Anāgatavaṃsa belongs to the late period of Pāli literature. It describes Metteyya’s life from birth, awakening, preaching and nirvaṇa as a whole. According to the tradition the text was compiled by Kassapa in the late 12th century. The present thesis is using literature comparison, that is comparing Anāgatavaṃsa to extant Sanskrit, Pāli and Chinese materials, in order to see the differences. There are five chapters in this Thesis. Chapter one is the introduction. It introduces the topic, method of this thesis, as well as the literature reviews. Chapter two dealing with the future Buddhas in the Pāli literatures, including the Pāli Canon as well as the post Pāli Canon. Chapter three is the comparison of Anāgatavaṃsa and Cakkavattisihanada Suttanta, Buddhavaṃsa, Visuddhimagga. Chapter four is the comparison of Anāgatavaṃsa and five Chinese versions related to Metteyya, as well as three versions of Maitreyavyākaraṇa. chapter five, the conclusion. The comparison shows that there are some similarities between Anāgatavaṃsa and Cakkavattisihanada Suttanta, Buddhavaṃsa, regarding narrative structure and the sentence patterns. Furthermore, some sentence patterns in the Anāgatavaṃsa can only be found in the Chinese parallel versions related to Metteyya and Maitreyavyākaraṇa, but not found in the Pāli materials. It shows that there were some relationships between Anāgatavaṃsa and these texts.
