DESCRIPTION
The Avaivartika Sūtra is a significant, rarely unstudied, self-proclaimed early Mahayana sutra that focuses on the state of a bodhisattva who cannot be turned back (avaivartika) from the attainment of full Buddhahood. The concept of the irreversible (avaivartika) bodhisattva is considered to be one of the most vital subjects in the historical development of Mahayana Buddhism due to the concept’s prevalence in early (pre-third century) Mahayana literature. The Avaivartika Sūtra provides the earliest and most comprehensive discussion of this concept among Mahayana sutras outside the Prajñåpåramitå literature. The sutra is also notable for its advocacy of ekayåna (’the single vehicle’), its use of narrative displacement, and its rhetoric of ‘word-play’ through semantic elucidation, or nirukti. By virtue of its preservation and transmission in South, Central, and East Asia over many centuries, one may infer that this text was an influential Mahayana Sutra in Buddhist culture. The full version of the sutra is no longer extant in any Indic language but is preserved in Chinese, Tibetan, Manchu, and Mongolian translations. Three translations are preserved in Chinese. The ninth-century Tibetan translation, the phyir mi ldog pa’i ’khor lo zhes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo, is preserved in several Dunhuang fragments and is found in all Tibetan Kanjurs, including Derge (no. 240) and Peking (no. 906).
TRANSATIONS
Avaivartika Sūtra (Standardized Ed.)Translated by Dharmarakṣa (284 c.e.) 阿惟越致遮經 (T. no. 266, 1)
Translated during the Northern Liang dynasty (北涼) (412–439 C.E.) 不退轉法輪經 (T. no. 267, 1)
Translated by 智厳 Zhi-yan (427 C.E.) 廣博嚴淨不退轉輪經 (T. no. 268, 1)