Heart Sūtra

The short version of The Heart Sūtra was first compiled‍—most likely as an abstract of longer Prajñāpāramitā sūtras‍—in China sometime in the middle of the seventh century ᴄᴇ.⁴ Shortly thereafter, it appears that the sūtra was translated from Chinese into Sanskrit. The material used to compile the sūtra was extracted from key passages in Prajñāpāramitā scriptures in Chinese translation, especially Kumārajīva’s (344–413 ᴄᴇ) translation of The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines (Taishō 223). These central statements were then framed by an introduction describing the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara’s role as the teacher, and then a concluding mantra, which functioned to encapsulate the blessings of the Prajñāpāramitā teachings.⁵ In this way, the short version of The Heart Sūtra combines established Buddhist Prajñāpāramitā scripture with dhāraṇī practice in an abridged format that is eminently suited for recitation. Notably, at that time in China such scriptural digests summarizing the words of the Buddha (buddhavacana) were common, and The Heart Sūtra is certainly not unique in this way.⁶ What is remarkable, however, is the immense importance and popularity the short version of The Heart Sūtra came to enjoy in China and the rest of East Asia. When viewed from the perspective of its roots in Prajñāpāramitā literature and its transformative and liberating efficacy in the perception of its many devotees, The Heart Sūtra does fulfill important criteria for being a genuine Buddhist scripture. For example, the Mahāyāna sūtra Inspiring Determination (Adhyāśayasañcodana, Toh 69) defines authentic buddhavacana as any discourse⁷ that fulfils the following four criteria: (1) it must be meaningful, (2) it has to be consistent with the Dharma, (3) it should reduce mental defilements, and (4) it should present the qualities of nirvāṇa as opposed to saṃsāra.⁸ In this sense The Heart Sūtra is perhaps not so different from many other Mahāyāna scriptures, in particular those of the Prajñāpāramitā family, that likewise were transmitted across a variety of time periods, regions, cultures, and languages‍—constantly in flux, yet ever encapsulating the transcendent aspects of authentic buddhavacana.

Traditionally, the earliest version of The Heart Sūtra in Chinese was thought to be Taishō 250, which in traditional sources is described as a translation of Kumārajīva. However, this attribution is generally no longer accepted, and some scholars have placed it later in time‍—some even in the beginning of the eighth century ᴄᴇ.⁹ Apart from Taishō 250, the earliest witness for The Heart Sūtra’s existence is a famous stone stele, which was discovered in the early twentieth century at the Yunju Temple in the Fangshan region near Beijing. The inscription on this stele is a rendering of the short version of The Heart Sūtra, and the colophon is dated to 661. The colophon further states that this is the translation prepared by Xuanzang (i.e., an equivalent of Taishō 251).¹⁰ Of the three shorter versions of the text in Chinese,¹¹ this is the one that has been commonly read and recited across East Asia down to the present day.

In terms of Sanskrit sources, the first rendering of the short sūtra in Sanskrit was likely produced shortly after the compilation of The Heart Sūtra in Chinese in the middle of the seventh century. However, the earliest witness we have of a Sanskrit text is not an actual Sanskrit manuscript, but rather a version with the Sanskrit transliterated into Chinese characters (Taishō 256). This text was likely produced by the famous translator and teacher Amoghavajra (705–74) and can therefore be dated to the eighth century.¹² While multiple Sanskrit manuscripts of the shorter version of The Heart Sūtra exist, any dating of such manuscripts is typically fraught with much uncertainty.¹³ Scholars have, however, dated a Sanskrit manuscript of the short version (currently kept in Tokyo National Museum) to the ninth or tenth century, and this appears to be the earliest extant Sanskrit manuscript.¹⁴ Tibetan translations of the short sūtra were never included in any of the Kangyurs, but several have been identified among the Dunhuang manuscripts.¹⁵

In sum, we can conclude that the Chinese version of the short sūtra must have been compiled sometime between 404 (when Kumārajīva completed his translation of Taishō 223) and 661 ᴄᴇ (the date on the stone stele), and that the Sanskrit translation was produced soon thereafter.¹⁶ However, in addition to these mutually distant historical markers, we also have data that place the likely time of compilation much more precisely within just a two-year period from 654–56 ᴄᴇ. First, 654 ᴄᴇ marks the year when the Dhāraṇī­samuccaya (Taishō 901), which is the likely source of the mantra in The Heart Sūtra, was translated into Chinese.¹⁷ Second, in Xuanzang’s biography (Taishō 2053, written in the late seventh century) it is mentioned that in 656 Xuanzang offered a gold-lettered version of The Heart Sūtra to the imperial family as a gift. Although the biography is a later source than the stone stele, the date provided in the biography is the earliest placement of The Heart Sūtra in the historical record and this may possibly be the very occasion on which The Heart Sūtra was first compiled in Chinese.¹⁸