The King Was Samantabhadra
The king-monk's grief and burning light are witnessed by his own daughter, and what she gains from watching is not admiration but the very gate this whole account has been describing. Then the identities are named, and the king turns out to be the last person a reader would have guessed.
A Daughter Who Was Watching
The king-monk's protest in Part 1137 was not addressed to her, and she was not one of the monks he was rebuking. She was simply present, and what she took from it was this gate.
「時，有比丘尼，名：法輪化光，是此王女，百千比丘尼而為眷屬，聞父王語及見神力，發菩提心永不退轉，得三昧，名：一切佛教燈，又得此甚深自在妙音解脫；得已，身心柔軟，即得現見法海雷音光明王如來一切神力。
"At that time there was a bhikṣuṇī named Light of the Transformation of the Dharma-Wheel, who was that king's own daughter, with a hundred thousand bhikṣuṇīs as her retinue. Hearing her father the king's words and seeing his spiritual power, she gave rise to the mind of awakening, never to regress from it, and attained a samādhi named Lamp of Every Buddha's Teaching, and attained as well this liberation of the Profound and Sovereign Wondrous Voice. Having attained it, her body and mind became soft and pliant, and she thereupon came to see, present before her, the spiritual power of the Tathāgata King of the Light of the Thunder-Sound of the Dharma-Ocean.
聞父王語及見神力 — hearing her father the king's words and seeing his spiritual power. She is watching her own father, who has just become a monk, grieve publicly over a dying dharma and then burn with light in the sky. What she gains from that scene is not grief of her own but the exact gate this teacher has spent Parts 1133 through 1136 describing to Good-Wealth — 甚深自在妙音解脫, named here for the first time inside the story itself rather than in the frame around it. A father's mourning turns out to be the occasion of his daughter's attainment.
得已，身心柔軟 — having attained it, her body and mind became soft and pliant. The same phrase, 柔軟, described the mind of the king's daughter in fascicle seventy, Part 1112, after she heard a sūtra spoken for her — 其心柔軟，無有麁彊, like a child newly conceived. Two fascicles apart, two different daughters of two different kings, and the identical word marks the same kind of change: not a new fact learned, but a texture the mind takes on.
The Identities
The formula this chapter always uses to close a memory arrives, and the answer this time reaches further than a name — it reaches all the way to Samantabhadra.
「善男子！於汝意云何？彼時轉輪聖王隨於如來轉正法輪，佛涅槃後興隆末法者，豈異人乎？今普賢菩薩是。其法輪化光比丘尼，即我身是。我於彼時，守護佛法，令十萬比丘尼於阿耨多羅三藐三菩提得不退轉，又令得現見一切佛三昧，又令得一切佛法輪金剛光明陀羅尼，又令得普入一切法門海般若波羅蜜。
"Good son, what do you think? That wheel-turning sage-king, who followed the tathāgata in turning the wheel of the true dharma and, after the buddha's parinirvāṇa, made the final dharma flourish once more — was he some other person? He is the bodhisattva Samantabhadra today. And the bhikṣuṇī Light of the Transformation of the Dharma-Wheel was none other than myself. At that time I safeguarded the buddha-dharma, causing a hundred thousand bhikṣuṇīs to attain non-regression from anuttara-samyak-sambodhi; and I caused them, further, to attain the samādhi of seeing every buddha present before them, to attain the vajra light dhāraṇī of the dharma-wheel of every buddha, and to attain the perfection of wisdom that universally enters every ocean of dharma-gates.
今普賢菩薩是 — he is the bodhisattva Samantabhadra today. This is the third time in this translation's fascicles seventy and seventy-one that a wheel-turning king in a night-spirit's ancient story turns out to be one of the great bodhisattvas — Mañjuśrī in Part 1099, Maitreya in Part 1114, and now Samantabhadra. Between them, the three identifications cover the three figures whose names recur across this whole chapter as the ones who wake teachers up, outshine proud cities, and hold within their own bodies every bodhisattva there is. A wheel-turning king's throne, in this sūtra's night-spirit accounts, seems to be where a great bodhisattva goes to be somebody's father.
令十萬比丘尼於阿耨多羅三藐三菩提得不退轉 — causing a hundred thousand bhikṣuṇīs to attain non-regression from anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. She does not merely receive an attainment for herself. The retinue of a hundred thousand bhikṣuṇīs named in the previous row was not decorative; she brings every one of them to non-regression, and then further to three more specific attainments. Whatever this liberation actually is, its first recorded effect is not private.
Part 1138 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-one. Part 1139 begins the longest catalogue of buddhas in this translation so far — nearly a hundred names, one after another, all appearing within the same eon at the same awakening-site.