Amitābha Sūtra
the shorter of the two Indian Mahayana sutras that describe Sukhāvatī, the pure land of Amitābha
The Amitābha Sūtra (Sanskrit: *Amitâbha-buddha-sūtra; Ch.: 阿彌陀經, pinyin: Āmítuó Jīng, or 佛說阿彌陀經, Fóshuō Āmítuó Jīng; Jp.: Amida Kyō, Vi.: A Di Đà Kinh), also known as the [Shorter] Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra (Sanskrit, The Array of "the Blissful Land", or The Arrangement of Sukhāvatī) is one of the two Indian Mahayana sutras that describe Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land of Buddha Amitābha. Amitābha is one of the most popular Buddhas in Mahayana Buddhism, known for having generated a pure realm free of suffering where all sentient beings can attain rebirth in after death.
The text was initially translated into Chinese in 402 by Kumārajīva (Taishō Tripiṭaka no. 366) and it is also known in Chinese as the "Small Sutra" (Xiaojing).
The Amitābha Sūtra is highly influential in East Asian Buddhism, including China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam since it is considered one of the "Three Pure Land" sutras which are the key scriptures in Pure Land Buddhism.
History
The Amitābha Sūtra was translated from an Indic language into Classical Chinese by Tripiṭaka master Kumārajīva in 402. The original Sukhāvatīvyūha sutras may have existed in India as early as the first or second centuries CE (during the Kushan era). They may have been composed in Gandhari or some other Prakrit language. A later translation of this sutra was completed by Xuanzang (602-664 C.E.), but it is not as widely used as Kumārajīva's, which is the standard edition in the East Asian tradition.
The sutra was commented on by numerous East Asian authors.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amitābha Sūtra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.