This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.
In Senchu Murano’s translation of the Buddha’s prediction for Śāriputra, we get this picture:
“Śāriputra! After a countless, inconceivable number of kalpas from now, you will be able to make offerings to many thousands of billions of Buddhas, to keep their right teachings, to practice the Way which Bodhisattvas should practice, and to become a Buddha called Flower-Light, the Tathāgata, the Deserver of Offerings, the Perfectly Enlightened One, the Man of Wisdom and Practice, the Well-Gone, the Knower of the World, the Unsurpassed Man, the Controller of Men, the Teacher of Gods and Men, the Buddha, the World-Honored One. The world of that Buddha will be called Free-From-Taint. That world will be even, pure, adorned, peaceful, and fertile, where gods and men will prosper. The ground of that world will be made of lapis lazuli; the roads will fan out from the center to the eight directions. Those roads will be marked off by ropes of gold, and the trees of the seven treasures on the roadsides will always bear flowers and fruit. Flower-Light Tathāgata will also lead the living beings [of his world] by the teaching of the Three Vehicles.
“Śāriputra! Although the world in which he appears will not be an evil one, that Buddha will expound the teaching of the Three Vehicles according to his original vow.
Now, compare that with H. Kern’s translation:
Again, Śāriputra, at a future period, after innumerable, inconceivable, immeasurable Æons, when thou shalt have learnt the true law of hundred thousand myriads of koṭis of Tathāgatas, showed devotion in various ways, and achieved the present Bodhisattva-course, thou shalt become in the world a Tathāgata, &c., named Padmaprabha, endowed with science and conduct, a Sugata, a knower of the world, an unsurpassed tamer of men, a master of gods and men, a Lord Buddha.
At that time then, Śāriputra, the Buddha-field of that Lord, the Tathāgata Padmaprabha, to be called Viraja, will be level, pleasant, delightful, extremely beautiful to see, pure, prosperous, rich, quiet, abounding with food, replete with many races of men; it will consist of lapis lazuli, and contain a checker-board of eight compartments distinguished by gold threads, each compartment having its jewel tree always and perpetually filled with blossoms and fruits of seven precious substances.
Now that Tathāgata Padmaprabha, &c., Śāriputra, will preach the law by the instrumentality of three vehicles. Further, Śāriputra, that Tathāgata will not appear at the decay of the Æon, but preach the law by virtue of a vow.
I’ve struggled over the Buddha’s assertion that Śāriputra will teach the three vehicles even though “the world in which he appears will not be an evil one.” Why not emulate Mañjuśrī? “In the sea [Mañjuśrī] expounded only the Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma.” But Kern’s translation agrees that Śāriputra “will preach the law by the instrumentality of three vehicles” after pointing out that his world will be “level, pleasant, delightful, extremely beautiful to see, pure, prosperous, rich, quiet, abounding with food, replete with many races of men.”
Given this agreement it seems safe to assume that this is an important point being made by the Lotus Sutra, and I should just accept this and move on.
Which brings me to another puzzle. This one occurs whenever Kern is describing the world of a future Buddha.
For example, Murano says Śāriputra’s “world will be made of lapis lazuli; the roads will fan out from the center to the eight directions. Those roads will be marked off by ropes of gold, and the trees of the seven treasures on the roadsides will always bear flowers and fruit.”
Kern agrees that it will consist of lapis lazuli, but he says it will “contain a checker-board of eight compartments distinguished by gold threads, each compartment having its jewel tree always and perpetually filled with blossoms and fruits of seven precious substances.”
This “checkerboard” image is used repeatedly by Kern, while all of the English translations of Kumārajīva speak of roads branching out in eight directions. For example, Hurvitz says: “It shall have vaiḍūrya for soil in an eightfold network of highways, each bordered with cords of pure gold.”
I have no clue what Kern was imagining when he described a world of eight compartments distinguished by gold threads.
Next: Variations to Puzzle Over
