The prediction, recorded in the Pali Canon's Cakkavatti-Sihanada Sutta, that a future buddha named Metteyya, Maitreya, will arise long after Shakyamuni's teaching is entirely forgotten, in an age when human life spans reach eighty thousand years, under a righteous wheel-turning monarch named Sankha who will himself renounce his throne to follow the new buddha's teaching. Unlike the being it describes, already treated in this atlas's Maitreya entry, this is the specific prophecy the Buddha is recorded as making about him, and its imagery of a coming age of peace has repeatedly been read, across Chinese history, as naming a date close at hand rather than an indefinite future.
Facts
Fulfillment
Documented ResponseIts imagery of a coming age of peace has been read, repeatedly across Chinese history and not only in the Red Turban Rebellion, which this atlas also covers, as naming a date close at hand rather than an indefinite future. 1 Documented ResponseThe secondary Buddhist-studies contrast this page needed. Read directly, Thomas DuBois's "Millenarianism and Millenarian Movements" entry in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism states the mainstream Buddhist reading of Maitreya's return in DuBois's own words: it is set in "relatively vague terms" and "destined to occur only in the very distant future (five billion years, by some accounts)," which turned ordinary devotional hope toward individual paths, rebirth in the Pure Land or Tusita heaven, rather than an approaching collective millennium. Against this, DuBois describes how Chinese apocryphal sutras from the sixth century reworked the same figure's arrival into an imminent cosmic cleansing, "at the lowest point of human suffering," the reading that fed the White Lotus tradition and the Red Turban Rebellion already on this row. DuBois writes about Buddhist millenarianism broadly, not the Theravada Pali Canon specifically, and is cited here for that broader contrast rather than as a Theravada verdict. 2 Dating
Predicted DateNo fixed date; set in a future age of eighty thousand year human lifespans, long after Shakyamuni's own teaching has been entirely forgotten, not tied to a calendrical prediction. 1 Date AttributedTraditionally Shakyamuni's own teaching career, fifth century BCE; the Pali Canon was committed to writing considerably later, traditionally at the Fourth Buddhist Council in Sri Lanka, first century BCE. 1 Attributions
TraditionBuddhism (Theravada, the Pali Canon) 1 Sources
Primary SourceCakkavatti-Sihanada Sutta, Digha Nikaya 26 1Tradition: Buddhism (Theravada and Mahayana) Origins
Attributed Author / CompilerThe historical Buddha (Shakyamuni, Siddhartha Gautama), as recorded in the Pali Canon's Cakkavatti-Sihanada Sutta. 1 Debunked
Claimed FulfillmentRead as imminent by Chinese White Lotus movements, including the mid-fourteenth century Red Turban Rebellion that ended Mongol Yuan rule. 1 The sutta's own stated precondition, an age of eighty thousand year human life spans, has not occurred by any account; the rebellion's political success in founding the Ming dynasty in 1368 did not involve the arrival of Metteyya himself. Learn More
The Prophecy in the Cakkavatti-Sihanada Sutta
The sutta sets the prophecy inside a long account of moral and social decline and renewal. As people abandon right conduct, the text says, human life spans shrink across generations toward a violent low point of about ten years, followed by a brief "sword interval" of general slaughter; a remnant of survivors then resolves to recover virtue, and life spans climb back up across further generations, doubling and redoubling until they reach eighty thousand years. It is at that high point, when conditions of prosperity and ease make the teaching easiest to hear, that both a righteous wheel-turning monarch named Sankha and a new buddha become possible at once.
The Buddha names his successor directly: a Blessed One named Metteyya will arise in the city of Ketumati, "endowed with wisdom and conduct, a well-farer, knower of the worlds, teacher of gods and humans, enlightened and blessed, just as I am now." Sankha, ruling as a conqueror of the four quarters by righteousness rather than force, will restore an ancient palace, give it away to ascetics and the destitute, then shave his head, put on the yellow robe and go forth from the household life as one of Metteyya's own followers. The king renouncing his throne to sit at the new buddha's feet is the sutta's image of what the golden age of eighty thousand years is actually for.
Maitreya is the only future buddha both Theravada and Mahayana traditions accept, and this passage is the shared textual root of that expectation, predating the sectarian split between them.
Dated Readings: The White Lotus Movements
The sutta ties Metteyya's arrival to a moral and demographic condition, an eighty thousand year life span, not to a calendar date, and offers no way to compute when that condition will be reached. Popular Chinese movements have repeatedly read it as imminent regardless. From around the thirteenth century, White Lotus teachers preached the near arrival of Maitreya, at times fused with Manichaean imagery of a coming Bright King, and organised that expectation into a standing underground network active for centuries.
The clearest case of the belief meeting political history is the mid-fourteenth century Red Turban Rebellion against Mongol Yuan rule, which drew heavily on White Lotus Maitreyan preaching. One of its commanders, the former monk Zhu Yuanzhang, went on to overthrow the Yuan and found the Ming dynasty in 1368. A later revival, the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796 to 1804 against the Qing, was suppressed after eight years of fighting. In neither case did the specific condition the sutta describes, an age of eighty thousand year life spans, arrive, and the movements' own leaders did not claim it had; what each generation read as urgent was the idea that the age was close, not that its stated precondition had been met.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed To
Belongs to Tradition
Also accepted, from the same textual root, in Mahayana tradition.
Preserved in the Theravada Pali Canon.
Instance Of
One of the named prophetic texts the general Doctrine entry surveys.
Related To
The Buddha's own recorded prediction naming Maitreya as his successor.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.