Introduction

i.1The Śrīgupta Sūtra tells the story of a plot to kill Śākyamuni Buddha by fire and poison, a narrative that frames four additional stories of the Buddha’s past lives that demonstrate examples of his invulnerability. In the framing narrative, the assassination attempt is carried out by the titular Śrīgupta. He is ordered to kill the Buddha by his Jain teacher, Jñātiputra, who disputes Śākyamuni’s claim to omniscience. However, because the Buddha is in fact omniscient, he sees through the plot and uses it as an opportunity to bring Śrīgupta to the Buddhist path. In its broad strokes, this story is similar to the one found in the Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā, a fourth- or fifth-century Pali scriptural commentary.

i.2Interwoven with the dramatic narrative of the assassination attempt are scenes in which the Buddha recounts four of his past lives: as a pheasant chick, a hare, the peacock king Suvarṇāvabhāsa, and a young brahmin boy named Dharmakāma. Each of these stories is told to demonstrate why Śrīgupta’s plot was doomed to fail; but on a deeper level, each one underscores the infallibility of the consequences‍—good and bad‍—of actions from one’s previous lives.

i.3The third of these vignettes is particularly noteworthy for recounting the tale of Śākyamuni’s previous incarnation as Suvarṇāvabhāsa, a peacock king who similarly escaped a plot to poison him. Stories of Suvarṇāvabhāsa appear throughout the Buddhist literature, and though they can differ substantially, they generally share the feature of Suvarṇāvabhāsa’s escape from some kind of snare or attempt on his life through the recitation of a series of verses, a dhāraṇī, or a mantra. The version of the story found in The Śrīgupta Sūtra is unique, but it too includes a series of verses that can be recited over food to neutralize any poisons it may contain. In this sūtra, once the Buddha has finished the story of his life as Suvarṇāvabhāsa and his escape from death by poisoning, he gives Śrīgupta a liturgy to recite over the food he has poisoned, thus rendering it safe for the Buddha and his monks to eat. It is possible that this series of verses may have been intended to be extracted for use in a more general apotropaic fashion to avert poisoning.

i.4There is no known Sanskrit witness of The Śrīgupta Sūtra. It was translated into Chinese in 583 by Narendrayaśas (516–89) under the title De hu zhangzhe jing (德護長者經, Taishō 545). The sūtra must have been well-known in China, as the famous seventh-century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang felt it important to record in Book Nine of his Records of the Western Regions the existence of a stūpa in Rājagṛha marking the site of Śrīgupta’s house.

i.5The Tibetan translation was made by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Dānaśīla with the Tibetan monk Yeshé Dé. The sūtra is likewise recorded in the Denkarma (Tib. ldan dkar ma), a ninth-century catalog of translations made during Tibet’s Imperial Period. Thus we can safely date the original Tibetan translation to the late eighth or early ninth centuries ᴄᴇ.

i.6The English translation presented here was made based on the Tibetan translation as preserved in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) and the version found in the Stok Palace Kangyur.