Āṭānātiya Sutta
SUTTANTA PIṬAKA, DῙGHA NIKĀYA, PĀTHIKA VAGGA PĀḶI
The Glazed Plaques of Four Lokapālas at Ananda Temple
According to Āṭānātiya Sutta there are Four Lokapālas who guarded the world from the four cardinal points.
In the conception of the Buddhist cosmology the Catulokapālas, the four guardian nat devas looking after the world from the four cardinal points. They are also calling Catu-mahārit Nat.
According to the Buddhism there are six-tired abode of celestial beings (Devaloka). The Catumahārājika is the first of the six levels inhabited by nats or celestial lords.
The Lords of the Four Directions (Four Lokapāla) (စတုမဟာရာဇ်နတ်မင်းကြီးလေးပါး) The Four Mahārājas (the fifth plane on Mount Meru and celestial abode of the four guardian deities of the world residing in the realm of Catumahārājika).
– Dhataraṭṭha Deva (ဓတရဋ္ဌ): The ruler of the eastern part of Mount Meru. (Lord of the Gandhabbas)
– The Dhataraṭṭha (ဓတရဋ္ဌ) who guarded at the East with blue colour.
– Virūḷhaka Deva(ဝိရူဠက): The ruler of the southern part of Mount Meru. (Lord of the Kumbhandhas)
– The Virūḷhaka (ဝိရူဠက) who located at the south with the green colour.
– Virupakkha Deva (ဝိရူပက္ခ): The ruler of the western part of Mount Meru. (Lord of the Nāgas)
– The Virūpakkha (ဝိရူပက္ခ) who guarded at the west with the blue colour.
– Kuvera Deva (ကုဝေရ): The ruler of the nothern part of Mount Meru. (Lord of the Yakkhas)
– The Kuvera (ကုဝေရ) who attired gold in colour guarded at north.
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| East Side of Southern Entrance Dhataraṭṭha တောင်ဘက်မုဒ်ဝ အရှေ့ဘက်ခြမ်း (ဓတရဋ္ဌ) | East Side of Southern Entrance Virūḷhaka တောင်ဘက်မုဒ်ဝ အရှေ့ဘက်ခြမ်း (ဝိရူဠက) |
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| East Side of Southern Entrance Virūpakkha တောင်ဘက်မုဒ်ဝ အရှေ့ဘက်ခြမ်း (ဝိရူပက္ခ) | East Side of Northern Entrance Kuvera or King Vessavaṇa မြောက်ဘက်မုဒ်ဝ အရှေ့ဘက်ခြမ်း (ကုဝေရ/ ဝေသဝဏ်နတ်မင်းကြီး) |
The rare evidence of the Catu-lokapālas symbolism of pagoda building in Myanmar can be seen at the upper terrace of the Kyaik-kasan pagoda, Thingun kyun township, Yangon, Myanmar.
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| Kyaik-kasan pagoda, Thingun kyun township, Yangon, Myanmar |
About the Āṭānātiya Sutta
Āṭānātiya Sutta is one of the names of Sutta, but it is a name derived from the name of a great city named Āṭānāta which located at the Catumahārājika. The Catumahārājika is the first of the six levels inhabited by nats or celestial lords.
The city of Āṭānāta is one of the cities of King Kuvera. Āḷakamanda is the capital city. Kuvera Great Deva King is the Lord of the Yakkhas. The Great Deva King Kuvera has the royal city by the name of Visāna. Hence King Kuvera is also known as King Vessavaṇa.
At one time the Bhagavā (Lord Buddha) was staying at the Gijjhakuṭa Hill near Rājagaha. Then soon after the middle watch of the night, the Four Great Deva Kings of extremely attractive appearance, having posted sentinels and petrol at the four quarters with the a great army of Yakkhas, Gandhabbas, Kumbhandhas and Nāga came to the Gijjhakuṭa Hill illuminating the entire hill with their radiance. Then, they approached the Bhagavā, paid homage to him and sat at suitable places.
The Great Deva King Vessavaṇa, who had sat at a suitable place, said to the Bhagavā thus: “Venerable Sir, there are yakkhas of superior status, medium status and inferior status who do not believe in the Bhagavā.
Generally, yakkhas lack belief in the Bhagavā.
Why is this the case? Because the Bhagavā imparts teachings on refraining from taking the life of any being, abstaining from theft, avoiding sexual misconduct, telling the truth, and steering clear of intoxicants that induce negligence.
Venerable Sir, yakkhas, in general, do not adhere to the principles of refraining from taking life, abstaining from theft, avoiding sexual misconduct, telling the truth, and avoiding intoxicants that induce negligence. They have an aversion to these teachings and do not find them agreeable.
Venerable Sir there are disciples of the Bhagavā who reside in remote secluded forest abodes, where there is little noise and little soft babble, which are free from human intrusions, which are suitable for performing secret acts by human beings, and which are suitable for solitary life.
Yakkhas of superior status also dwell in those abodes; there are yakkhas who do not believe in the teachings of the Bhagavā.
To make them believe in the Bhagavā, may it please the Bhagavā to teach the protecting stanza known as the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta, so that bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, lay male disciples and lay female disciples may be well guarded, well protected”.
The Bhagavā, in agreement, consented through his silence. Following this, the Great Deva King Vessavana, acknowledging the Bhagavā’s acceptance, recited the Āṭānāṭiya Paritta at that time:
By reciting this Sutta, the bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, lay male disciples, and lay female disciples are not oppressed by Yakkhas, Gandhabba, Kumbhandas, and Nāgas.
If the Yakkhas, Gandhabbas, Kumbhandas, and Nāgas are harassing him or her, they can be informed and reported to the great Yakkhas, their generals, and their senior generals.
Now, who are these great Yakkhas, their generals, and their senior generals? They are..
| Great Yakkhas and Senior Generals in the Āṭānātiya Sutta | အာဋာနာဋိယသုတ္တန်ပါ နတ်စစ်မဟာသေနာပတိကြီး ၄၀ |
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| 1. Inda (ဣန္ဒ) | 21. Sivaka (သီဝက) |
| 2. Soma (သောမ) | 22. Mucalinda (မုစလိန္ဒ) |
| 3. Varuna (ဝရုဏ) | 23. Vessamitta (ဝေဿာမိတ္တ) |
| 4. Bharadvaja (ဘာရဒွါဇ) | 24. Yugandhara (ယုဂန္ဓရ) |
| 5. Pajapati (ပဇာပတိ) | 25. Gopāla (ဂေါပါလ) |
| 6. Candana (စန္ဒန) | 26. Supparodha (သုပ္ပရောဓ) |
| 7. Kamaseṭha (ကာမသေဋ္ဌ) | 27. Hiri (ဟိရိ) |
| 8. Kinnughaṇḍu (ကိန္နုဃဏ္ဍု) | 28. Netti (နေတ္တိ) |
| 9. Nighaṇḍu (နိဃဏ္ဍု) | 29. Mandiyya (မန္ဒိယ) |
| 10. Panāda (ပနာဒ) | 30. Pañcāla (ပဉ္စာလ) |
| 11. Opamañṇa (ဩပမည) | 31. Caṇḍa (Caṇḍī) (စဏ္ဍီ) |
| 12. Devaduta-Mātali (နတ်တို့တမန်မာတလိ) | 32. Āļāvaka (အာဠာဝက) |
| 13. Cittasena of Gandhabba mountains (ဂန္ဓဗ္ဗတောင်၌နေသော စိတ္တသေန) | 33. Pajjunna (ပဇ္ဇုန္န) |
| 14. Nalorājā (နဠောရာဇာ) | 34. Sumaņa (သုမန) |
| 15. Janesabbha (ဇနေသဘ) | 35. Sumukha (သုမုခ) |
| 16. Sātāgiri (သာတာဂီရိ) | 36. Dadhimukha (ဒဓိမုခ) |
| 17. Hemāvata (ဟေမဝတ) | 37. Mani (မဏိ) |
| 18. Punṇaka (ပုဏ္ဏက) | 38. Māṇivara (မာဏိဝရ) |
| 19. Karatiya (ကရတိယ) | 39. Dīgha (ဒီဃ ဘီလူးများနတ်များ) |
| 20. Guļa (ဂုဠ) | 40. Serisaka (သေရိသက) |
East Side of Southern Entrance of Ananda Temple: Three Glazed Plaques of Catulokapālas
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| Dhataraṭṭha (ဓတရဋ္ဌ) | Virūḷhaka (ဝိရူဠက) | Virūpakkha (ဝိရူပက္ခ) |
East Side of Southern Entrance of Ananda Temple: 14 Glazed Plaques of Senior General Yakkhas (Fortunately, these 14 images are in good condition and their captions are clear to read.)
တောင်ဘက်မုဒ်ဝအရှေ့ဘက်အခြမ်း၊ ယက္ခသေနာပတိနတ်မင်းကြီး (၁၄) ပါးစဉ့်ကွင်းများ (တောင်ဘက်ခြမ်းရှိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိစဉ့်ကွင်းများမှာ အတန်ငယ်ကောင်းမွန်နေပြီး အောက်ဖက်မှ စာများမှာလည်း ဖတ်၍ရသည်။
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| 1. ပနာဒ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Panāda) | 2. ဩပမည ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Opamañṇa) |
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| 3. နတ်တို့တမန်မာတလိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Devaduta-Mātali) | 4. ဂန္ဓဗ္ဗ တောင်၌ နေသော စိတ္တသေန ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Cittasena of Gandhabba mountains) |
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| 5. နဠောရာဇာ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Nalorājā) | 6. ဇနေသဘ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Janesabbha) |
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| 7. သာတာဂီရိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Sātāgiri) | 8. ဟေမဝတ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Hemāvata) |
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| 9. ပုဏ္ဏက ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Punṇaka) | 10. ကရတိယ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Karatiya) |
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| 11. သီဝက ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Sivaka) | 12. မုစလိန္ဒ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Mucalinda) |
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| 13. ဝိဿာမိတ္တ (ဝေဿာမိတ္တ)ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Vessamitta) | 14. ယုဂန္ဓရ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Yugandhara) |
East Side of Southern Entrance of Ananda Temple: 14 Glazed Plaques of Senior General Yakkhas (Unfortunately, 14 of these images are badly damaged.)
မြောက်ဘက်မုဒ်ဝအရှေ့ဘက်အခြမ်း၊ ယက္ခသေနာပတိနတ်မင်းကြီး (၁၄) ပါးစဉ့်ကွင်းများ (မြောက်ဘက်ခြမ်းရှိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိစဉ့်ကွင်းများမှာ ဆိုးရွားစွာပျက်စီးနေသည်)
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| ကုဝေရ Kuvera (ဝေသဝဏ်)နတ်မင်းကြီး The Great Deva King Vessavaṇa, who was the main character of this Āṭānātiya Sutta. |
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| 1. ဂေါပါလ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Gopāla) | 2. သုပ္ပရောဓ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Supparodha) |
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| 3. ဟိရိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Hiri) | 4. နေတ္တိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Netti) |
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| 5. မန္ဒိယ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Mandiyya) | 6. ပဉ္စာလ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Pañcāla) |
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| 7. အာဠာဝက ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Āļāvaka) | 8. ပဇ္ဇုန္န ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Pajjunna) |
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| 9. သုမန ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Sumaņa) | 10. သုမုခ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Sumukha) |
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| 11. ဒဓိမုခ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Dadhimukha) | 12. မဏိ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Mani) |
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| 13. မာဏိဝရ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Māṇivara) | 14. သေရိသက ယက္ခသေနာပတိ (Serisaka) |
ဘီလူးများကို အပြစ်ဒဏ်ပေးအရေးယူပုံ
How to punish to Yakkha, Kumbhandha, Gandhabba and Naga?
- Venerable Sir, such a being would not get respect, and esteem in either village or town.
- Venerable Sir, he would not get a residential site nor permission to dwell in the royal city of Alakamanda. (Alakamanda: The royal city of the great Deva Kuvera)
- Venerable Sir, he would not get the right to attend the congregation of the Yakkhas.
- Venerable Sir, other Yakkhas would not give him or take from him a daughter for marriage.
- Venerable Sir, they would heap abuse on him using all forms of abusive language of the Yakkhas, making rude remarks about his physical appearance. (Body Shaming)
- Venerable Sir, they would put an empty iron can upside down on his head.
- Venerable Sir, they would split his head into seven pieces.
| Sir., R. C. Temple,The Thirty-seven Nats, A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma, နတ်သုံးဆယ်ခွံနှစ်ပါ, London, 1906 (Catu-mahārit Nat) | Sir., R. C. Temple,The Thirty-seven Nats, A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma, နတ်သုံးဆယ်ခွံနှစ်ပါ, London, 1906 |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိ နန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) Catulokapālas အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိ နန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များမှ စတုမဟာရာဇ်နတ်မင်းကြီး (၄) ပါး၊ |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (1-4) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-1-4) |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (5-8) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-5-8) |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (9-12) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-9-12) |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (13-16) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-13-16) |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (17-20) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-17-20) |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (21-24) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-21-24) |
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| National Museum (Royal Paper Parchments) 28 Senior Generals of Yakkhas (25-28) အမျိုးသားပြတိုက်ရှိနန်းတွင်းပုရပိုက်များ ယက္ခသေနာပတိ နတ်မင်းကြီး (၂၈) ပါး (ယက္ခသေနာပတိ-25-28) |
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Reference Books
နန္ဒမာလာဘိဝံသ၊ အရှင်၊ ဒေါက်တာ၊ အာဋာနာဋိယသုတ်အနှစ်ချုပ် ၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ အောင်ဇမ္ဗူပုံနှိပ်တိုက်၊ ၂၀၂၂ အာဋာနာဋိယသုတ် ၊ ပါထိကဝဂ်ပါဠိတော်၊ ဒီဃနိကာယ်၊ သုတ္တန်ပိဋကတ်၊ ဆဋ္ဌသံဂါယနာတင် ပိဋကတ်တော်၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ သာသနာရေးဦးစီးဌာန၊ ၁၉၉၂ မြတ်ကျော်၊ ဦး၊ စံလွင်၊ ဦး၊ မြတ်ဗုဒ္ဓပါဝါစနအဘိဓာန် ၊ Myat Kyaw and San Lwin , A Pali-Myanmar-English Dictionary of the Noble Words of the Lord Buddha, Yangon, Pyi Zone Press, 2007 အောင်ကြိုင်၊ မင်းဘူး၊ လက်ရာစုံစွာအာနန္ဒာ ၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ စာပေဗိမာန်၊ ၁၉၉၃ ဖိုးကျား၊ ဦး (အမျိုးသားပညာဝန်)၊ ၃၇ မင်း ၊ ရန်ကုန်၊ ပါရမီစာပေ၊ ၁၉၉၉ Āṭānātiya Sutta, PĀTHIKA VAGGA PĀḶI, DῙGHA NIKĀYA, SUTTANTA PIṬAKA, Trans. U Ko Lay, Yangon, Department for the Promotion and Propagation of the Sāsanā, 2005 Tin, U, “The earliest arrival of the Maha-yin Sect to Pagan, Burma”, (မဟာယဉ်ဂိုဏ်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံပုဂံသို့ ရှေးဦးစွာရောက်သည်အကြောင်း) Journal of Burma Research Society, Vol. 19, Part. 2, 1929 Htin Aung, Dr, Folk Elements in Burmese Buddhism, London, Oxford University Press, 1962 Temple, R. C., Sir., The Thirty-seven Nats, A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma, နတ်သုံးဆယ်ခွံနှစ်ပါ, London, 1906
| အာဋာနာဋိယသုတ်အနှစ်ချုပ် | အာဋာနာဋိယသုတ် ပါထိကဝဂ်ပါဠိတော်၊ ဒီဃနိကာယ် | မြတ်ဗုဒ္ဓပါဝါစနအဘိဓာန် |
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| လက်ရာစုံစွာအာနန္ဒာ | ၃၇ မင်း | Āṭānātiya Sutta, PĀTHIKA VAGGA PĀḶI, DῙGHA NIKĀYA, |
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| The earliest arrival of the Maha-yin Sect to Pagan, Burma” | Folk Elements in Burmese Buddhism | The Thirty-seven Nats, A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma, နတ်သုံးဆယ်ခွံနှစ်ပါ |
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