Note 32 — Exotics (continued 2)

Gokuraku is the common word in Japan for the Buddhist heaven. The above inscription, translated for me from a sotoba of the Jōdo sect, is an abbreviated form of a verse in the Smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha (see Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East”), which Max Müller has thus rendered in full:—“In that world Sukhâvatî, O Sâriputra, there is neither bodily nor mental pain for living beings. The sources of happiness are innumerable there. For that reason is that world called Sukhâvatî, the happy.”