Yamaguchi Nariko
The Nakamura Hajime Eastern Institute (Japan)
There is a Mongolian sacred book of Buddhism, titled Burqan-u Arban Qoyar Jokiyangγui (The Twelve Deeds of the Buddha; hereinafter BJ). This was created in the 14th CE, in the Yuan era. Most of Buddhist canons translated into Mongolian in that era have been scattered and lost; therefore, BJ can be said to be one of the rare and precious materials.
It is estimated that BJ originally consisted of three volumes. However, the 1st and 3rd volumes have been lost. According to the colophon of the 2nd volume, this text was translated from Tibetan (this original text also has been lost) into Mongolian in the 14th CE by She rab seng ge, a priest who belonged to the Sa skya school, one of the main schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
The first and main previous research on BJ is a book with the title of The Twelve Deed of Buddha, written by N. Poppe, published in 1967. In this book, Poppe pointed out that BJ is an abridged version of the Lalitavistara, which is one of stories of the Buddha’s life and maintained in Mahāyāna Buddhism. In other words, he regarded the Lalitavistara as the source of BJ.
However, I think that his opinion is still questionable. Certainly, these two texts have something in common, but they have several distinct differences, too. For example, the birth of Rāhula, the son of the Buddha, is described in BJ. On the other hand, his birth is not mentioned at all in the Lalitavistara. Furthermore, in the Lalitavistara, a girl called Sujātā was an almsgiver who offered a bowl of milk-rice to the Bodhisattva. However, two girls, Nandā and Nandabalā, were the almsgivers in BJ. It can be said that these differences indicate that BJ is not a plain abridged version of the Lalitavistara and that there should be other sources.
As a convincing candidate, I will pick up a life story of the Buddha in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-Vinaya. In this story, we can find the topics of the birth of Rāhula as well as the almsgivers, Nandā and Nandabalā. Of course, the Mūlasarvāstivāda-Vinaya is just a candidate for another source of BJ. However, it is certain that BJ is not just an abridged text of the Lalitavistara, but a remodel story made by combining several stories of the Buddha’s life.
There has been a traditional and familiar concept of the life of the Buddha in Tibetan Buddhism, which is also called “Twelve Deeds of the Buddha (mdzad pa bcu gnyis, in Tibetan)”. It summarizes the Buddha’s life into the twelve famous events such as the “descendant from Tuṣita heaven” and the “Nirvāna”. BJ was probably a remodeled work based on this concept.
(Presented in the International Conference on Buddhist Studies: Buddha's Biography – Buddhist Legends, 18-19 July 2015, Le Meridien Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, The Pali and Sanskrit Section, Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty of Arts and Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University)