Five Hundred Buddhas, Seventeen Differences
The reveals continue past the night-spirit's own identity — the five hundred ministers who condemned her to death turn out to be Devadatta's own followers, each destined for buddhahood despite everything, and the prisoners she rescued turn out to be a thousand buddhas not yet born in her own listeners' era.
Devadatta's Own Followers
The figures who wanted her dead are not left out of the story's final accounting — they too, the passage insists, are heading toward buddhahood, however different each of their paths will look.
「佛子！於汝意云何，彼時五百大臣，欲害我者，豈異人乎？今提婆達多等五百徒黨是也。是諸人等，蒙佛教化，皆當得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提，於未來世，過須彌山微塵數劫，爾時有劫，名：善光，世界名：寶光，於中成佛。其五百佛次第興世，最初如來，名曰：大悲；第二，名：饒益世間；第三，名：大悲師子；第四，名：救護眾生；乃至最後，名曰：醫王。雖彼諸佛大悲平等，然其國土、種族、父母、受生、誕生、出家、學道、往詣道場、轉正法輪、說修多羅、語言、音聲、光明、眾會、壽命、法住及其名號，各各差別。
"Child of the Buddha, what do you think — could those five hundred great ministers who then wished to kill me be anyone else? They are none other than Devadatta and his five hundred followers of today. All of these people, through the Buddha's own teaching and transformation, shall each attain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi; in an age to come, beyond kalpas as many as the fine motes of dust of Mount Sumeru, there will be a kalpa named Wholesome Light, and a world named Jewel Light, and within it they shall become buddhas. Those five hundred buddhas shall arise in the world one after another: the very first tathāgata shall be named Great Compassion; the second, Benefiting the World; the third, Lion of Great Compassion; the fourth, Rescuer and Protector of Beings; and so on, down to the very last, named King of Physicians. Though the great compassion of all those buddhas is equal alike, their lands, their lineages, their parents, the manner of their conception and birth, their going forth from home, their study of the path, their going to the awakening-site, their turning of the true dharma-wheel, the sūtras they expound, their language, their voice, their light, their assemblies, their lifespans, the duration their dharma abides, and their very names — every one of these shall differ, each from each.
雖彼諸佛大悲平等，然其⋯⋯各各差別 — though the great compassion of all those buddhas is equal alike, yet⋯⋯every one of these shall differ. Counted directly, seventeen distinct respects are named in which these five hundred future buddhas will differ from one another — land, lineage, parents, birth, going forth, the path studied, the awakening-site, the dharma-wheel, the sūtras taught, language, voice, light, assembly, lifespan, the dharma's duration, and name. Only compassion itself is named as identical across all five hundred; everything else about how that compassion takes shape in the world is allowed, even expected, to differ completely.
A Thousand Buddhas Not Yet Born
The reveal turns last to the prisoners themselves — not villains rescued by chance, but a specific, named lineage of buddhas belonging to an era still to come.
「佛子！彼諸罪人，我所救者，即拘留孫等賢劫千佛，及百萬阿僧祇諸大菩薩——於無量精進力名稱功德慧如來所，發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心，今於十方國土，行菩薩道，修習增長此菩薩教化眾生令生善根解脫者是。
"Child of the Buddha, those condemned prisoners whom I rescued are none other than Krakucchanda and the rest of the thousand buddhas of the Fortunate Kalpa, together with a million asaṃkhyeyas of great bodhisattvas — those who, at the place of the tathāgata Power of Measureless Vigour, Renown, Merit, and Wisdom, gave rise to the mind of anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, and who now, in lands throughout the ten directions, practise the bodhisattva path, cultivating and increasing this very bodhisattva liberation of teaching and transforming beings so they give rise to wholesome roots.
拘留孫等賢劫千佛 — Krakucchanda and the rest of the thousand buddhas of the Fortunate Kalpa. Krakucchanda is named in this pilgrimage's own account before, in Part 1131, as the first buddha of the very kalpa this world is now living through. The prisoners this story has followed for several Parts — condemned for treason, screaming under torture, saved only by a prince's offer of his own execution — turn out to belong not to some far future age at all, but to the same Fortunate Kalpa Good-Wealth himself is standing in as he hears the story told.
Part 1174 Complete
This continues chapter thirty-nine, 入法界品, in fascicle seventy-three. Part 1175 completes the story's final reveal — the king who ordered his own son's execution, and the queen's household of sixty thousand, each given an identity in the world Good-Wealth actually lives in.