Devatāsūtra
Devatāsūtra (T. lha'i mdo ལྷའི་མདོ།) is a sutra from the Sanskrit tradition in which a divine being (devatā) appears before the Buddha and asks a series of questions, in the form of riddles, about how best to live a good life. The Buddha’s responses constitute a concise and direct teaching on some of the core orientations and values of Buddhism, touching on the three poisons, the virtues of body, speech, and mind, and providing wisdom for daily life.[1]
The sūtra is extant in many manuscripts from the first millennium ᴄᴇ, in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.[1]
Text
Sanskrit editions
The Sakya Pandita Translation Team states:
- There are two Sanskrit witnesses. A full version of the sūtra, which matches the Tibetan translation quite closely, is included among the Gilgit Buddhist manuscripts discovered in 1931 in present-day northern Pakistan. Written in the proto-Śāradā script, the manuscript is dated between the sixth to eighth centuries ᴄᴇ. Sanskrit editions of the sūtra that are based on this manuscript have been published by two contemporary scholars. The sūtra is also included as one of the twenty sūtras in an undated Sanskrit manuscript written in the Dhārikā script and preserved in the Potala Palace, Lhasa. A comparative critical edition based on this manuscript, which also presents the parallel Tibetan and Chinese texts along with an English translation, has been published by Bhikṣuṇī Vinītā. While the Gilgit manuscript corresponds quite closely in length and content to the Tibetan translation found in the Kangyur, the Potala Palace Sanskrit manuscript contains five additional ślokas at the beginning and two ślokas toward the end that are not found in the Tibetan.[1]
Chinese translation
The Sakya Pandita Translation Team states:
- A Chinese translation of The Devatā Sūtra was completed by Xuanzang in 648 ᴄᴇ and is included in the Chinese canon (Taishō 592). It is slightly shorter than both the Tibetan and Sanskrit witnesses. Over twenty manuscripts containing the sūtra in Chinese are among the manuscripts retrieved from the cave library at Dunhuang, and many illustrations of the sūtra have been identified among the murals of the cave complex there.[1]
Tibetan translation
The Sakya Pandita Translation Team states:
- The Tibetan translation of The Devatā Sūtra has no colophon, making its translation history uncertain. However, in both the Denkarma (ldan dkar ma)6 and Phangthangma (’phang thang ma) imperial catalogs, it is listed among translated “Hīnayāna” (Tib. theg pa chung ngu) sūtras, so its translation into Tibetan was no later than the early ninth century ᴄᴇ. An attribution to the great translator Yeshé Dé has been suggested, based on the listing in Butön’s History of Buddhism. However, that citation may just refers to The Shorter Devatā Sūtra (Toh 330), which immediately follows it in Kangyur collections. Jonathan Silk has listed The Devatā Sūtra among “questionable cases” that may have been translated into Tibetan from Chinese. There is a close correspondence between the Tibetan and Chinese in the opening narrative, and in the first seven exchanges (or fourteen verses) in the latter part of the sūtra. However, the Tibetan and Chinese also diverge, and the Tibetan contains two exchanges (exchanges 8 and 10 below) that are not found in the Chinese at all but are found in the extant Sanskrit witnesses. This indicates that a translation from Sanskrit (or perhaps from both languages) is more likely.[1]
In the Derge edition of the Tibetan Kangyur, the text is indexed as Toh 329.
English translation
Sakya Pandita Translation Team (2024), The Devata Sutra, 84000 Reading Room- An early English translation of the sūtra from Chinese was published by Carus (1894).[1]