to ascend to Tuṣita Heaven directly and be reborn there or to remain in the world to await his coming.

Twenty-one arhats are listed in Chapter 1:

Ājñāta-Kauṇḍinya
Mahā-Kāśyapa
Uruvilvā-Kāśyapa
Gaya-Kāśyapa
Nadi-Kāśyapa
Śāriputra
Great Maudgalyāyana
Mahā-Kātyāyana
Aniruddha
Kapphina
Gavampati
Revata
Pilindavatsa
Bakkula
Maha-Kausthila
Nanda
Sundarananda
Pūrṇa who was the son of Maitrāyanī
Subhūti
Ananda
Rahula.

The Etadaggavagga (Aṅguttara-Nikāya) lists the Buddha’s disciples in terms of their specialized abilities. For example, the ten great disciples are classified as follows¹:

1. Sāriputta [Śāriputra], the foremost in deep wisdom,
2. Mahāmoggallāna [Maudgalyāyana], the foremost in transcendental faculties,
3. Anuruddha [Aniruddha], the foremost in divine sight,
4. Mahākassapa [Mahākāśyapa], the foremost in observance of ascetic practices,
5. Puṇṇa Mantāniputta [Pūrṇa, son of Maitrāyanī], the foremost in expounding the teaching,
6. Mahākaccāyana [Mahākātyāyana], the foremost in ability to analyze and explain the teachings,
7. Rāhula, the foremost of all who loved learning,
8. Revata Khadiravaniya, the foremost of the forest dwellers,
9. Ānanda, the foremost of those who had heard and memorized the teachings, and
10. Upāli, the foremost of those who had memorized the Vinaya.

The chapter goes on to list other bhikkhus, bhikkhuṇis, upāsakas, and upāsikās and describes their special abilities.

It is understandable that those leading disciples who responded to the Buddha’s teachings in the way that suited them best then became teachers of those special abilities, guiding new followers in their own particular expertise. The disciples who gathered under them appear to have formed groups according to their interests, as is hinted by a sentence in the Saṃyutta-Nikaya: “According to one’s nature/selfdom (dhātu) people flow together, meet together.” The Buddha pointed out that the groups that formed around the various leaders tended to have the same leanings as those leaders (Saṃyutta-Nikāya), commenting that the disciples who were walking with Śāriputra were people of great wisdom; those around Mahāmoggallāna were of transcendental powers; those around Mahākassapa were of ascetic tendencies; those around Anuruddha were of divine sight; those around Puṇṇa Mantāniputta were expounders of the teaching; those around Upāli were memorizers of the Vinaya; those around Ānanda were those who had “heard much” (bahussuta); and those who had followed Devadatta were people of evil.
Source elements of the Lotus Sutra, p 169-170

1

Lotus World and the Oxford dictionary of Buddhism list Subhuti, foremost in understanding emptiness, among the 10 disciples. While Revata Khadiravaniya, the younger brother of Śāriputra, is not listed in those lists, other lists have him as foremost among forest dwellers. return

The Lotus Sutra records that the eight-year-old daughter of the Nāga (Dragon) King attained buddhahood in the southern region. According to the chapter “The Nāga and Birds” in the fourth varga (Shih-chi Ching, “Origin of the Worlds”) of the Chinese translation of the Dirgha-āgama (Ch’ang-a-han Ching, translated by Buddhayagas and Chu Fo-nien in 412-13; T. 1:127-29), at the bottom of the sea was the Sāgara palace. The Cheng-fa-n’ien-ch’u Ching (T. 721; Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra, translated by Prajñāruci in 539) says that there is a great sea (the Arabian Sea) past the mountain called Gurjara in the southern part of Jambudvipa. Five hundred yojanas under this sea is the palace of the Dragon King, adorned with many kinds of jewels (T. 17:405b). We can safely conjecture that behind these traditions is the fact of the prosperity of Gandhāra and Kashmir as centers for East-West trade during the Kuṣāṇa dynasty, and the inflow of riches with the expansion of seaborne trade between the west coast of India and the Roman Empire. In the depiction in the “Devadatta” chapter of the daughter of the Dragon King offering the Buddha a pearl, we may suppose that those people who supported the Nāga cult had a connection with the merchants of that trade, and that with the expansion of the idea of compassion in Buddhism, such low class non-Aryan people became the object of salvation and received predictions of buddhahood; thus it is possible to infer that here we have the Nāga cult (and the buddhahood of women) symbolically being embraced by Buddhism.