D?PA?KARA

The earliest lists of past buddhas consist only of six previous buddhas plus ??kyamuni, but in subsequent centuries the list was expanded to twenty-five, beginning with a buddha known as D?pa?kara (Lightmaker). According to relatively late P?li works, such as the Buddhava?sa and the Nid?nakath?, it was in the presence of D?pa?kara that the future ??kyamuni first made his vow to become a buddha.

D?pa?kara's complete absence from the P?li sutta literature makes it virtually certain that traditions concerning this buddha did not gain general currency until several centuries after ??kyamuni Buddha's death. The distribution of artistic images of D?pa?kara—which abound in Gandh?ra, but are virtually absent from other sites—points to the likelihood that the story of D?pa?kara was first formulated on the far fringes of northwest India. It may also be significant that the story of D?pa?kara related in the Mah?vastu (i.193ff)—a work ascribed to the Lokottarav?da branch of the Mah?s??ghika school, known to have flourished in what is today Afghanistan—is rich in narrative detail, while the account found in such Therav?da sources as the Buddhava?sa (and based on it, the Nid?nakath?) is more formulaic. D?pa?kara himself eventually became the subject of j?taka tales relating his previous lives, preserved in medieval Therav?da texts (Derris) and in early Chinese translations (Chavannes, story no. 73).

The story of D?pa?kara's prediction of the future ??kyamuni's eventual attainment of buddhahood came to play an especially important role in Mah?y?na circles, where aspiring bodhisattvas interpreted the story as an indication that they too must be reborn during the time of a living buddha and receive a prediction (vy?kara?a) in his presence.

See also:Buddha(s); Buddha Images; India, Northwest

Bibliography

Chavannes, Edouard, trans. Cinq cents contes et apologues extraits du tripitaka chinois, 4 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1910.

Derris, Karen. "Virtue and Relationship in the Therav?din Biographies." Ph.D. diss. Harvard University, 2000.

Soper, Alexander. "D?pa?kara." In Literary Evidence for Early Buddhist Art in China. Ascona, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae, 1959.

Jan Nattier