The Sūtra of the Golden Light

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The Sūtra of the Golden Light: Being a Translation of the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra

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Translations of Sutras (Skt-Eng)

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

The present volume contains a literal translation of the Sanskrit text of the Suvarṇabhāsottama Sūtra. The edition used was that of J. Nobel, Leipzig, 1937. Account has been taken of his subsequent improvements: the Nachtrag and Berichtigungen published with his edition, and various suggestions to be found in the critical apparatus to his 1944 edition of the Tibetan. I have not usually drawn attention to misprints in his edition of the Sanskrit text if they are obvious and if he has himself pointed them out somewhere.
The Tibetan has been compared carefully throughout. In cases where the Sanskrit text is missing I have provided within brackets a literal rendering of the Tibetan translation, except in one instance where I have given a rendering of Dharmakṣema's translation because the fragmentary Khotanese shows that Dharmakṣema's translation may well reflect accurately the missing Sanskrit. I have also compared the Khotanese versions wherever possible. They, however, require further research. As a first step I have appended a list of all the pieces so far identified and located. Many of the fragments will need to be reread in the light of my identifications. I have kept an eye also on I-tsing's version in the translation of Nobel, but its difference from the Sanskrit was so great that it seldom shed light on it. (Emmerick, preface, vii)

Citation

Emmerick, R. E., trans. The Sūtra of the Golden Light: Being a Translation of the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra. London: Louzac, 1970. https://archive.org/details/suvarnabhasottamasutrasutraofgoldenlightemmerickr.e._156_m/mode/2up.

Table of contents

PREFACEvii

INTRODUCTIONix

BIBLIOGRAPHYxiii

TRANSLATION1

- 1. Introductory Chapter1
- 2. Chapter on the Measure of Life of the Tathāgata3
- 3. The Chapter on Confession8
- 4. Chapter (called) "Abundance of Lotuses"17
- 5. Chapter on Emptiness20
- 6. Chapter on the Four Great Kings23
- 7. The Chapter on Sarasvati43
- 8. The Chapter on Śrī48
- 9. Chapter on the Maintenance of the Names of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas50
- 10. The Chapter on Dṛḍha51
- 11. The Chapter on Saṃjñāya55
- 12. Chapter on Instruction concerning Divine Kings57
- 13. The Chapter on Susaṃbhava62
- 14. Chapter on the Refuge of the Yakṣas65
- 15. Chapter on the Prophecy concerning the Ten Thousand Divine Sons70
- 16. Chapter on Healing Illness73
- 17. The Chapter on Jalavāhana77
- 18. The Chapter on the Tigress85
- 19. Chapter on the Praise of all the Tathāgatas97

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES103

APPENDIX: THE KHOTANESE VERSIONS105

Interconnections

Works related to this item

1 Full translation of

Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtrendrarājasūtra [आर्यसुवर्णप्रभासोत्तमसूत्रेन्द्रराजनाममहायानसूत्र]. 'phags pa gser 'od dam pa mdo sde'i dbang po'i rgyal po zhes bya ba theg pa chen po'i mdo [འཕགས་པ་གསེར་འོད་དམ་པ་མདོ་སྡེའི་དབང་པོའི་རྒྱལ་པོ་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ།]. [The Sovereign Lord of Sūtras, The Golden Light]. Translated by Jinamitra, Śīlendrabodhi, Ye shes sde, Dharmakṣema, Baogui, Yijing. Kangyur, D556. http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=550&typ=1; http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=551&typ=1; http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=552&typ=1.

Classical WorksAbout this item

There are three translations of this text included in the Tibetan canon:

Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtrendrarājasūtra (RKTSK 550) translated from the Chinese by Gö Chödrub.
Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtrendrarājasūtra (RKTSK 551) translated from the Sanskrit by Jinamitra, Śīlendrabodhi, and Ye shes sde.
Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtrendrarājasūtra (RKTSK 552). Translator not listed.

Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra. (T. Gser ’od dam pai mdo; C. Jinguangming zuishengwang jing; J. Konkōmyō saishōōkyō; K. Kǔmgwangmyǒng ch’oesǔngwang kyǒng). In Sanskrit, "Sūtra of Supreme Golden Light," an influential Mahāyāna sūtra, especially in East Asia. Scholars speculate that the text originated in India in the fourth century and was gradually augmented. It was translated into Chinese by Yijing in 703. The sūtra contains many dhāraṇī and is considered by some to be a proto-tantric text; in some editions of the Tibetan canon it is classified as a tantra. It is important in East Asian Buddhism for two main reasons. First was the role the sūtra played in conceptualizing state-protection Buddhism (huguo fojiao). The sūtra declares that deities will protect the lands of rulers who worship and uphold the sūtra, bringing peace and prosperity, but will abandon the lands of rulers who do not, such that all manner of catastrophe will befall their kingdoms. The sūtra was thus central to "state protection" practices in East Asia, together with the Saddharmapuṇḍarikasūtra and the Renwang jing. Second, the sūtra provides the locus classicus for the "water and land ceremony" (shuilu hui), a ritual intended for universal salvation, but especially of living creatures who inhabit the most painful domains of saṃsāra; the ceremony was also performed for a variety of this-worldly purposes, including state protection and rain-making. According to the sūtra, in a previous life, the Buddha was a merchant s son named Jalavāhana, who one day encountered a dried-up pond in the forest, filled with thousands of dying fish. Summoning twenty elephants, he carried bags of water from a river into the forest and replenished the pond, saving the fish. He then sent for food with which to feed them. Finally, recalling that anyone who hears the name of the buddha Ratnaśikhin will be reborn in the heavens, he waded into the pond and pronounced the Buddha's name, followed by an exposition of dependent origination. When the fish died, they were reborn in the Trāyastriṃśa heaven. Recalling the reason for their happy fate, they visited the world of humans, where each offered a pearl necklace to Jalavāhana's head, foot, right side, and left side. The sūtra also tells the story of Prince Mahāsattva who sees a starving tigress and her cubs. He throws himself off a cliff to commit suicide so that the tiger might eat his body (see Namo Buddha). This is one of the most famous cases of dehadāna, or gift of the body. (Source: "Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra." In The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 877. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)