Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra

Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra [alt. Sūtrālaṃkāra] (T. theg pa chen po’i mdo sde’i rgyan ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོའི་མདོ་སྡེའི་རྒྱན་; C. Dasheng zhuangyan jing lun 大乘莊嚴經論), known in English as The Ornament of the Mahayana Sutras, is an important Mahayana treatise that, according to tradition, was presented to Asanga by the Buddha Maitreya. In the Tibetan tradition, this text is identified as one of the Five Treatises of Maitreya.

It comprises twenty-two chapters with a total of 800 verses. There is a commentary (bhāṣya) on this text by Vasubandhu and several sub-commentaries by Sthiramati and others.

Text

Sanskrit editions

Two Sanskrit editions are available:

• Lévi's edition of 1907 (French translation: 1911) and
• Bagchi's edition of 1970, which is based on Lévi's edition but adds corrigenda to the text.

Chinese editions

• Chinese canon (Taishô, 1604)

Tibetan editions

• Tibetan canon (MSA: Tohoku cata logue no. 4020; MSA/Bh: Tohoku 4026)
• ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོ་མདོ་སྡེའི་རྒྱན་, theg pa chen po mdo sde'i rgyan, mahayana sutralamkara karika

It is counted among the thirteen great texts in the Nyingma tradition.

Translations into Western languages

English

• Maitreyanatha. Universal Vehicle Discourse Literature Mahayanasutralamkara (Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences), translated by American Institute of Buddhist Studies (Robert Thurman), 2004
• Asanga & Jamgön Mipham. A Feast of the Nectar of the Supreme Vehicle: An Explanation of the Ornament of the Mahayana Sutras, Maitreya's Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra with a commentary by Jamgön Mipham, Padmakara Translation Group (Shambhala, 2018)
• Maitreya. Ornament of the Great Vehicle Sutras: Maitreya’s Mahayanasutralamkara with Commentaries by Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham. Dharmachakra Translation Committee (Shambhala Publications, 2014) ISBN 978-1559394284

French

• S. Levi, Mahāyāna Sūtrālaṅkāra. Exposé de la doctrine du grand véhicule selon le système Yogācāra, Honoré Champion, Paris, 1911

Further reading

• D'Amato, M. "Three Stages: An Interpretation of the Yogacara Trisvabhava-Theory." Journal of Indian Philosophy. (2005) 33:185-207

External links

• Multilingual edition of Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra in the Bibliotheca Polyglotta
• An overview of the Five Treatises of Maitreya including this work
• Mahayana-sutra-alamkara-karika, Wikipedia
• The Ornament of the Mahayana Sutras, Rigpa Shedra Wiki