Verses for Prasenajit
Toh 322
Degé Kangyur vol. 72 (mdo sde, sa), folios 201.a–204.a
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
This text was translated by Elizabeth Angowski, who also wrote the introduction and annotated the translation.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. David Fiordalis edited the introduction, translation, and annotations, and supplied additional information by consulting the Sanskrit manuscript held at the Cambridge University Library. Dawn Collins copyedited the text. Sameer Dhingra was in charge of the digital publication process.
Introduction
Verses for Prasenajit is a text that belongs to the General Sūtra section of the Kangyur. Its title refers to King Prasenajit, who is said to have ruled over the country of Kośala during the time of the Buddha. At the outset of the text, King Prasenajit asks the Buddha Śākyamuni, in verse, how it is that people can secure happiness in future lifetimes by making offerings to awakened beings after they have passed away. The Buddha responds in verse on the benefits of constructing, beautifying, maintaining, and worshiping at the stūpas and images of such beings.1 Near the end of the sūtra, the Buddha also devotes three stanzas to the benefits of donating to the saṅgha, noting that those who give bedding as well as fine food and drink to renunciants will one day enjoy such finery in kind.
Verses for Prasenajit primarily highlights the mundane rewards a person can expect to receive as a result of venerating the stūpas and images of awakened beings. Prominent examples include great physical beauty and strength, political power, esteem, and abundant resources, like elegant garments and ornate, comfortable homes. In fact, reading Verses for Prasenajit, one is struck by just how many of the benefits of stūpa and image worship relate to physical attractiveness and corporeal ease. Although several lines do speak to the attainment of virtue or liberation, most pertain to material gains.2
This is not to say that Verses for Prasenajit advocates a focus on securing beauty and comfort above all else, however. Rather, it seems to underscore the idea that stūpa and image worship can benefit everyone, regardless of an individual’s current situation or ultimate goals. We see this idea conveyed especially in stanzas that treat the attainment of mundane rewards and progress along the spiritual path as outcomes of the same act of veneration. For example, if people put on a crown (or bind a turban) at a stūpa, they will obtain fortune and liberation. Similarly, someone who sweeps up around a stūpa can expect to become beautiful and free from the flaws of craving. In short, deeds that result in auspicious rebirths might simultaneously lead one farther down the path to awakening. Or, as Vincent Tournier puts it, worldly boons can serve as “markers of one’s progress toward Awakening.”3
As its stanzas progress, Verses for Prasenajit casts a wide net over its imagined audience. Although the Buddha is ostensibly addressing Prasenajit, a king who might be inclined to sponsor the wholesale construction of a stūpa, his words conjure up a world in which many people, not just wealthy monarchs, interact with sacred sites and images. Certain people might not be able to fund a stūpa’s construction entirely, but perhaps they could support the construction of the spire, for example. Still others might not have the resources to offer things like bells and parasols, but they could help keep a stūpa and its grounds clean. At one point, the Buddha tells Prasenajit that those who offer “whatever special offerings they have and can afford…will attain unsurpassable awakening,” encapsulating the idea that stūpa veneration can be realized in many ways by people of various inclinations and means.
Verses for Prasenajit lacks a colophon, and thus the translator remains unknown. The inclusion of the text’s title in the Denkarma (ldan dkar ma)4 and Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) catalogs of Tibetan translations of the imperial era, however, suggests that it was translated sometime during the late eighth or early ninth century.
Thematically, Verses for Prasenajit is of a piece with sūtras like The Avalokinī Sūtra (Toh 195), Describing the Benefits of Producing Representations of the Thus-Gone One (Toh 320), The Verses on Circumambulating Shrines (Toh 321), and The Sūtra on Commissioning Images to Be Made of the Tathāgata (Tathāgatabimbakārāpaṇasūtra),5 a fragment of which is preserved among the Gilgit manuscripts.
In terms of historical significance, recent evidence suggests that a version of Verses for Prasenajit was a source for donative inscriptions at Ajaṇṭā, the complex of Buddhist vihāras and cave monuments constructed in central India from the second century ʙᴄᴇ through to the sixth century ᴄᴇ. Echoed in Ajaṇṭā’s tenth and twenty-second caves is a stanza6 that appears seventh within the Tibetan Verses for Prasenajit, namely:
“Those who produce an image of the Victor here,They will possess beauty, charm, and good qualities.Their senses restrained, brilliant as the sun,They will become beautiful for all the world to behold.”
Together with Āryaśūra’s Jātakamālā, then, Verses for Prasenajit seems to be one of only two known works that serve as a source for the Ajaṇṭā inscriptions.7
Non-Tibetan sources for Verses for Prasenajit include two Sanskrit fragments from Gilgit and two complete Sanskrit manuscripts, one housed in the Potala and the other held at the Cambridge University Library. The Potala manuscript, which bears the title Prasenajitparipṛcchāsūtra (The Sūtra of Prasenajit’s Question) rather than Prasenajidgāthā (Verses for Prasenajit), has been edited and collated with the Gilgit fragments by Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā (Vinita Tseng) within A Unique Collection of Twenty Sūtras in a Sanskrit Manuscript from the Potala (2010).8 Ven. Vinītā notes that the collection as a whole lacks a colophon, perhaps because only the first forty-four leaves are preserved, and she states that there is insufficient evidence to date it, save to say that because it quotes The Sūtra on the Descent into Laṅkā (Laṅkāvatārasūtra, Toh 107), the collection appears to be later than that text.9 However, Jonathan Silk, in a review of Ven. Vinītā’s work, speculates that the manuscript could be from the thirteenth century.10
By comparison, the Cambridge manuscript has so far received less scholarly attention since the time of its acquisition.11 Like the Potala manuscript, however, it is also a collection of texts of which two are complete in the extant fragment: this text, which bears the title The Question of Prasenajit (Prasenajitparipṛcchā), and also a complete version of The Verses on Circumambulation (Pradakṣiṇāgāthā). For a further discussion of the latter, see the translation of Toh 321. The Potala’s Sanskrit manuscript version of the text includes thirty-three stanzas, whereas the Cambridge manuscript version has thirty-five. The latter includes all of those stanzas found in the former and has them in almost the same order, albeit with some variations of terminology and phrasing, plus two additional stanzas. One of these additional stanzas is also found in one of the Gilgit manuscripts, but neither of them seems to be in the Tibetan translation. The Tibetan version, by contrast, has a total of fifty-nine stanzas.12 The Tibetan further differs from the Potala and Cambridge Sanskrit manuscripts in that it exhibits a greater variation in the sequencing of the stanzas it has in common with those manuscripts. Therefore, it seems likely that the basis for the Tibetan translation stemmed from a different version of the work.
Ven. Vinītā’s A Unique Collection contains the first and only edition and English translation of a Sanskrit version of the text. In tandem with her edition and translation of the Potala manuscript, she includes a transcription and edition of the Gilgit fragments and of the Tibetan translation based on five witnesses, including the Degé, Gondhla, Peking, and Stok Palace versions. Ven. Gyalten Lekden published an online English translation of the Tibetan in 2019.13 Otherwise, no other complete translations of Verses for Prasenajit have been published in any European language.
This translation is based primarily on the Degé Kangyur, the Comparative Edition (dpe bsdur ma), and the Stok Palace Kangyur. Other Kangyurs were also consulted, as were Ven. Vinītā’s Sanskrit and Tibetan editions as well as the Sanskrit manuscript held at the Cambridge University Library. The most significant findings from this comparative work are cited in the notes.
Text Body
The Translation
Homage to the Three Jewels.
Then, after the king, radiant with joy, circumambulated the sage and the saṅgha and bowed down his head at the feet of the Lord of Sages, he departed the Jeta Grove.
“Verses for Prasenajit” is complete.
Notes
Bibliography
Tibetan Sources
gsal rgyal gyi tshigs su bcad pa (Prasenajidgāthā). Toh 322, Degé Kangyur vol. 72 (mdo sde, sa), folios 201.a–204.a.
gsal rgyal gyi tshigs su bcad pa. bka’ ’gyur (dpe bsdur ma) [Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing: krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing House), 2006–9, vol. 72, pp. 575–83.
gsal rgyal gyi tshigs su bcad pa. Stok Palace Kangyur vol. 79 (mdo sde, sa), folios 149.b–153.b.
gsal rgyal gyi tshigs su bcad pa. Phukdrak Kangyur vol. 87 (mdo sde, ke), folios 210.b–215.a.
gsal/gsang rgyal gyis tshigs su bcad pa. Gondhla Collection vol. 25 (dri med mdo), folios 84.a–86.b.
Phangthangma (dkar chag ’phang thang ma). Beijing: mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2003.
Denkarma (pho brang stod thang ldan dkar gyi chos ’gyur ro cog gi dkar chag). Toh 4364, Degé Tengyur vol. 206 (sna tshogs, jo), folios 294.b–310.a.
Sanskrit Sources
Prasenajitparipṛcchā. Cambridge University Library MS Os.131.3–4.
Prasenajitparipṛcchāsūtra. Vinītā, Bhikṣuṇī, ed. and trans. A Unique Collection of Twenty Sūtras in a Sanskrit Manuscript from the Potala. Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region 7/1, Vol. 1. Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House; Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2010, pp. 207–58.
Other Sources
84000. The Avalokinī Sūtra (Avalokinīsūtra, Toh 195). Translated by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. Online publication. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2023.
84000. Describing the Benefits of Producing Representations of the Thus-Gone One (Tathāgatapratibimbapratiṣṭhānuśaṃsasaṃvarṇana, Toh 320). Translated by the Alexander Csoma de Kőrös Translation Group. Online publication. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2021.
84000. “Stūpa.” Online Knowledge Base. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2023. Last updated May 2024.
84000. The White Lotus of the Good Dharma (Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, Toh 113). Translated by Peter ALan Roberts. Online publication. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2022.
Beer, Robert. The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs. Boston: Shambhala, 1999.
Cohen, Richard S. “Ajanta’s Inscriptions.” In Ajanta: History and Development, Volume Two Arguments about Ajanta, 2: 273–339. Ajanta: History and Development. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
Edgerton, Franklin. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary (Volume II: Dictionary). New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.
Gyalten Lekden. “The Verses of Prasenajit.” The Union of Teaching and Accomplishment Publishing Group (blog), 2019.
Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. Die lHan kar ma: ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008.
Monier-Williams, Sir Monier. A Sanskṛit-English dictionary: etymologically and philologically arranged with special reference to Greek, Latin, Gothic, German, Anglo-Saxon, and other cognate Indo-European languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888.
Silk, Jonathan A. Review of Buddhist Sūtras in Sanskrit from the Potala, by Bhikṣunī Vinītā. Indo-Iranian Journal 56 (2013): 61–87.
Tournier, Vincent. “Stairway to Heaven and the Path to Buddhahood: Donors and Their Aspirations in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Ajanta.” In Cristina Pecchia and Vincent Eltschinger, eds. Mārga, Paths to Liberation in South Asian Buddhist Traditions, Vol. I. Papers from an International Symposium Held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, December 17–18, 2015. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2015, pp. 177–248.
Glossary
Types of attestation for names and terms of the corresponding source language
Attested in source text
This term is attested in a manuscript used as a source for this translation.
Attested in other text
This term is attested in other manuscripts with a parallel or similar context.
Attested in dictionary
This term is attested in dictionaries matching Tibetan to the corresponding language.
Approximate attestation
The attestation of this name is approximate. It is based on other names where the relationship between the Tibetan and source language is attested in dictionaries or other manuscripts.
Reconstruction from Tibetan phonetic rendering
This term is a reconstruction based on the Tibetan phonetic rendering of the term.
Reconstruction from Tibetan semantic rendering
This term is a reconstruction based on the semantics of the Tibetan translation.
Source unspecified
This term has been supplied from an unspecified source, which most often is a widely trusted dictionary.
Ānandabhadra
- kun dga’ bzang po
- ཀུན་དགའ་བཟང་པོ།
- ānandabhadra
- —
beggar
- dbul bo
- དབུལ་བོ།
- daridra
- —
Blessed One
- bcom ldan ’das
- བཅོམ་ལྡན་འདས།
- —
- —
central pillar
- srog shing
- སྲོག་ཤིང་།
- yaṣṭi
- —
Constant Happiness
- rtag tu dga’
- རྟག་ཏུ་དགའ།
- —
- —
correct discernment
- so so yang dag rig pa
- སོ་སོ་ཡང་དག་རིག་པ།
- pratisaṃvid
- —
crown
- cod pan
- ཅོད་པན།
- uṣṇīṣa
- paṭṭa
- —
five attributes
- yan lag lnga
- ཡན་ལག་ལྔ།
- pañcāṅga
- —
fivefold vision
- spyan lnga
- སྤྱན་ལྔ།
- pañcacakṣuḥ
- —
fly whisk
- rnga yab
- རྔ་ཡབ།
- vālavyajana
- —
have entered nirvāṇa
- mya ngan ’das pa
- མྱ་ངན་འདས་པ།
- parinirvṛta
- —
Jeta Grove
- rgyal byed tshal
- རྒྱལ་བྱེད་ཚལ།
- jetavana
- —
lord of the gods
- lha dbang
- ལྷ་དབང་།
- —
- —
meditative absorption
- ting nge ’dzin
- ཏིང་ངེ་འཛིན།
- samādhi
- —
Nārāyaṇa
- sred med bu
- སྲེད་མེད་བུ།
- nārāyaṇa
- —
necklaces
- do shal
- དོ་ཤལ།
- hāra
- —
outcast
- rigs dman
- རིགས་དམན།
- hīnajanman
- —
Prasenajit
- gsal rgyal
- གསལ་རྒྱལ།
- prasenajit
- —
Protector of the World
- ’jig rten mgon po
- འཇིག་རྟེན་མགོན་པོ།
- lokanātha
- lokeśvara
- —
reliquary
- gdung ldan
- གདུང་ལྡན།
- dhātudhara
- —
supreme mind
- blo mchog
- བློ་མཆོག
- agrabuddhi
- —
tiered parasol spire
- gdugs brtsegs
- གདུགས་བརྩེགས།
- chattrāvalī
- —
webbed fingers and toes
- sor mo dra bar ’brel ba
- སོར་མོ་དྲ་བར་འབྲེལ་བ།
- —
- —
whitewash
- rdo thal
- རྡོ་ཐལ།
- sudhā
- —
World’s Superior
- ’jig rten bla ma
- འཇིག་རྟེན་བླ་མ།
- —
- —