Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā/Full text
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Texts/Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā/Full text
Texts/Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā/Full text
अष्टसाहस्रिकाप्रज्ञापारमिता
Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā
The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (84000)
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The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, like other sūtras on the Perfection of Wisdom, deals with the topic of emptiness and the understanding of the ultimate truth or the way things are. Modern scholars date the sūtra roughly to the 2nd and 1st century BC and consider it to be the earliest sūtra on which other Perfection of Wisdom sūtras are based. Its adherents claim the sūtra to be a part of the words of the Buddha. It is believed to have been taken to the subterranean world and brought back to the human world by Nāgārjuna. It is sometimes known as the Condensed Mother (ཡུམ་བསྡུས་པ་), the term Mother referring to the Perfection of Wisdom which gives rise to all buddhas and bodhisattvas. It is said to be the condensed version of the long version in one hundred thousand lines and the middle version in twenty-five thousand lines. Having spread across Asia and beyond and having been translated into many languages, it is one of the most common books to be found in the Buddhist Himalayas.
The sūtra takes the form of a series of dialogues between the Buddha Śākyamuni, Subhūti, Śāriputra, and others, such as Indra, the king of gods, and a goddess of the Ganges. In the final chapters, the sūtra contains the inspirational narratives of Sadāprarudita and his quest for the teachings on the Perfection of Wisdom from the Bodhisattva Dharmodgata. The sūtra is also one of the earliest Mahāyāna sources proclaiming the luminous nature of the mind.
| Reference | Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā [अष्टसाहस्रिकाप्रज्ञापारमिता]. 'phags pa shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa brgyad stong pa [འཕགས་པ་ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་བརྒྱད་སྟོང་པ།]. [The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (84000)]. Translated by Śākyasena, Jñānasiddhi, Dharmatāśīla, Xuanzang, Dānapāla, Kumārajīva, Dharmapriya, Chu Fo-nien, Chih-ch'ien, Lokakṣema. Kangyur, RKTSK 12 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=12&typ=1. |
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| People | Dharmapriya, Dharmatāśīla, Dānapāla |
