"Our merciful Father, the Tathagata, manifested himself in Central India in historical times (lit. since man's life has been limited to one hundred years), and expounded, for the benefit of all sentient creatures, the whole of the Holy Teachings of his lifetime. The sentient creatures of the times when the Tathagata was in the world, being closely bound to him by the merits of good actions acquired in the past, entered upon the way of Truth (and were saved). 'But what,' he lamented, shall happen to the Sentient Beings who shall come after my Nirvana?' So he caused the whole eighty thousand of his Holy Teachings to be committed to writing, and out of these entrusted to Kas'yapa the monk (sonja) all the writings of the Lesser Vehicle, whilst those of the Greater Vehicle, together with the Saddharma pundarika and the Nirvana Sutras, etc., he entrusted to the care of the Bodhisattva Manjus'ri. But the kernel of all the eighty thousand Teachings, the five syllables Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo, which contain the gist (or main section) of the Saddharma pundarika Sutra, he entrusted neither to Kas'yapa and Ananda, nor yet to Manjus'ri, Samantabhadra, Avalokites'vara, Maitreya, Kshitigarbha, Nagarjuna, or any of the Great Bodhisattvas, though they desired him to do so; but summoning, from the depths of the earth, the old man Visishta-c'aritra, he did there, in the presence of the Buddha Prabhutaratna and all the Buddhas of the Ten Quarters, from the centre of the Stupa of S'akyamuni made of Seven Precious Substances, deliver to Visishta-c'aritra the Five Syllables of the Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo. Hence, after his Nirvana he considered all Sentient Beings as his sons, to be treated with absolute equality of consideration. But, just as it is the wont of physicians to give medicines according to the disease, so during five hundred years he bade Kas'yapa and Ananda to administer the medicine of the Small Vehicle Doctrines to all beings, and during the next five hundred years he gave to Manjus'ri, Maitreya, Nagarjuna, and Vasubandhu, etc., the medicines of the Avatamsaka, Vairoc'ana, Prajnaparamita, and other Sutras. A thousand years after his death, in the period of the Image Law, he bade Yaku-O, Kwannon, and the other Bodhisattvas, impart to all Sentient Beings all the other doctrines, with the exception of the Real Section of the Hokekyo. 'When the period of the Failure of the Law shall commence,' said he, 'the Scriptures which I give to Kas'yapa, Ananda, etc., to Manjus'ri, Maitreya, etc., to Yaku-O, Kwannon, etc.--the Scriptures of the Great and Small Vehicles--shall remain in the letter, but shall no more serve as medicines, for the sickness shall be grievous, but the medicine light. At that time shall Visishta-c'aritra be manifested, and shall give the medicine of the Five Syllables of the Myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo to the Sentient Beings within Buddhadom.'"