The Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra (सुवर्णप्रभासोत्तमसूत्रेन्द्रराज: suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtrendrarājaḥ) is a Buddhist text of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism. The title can be translated as the Golden Light Sutra or Sutra of the Sublime Golden Light. The sutra was originally written in India in Sanskrit and was translated several times into Chinese, by Dharmakṣema among others. The sutra is an important Mahayana sutra. It has been translated into Khotanese, Old Turkic, Tangut, Tibetan, Mongolian and Manchu. The name of the sutra derives from chapter 3 where the bodhisattva Ruchiraketu dreams of a great drum that radiates a sublime golden light, symbolizing the Dharma, or teachings of the Buddha.
Now almost forgotten in China, and from largely Buddhism in central Asia, it became one of the most important sutras in Japan because of its fundamental message, which teaches that the Four Guardian Gods protect the ruler who governs his country in the proper manner. The sutra also expounds the vows of the Hindu goddesses Sarasvati, Lakshmi (Shri) and Drdha, the Earth Goddess, to protect any bhikkhu, or monk, who will uphold and teach the sutra.
Taken at face value one might take the main theme of the sutra literally, which is the importance for leaders to be good examples for the kingdom. In Chapter Twelve, the sutra speaks in verse form about the disasters that befall a kingdom when its ruler does not uphold justice, and the benefits of kings who lead an exemplary life. In the Chapter on the Guardian Kings, the Four Guardian Kings have a dialogue with the Buddha, explaining in vivid detail all the benefits a kingdom will have if its ruler enshrines the essence of the sutra and offers daily praise. The sutra contains some elements of early tantra, in that in chapter two, the sutra describes four Buddhas who dwell in the four cardinal directions. These same four comprise later Buddhist mandalas in the same positions, such as the Matrix Mandala.
Hence, historically the sutra won great esteem as a sutra for protecting the country, based on the text of the first chapter, and often was read publicly to ward off threats. Its first reading as a court ceremony was around 660 AD, when the Tang Dynasty of China and Silla of Korea had defeated Baekche of Korea and were threatening Japan.
In 741 Emperor Shōmu founded provincial monasteries and nunneries in each province. The official name of the monasteries was the Temple for Protection of the State by the Four Heavenly Kings Golden Light Sutra . The 20 monks who lived there recited the Sovereign Kings Golden Light Sutra on a fixed schedule to protect the country. As Buddhism evolved in Japan, the practice gradually fell out of use, and is no longer continued today.
In some languages the sutra is preceded by a confession taught Zhang Judao and a wife of an official, make an confession to the domestic animals they have killed and write the sutra and make a vow to these lives to early reincarnate into human realms. A Ming dynasty monk also collect some sutra effect.
Dharmakṣema , translated zhú fǎ-fēng; 385–433 CE was a Buddhist monk, originally from Central India, who went to China after studying and teaching in Kashmir and Kucha. He had been residing in Dunhuang for several years when that city was captured in 420 by Juqu Mengxun, the king of Northern Liang. Under the patronage of Mengxun, Dharmakṣema took up residence in Guzang, the Northern Liang capital in 421. As well as being a valued political adviser to Mengxun, he went on to become one of the most prolific translators of Buddhist literature into Chinese. The colophons to translated texts attributed to Dharmakṣema, indicate that he was one of the few Indian scholar-monks active in China who was sufficiently proficient in spoken Chinese to make the preliminary oral translations of Buddhist texts himself without an interpreter, although the further stages in the production of the translations were done by his team of Chinese assistants. He was assassinated on the orders of his erstwhile patron Mengxun, for quasi-political reasons, on another journey to the West in 433.
When he was six years old, Dharmakṣema lost his father. His mother supported the family as a weaver of fine woollen cloth. One day a popular and wealthy monk, Dharmayaśas, was in the area. Impressed by his prosperity, Dharmakṣema's mother had the young boy of ten taken on as a pupil. Throughout his youth, Dharmakṣema studied the Hīnayāna scriptures and showed great promise as he was gifted with considerable powers of memory and eloquence. On the other hand, he seems to have taken an early interest in the use of magic and spells, competing with other boys in challenges.
Later he is said to have met an old meditation master, known only as "White Head", who worsted Dharmakṣema in a debate that lasted ten days. He was given a copy of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra by the old monk and this is reported to have been the trigger of his conversion to Mahāyāna. He then studied Mahāyāna and by the age of twenty, he is said to have memorized a phenomenal amount of scripture.
His younger brother accidentally killed the favourite elephant of the local king and was executed for this. Though the king had forbidden anybody to mourn or bury the corpse on pain of death, Dharmkṣema defied this order and buried the body of his brother. After he had been interrogated by the king about his disobedience, the king was impressed by Dharmakṣema's audacity and took him on as a court chaplain. All the surviving biographies suggest that Dharmakṣema maintained his position there for a while using a combination of flattery and magical tricks. Eventually, the biographies report, this king grew tired of Dharmakṣema, forcing Dharmakṣema to resort to unscrupulous magic and blackmail in an attempt to retain his court position. When his trickery came to light, he fled to Central Asia by way of Kashmir, taking with him the copy of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra and two other texts on moral discipline.
After a brief stay in Kucha and possibly Shanshan, Dharmakṣema arrived in Dunhuang where he may have stayed for several years and possibly did some early translation work. It is reported that his fame as a thaumaturge followed him across Central Asia.
An anecdote, mentioned in the monastic biographies, dating to this period shows a somewhat less than respectful attitude towards the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, even though the account presumably comes from Dharmakṣema himself. He was staying at an inn and decided to use the text as a pillow. Each night for the following three nights, a voice was heard coming from the ground asking why he was using the sacred word of the Buddha as a pillow. He eventually placed the book high on a shelf and the voice stopped calling out to him.
While he was in Dunhuang, that city was subdued in 420 and again in 421 by the Northern Liang king, Juqu Mengxun. It is probable that Juqu had already heard about Dharmakṣema since the biographical records imply that Juqu sought him and installed him in the palace temple in Guzong, the Northern Liang capital, by 421. Almost immediately, Dharmakṣema was put to work translating the Nirvāṇa Sūtra by Juqu who may have been interested in the prophecies contained in that text concerning the "end-days" of the Dharma. The ten juan (scroll) translation that Dharmakṣema produced at that time seems to have been based on the manuscript that he had brought with him, corresponding to the six juan version, normally attributed to Faxian, but actually translated by Buddhabhadra and Baoyuan a few years earlier. Following the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, Dharmakṣema went on to translate the remainder of the corpus of texts attributed to him.
Throughout this period, Dharmakṣema seems to have consolidated his position both as imperial chaplain and court adviser. Juqu seems to have valued his reported prophetic abilities, which were regarded as infallible by his contemporaries. He also continued to use his magical or thaumaturgic skills to retain Juqu's reliance upon him, reportedly exorcising the city of a host of plague-bearing demons.
By the mid-420s, the emperor of the neighbouring state of Wei, Tuoba Tao, had heard of Dharmakṣema's magical and prophetic abilities, and, as Juqu's superior, demanded that Dharmakṣema be handed over to him. It is reported that Juqu was very reluctant to do so as Dharmakṣema was a value asset to his Northern Liang state.
Coincidentally, around this time Dharmakṣema is said to have suddenly discovered that the version of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra he had earlier translated was incomplete, asserting that the full version should cover at least 25,000 or even 35,000 verses—as opposed to the 5000 verses he had already translated. Dharmakṣema was given permission to go in search of the missing portions and may have travelled back to North Western India for this purpose. After an absence of more than two years, he then returned to Guzang, bringing extra textual material with him which he claimed he had found in Khotan. It is possible that Dharmakṣema himself was the author of this material, as he had both the scriptural training and the motive to do this.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Dharmakṣema stayed on in Guzang. He then translated this new material, together with still further material purportedly belonging to the extended Nirvāṇa Sūtra, which had been handed to him by an anonymous visiting foreign monk, "as if it were expected" as the biographies note with apparent incredulity. This renewed work resulted in the current version of forty juan found in the Chinese canon.
After negotiations had dragged on for several years, the pressure from Tuoba Tao became impossible to ignore—he was even threatening to invade Northern Liang to take Dharmakṣema by force. In the late months of 432, a decision to kill Dharmakṣema was reached by Juqu Mengxun and Li Shun, the aristocratic emissary of Tuoba Tao. The reasons for this decision are unclear as two differing accounts are found in the monastic biographies and the civil Wei Annals, though the two sources concur that he was killed in January 433 at the age of forty-nine. The monastic biographical records state that Dharmakṣema had insisted on leaving Guzong for another trip in search of further missing parts of the Nirvāṇa Sūtra. Juqu thought that Dharmakṣema might be planning to defect to another ruler and did not want lose his talents. He therefore sent assassins after Dharmakṣema who killed him on the road some 40 li from Guzong. The Wei Annals present a different story. They record that Dharmakṣema was particularly famed for secret sexual techniques, which had interested Tuoba Tao, which had already got him into trouble in Shanshan with female members of the royal family there. At their meeting in 432, Li Shun revealed to Juqu that Dharmakṣema had been giving lessons in special sexual techniques in secret to ladies of the Northern Liang court, including members of Juqu's own family. Juqu Mengxun was outraged by this revelation and had Dharmakṣema tortured and publicly executed.
It is also recorded that Juqu regretted his actions and was plagued by visitations from demons "even in broad daylight" until his own death a few months later in March 433.
The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to China started in the 3rd century BCE during the reign of the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang. The first documented translation efforts by Buddhist monks were in the 2nd century CE, probably as a consequence of the expansion of the Kushan Empire into the Chinese territory of the Tarim Basin.
From the 4th century onward, with Faxian's pilgrimage to India (395-414), and later Xuanzang (629-644), Chinese pilgrims too started to travel by themselves to northern India, their source of Buddhism, in order to get improved access to original scriptures. The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism began to decline around the 7th century with the rise of Islam in Central Asia.
According to some European historians, Mauryan emperor Aśoka the Great sent the royal monk Massim Sthavira to Nepal, Bhutan, and China to spread Buddhism around 265 BCE. However, it has not been widely confirmed that these missionaries arrived in China or that they were responsible for establishing the teachings of Buddhism there.
The 1st century BCE Records of the Great Historian tells of the travels of the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian to Central Asia around 130 BCE. He reports about a country named Shendu (India), whose peaceful Buddhist ways are mentioned in writing in the 1st century CE Han history, the Hanshu. Chinese murals in the Tarim Basin city of Dunhuang describe Han Wudi (156-87 BCE) worshiping Buddhist statues, "golden men brought in 120 BCE by a great Han general in his campaigns against the nomads". However, there is no such mention of Han Wudi worshiping the Buddha in Chinese historical literature. The Hou Hanshu also records the visit to the Chinese capital in 2 BCE of Yuezhi envoys, who gave oral teachings on Buddhist sutras to a student, suggesting that some Yuezhi had already started to disseminate the Buddhist faith in eastern Asia during the 1st century BCE. The Hou Hanshu then describes a questionable legend about the encouragement of Buddhism around 70 CE by Emperor Ming (58-75 CE):
- There is a current tradition that Emperor Ming dreamed that he saw a tall golden man the top of whose head was glowing. He questioned his group of advisors and one of them said: “In the West there is a god called Buddha. His body is sixteen chi high (3.7 metres or 12 feet), and is the colour of true gold.” The Emperor, to discover the true doctrine, sent an envoy to Tianzhu (Northwestern India) to inquire about the Buddha’s doctrine, after which paintings and statues [of the Buddha] appeared in the Middle Kingdom.
This encounter is further described in a 6th century CE account by Yang Xuanzhi:
- The establishment of the Baima Temple (Temple of the White Horse) by Emperor Ming (58-75 CE) of the Han marked the introduction of Buddhism into China. The temple was located on the south side of the Imperial Drive, three leagues (li) outside the Xiyang Gate. The Emperor dreamt of the golden man sixteen Chinese feet tall, with the aureole of sun and moon radiating from his head and his neck. A "golden god", he was known as Buddha. The emperor dispatched envoys to the Western Regions in search of the god, and, as a result, acquired Buddhist scriptures and images. At the time, because the scriptures were carried into China on the backs of white horses, White Horse was adopted as the name of the temple. (Translation: Ulrich Theobald).
The first documented translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese occurs in 148 CE with the arrival of the Parthian prince-turned-monk, An Shigao . He worked to establish Buddhist temples in Loyang and organized the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, testifying to the beginning of a wave of Central Asian Buddhist proselytism that was to last several centuries. An Shigao translated Buddhist texts on basic doctrines, meditation and abhidharma. An Xuan, a Parthian layman who worked alongside An Shigao, also translated an early Mahāyāna Buddhist text on the bodhisattva path.
Mahāyāna Buddhism was first widely propagated in China by the Kushan monk Lokakṣema , active ca. 164–186 CE), who came from the ancient Buddhist kingdom of Gandhāra. Lokakṣema translated important Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, as well as rare, early Mahāyāna sūtras on topics such as samādhi and meditation on the buddha Akṣobhya. These translations from Lokakṣema continue to give insight into the early period of Mahāyāna Buddhism.
In the middle of the 2nd century CE, the Kushan empire under king Kaniṣka expanded into Central Asia and went as far as taking control of Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand, in the Tarim Basin, modern Xinjiang. As a consequence, cultural exchanges greatly increased, and Central Asian Buddhist missionaries became active shortly after in the Chinese capital cities of Loyang and sometimes Nanjing, where they particularly distinguished themselves by their translation work. They promoted both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna scriptures. Thirty-seven of these early translators of Buddhist texts are known.
