(South and Central Asian mythology)

The boddhisattva of ‘infinite light’, who represents the primordial, self-existent Buddha. A manifestation of the underlying essence of the six ‘meditation Buddhas’, he sprang from a lotus and he ceaselessly stretches out to aid the weak and faltering. Amitabha vowed that he would refuse personal salvation unless he should gain the power to cause any being who appealed to him to be reborn in the Pure Land, the Western Paradise, immediately after death. All that is asked of the would-be saint is worship or uttering the holy formula of his name. On the lips of the dying for countless generations, therefore, has been the name of bodhisattva of the ‘immeasurable enlightening splendour’. It was a spiritual ‘short cut’ that appealed to Chinese Buddhists, who were first introduced to him as A-mi-t'o-fo by an Indo-Scythian, Chih Ch'ien, about AD 230. Chih Ch'ien made a considerable impression in China: he was appointed by the ruler of Wu as a scholar of wide learning, po-shih, and charged with the moral instruction of the Crown Prince. The archetype of compassion, Amitabha became in China and Japan the gentle, easy, and popular way of salvation for Mahayana Buddhists. Solitary exertion, asceticism, even good works, vanish before the promise of boundless grace. Each being reborn in the Pure Land can confidently expect a lotus throne.

A Dictionary of World Mythology. Copyright © Arthur Cotterell 1979, 1986, 2003. All rights reserved.