Chapter 1 · Where the Prajñā Sūtras Began — from the Daoxing to the Great Prajñā

Part One · Sources and Formation

Why are there so many Prajñā sūtras—the Daoxing, the Smaller, the Larger, the Great Prajñā? Are they the same sūtra?

This is the first perplexity that confronts anyone approaching the Prajñā collection. This chapter will not rush to settle it through modern textual scholarship. We will first hear how the ancients answered, because people in the Chang'an translation hall were already asking this question sixteen hundred years ago, and they answered it remarkably well. Then we will unfold six centuries of Chinese translation history: how one sūtra was translated again and again, with every translation preserved.

1 · One Sūtra in Four Forms — the Ancients' Own Answer

During the Hongshi era of the Later Qin, Kumārajīva newly translated the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā and Sengrui wrote its preface. The preface begins by locating the sūtra:

「The Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra is a consummate teaching that reaches to the end of principle and fully discloses nature; it is the broad course by which bodhisattvas become buddhas.」 〔僧叡〈小品經序〉·T08n0227 0536c18（序起 0536c15）〕

It then answers our question directly:

「The main text of this scripture exists in four forms; the Buddha taught it at different times in fuller and shorter forms, adapting to those being guided. The longest is said to have one hundred thousand verses, and the shortest six hundred. What is called the Larger Prajñāpāramitā here is the middle-sized text in India.」 〔同序·T08 0537a12〕

Let us slow down sentence by sentence. 「Exists in four forms」—the ancients clearly knew that this sūtra had multiple texts, ranging in length from one hundred thousand verses to six hundred. 「The Buddha taught it at different times in fuller and shorter forms, adapting to those being guided」—this is the crucial sentence. The differences among the texts were not understood as corruption or interpolation, but as the Buddha teaching more fully or more briefly at different times and for different capacities. One Dharma takes longer and shorter forms in response to those who hear it. The last sentence is especially revealing: 「What is called the Larger Prajñāpāramitā here is the middle-sized text in India.」 Even the text customarily called 「Larger」 in China was only middle-sized when returned to the full Indian spectrum. 「Larger」 and 「Smaller」 are relative names, not differences in essence.

This is the ancients' answer: the family of Prajñā sūtras is not the fragmentation of one text, but one Dharma taught at different times in adapted, fuller and shorter forms. The whole road of this book begins from this sentence.

2 · From the Daoxing to the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā — a Genealogy of Translations

How did China receive this sūtra, step by step? The history of translation preserves a clear genealogy. In the Later Han, Lokakṣema first translated the ten-fascicle Daoxing Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra—the first station of prajñā in China. Zhi Qian of Wu followed with the Damingdu Sūtra; in the Former Qin, Dharmapriya and Zhu Fonian produced the Extracted Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra. Then, under the Later Qin, Kumārajīva translated it anew as the present ten-fascicle, twenty-nine-chapter Smaller Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra. Sengrui's preface records the exact dates:

「On the sixth day of the second month of Hongshi 10, he requested that it be translated; by the thirtieth day of the fourth month, the correction was entirely complete.」 〔同序·T08 0537a09〕

Once the translation was complete, the catalogues confirmed this genealogy generation after generation. The Collection of Records Concerning the Tripiṭaka records the 「New Smaller Sūtra」 and preserves Sengrui's preface in full. The Kaiyuan Catalogue of Buddhist Teachings expressly lists Kumārajīva's translation with the Daoxing, the Damingdu, and the others as different translations of the same text, while preserving divergences in the transmitted counts of ten fascicles and seven〔T55n2145 0010c18·0054c12–0055a12；T55n2154 0512b07–08·待譯〕. In other words, 『these are different translations of the same sūtra』 is not a reconstruction by modern scholars; it is the judgment of the ancient catalogues themselves. In the Song, Dānapāla produced yet another translation, the Sūtra of the Buddha-Mother's Birth of the Three Dharma Treasuries of Prajñāpāramitā, adding another member to the family.

Five translations spanning eight hundred years all remain in the canon. No translation displaced another.

3 · The Great Prajñā — a Library for Parallel Reading, Not the Final Stop

What, then, of Xuanzang's six-hundred-fascicle Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra? Did it replace every earlier translation?

No. Xuanzang's collected translation is the great compendium of the Prajñā family—a gathering in sixteen assemblies that includes the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā family. But precisely which assembly corresponds to which earlier translation must be established chapter by chapter; it cannot be assigned in advance. This book inherits the position already established in the annotated edition of the Smaller Prajñāpāramitā:

「Xuanzang's Great Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, T07n0220, is a later-translated library for parallel reading. It is cited only where the particular assembly and passage have been established segment by segment; this edition does not designate the whole work in advance as either the Fourth or the Fifth Assembly.」 〔摘自《小品般若》譯注緒論〕

The phrase 「library for parallel reading」 is deliberately careful. The Great Prajñā is a treasury always available for comparison, not a final court declaring the earlier translations obsolete. Translation history is a family of coexisting witnesses, not an elimination contest. Lokakṣema's archaic plainness, Kumārajīva's fluency, and Xuanzang's completeness are each the way one age received prajñā; each bears witness in a way no other can replace.

4 · What Six Centuries of Translation Tell Us

What does it mean that the sūtra was translated again and again? At the end of Sengrui's preface is the first conscious Chinese reflection on the literary form of Prajñā translation:

「The Sanskrit is elegant and plain; translated in accordance with the source, the result may lack ornate ingenuity but has more than enough simplicity and correctness. May those capable of awakening through the text pass beyond its outward embellishment and draw near to its actual meaning.」 〔同序·T08 0537a15〕

「It may lack ornate ingenuity but has more than enough simplicity and correctness」—the translator knows that his Chinese is plain and does not regard this as a defect. 「Pass beyond its outward embellishment and draw near to its actual meaning」—the reader is asked to let ornament go and take hold of what is real. This self-awareness shows that translating scripture has never been only a matter of changing languages. It is a civilization learning to speak, with its own tongue, a wisdom it has never spoken before. Across six centuries of repeated translation, each version is another, deeper act of receiving.

Return to the opening question: are the Daoxing, the Smaller, the Larger, and the Great Prajñā the same sūtra? The ancients answer: they are one Dharma taught at different times in adapted, fuller and shorter forms. Over six centuries China received this family member by member and abandoned not one of them. This is how scripture grows. How, then, does learning become treatise? Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra is waiting—the road of the next chapter.

Author · Shi Huijing CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · 二〇二六 · 夏