The Perfection of Wisdom
Among the earliest Mahāyāna texts is the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā). Its central teaching is emptiness (śūnyatā): that nothing, not even the Buddha's own teachings, exists with a fixed, independent nature of its own. A bodhisattva practises the perfections without grasping at any of them.
The Perfection of Wisdom literature kept growing for centuries, into versions of 25,000 and 100,000 lines, and was also condensed into short texts such as the Diamond Sūtra and the Heart Sūtra, still chanted daily across East Asia.
The Lotus and others
The Lotus Sūtra teaches that the Buddha's different teachings were "skilful means", adapted to his listeners, and that all of them lead to one vehicle, Buddhahood itself. It also presents the Buddha's life on earth as a display: in truth, it says, his lifespan is immeasurable.
Other influential texts include the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, in which a wise layman out-argues the Buddha's monks; the Pure Land sūtras describing Amitābha's realm; and the vast Avataṃsaka, the Flower Garland Sūtra.
Why it matters
These texts supplied much of the scriptural foundation for later Mahāyāna thought, including its philosophy of emptiness.
History and tradition
What historians can say
These texts were composed over several centuries after the Buddha, probably by many different communities. A Chinese translation of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines was made by Lokakṣema in 179 CE, which gives a firm latest date, and a birch-bark manuscript from Gandhāra containing part of it has been radiocarbon-dated to around the 1st to 2nd centuries CE.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
Followers of these sūtras regard them as the Buddha's own teaching, often given on Vulture Peak near Rājagaha. Many sūtras promise great merit to anyone who copies, recites or honours them, which is one reason so many copies were made.