Thereupon Medicine-King Bodhisattva-mahāsattva and Great-Eloquence Bodhisattva-mahāsattva, together with their twenty-thousand attendants who were also Bodhisattvas, vowed to the Buddha:
“World-Honored One, do not worry! We will keep, read, recite and expound this sūtra after your extinction.

So far [the Buddha] has broadly drawn parables and explanations, speaking of those who kept this sūtra. What is said here is about the great beings (mahāsattvas), including Medicine King, who take vows to keep this sūtra and propagate it in the evil age.

At that time there were five hundred Arhats in this congregation. They had already been assured of their future attainment [of Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi]. They said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One! We also vow to expound this sūtra [but we will expound it] in some other worlds [rather than in this Sahā-World].”

The people of this land are so evil-minded that arhats will not be able to transform them. Hence, they are “in other lands.” [What appears to be a tacit] affirmation [by the Buddha, as he keeps silent about their vow to propagate the sūtra in “other lands”], of the impossibility of their mission should not be taken as real. [The Buddha’s silence should be interpreted] merely as words of stern [warning] for serious application to their mission.