Sāgara is a prominent nāgarāja or dragon king in

Mahayana Buddhism Mahāyāna ( ; , , ; ) is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices developed in ancient India ( onwards). It is considered one of the three main existing branches of Buddhism, the others being Thera ...

. His name comes from the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

word meaning “ocean.”

Character

Sāgara is listed among the and is one of sixteen that are spared from the assault of the

garuda Garuda (; ; Vedic Sanskrit: , ) is a Hindu deity who is primarily depicted as the mount (''vahana'') of the Hindu god Vishnu. This divine creature is mentioned in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain faiths. Garuda is also the half-brother of the D ...

s. His frequent inclusion of Sāgara among the several groups of protective deities in Buddhism is a direct reference to the nāgas and his role as one of their primary leaders. He is listed among the 28 guardians of the thousand-armed

Avalokiteśvara In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara (meaning "the lord who looks down", International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: ), also known as Lokeśvara ("Lord of the World") and Chenrezig (in Tibetan), is a Bodhisattva#Bhūmis (stages), tenth-level bodhisattva associ ...

. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra reveals that he is the nāga that presides over the world's supply of rain. In East Asian art, he is often depicted with a reddish white complexion and assumes a posture of great authority. In his left hand he holds a snake or dragon and in his right hand he wields a sword. He wears a crown that consists of five snakes.

Undersea Palace

Sāgara's palace lays at the bottom of the ocean and is the setting of several

Mahayana sutras The Mahayana sutras are Buddhist texts that are accepted as wikt:canon, canonical and authentic Buddhist texts, ''buddhavacana'' in Mahayana, Mahayana Buddhist sanghas. These include three types of sutras: Those spoken by the Buddha; those spoke ...

. It is 84,000

yojanas A yojana (Devanagari: योजन; Khmer language: យោជន៍; ; ) is a measure of distance that was used in ancient India, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. Various textual sources from ancient India define Yojana as ranging from 3.5 to 15& ...

in length and width with an array of decorations that are seven-fold, including walls, banisters, jeweled nets and seven rows of trees. The palace is adorned with the seven treasures and is filled with the song of innumerable birds.

Literature

King Sāgara appears extensively throughout the

Buddhist canon There are several Buddhist canons, which refers to the various scriptural collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures or the various Buddhist scriptural canons.

. His name often appears in enumerations of dragon kings that appear among Śākyamuni Buddha's audience. On other occasions, he is a central figure who participates in conversation with the Buddha and

bodhisattvas In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who has attained, or is striving towards, ''Enlightenment in Buddhism, bodhi'' ('awakening', 'enlightenment') or Buddhahood. Often, the term specifically refers to a person who forgoes or delays personal n ...

and elucidates matters in the realm of the nāgas.

Lotus Sutra

Chapter 12 of the

Lotus Sutra The ''Lotus Sūtra'' (Sanskrit: ''Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtram'', ''Sūtra on the White Lotus of the True Dharma'', zh, p=Fǎhuá jīng, l=Dharma Flower Sutra) is one of the most influential and venerated Buddhist Mahāyāna sūtras. ...

contains the well-known episode of Sāgara's daughter, known simply as ''nāgakanya'' ("nāga maiden"), whose transformation allows her to procure the male body of a bodhisattva, followed by becoming a fully enlightened Buddha. This event was preceded by

Mañjuśrī Manjushri () is a ''bodhisattva'' who represents ''Prajñā (Buddhism), prajñā'' (transcendent wisdom) of the Buddhas in Mahāyāna Buddhism. The name "Mañjuśrī" is a combination of Sanskrit word "wikt:%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%9E%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%9C%E0 ...

's visit to Sāgara's ocean palace, where he taught the Lotus Sutra to the

nāga In various Asian religious traditions, the Nāgas () are a divine, or semi-divine, race of half-human, half-serpent beings that reside in the netherworld (Patala), and can occasionally take human or part-human form, or are so depicted in art. ...

Lalitavistara Sūtra

Sāgara makes a few appearances in the

Lalitavistara Sūtra The ''Lalitavistara Sūtra'' is a Sanskrit Mahayana sutras, Mahayana Buddhist sutra that tells the story of Gautama Buddha from the time of his descent from Tushita until his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi. The term ''La ...

. He is one among six nāga kings who make the aspiration to venerate the bodhisattva Siddhārtha with clouds and rain of sandalwood powder. When Siddhārtha discarded the golden bowl provided by Sujātā, Sāgara took it from the bottom of the Nairañjanā River and later gave it to Śakra to be enshrined among the gods in

Trāyastriṃśa The (Sanskrit; Pali ), (''Tushita''; ''Heaven of the Thirty-three''), is an important celestial realm of the devas in Buddhist cosmology. The word ' is an adjective formed from the numeral ', or "33" and can be translated in English as "bel ...

. Towards the end of the story, the Buddha is described as having a rumbling voice like that of one of Sāgara's thunderclouds.

Sutra on the Questions of the Nāga King Sāgara

Three extant versions of this sutra exist in both the Tibetan

Kangyur The Tibetan Buddhist canon is a defined collection of sacred texts recognized by various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, comprising the Kangyur and the Tengyur. The ''Kangyur'' or ''Kanjur'' is Buddha's recorded teachings (or the 'Translation of ...

and the

Taishō Tripiṭaka The ''Taishō Tripiṭaka'' (; Japanese: ''Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō''; " Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka") is a definitive edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon and its Japanese commentaries used by scholars in the 20th century. The name is abbr ...

(T0598, T0599 and T0601). Known in

as the ''Sāgaranāgarājaparipṛcchā Sūtra'', all three texts are vastly different from each other regarding their content. The shortest text opens with the Buddha residing in Sāgara's ocean palace accompanied by an audience of 1,250 monks. The Buddha addresses Sāgara and teaches him that speaking the Four Dharma Seals is synonymous with speaking the 84,000 methods of teaching the Dharma.

References

{{Buddhism topics Buddhist gods Nāgas Water gods Twenty-Four Protective Deities