Introduction

i.1In The Inquiry of the Girl Sumati, the reader encounters a young girl named Sumati, whose name means “keen intellect.” Throughout the sūtra, Sumati demonstrates her intelligence, maturity, and confidence. She first approaches the Buddha Śākyamuni while he is residing with a large assembly of monks and bodhisattvas on Vulture Peak near Rājagṛha. She asks him a series of questions about how to gain various advantages, all of which are described as outcomes of the practices of a bodhisattva. These include physical beauty, wealth, a united community, spontaneous rebirth in a pure buddha domain in the presence of a buddha, superhuman powers with which to travel to other buddha domains, and obtaining a peaceful, auspicious moment of death.

i.2The Buddha responds to her questions with a series of answers in prose and verse in which he outlines various sets of four dharmas, with the word dharma here implying ethical guidelines, qualities, and truths as well as factors that contribute to one’s achievement of the stated goals of a bodhisattva. This part of the sūtra is reminiscent of other sūtras featuring sets of four dharmas, such as The Sūtra Teaching Four Factors (Toh 249), The Four Factors (Toh 250), and The Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Four Factors (Toh 251). After the Buddha has finished his teaching, Sumati expresses the fervent aspiration to practice all these sets of dharmas just as the Buddha has articulated them.

i.3Sumati’s confidence in making such a statement elicits a series of questions, first from Maudgalyāyana, the Buddha’s great disciple (mahāśravaka), and then from Mañjuśrī, the great bodhisattva. Maudgalyāyana first asks Sumati if she understands the gravity of her undertaking, which prompts Sumati to perform an “act of truth”, a kind of wondrous demonstration found in Indian and Buddhist literature whereby the truth of a statement produces a miracle or wonder. In this case, her act of truth causes an earthquake, divine flowers to fall from the sky, and divine music to be heard. This demonstration leads Maudgalyāyana to bow down before her out of respect.

i.4Mañjuśrī then engages Sumati in dialogue, asking her a series of questions about her understanding of the Dharma that is reminiscent of other dialogues, such as those found in The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Toh 176) and The Questions of Gaṅgottarā (Toh 75). Sumati responds to Mañjuśrī’s questions with a deep understanding of the nature of reality. During the conversation, the Buddha informs Mañjuśrī that Sumati had been Mañjuśrī’s own teacher in a past life and had introduced him to the fact that things do not arise in truth. This elicits Mañjuśrī’s respect, but then he wonders why she is still female, which prompts Sumati to state, in effect, that male and female are nothing more than concepts with no objective basis in reality, and then she performs another act of truth whereby she transforms herself into an adult male monk.

i.5This act of truth is followed by another similarly wondrous act by Sumati that serves to describe and confirm the conditions in which she will attain awakening as a buddha in the future. That she will do so is given further confirmation by the Buddha, who also gives prophecies of future awakening as buddhas to several monks in the audience who are inspired by Sumati’s example to dedicate their own merit to becoming buddhas. The sūtra then concludes with the Buddha exhorting Mañjuśrī and the rest of the audience to remember the sūtra, to recite it, to copy it, and to teach it to others in the future.

i.6According to the colophon of the canonical Tibetan translation, it was made by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Surendrabodhi and the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé. It is also referenced in the two earliest Tibetan catalogs of texts translated during the imperial period; the Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) and the Denkarma (ldan / lhan dkar ma). The Tibetan translation was therefore likely completed in the late eighth or early ninth century ᴄᴇ.

i.7In addition to the canonical Tibetan translation, a fragmentary Tibetan manuscript is preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts (IOL Tib J 203). There is also a surviving fragment of a Sanskrit manuscript of this sūtra from Nepal, which is held in the library of the University of Cambridge (MS Or.131.1). There are four Chinese translations of the sūtra: Taishō 334 was translated by Dharmarakṣa between 265 ᴄᴇ and 308 ᴄᴇ, Taishō 335 was translated by Kumārajīva between 402 and 412, while Taishō 310 and Taishō 336 were both translated by Bodhiruci and finalized in 693 and 713, respectively.

i.8Several translations of the sūtra have been made in English, mostly from Chinese. A complete translation of Taishō 310 was published by Diana Paul 1979 (pp. 201–11). An abridged translation of Taishō 310 is found in Chang 1983 (pp. 256–61). The sūtra has also been discussed and partly translated by Nancy Schuster 1981, also based on Taishō 310 and Taishō 336. There are also two anonymous English translations from Chinese published on the Lapis Lazuli Texts website: one of Taishō 310 and one of Taishō 336. A few parts of the Tibetan translation have also been discussed and translated into English by Paul Harrison and Christian Luczanits 2012 (pp. 116–17).

i.9This translation is based on the canonical Tibetan translation in the Degé Kangyur in consultation with the comparative edition (dpe bsdur ma) and the Stok Palace edition. In the process, the four Chinese translations and the Sanskrit fragment were also consulted.