MAITREYA THE BUDDHIST MESSIAH.
That Buddha of the future whose coming is awaited like a Messiah is Ajita Maitreya “the Compassionate Invincible One”; homage to him in India and beyond met with unexpected spectacular success. Buddhist literature makes frequent allusions to him and devotes whole works to him. The vast amount of information it supplies about him is involved and often contradictory. However, even if we have to give up the attempt to establish a chronology of Indian messianism, there is nothing to prevent us from trying to make a systematic classification of the sources which mention him.
l. Ajita and Maitreya, disciples of Bavari. -The Parayana (Suttanipata, Ch. V, vv. 976-1149) dates from the very dawn of Buddhist literature. It is one of the few sources of the Nikayas and Agamas, which frequently refer to it. In this ancient work, Ajita and Maitreya play only and unobtrusive part. They belonged to the group of the 776 sixteen disciples of Bavari who were converted by the Buddha.
Bavari was a brahmin ascetic who went to Sravasti in Daksinapatha (the Deccan) and settled on the banks of the River Godavari, in a hennitage near the posessions of King Assaka and Alaka. The ascetic, who enjoyed revenues from a neighbouring village, offered up a great sacrifice and distributed all his goods as charity. A brahmin with a fierce expression came to see him and demanded five hundred pieces of money from him. Reduced as he himself was to total indigence, he could not satisfy him. Enraged by this refusal, the brahmin cursed him and announced that his head would burst into seven pieces. Bavari, much disquieted, was reassured by a deity who told him that the malevolent brahmin did not even know the meaning of the words “head” and “bursting of the head”. - “Who does know the meaning then?” asked Bavari. - “The Buddha”, replied the goddess, “the Buddha who has just appeared in the world”. Wishing to verify that fact, Bavari sent to the Buddha his sixteen disciples, the first two of whom were Ajita and Tissa-Metteyya (Tisya-Maitreya). After a long journey which took them from Andhra country to Vaisali, the sixteen disciples met the Buddha and greeted him in their teacher’s name. They noted with satisfaction that Sakyamuni possessed the characteristic marks of a Great Man. The sixteen disciples, beginning with Ajita, each asked the Buddha a question in tum, and he answered them. According to the commentary, at the end of the conversation, they all became Arhats except Pingiya, Bavari’s nephew, who only became an anagamin. He returned to his uncle and told him what had happened. He was still speaking when the Buddha appeared in all his glory before the uncle and nephew; Bavari became an Arhat and Pingiya in anagamin.
In the Parayana (v.l019), the ascetic Bavari is 120 years old and possesses three of the marks of a Great Man. This information is confirmed by the Upadesa (T1509, ch. 4, p. 92a 9; ch. 29, p. 273a 25) which lists those marks : the urna, the tongue covering the face and the cryptorchis. While the Parayana makes Bavari a brahmin from Sravasti who moved to the Deccan, the Hsien yu ching (T 202, ch. 12, p. 432c l-2) gives him simply as a great teacher from the area of Pataliputra. The A lo han chu te ching (T 126, p. 832a4) emphasizes his moral qualities: the Sravaka who is endowed with great generosity is Bavari. For the Parayana. Ajita and Maitreya are, with fourteen others, pupils (manava) of Bavari, but their origins are not specified. Ajita was. the son of a brahmin from Sravasti, the first assessor of the king of Kosala (Theragatha Comm., I, p. 73 sq.); he was also Bavari’s 777 nephew (Apadana. I, p. 337, v.28; Anguttara Comm., I, p. 335). With regard to Maitreya, the sources hesitate between a northern and southern origin : “At the time of the Buddha, the son of the brahmin Kapali was called Maitreya; his body was golden-coloured, and had thirty-two marks and eighty minor marks” (Pu shihjou ching (T 183, p. 457c). - “Maitreya was born in the kingdom of Varanasi (Banaras), in the village of Kapali, into the family of the great brahmin Bavari” (Kuan Mile, T 452, p. 419c 14-15). - “Maitreya was the son of a brahmin from South India” (Chu wei mo chieh ching, T 1775, ch. I, p. 331b 9).in the Gandhavyuha (ed. D. T. SUZUKI, p. 527, 11.8-9; T 278, ch. 60) Maitreya declares to the young Sudhana : “I was born in Daksinapatha, in the land of the Malatas, in the village of Kutagramaka”.
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Maitreya called Ajita (lnvictus).- In conclusion, in a final series of sources, apparently later than the preceding ones, no difference is made between Ajita and Maitreya : Ajita becomes the personal name (naman) and Maitreya the family (gotra) name of one and the same person, Ajita-Maitreya, i.e. Mithras Invictus. These are some references :
a. Mahavastu, I, p. 51 : The Buddha declares : “Just as I am now, after me that bodhisattva Ajita will be a Buddha in the world, with Ajita as his personal name (namena), and Maitreya as his family name (gotrena), in the royal town of Bandhuma”. - Ibid., III, p. 246 : Ajita, in a family of brahmins, where many treasures have been piled up, will re.nounce plentiful desires and that brahmin will take up the mendicant life. Then, in a prosperous family, enriched with a good state of mind, he will be Maitreya on this earth in the future".
b. In the Sukhavativyaha (ed. F. Max MOLLER, §40) and the Saddharmapundarika (ed. KERN, p. 309, ll.l-2), the Buddha always addresses the bodhisattva Maitreya by calling him Ajita.
d. In his commentary upon the Vimalakirtinirdda (T 1775, ch. I, p. 33Ib 8-9), Seng Chao, a disciple of Kumarajiva, remarks: “Maitreya is his family name (hsing); Ajita is his personal name {tzu)”.
e. The Anagatavamsa is a Pali poem of a hundred and fifty stanzas recited by the Buddha at Sariputra’s request. Its date is unknown, and its author was a thera Kassapa from Cola country. It deals with the former existences of Metteyya under the three Buddhas Sumitta, Metteyya and Muhutta, under twenty-seven Buddhas and finally at the time of the Buddha Gotama. In that last period, Metteyya was the prince Ajita, son of Ajatasattu (JPTS, 1886, p. 34). Here again, Ajita and Metteyya are not differentiated. Verse 43 (ibid., p. 46) defines his identity : Ajita nama namena Metteyyo “Metteyya, called Ajita” .
Maitreya, as the Buddha of the future, always finds a place in Buddhism. His name and antiquity suggest a connection with the Vedic Mitra and the Iranian Mithra, a sovereign god, but also a social and obliging deity, with a beneficent and judicial aspect. From the outset, he appears in the long list of the Buddhas of the past and future who preceded or will follow Sakyamuni. Maitreya is no different from his colleagues, he will be a Buddha like all the others. The Parayana places a certain Maitreya or Tisya-Maitreya at the time of Sakyamuni and makes him a pupil of Bavari. With fifteen other companions, including Ajita, he is converted by Sakyamuni and attains Arhatship. The author does not as yet establish any relationship between the student Maitreya and the Buddha of the future. However, from among the whole lineage of the Tathagatas, it was naturally Maitreya who was to awaken interest and hold the attention. Once Sakyamuni was in Nirvana. it was from his immediate successor that the coming of the golden age of mankind was to be expected. The Maitreyavyakarana endeavoured to describe the marvellous events and mass conversions which will mark the coming of Maitreya into his world. These predictions, however, remained too impersonal and abstract. In order to present them in a more lively and realistic way, it was claimed that they were made by Sakyamuni concerning his contemporaries. By his very name, Maitreya, Bavari’s disciple, was clearly named as beneficiary. In a whole series of texts, of which the Purvaparantakasutra is the most characteristic, a solemn assembly was devised during which Sakyamuni formulated his predictions regarding Maitreya and his companion Ajita. Handing over to Maitreya the golden tunic which Mahaprajapati had offered to the Sangha, Sakyamuni announces to him that he will later be the Buddha Maitreya; Ajita, his companion, receives the assurance that, at the same date, he will be the Cakravartin (Universal Monarch) Sankha. Finally - if there ever was a final point - Ajita and Maitreya were fused into one and the same person : Ajita-Maitreya. This fusion is not in the least surprising if we note, as did J. Filliozat, that Maitreya, the “Benevolent”, is derived from maitri. “benevolence”, and that the property of maitri is to render its possessor invulnerable and ajita, “unsubdued” Through his name, Maitreya the unsubdued, the Buddha of the future, became a counterpart or replica of the Iranian god Mithra - Sol Invictus and was drawn into the great movement of messianic expectation which, under various symbols, pervaded the whole of the East at the end of the pre-Christian era. The syncretism which was dominant culminated, in the Manichaean texts in Uighur, in a vast synthesis in which were fused “Mithras Invictus”, “Jesus the Son of God” and “Maitreya-Ajita”. Belief in Maitreya flourished particularly in Central Asia until the advent of Islam. The sources collected by the various archaeological missions are plentiful : statues and frescoes, historical texts, documents concerning the founding of temples and monasteries, formulas of donations, religious and literary texts such as the Maitreyasamiti, confessions of sins, Manichaean fragments and, finally, hymns to Maitreya, and they all attest to the presence of a new god around whom were crystallized the aspirations of the Eastern world. From this belief was born a Buddhism which was almost exclusively a religion of pure devotion (bhakti), a monotheism. It was no longer in line with the earlier orthodoxy. The adherent no longer acquired merit with a view to a good rebirth in the world of the gods or of mankind; the ascetic no longer trained in the eightfold path in order to acquire an incomprehensible Nirvana. The doctrine of the maturations of actions was, if not forgotten, at least minimized. The only means of salvation was henceforth divine compassion, considerate and efficacious. Devotion to Maitreya was common to the two Vehicles- and this is why we speak of it here.
