Commentaries on the Prajñāpāramitā Scriptures Overall
The Prajñāpāramitā scriptures themselves were much read and studied throughout the Mahāyāna Buddhist world, yet as standalone works they were almost certainly no less difficult to understand fully than we find them today.
If we extrapolate from the scriptures themselves, their intended audience includes two distinct spiritual types, namely, (a) the “faithful type” (śraddhānusārin), those who have enough faith in the Mahāyāna teachings that they can enter the path of preliminary practice through faith alone, and (b) the “intellectual type” (dharmānusārin), those who have faith in the Mahāyāna teachings but require explanations that seem true to them analytically before they enter the path of preliminary practice.17 For the faithful type, it is just revering or reciting the scripture—even without any understanding of the esoteric meaning—that is said to have immediate worldly benefits and to set them quickly on the path to complete awakening. For the intellectual type, on the other hand, it is studying the esoteric meaning of the scripture that is supposed to have immediate worldly benefits and to lead eventually to complete awakening. The Prajñāpāramitā scriptures are aimed at both types, since hearing or reading them is a necessary condition for awakening, but on its own is not a sufficient condition for a clear understanding of the Transcendent State of Wisdom itself or its related practices.
Those wishing to practice the teachings were explicitly said to require the guidance of a teacher and to devote themselves wholeheartedly to study. As the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras spread across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, the direct guidance of teachers does not seem to have been enough. Out of the need for more extensive guidance, the commentarial tradition was born.
The complexity of interpreting the language and meaning of these scriptures is witnessed by the large number of different commentaries and treatises composed over the centuries, and the variety of interpretive traditions.18 Schematically, these can be seen as arising in three phases.
First, Nāgārjuna’s treatise, The Root Verses on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Toh 3824), clarified their explicit teachings on emptiness, and the commentary attributed to him by the Chinese tradition, Treatise on the Great Virtue of Wisdom (Dazhidu lun, *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa), unpacked their terminology and general implications.19
Next, according to some traditions, the great master Asaṅga (fourth century ᴄᴇ) found the logical coherence of the structure and content of these scriptures so difficult to grasp that he prayed to the bodhisattva Maitreya for guidance. In response to his prayers, Maitreya is said to have transmitted to Asaṅga (along with four other works) the treatise called The Ornament of Clear Realization (Toh 3786, hereafter referred to as Ornament), which reveals the implicit framework of eight topics necessary for understanding how the Prajñāpāramitā scriptures are structured around the stages and paths to awakening.20
Finally, The Long Explanation of the Noble Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand, Twenty-Five Thousand, and Eighteen Thousand Lines (Toh 3808), attributed by some to Vasubandhu (fourth to fifth century) and by others to Daṃṣṭrasena (eighth to early ninth century), presents the structure of the larger scriptures as involving three approaches to the topic: brief, intermediate, and detailed.21