Introduction

i.1The Sūtra of the Question of Subāhu is a Great Vehicle sūtra in which Śākyamuni Buddha teaches how a bodhisattva should ideally practice the six perfections. According to the opening and closing phrases appended to its Tibetan translation, it constitutes “the twenty-sixth section of the Noble Dharma Discourse, the Great Heap of Jewels, in one hundred thousand sections.”

i.2Although it is no longer extant in Sanskrit and little can be known for certain about its provenance, there is some indication that it was well known in India. It was translated into Chinese in the fifth century ᴄᴇ by the famed translator Kumārajīva (344–413). The Tibetan, according to its colophon, was translated, edited, and finalized, based on revisions done according to the language reform, by a translation team consisting of the Indian preceptors Dānaśīla and Jinamitra, and the Tibetan chief editor-translator Bandé Yeshé Dé, who were active in Tibet in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Indeed, the sūtra is listed in the Denkarma (ldan/lhan dkar ma) catalog of imperial translations usually dated to 812, and the mention of the “language reform” suggests that the translation may have been finalized only after 783/795. Korean and Mongolian translations were also made, and the Degé edition of the Tibetan Tengyur includes an aspiration prayer derived from it as well. Finally, to avoid confusion it should be noted that there is another Kangyur text that has the same Sanskrit title as The Question of Subāhu but that has no relationship to it, being a tantra of the Action (Kriyā) class.

i.3The sūtra is set at the Kalandaka­nivāpa, in the Veṇuvana near Rājagṛha, where the Buddha is accompanied by a large assembly of monks. A bodhisattva great being by the name of Subāhu, with servants in tow, visits the Buddha from the nearby town of Rājagṛha to pose a single question: what are the qualities bodhisattvas should have in order to progress to perfect awakening? The entire sūtra consists of the Buddha’s response to this question. He begins by simply listing the six perfections of generosity, ethical discipline, patience, diligence, concentration, and insight, and then expounds in greater detail on each perfection in turn. Each of the six sections of the ensuing discourse stipulates first how bodhisattvas should ideally practice the perfection in question, and then how bodhisattvas should gradually train in that perfection if they lack the requisite capacity to undertake it as ideally stipulated. Each section ends by emphasizing how the aspiration to undertake that perfection ideally is, just by itself, the most sublime form of the perfection; it is the cultivation of this mental attitude, stresses the Buddha, suffused with compassion for all beings, that will enable bodhisattvas to swiftly and easily complete the perfections.

i.4Subāhu himself, as the sūtra’s opening frame seems to suggest, is probably a lay bodhisattva, and the stipulations for a bodhisattva’s ideal practice of generosity and ethical discipline thus reflect a resolutely lay orientation. For instance, a bodhisattva should give gifts as extravagant as land; he should never give in a way that harms his children, wives, male and female slaves, or servants and laborers; and his ethical discipline should consist primarily of observing the five lay vows of an upāsaka. Along with the explanations of paths of gradual training, and the emphasis on aspiring to practice it as the highest form of each perfection, these features taken together suggest an open appeal to an audience that extends beyond the circle of strict ascetics.

i.5If The Sūtra of the Question of Subāhu was therefore primarily intended for an audience of lay Buddhist practitioners, that is by no means exclusively so. Throughout the text, the Buddha presents the “Hearers’ Vehicle” as a perfectly viable approach. The ideal bodhisattva he describes should strive to preserve the integrity of the vehicles of the hearers (śrāvaka), solitary buddhas (pratyekabuddha), and bodhisattvas, teach each one as appropriate, and even acquire his own “great saṅgha of hearer attendants.” Despite this relative absence of perceived incompatibility between hearer and bodhisattva practitioners here in comparison to more disparaging statements in some other Mahāyāna sūtras, there is nonetheless a discernible hierarchy in the Buddha’s presentation that reflects the presumed superiority of the Bodhisattvas’ Vehicle.

i.6The present translation is based mainly on the Tibetan version of the sūtra present in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the variant readings presented in the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace version.