འཕགས་པ་སངས་རྒྱས་བརྒྱད་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.5

intro.5

There is to our knowledge no extant Sanskrit version of this sūtra. According to the colophon to the Tibetan translation it was translated into Tibetan by the Indian preceptors Jinamitra and Surendrabodhi, along with the editor-translator Yeshé Dé. The text is also recorded in both the Denkarma¹ and Phangthangma² catalogs of the Tibetan imperial translations, so it would have been translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan no later than the early ninth century, as the Denkarma is thought to have been compiled in 812 ce. Four Chinese sūtras with cognate material are included in the Taishō Buddhist Canon (Taishō 427, 428, 430, and 431).³ The earliest of the Chinese translations (Taishō 427) dates to the early third century, so the materials presented in this sūtra have their roots in very early Indian Mahāyāna.