The King Was Maitreya, the Girl Was Me

今彌勒菩薩是 — he is the bodhisattva Maitreya today. Part 1099 closed the previous night-spirit's account with the same formula and a different answer: the wheel-turning king in her story was Mañjuśrī. Two night-spirits in succession have now told a life that runs through a wheel-turning king's household, and the kings have turned out to be the two bodhisattvas who stand at the beginning and the end of this pilgrimage — Mañjuśrī, who sent Good-Wealth out, and Maitreya, who will receive him near its close. What both accounts hold in common is the figure who is not a king in either: Samantabhadra, who in each case did the actual work.

寂靜音海夜神是，今所住處去此不遠 — she is the night-spirit Ocean of Tranquil Sound, whose dwelling-place is now not far from here. This is not only a piece of ancient history. It is an address. A teacher Good-Wealth has not yet met is being placed on the map several parts before he is sent to her, and she is placed there as somebody's mother-in-law from a previous age.

毘盧遮那藏妙寶蓮華髻 — Vairocana Treasury Wondrous Jewel Lotus Topknot. Part 1105 introduced this king as 毘盧遮那妙寶蓮華髻, without the character 藏, treasury. Both spellings occur exactly once each in the fascicle and the Taishō carries no variant at either point. It is a small wobble of the kind long Chinese proper names collect, and it is recorded here rather than silently harmonised — as was the larger wobble in the daughter's own name, noted at Part 1109.

即得菩薩普現一切世間調伏眾生解脫門 — she attained the bodhisattva liberation-gate of Universally Manifesting in Every World and Taming Beings. In Part 1104 Good-Wealth asked her three questions, and the first was 其名何等, what is it called. Ten parts have gone by without an answer. It arrives here, buried in the middle of a sentence about a girl's first offering, and it is the same gate he watched her demonstrate at the very opening of this fascicle — Part 1101 called it 菩薩調伏眾生解脫神力 and Part 1102 described it as 普現調伏一切眾生菩薩解脫. The demonstration came first, the biography second, and the name last.

解身瓔珞，散佛供養 — I undid the necklaces from my body and scattered them over the Buddha as an offering. She is retelling in seven characters what Part 1111 spent a hundred on, and the retelling omits everything that happened next: the canopy, Vairocana, the vision of every bodhisattva inside Samantabhadra. What she keeps is the gesture. Asked to account for her own attainment, she mentions taking her jewellery off.

初出家時，我為夜神 — at the time he first went forth from home, I was a night-spirit. Eight characters, and they are the first time in this entire account that she says she was one. The girl who mended a statue, who threw her necklaces at a buddha, who was a king's daughter in a proud city, has by the opening of the next world already become what she still is. The sūtra does not narrate the transition and does not treat it as a promotion. Being a night-spirit is simply the shape her work has taken for longer than the story has been telling.

其最初佛，名：大悲幢 — the first of those buddhas was named Banner of Great Compassion. Of the five hundred, this is the one whose going-forth she attended as a night-spirit. Her own liberation, named two rows earlier, is about manifesting everywhere and taming beings; the first buddha she serves in her new form is a banner of great compassion. The sūtra likes these quiet consonances between what somebody does and what they happen to be standing next to.