Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Mahāyānasūtras – 97
which are come across in Mahāyānasūtras is also described the
grandeur of Amitābha and his paradise in the Sukhāvatīvyūha.
Of this book we have two diverse recensions. The longer one which
might well be the original and the shorter one which appears to be
an abbreviated edition of the former with an emended introduction.
Both versions have been edited by Max Müller, Bunyiu Nanjio in the
Anecdota Oxoniensia Aryan Series, Vol. I, part II, Oxford, 1883, and
translated by Max Müller Sacred Books of the East vol. 49, part 2. A
third book called the Amitāyurdhyānasūtra is less occupied with the
picture of the country of Sukhāvatī than with the exhortations to
meditation or dhyāna of Amitāyus by means of which a man attains
to the Blessed Land. It is translated from Chinese by J. Takakusu in
Sacred Books of the East Vol. 49, part 2, p. 159 ff. [79]
This Sūtra is unfortunately not preserved to us in the original
Sanskrit, but only in a Chinese translation and is interesting in that it
contains the history of Ajātaśātru and Bimbisāra known also in the
Pāḷi accounts. (Kern, Der Buddhismus I, 243 ff, Spence Hardy,
Manual of Buddhism, London, 1860 p. 317 f.) A Sukhāvatīvyūha is
reported to have been translated into Chinese between 148 and 170
and there are no less than twelve versions of it dating from different
centuries. In 402, Kumārajīva translated the shorter version. A
translation of the Sukhāvatīvyūha-Sūtra is also credited to Hiuen-
Tsiang in 1650 A.D. (Nanjio, Catalogue Nos. 23, 25, 27, 199, 200,
863). This testifies to the favour in which the text was held in China.
In Japan, however, the three texts relating to Amitāyus and
Sukhāvatī form the fundaments of the doctrine of the two Buddhistic
sects of Jodoshu and Shinshu. The latter has the largest number of
adherents of any Buddhist sect in Japan. It is to be noted that the