Introduction

i.1On Vulture Peak Mountain in Rājagṛha, the bodhisattva Maitreya arises from an audience of monks and bodhisattvas and asks the Buddha to explain the karmic results of teaching the Dharma. The Buddha responds by comparing the merit gained by a person who makes an unfathomably enormous material offering to the buddhas, to the merit gained by another person who teaches a single verse of Dharma, declaring that the merit of the latter is far superior. The Buddha then concludes with a two-verse summary of his pithy explanation.

i.2This very brief sūtra, found in the General Sūtra (mdo sde) section of the Degé Kangyur, is not to be confused with two other sūtras from the Ratnakūṭa (dkon brtsegs) collection of the Kangyur called The Question of Maitreya (Toh 85) and The Question of Maitreya on the Eight Qualities (Toh 86), which are longer and differ thematically from this sūtra.

i.3While the longer Question of Maitreya is well known and has been the subject of several commentaries in the Tibetan tradition, this text seems to have been less utilized. We were only able to locate a few references to it, one of which is in a Prajñāpāramitā commentary by the Indian scholar Dharmamitra (twelfth century) on the Abhisamayālaṅkāra, located in the Tengyur. This shorter Question of Maitreya is cited among a series of scriptural quotations regarding how bodhisattvas should not conceal teachings from students but offer them freely out of compassion.

i.4There was no known Sanskrit original of The Question of Maitreya available until recently, when a manuscript containing a collection of twenty sūtras was found in the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā published a critical edition and English translation of this collection in the series Sanskrit Texts from the Autonomous Region (2010). Unfortunately, due to the inaccessibility of the manuscript collection and because it is missing a final colophon, its origin and date are currently unknown. There seems to be a thematic connection among these twenty sūtras: Vinītā notes that moral discipline (śīla) is a recurrent theme in the manuscript, and we can likewise identify the prevalence of themes of karmic cause and effect and, as in the case of The Question of Maitreya, the hierarchy of merit. In our translation, citations of the Sanskrit are given using Vinītā’s emendations of the handwritten manuscript.

i.5While the Sanskrit manuscript is entitled Ārya­maitreya­paripṛcchā­nāma­mahā­yāna­sūtra, the Degé edition gives the transliterated Sanskrit title Ārya­maitri­paripṛcchā­nāma­mahā­yāna­sūtra, a variation on the name of the bodhisattva Maitreya. Other Tibetan editions give similar variants, such as maitre, metre, or mitri. We have chosen to adopt the more familiar rendering ( maitreya ) for the title.

i.6In addition to the Degé Kangyur, we have consulted the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and several other editions, including those from Tshalpa, Thempangma, and independent lines, to compare and record variant readings. These editions are generally consistent and closely match the Sanskrit text. There is no known Chinese translation of this sūtra.

i.7There are three sūtras entitled The Question of Maitreya listed in the imperial catalogs, but judging by this sūtra’s length it likely corresponds to the “small” (chung ngu) Question of Maitreya recorded in both the Denkarma (ldan dkar ma) and Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) catalogs. This suggests that the sūtra was translated into Tibetan by the early ninth century at the latest, as the Denkarma catalog is thought to be dated to 812 ᴄᴇ. The sūtra lacks a translator’s colophon, so it is not possible to identify its translators or more precisely determine the context of its transmission to Tibet.

i.8In addition to the English translation found in Vinītā’s critical edition of the Sanskrit manuscript, there is also a recent English translation by Peter Skilling, with helpful notes, in his 2021 anthology Questioning the Buddha: A Selection of Twenty-Five Sutras.

i.9We have based our translation primarily on the Degé edition of the Tibetan Kangyur, but we consulted the Sanskrit and other Kangyur editions in the case of questionable terms or passages, to establish the most plausible and accurate readings of the text. Any instance where we have diverged from the Degé has been noted, and any significant differences found in the various versions of the sūtra are recorded in the notes.