Fóshuō guān Mílè púsà shàngshēng Dōushuài tiān jīng 佛說觀彌勒菩薩上生兜率天經
Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Contemplating the Bodhisattva Maitreya’s Ascent to Tuṣita Heaven by 沮渠京聲 Jǔqú Jīngshēng (譯)
About the work
The Guān Mílè púsà shàngshēng Dōushuài tiān jīng is the central visualization (guān 觀) sūtra of the Maitreya cult — the text describing Maitreya’s ascent (shàngshēng 上生) to Tuṣita heaven and the practice of being reborn there. In one fascicle, the text narrates the golden-light miracle of the Buddha at Śrāvastī, a vast assembly including bodhisattvas Maitreya and Mañjuśrī, and Upāli’s question about Maitreya’s future. The Buddha reveals that twelve years after death, Maitreya (Ajita 阿逸多) will ascend to Tuṣita heaven, where the celestial deity Láodùbátí 牢度跋提 will build a wondrous palace of jewels and divine maidens. The sūtra describes the palace in lavish detail and concludes with practice instructions for rebirth in Tuṣita, listing nine categories of practitioners who can aspire to this goal.
The text is the first of the “Maitreya sūtras” in the canon and forms, together with the “descent” sūtras (T453–T456), a complement to the eschatological Maitreya narrative. It is commonly grouped with T454 (KR6i0033) and T456 (KR6i0035) as the “Three Maitreya Sūtras” (sān Mílè jīng 三彌勒經).
Prefaces
No separate preface survives. The body begins: 如是我聞，一時佛在舍衛國祇樹給孤獨園…
Abstract
The attribution of T452 to 沮渠京聲 (?–464 CE) is accepted in the canonical tradition but has been challenged by modern scholars. He was a member of the Northern Liáng 北涼 royal house (a cousin of the ruler 沮渠蒙遜 Jǔqú Měngxùn), who traveled to Khotan in his youth to study Buddhist meditation, and after the fall of the Northern Liáng (439 CE) went south to the Liú-Sòng capital Jiànkāng 建康 (modern Nánjīng), where he worked at several monasteries. His datable translation activity falls between ca. 455 and his death in 464 CE.
The Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 (T55.2145) records that he received both this text and the Guān Shìyīn visualization sūtra at Gāochāng 高昌 (Turfan) and brought them south; this suggests the text may have been composed or compiled in Central Asia (Turfan region) rather than translated from an Indian original. Jonathan Silk (2019) argues the text is “rather a Central Asian composition” wrongly attributed to him. Cuong T. Mai’s dissertation (Indiana, 2009) and Alan Sponberg (Maitreya, the Future Buddha, CUP, 1988) have treated the text as belonging to a cluster of visualization apocrypha shaped by Chinese and Central Asian devotional contexts. No Sanskrit or independent Tibetan version survives; a Tibetan translation (Toh 199, 84000) was made from the Chinese, not from Sanskrit.
The “three Maitreya sūtras” (sān Mílè jīng) — T452, T454, and T456 — are cross-commented in 憬興 Jǐngxīng’s Sān Mílè jīng shū (KR6i0040, T38n1774). Individual commentaries include 吉藏 Jízàng’s Mílè jīng yóuyì (KR6i0037), 窺基 Kuījī’s Guān Mílè shàngshēng jīng zàn (KR6i0038), 元曉 Wŏnhyo’s Mílè shàngshēng jīng zōngyào (KR6i0039), and the Sòng-dynasty Mílè shàngshēng jīng ruìyìng chāo (KR6i0044).
Translations and research
- Sponberg, Alan and Helen Hardacre (eds.). Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. — Standard reference; contains Jan Nattier, “Meanings of the Maitreya Myth” and Alan Sponberg, “Wŏnhyo on Maitreya Visualization.”
- Mai, Cuong T. Visualization Apocrypha and the Making of Buddhist Deity Cults in Early Medieval China. PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 2009.
- 84000 translations: The Sūtra on Maitreya’s Birth in the Heaven of Joy (Toh 199), introduction by Jonathan Silk, noting Central Asian provenance.