This is another in a series of weekly blog posts comparing and contrasting the Sanskrit and Chinese Lotus Sutra translations.
In Chapter 6, Assurance of Future Buddhahood, Great Maudgalyāyana, Subhūti and Mahā-Kātyāyana, having heard the prediction of future Buddhahood given to Mahā-Kāśyapa, explain how they would feel if they received a similar prediction. In both the English language translations of Kumārajīva’s Chinese Lotus Sutra and H. Kern’s English language translation of a Nepalese Sanskrit document, a story is told of a man in a time of famine who finds himself before a great meal.
Senchu Murano offers this telling:
Suppose a man came
From a country suffering from famine.
Now he saw the meal of a great king.
He did not partake of it in doubts and fears.
After he was told to take it by the king,
He took it at once.
We are like that man.
We know the defects of the Lesser Vehicle.
But we do not know how to obtain
The unsurpassed wisdom of the Buddha.Although we hear you say [to us],
“You will become Buddhas,”
We are still in doubts and fears about it,
Just as that man was about the meal.
If you assure us of our future Buddhahood,
We shall be happy and peaceful.You, the Great Hero, the World-Honored One,
Wish to give peace to all the people of the world.
If you assure us of our future Buddhahood, we shall be
Like the man who was permitted to take the meal.
An entirely different greeting is presented by Kern:
12. (It is as if) a certain man, in time of famine, comes and gets good food, but to whom, when the food is already in his hands, they say that he should wait.
13. Similarly, it was with us, who after minding the lower vehicle, at the calamitous conjuncture of a bad time, were longing for Buddha-knowledge.
14. But the perfectly-enlightened great Seer has not yet favored us with a prediction (of our destiny), as if he would say: Do not eat the food that has been put into your hand.
15. Quite so, O hero, we were longing as we heard the exalted voice (and thought): Then shall we be at rest, when we shall have received a prediction.
16. Utter a prediction, O great hero, so benevolent and merciful! let there be an end of our feeling of poverty!
This is a striking difference. Kumārajīva has the great disciples hesitant to take the food, uncertain that it is available to them. They have heard they are qualified to become Buddhas, but they want to be reassured. Kern’s Sanskrit has the disciples denied the reward of the great vehicle. They remain outside the great vehicle until they receive an explicit prediction from the Buddha.
In Leon Hurvitz’s translation of the Lotus Sutra, he compared a composite Sanskrit Lotus Sutra with Kumārajīva’s Chinese translation and created a hybrid English translation. Where the Sanskrit and Kumārajīva disagreed substantially he put the Sanskrit version in the footnotes. See Kern’s Sanskrit and Hurvitz’s Sanskrit. Hurvitz’s translation of this section of Chapter 6 has the disciples awaiting the King’s permission to eat without comment on the difference in the Sanskrit. Since the Sanskrit he is referencing merges several extant documents into a single version, it is possible that the denial found in Kern’s earlier document was an outlier and that other Sanskrit documents take Kumārajīva’s position – the disciples are not denied the food but hesitant to take it.