འཕགས་པ་སྤབས་པའ་བླ་གྲས་ཀྱས་ཞས་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.4

intro.4

To our knowledge there is no extant Sanskrit version of this sūtra. It was, however, translated into Chinese (Taishō 544) by Fa Chang 法場 during the early sixth century ce. Although it appears that the sūtra did exercise some influence in China,¹ it does not seem to have had a particularly significant impact in Tibet. The colophon to the Tibetan translation states that it was produced by the Indian preceptor Prajñāvarman and the Tibetan translator Yeshé Dé. The text is also recorded in the Denkarma² and Phangthangma³ inventories of Tibetan imperial translations, so we can establish that it was first translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan no later than the early ninth century, as the Denkarma is dated to 812 ce. The primary Tibetan text used for the present translation was the Degé (sde dge) edition, but the other editions included in the Comparative Kangyur (dpe bsdur ma) were also consulted.