Introduction

i.1In the context of teaching Ānanda the importance of not being complacent about one’s roots of virtue, the Buddha explains that although he had venerated countless buddhas in the past, it was not until he encountered the Buddha Dīpaṅkara, during a former life as a brahmin ascetic, that he first received a prophecy of his future awakening.

i.2There follows the account of the former Buddha Dīpaṅkara. This begins with his birth, in a far distant past, as the son of a king called Endowed with Islands. This king had himself formerly been the royal priest of a king named Ajātaśatru, who held him in such high esteem that he gave him half his kingdom. The account of the young prince Dīpaṅkara’s early life loosely parallels the biography of the Buddha Śākyamuni himself in the present eon as told in accounts such as the Lalitavistara ‍—from his transmigration from Tuṣita Heaven into his mother’s womb, to his first encounter with old age, sickness, and death and his decision to abandon his inheritance, to his arrival at the seat of awakening.

i.3In the case of Dīpaṅkara, however, according to the Tibetan version translated here, after his awakening to complete buddhahood he remains at the seat of awakening for fifty years, during which time not a single being approaches him or pays him homage. Dīpaṅkara, realizing that the people of the area are so happy that they have become careless, and wanting to rouse them from their complacency, then magically emanates a city even more impressive than their own. When this does not disturb them, he destroys it in a great blaze, leading the distressed population to finally consider their own impermanence. The Buddha Dīpaṅkara then rises from the seat of awakening and gives his first Dharma teaching. Accepting an invitation from King Ajātaśatru, he then travels to the palace Padmāvatī.

i.4Meanwhile, in the remote mountains, a young brahmin ascetic named Megha, who in a future life will be the Buddha Śākyamuni, is completing his training with the brahmin Ratna, whom he must provide with a fee of a bolt of fabric, a staff, a water flask, and five hundred coins. Lacking the five hundred coins, Megha descends from the mountain to seek the payment for his teacher, and in the city Gone to Bliss he encounters a large offering being made to brahmins by the wealthy Suviśākha. When Megha defeats the brahmin elder Giver of Pieces in a contest of knowledge of the Vedas, mantras, and treatises, Suviśākha offers Megha lavish gifts that include five hundred coins and his daughter Receiver of Goodness. Repulsed by the thought of marriage, Megha takes the gifts but refuses the girl, and he heads back toward the mountains while the girl, firmly considering him to be her husband, follows a few hours behind him.

i.5On the way back, Megha’s course is diverted by one of the gods from the Śuddhāvāsa realm so that he arrives instead at Ajātaśatru’s capital Padmāvatī, which has been cleaned and decorated in honor of Dīpaṅkara’s imminent arrival. As soon as Megha hears of the newly awakened Dīpaṅkara, he looks for flowers with which to make an offering to the Buddha. However, since King Ajātaśatru has decreed that all flowers are to be offered to the Buddha and that no one has permission to buy or sell them, Megha fails to find a single flower anywhere. Meanwhile, the girl Receiver of Goodness has begged seven flowers from a garland maker, and with them she approaches Megha.

i.6In the conversation that follows in prose, the girl proposes that she will give her flowers to Megha in exchange for his vow to always be her husband in lives to come, to which he eventually agrees. Here Megha reveals that the flowers are a metaphor for roots of virtue, saying that he “will plant them in a field of merit in which they will grow as soon as they are planted.”

i.7The verses that follow, spoken by the Buddha Śākyamuni, retell previous events of the sūtra, giving a much more elaborate account of the conversation between Megha and Receiver of Goodness and then continuing up to their approaching the Buddha Dīpaṅkara and Megha’s intent to receive a prophecy. The prose then resumes with their agreement that they will both offer the flowers and their departure to find the Buddha.

i.8Seeing Dīpaṅkara and, through a miraculous display, all his thirty-two marks of a great being, Megha is overjoyed. While the other people in the gathering lay out costly garments for the Buddha to walk on, Megha lays out his humble, dirty deer skin, which is angrily tossed away by the others. Megha retreats down a side path, away from the crowds, praying that the Buddha will think of him and place his feet on his matted hair. The Buddha then does so, and Megha is able to scatter his flowers over the head of the Buddha, who then prophesies that he will become the Buddha Śākyamuni in a future eon.

i.9The account of the Buddha Dīpaṅkara’s awakening and his prophecy to the young brahmin who would later become the Buddha Śākyamuni has long been a popular tale in the Buddhist world, and accordingly we find a number of retellings, with significant variation, in Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Pali literature. Numerous depictions of the meeting between Śākyamuni as a bodhisattva in a former life and the Buddha Dīpaṅkara are found in Gandhāran art from present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, the northwestern fringes of the Indian cultural sphere. Junko Matsumura is perhaps not exaggerating when she writes, “The story is so popular and important in both Northern and Southern Buddhism that there is a plethora of many different versions, so that, if we were to include short references and mentions of the motif, the number of related texts would be almost uncountable.”

i.10Corresponding narratives extant in Sanskrit are found in the Divyāvadāna and Kṣemendra’s (ca. 990–ca. 1070 ᴄᴇ) Bodhi­sattvāvadāna­kalpalatā, where the young brahmin is called Sumati. There are also lengthy accounts in the Mahāvastu and The Collected Teachings on the Bodhisatva (Bodhisattva­piṭaka), where, as in this text, he is called Megha. The story told in The Collected Teachings on the Bodhisatva is recounted by Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub, 1290–1364) in his chos ’byung (History of Buddhism).

i.11The parallel Pali story, known as the Sumedhakathā (Sumedha being the name of the young brahmin), is found in a number of sources. Perhaps the earliest is the Buddhavaṃsa, but the best known are the Nidānakathā, an introduction to the Pali jātakas from approximately the fifth century ᴄᴇ, and Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the Dhammapada.

i.12There are also a considerable number of Chinese parallels that shed some light on the development of the narrative throughout its history. While we have not given much consideration to these passages here, they are listed and compared in detail in the works of Matsumura. While Matsumura notes that the Tibetan version translated here is “the only extant independent sūtra on the Dīpaṃkara Prophecy,” she also cites evidence from Chinese sources indicating that several independent versions may have existed.

i.13The Tibetan translation of The Prophecy of Dīpaṅkara is listed in both the Denkarma and Phangthangma catalogs (under sūtras consisting of 210 ślokas), which date to the ninth century. Given that the colophon cites the initial translators as Viśuddhasiṃha and Gepal, who are thought to have lived in the late eighth to the early ninth century, we can safely assume that this translation dates to the same time period. The translation was revised by Jñānagarbha and Lui Gyaltsen.

i.14As the language in this Tibetan translation tends to be rather terse and elliptical, the narrative has been at times clarified using other versions of the story, particularly those in the Divyāvadāna, the Mahāvastu, and The Collected Teachings on the Bodhisatva, and we have noted these readings in the endnotes. We have also benefited from previous translations of The Prophecy of Dīpaṅkara by Léon Feer (into French) and Matsumura (into English). While the translation is primarily based on the Degé Kangyur edition, we also consulted the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur and the Stok Palace (stog pho brang) Kangyur.