Transcribing in the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras

Abstract

The enlarging of Buddhist Scriptures essentially ceased in Pāli Buddhism after the initiation of commentaries on the scriptures. Conversely, in Mahāyāna Buddhism, adding words to the sūtras continued even after this initiation of commentaries. The purpose of the present study is to identify some factors that allowed Buddhists to add words to the descriptions of the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras. First, I argue that the descriptions that urge Buddhists to transcribe the sūtras and give them to others might make it difficult for Buddhists to stop changing words in the sūtras. Second, I argue that Buddhists might not have stopped enlarging the sūtras because enlargement is not prohibited in the sūtras, even though forgetting and losing only one word in the sūtras is forbidden.