ABSTRACT
No other corpus of Mahāyāna texts has captured the modern scholarly imagination more than the collection of Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras (Perfection of Wisdom scriptures) has in the last half century. Among these the Aṣṭasahaśrikā-prajñāpāramitā (Aṣṭa) has garnered the most attention since the late Edward Conze proclaimed it to be the oldest Perfection of Wisdom text, leading some to speculate that it is the oldest Mahāyāna sūtra. 1 Although the Aṣṭa can no longer claim special status as the oldest Mahāyāna scripture, 2 its antiquity is confirmed by its inclusion among the oldest Chinese translations of Mahāyāna sūtras and a recently discovered Gāndhārī manuscript fragment. 3 No doubt some of the scholarly focus on the Prajñāpāramitā texts is due to Edward Conze’s pioneering translation work. This in turn must be due in part to the survival of many of these sūtras within the extant Nepalese and Pāla manuscript collections. While the popularity of the Heart Sūtra and Diamond Sūtra in the Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist traditions have made them common objects of scholarly inquiry, 4 the Indian commentarial tradition demonstrates the continued attention that Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras received within the Indian Buddhist intellectual tradition. 5
