Fóshuō Mílè dà chéngfó jīng 佛說彌勒大成佛經
Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on Maitreya’s Great Attainment of Buddhahood attributed to 鳩摩羅什 Jiūmóluóshí (Kumārajīva, 譯)
About the work
The Mílè dà chéngfó jīng is the longest and most doctrinally developed of the Maitreya sūtras. In a single fascicle (but considerably longer than T453–T455), it offers an extended cosmological picture of the future world in which Maitreya appears, an elaborated narrative of his three dragon-flower assemblies (龍華三會, with numbers of people liberated: 96 billion / 94 billion / 92 billion), and a fully Mahāyānized treatment of the elder Kāśyapa — who in this text is transformed from an arhat relic-bearer into a bodhisattva-like figure comparable to those in the Lotus Sūtra. The attribution is to 鳩摩羅什 in the Yáo-Qín (姚秦) period. Together with T452 (KR6i0031) and T454 (KR6i0033), this forms the “Three Maitreya Sūtras” core commented on by 憬興 Jǐngxīng’s Sān Mílè jīng shū (KR6i0040).
Prefaces
No separate preface; the text begins with the standard narrative opening. The Chū sānzàng jì jí 出三藏記集 does not definitively include T456 among 鳩摩羅什’s confirmed translations.
Abstract
T456 is the most expansive of the Maitreya cycle texts and exhibits the most thoroughgoing Mahāyānization of the Maitreya legend. Rothschild and others (Journal of Chinese Religions 45/1, 2017) note that T456’s three-assembly composition (each assembly liberating specific groups by hundreds of billions) became the canonical reference for the Maitreya eschatological timeline. The text’s Kāśyapa narrative notably transforms this elder — elsewhere portrayed as a strictly Hīnayāna figure — into something approximating a Mahāyāna bodhisattva awaiting the next Buddha, a move paralleling the Lotus Sūtra’s revaluation of Śrāvaka practitioners. No Sanskrit or Tibetan original survives independently of the Chinese. The attribution to 鳩摩羅什 is traditional but not confirmed by the earliest bibliographic witnesses.
The text’s eschatological content — a world transformed by the wheel-turning king Shānjié 珊瑞 with cities of jewels, people of 84,000-year lifespans, Maitreya’s miraculous birth and quick attainment — provided iconographic and narrative material for Maitreya devotional art across China, Korea, and Japan.
Translations and research
- Sponberg and Hardacre (eds.). Maitreya, the Future Buddha. CUP, 1988.
- Rothschild, N. Harry et al. “Re-examining The Zhengming Jing.” Journal of Chinese Religions 45/1 (2017). — Uses T456 as a canonical baseline.
- Legittimo, Elsa I. “Reopening the Maitreya-files.” JIABS 31 (2008 [2010]).