Fóshuō Mílè xiàshēng chéngfó jīng 佛說彌勒下生成佛經
Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Descent and Attainment of Buddhahood of Maitreya attributed to 鳩摩羅什 Jiūmóluóshí (Kumārajīva, 譯)
About the work
The Mílè xiàshēng chéngfó jīng is the Later Qín (Yáo-Qín period) rendering of the Maitreyavyākaraṇa, describing Maitreya’s descent from Tuṣita to earth, his birth into a brahmin family, enlightenment under the dragon-flower tree (50 lǐ high, with magnificently spreading branches), and the liberation of billions through three successive great assemblies. The title adds chéngfó 成佛 (“attaining Buddhahood”) beyond the simpler “descent” title of T453 (KR6i0032), reflecting a fuller doctrinal statement. The attribution to 鳩摩羅什 is standard in the canonical tradition. Together with T452 (KR6i0031) and T456 (KR6i0035), this text forms one of the “Three Maitreya Sūtras” (sān Mílè jīng) commented on by 憬興 Jǐngxīng (KR6i0040).
Prefaces
No separate preface survives. The Taishō cross-references T453 and T455 as parallel translations.
Abstract
Legittimo (“Reopening the Maitreya-files,” JIABS 31, 2008) argues that T453 and T454 are so closely related that they cannot represent independent translations of the same Indic original — one of them is likely a revision of the other, or they share a common Chinese textual ancestor. The traditional attribution of T454 to 鳩摩羅什 is not among the translations positively identified in 僧祐 Sēngyòu’s Chū sānzàng jì jí, and may derive from later cataloguing tradition. Nonetheless, T454 has been the most widely used of the Maitreya descent sūtras in East Asian Buddhist liturgy and iconography, and was translated into English by Shōtarō Iida and Jane Goldstone for the BDK series.
The Indic background: the Maitreyavyākaraṇa (“Record of Maitreya’s Prophecy”) has Indic parallels in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya (Tibetan), the Divyāvadāna, and related Avadāna literature, though no Sanskrit text matches the Chinese versions closely; the Chinese texts likely represent a developed or supplemented form of the original Indic narrative.
Translations and research
- Iida, Shōtarō and Jane Goldstone, trans. The Sūtra That Expounds the Descent of Maitreya Buddha and His Enlightenment. BDK English Tripiṭaka. Berkeley: BDK America. — Complete English translation.
- Legittimo, Elsa I. “Reopening the Maitreya-files.” JIABS 31/1–2 (2008 [2010]).
- Sponberg and Hardacre (eds.). Maitreya, the Future Buddha. CUP, 1988.