Introduction

i.1The Great Lion’s Roar of Maitreya opens amid an assembly of śrāvaka and bodhisattva disciples, where Venerable Mahākāśyapa poses a series of questions to the Buddha about how men and women who have gone forth into monastic life should train, act, and engage in spiritual practice. In response, the Buddha describes at length the proper conduct and practice of those who have gone forth, contrasting it with various forms of potential misconduct and faulty practice and utilizing a series of memorable analogies as illustrations.

i.2Mahākāśyapa then requests that the Buddha remain in the world “for an eon or longer” in order to safeguard the Dharma. The Buddha predicts that in the future Mahākāśyapa himself will safeguard the Dharma, at which point Mahākāśyapa objects that the Dharma cannot remain for long if it is entrusted to a śrāvaka rather than a bodhisattva, and he supplicates the Buddha to anoint Maitreya in his stead. The Buddha then commands Maitreya to take responsibility for protecting the Dharma in the future, which he accepts.

i.3In response to Maitreya’s query, the Buddha describes at length the blameworthy qualities of those in the future who will “falsely claim to be bodhisattvas” and the proper conduct and practice of bodhisattvas, again utilizing a series of analogies as well as a narrative of one of his past lives. Maitreya roars his lion’s roar in response, describing his own diligent and ascetic practice of the bodhisattva path. When a group of monks rises to leave the assembly, thinking Maitreya’s description of ascetic practice unrealistic, Maitreya reassures them and offers a teaching on how they should practice.

i.4Finally, Mahākāśyapa asks the Buddha how many “sham bodhisattvas” there will be in the future, and the Buddha answers by predicting that sham bodhisattvas will involve themselves in the worship of his relics rather than in proper practice. He elaborates by narrating another of his past lives, in which Maitreya in a former life also features, providing an extended critique of those who involve themselves in devotional practices focused on relics, stūpas, and images to the exclusion of ascetic practice and meditation. In particular, the Buddha criticizes those who would commercialize such devotional activities and seek to make a living thereby, narrating another of his past lives by way of illustration. In this way, the Buddha contrasts proper practice, focused on renunciation, moral discipline, and meditative inquiry, with the improper practice of commercializing devotional practices for mundane ends.

i.5The Great Lion’s Roar of Maitreya is one of the forty-nine sūtras that make up the Heap of Jewels (Ratnakūṭa; dkon brtsegs) section of the Kangyur, an important compilation of Mahāyāna scriptures that exists in both Chinese and Tibetan translation. No Sanskrit original has survived. The Chinese translation of the sūtra, Mohe jiaye hui 摩訶迦葉會 (Taishō 310 [23]), was produced in 541 by *Upaśūnya (月婆首那) and later included as part of the Chinese Ratnakūṭa compiled in the eighth century ᴄᴇ by Bodhiruci. The Tibetan translation is attributed in the colophon to the Indian pandits Jinamitra, Surendrabodhi, and Prajñāvarman and the Tibetan Yeshé Dé and others, which dates it to the early ninth century at the latest. This is confirmed by the text’s inclusion in both imperial-era translation catalogs, the Denkarma (ca. 812) and the Phangthangma. The text was also found at Dunhuang (Pelliot tibétain 93), which suggests that it was widely disseminated across the Tibetan-speaking world from the ninth to the early eleventh centuries ᴄᴇ.

i.6Indications of the text’s place in the Indian Buddhist landscape can be found in the fact that it is quoted by name in A Compendium of Sūtras (Sūtrasamuccaya, Toh 3934), attributed to Nāgārjuna, as well as in An Explanation of The Compendium of Sūtras: An Ornament Illuminating the Jewels (Sūtra­samuccaya­bhāṣya­ratnā­lokālaṃkāra­nāma, Toh 3935) attributed to Ratnākaraśānti (ca. 970–1045). The text is also extensively quoted by the renowned Atiśa (982–1054) in The Great Compendium of Sūtras (Mahā­sūtra­samuccaya, Toh 3961). At least one citation by name appears also in A Compendium of Sūtras on the Stages of Meditation (Toh 3933). At the very least, these citations demonstrate that the sūtra was recopied and readily available to scholars in India over the course of the first millennium ᴄᴇ.

i.7As for the perspective of modern academic scholarship, Gregory Schopen has shown that there are multiple instances in the sūtra of vocabulary shared with the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, and Schopen’s analysis of the sūtra’s polemics against the commercialization of relic and image cults demonstrates either the direct influence of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya or the fact that the present sūtra shared its milieu with the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya and the communities in which it was transmitted. In that regard, it is perhaps of interest that some of the sūtra’s criticism and instruction is aimed at śrāvaka as well as bodhisattva monastics, not to mention the sūtra’s promotion of the ideal of the forest-dwelling monastic and, in general, its view of the merits of monastic life in comparison to the life of lay householders. For example, the sūtra refers with approval to a supposed previous age in which literally everyone left their homes to take up the religious life, so that not even one householder remained.

i.8The sūtra’s polemics against the commercialization of relic, stūpa, and image cults might be usefully contrasted with other sūtras in which such devotional practices are endorsed and promoted. In the case of devotional practices focused on stūpas (and by implication relics), the present sūtra might be contrasted with The Avalokinī Sūtra (Toh 195) as well as The Verses on Circumambulating Shrines (Caitya­pradakṣiṇa­gāthā, Toh 321). In the case of devotional practices focused on images, it might be contrasted with Describing the Benefits of Producing Representations of the Thus-Gone One (Tathāgata­prati­bimba­prati­ṣṭhānu­śaṃsasaṃvarṇana, Toh 320).

i.9The central place accorded to Maitreya in this sūtra means that it is fruitfully read together with the other sūtras in the Kangyur that feature or focus on the figure of Maitreya: The Question of Maitreya (Maitreya­paripṛcchā, Toh 85) and The Question of Maitreya on the Eight Qualities (Maitreya­pari­pṛcchādharmāṣṭa, Toh 86), which are also found in the Heap of Jewels section, and The Question of Maitreya (Maitreya­paripṛcchā, Toh 149), Maitreya’s Setting Out (Maitreya­prasthāna, Toh 198), and The Sūtra on Maitreya’s Birth in the Heaven of Joy (Toh 199). As the present sūtra describes the Buddha commanding Maitreya to take responsibility for safeguarding the Dharma in the future, of particular comparative interest are Maitreya’s Setting Out, in which the Buddha describes the past life in which Maitreya first gave rise to bodhicitta, and The Sūtra on Maitreya’s Birth in the Heaven of Joy, in which the Buddha describes Maitreya’s birth in the Heaven of Joy, from which he will eventually descend into this world to be fully awakened.

i.10Though not alluded to in the present sūtra, the presence of both Mahākāśyapa and Maitreya, as well as the reference to who will assume responsibility for propagating the Dharma in a distant future, evokes the ancient Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition that links the two figures in terms of Maitreya’s eventual succession of the Buddha Śākyamuni. According to that tradition, the Buddha Śākyamuni bestowed his own robe on Mahākāśyapa, who succeeded the Buddha at the head of the monastic saṅgha. At the end of his own lifespan, Mahākāśyapa, wearing the Buddha’s robe, entered into Mount Kukkuṭapāda, where both the robe and his body will remain uncorrupted until the advent of Maitreya, who will proceed to the mountain and, depending on the source, remove Mahākāśyapa’s body in the presence of his own disciples or receive the Buddha Śākyamuni’s robe from him.

i.11This is the first publication of a complete English translation of The Great Lion’s Roar of Maitreya. Selected passages from the second half of the sūtra were translated into French by Paul Demiéville in the 1930s, and several more were more recently translated into English by Erik Zürcher. The several passages translated by Schopen have also been a useful reference for us.

i.12Our translation is based on the version found in the Degé Kangyur. We have compared its readings with those of the versions found in the other Kangyurs included in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), as well as that found in the Stok Palace Kangyur.