Buddhas' Names Sutra
Buddhas' Names Sutra
仏名経 (Chin Fo-ming-ching; Jpn Butsumyo ﾭkyo )
A work translated into Chinese around 520 by Bodhiruchi, founder of the Treatise on the Ten Stages Sutra (Chin Ti-lun) school. This sutra lists the names of 11,093 Buddhas and bodhisattvas and describes their blessings. There are several sutras of this kind, such as the Names of Three Thousand Buddhas Sutra. They were used in a ceremony that gained popularity in China around the fifth or sixth century, in which the names of the Buddhas of past, present, and future were recited to expiate past offenses. In Japan, it is thought that the earliest such ceremony was held in 774. In the early ninth century, this ceremony came to be observed in the imperial palace and in provincial temples over a period of three days, beginning on the fifteenth day (later, the nineteenth day) of the twelfth month. Later the period was shortened to one night.
