Atanatiya Sutra
The Āṭānāṭiya Sutra (Skt. Āṭānāṭiyasūtra; P. Atanatiya Sutta; T. lcang lo can gyi pho brang gi mdo; English: "Discourse on Atanatiya") is a sutra found in all three main Buddhist canons.
- In the Pali canon, it is the 32nd Sutta in the Dīgha Nikāya ("Long Discourses of Buddha") of the Pāli Canon.[1][2]
- In the Chinese canon, the sutra found in the Dīrgha Āgama section, there titled The Mahāsūtra, the Sūtra of Āṭānāṭīya.
- In the Kangyur of Tibetan canon, this text is included in both in the standard Sutra section, as well the Dhāraṇī section.[3][4][5]
The sutra, which presents a dhāraṇī for spiritual protection against negative spirits, was presented to the Buddha by one of the "Four Great Heavenly Kings", King Vessavana (Pali; Sanskrit: Vaiśravana). It also contains a description of the celestial kingdoms of the Four Heavenly Kings.
Introduction
The Āṭānāṭiya Sutta instructs on how to protect oneself and the monastic community from malevolent spirits, demons, and evil forces that disrupt the practice of the Buddha’s teachings. It describes the circumstances in which such beings may interfere with the holy relics and the followers of the Buddha, and offers protective verses recited for spiritual safeguarding.[6][7]
During the Buddha’s time, malevolent beings (sometimes called "evil spirits" or malicious devas) who did not respect the Buddha or his disciples would harass and obstruct monks, nuns, and lay devotees. The Āṭānāṭiya Sutta was recited to protect the community, especially through the recitation of dhāraṇīs (protective spells), and included instruction on the powers and duties of the Four Heavenly Kings in maintaining cosmic order.[8]
Background
According to traditional accounts, the Four Great Heavenly Kings gathered in the celestial city of Āṭānāṭa to compose the sutta. They praised the Buddha and the Seven Buddhas who preceded him, and established the protective verses to counteract evil spirits. After composing the text, celestial armies accompanied the sutta to the earthly realm for the Buddha and his disciples.[9]
The sutta describes the duties of celestial beings and the protective measures the monastic community can take, emphasizing adherence to moral precepts and avoidance of harmful actions, such as killing, theft, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxicants. It also lists the names of 41 supernatural warriors and describes the powers of malevolent beings that can disrupt spiritual practice.[10]
List of yakkhas
The 41 yakkhas that appear in the text are:
- Inda
- Soma
- Varuṇa
- Bhāradvāja
- Pajāpati
- Candana
- Kāmaseṭṭha
- Kinnughaṇḍu
- Nighaṇḍu
- Panāda
- Opamañña
- Mātali
- Cittasena
- Gandhabba
- Naḷa
- Janesabha
- Sātāgira
- Hemavata
- Puṇṇaka
- Karatiya
- Guḷa
- Sivaka
- Mucalinda
- Vessāmitta
- Yugandhara
- Gopāla
- Suppagedha
- Suppagedha (or Supparodha)
- Hiri
- Netti
- Mandiya
- Pañcālacaṇḍa
- Āḷavaka
- Pajjunna
- Sumana
- Sumukha
- Dadhimukha
- Maṇi
- Māṇivara
- Dīgha
- Serīsaka
The text also includes 10 yakkhas who serve as informants to King Vessavana:
- Tatolā
- Tattalā
- Tatotalā
- Ojasi
- Tejasi
- Tatojasī
- Sūra
- Rājā
- Ariṭṭha
- Nemi
See also
Notes
- ↑ "Āṭānāṭiya Sutta: Discourse on Āṭānāṭa". Buddhist Publication Society. 1999. Retrieved 2025-08-13.
- ↑ Walshe, Maurice (1995). The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha Nikaya. Wisdom Publications. pp. 471–478.
- ↑ "The Āṭānāṭiya Sūtra". Retrieved 2025-08-13.
- ↑ "The Mahāsūtra: The Āṭānāṭiya Sūtra". Retrieved 2025-08-13.
- ↑ "Atanatiya-sutta, Ātānātiya-sutta, Āṭānāṭiya-sutta: 1 definition". 2019-09-12. Retrieved 2025-08-13.
- ↑ တိပိဋကဆရာတော် ဦးဝိစိတ္တဿရာဘိဝံသ (1997). နိုင်ငံတော် သာသန မဟာဗုဒ္ဓဝင် (တတိယတွဲ)၊ သတ္တမအကြိမ်. သာသနာရေးဦးစီးဌာန. p. 317.
- ↑ ဒေါ်အုန်း မဟာဝိဇ္ဇာ (1981). စာပေသမိုင်း. ရန်ကုန်: သာသနာရေးဦးစီးဌာန.
- ↑ "Atanatiya Sutta: Discourse on Atanatiya". Buddhist Publication Society. 1999.
- ↑ တိပိဋကဆရာတော် ဦးဝိစိတ္တဿရာဘိဝံသ (1997). နိုင်ငံတော် သာသန မဟာဗုဒ္ဓဝင် (တတိယတွဲ)၊ သတ္တမအကြိမ်. သာသနာရေးဦးစီးဌာန. p. 317.
- ↑ "Atanatiya-sutta, Ātānātiya-sutta, Āṭānāṭiya-sutta: 1 definition". 2019-09-12. Retrieved 2025-08-13.
